CALGARY (CBC) - A 48-year old carpenter has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges in connection with the death and disappearance of corrections worker Natasha Cournoyer.

Crown prosecutor Éliane Perrault said investigators caught up with Claude Larouche with the help of DNA evidence.

Larouche has prior convictions dating back 25 years, including a kidnapping conviction involving a nine-year-old girl.

He was expected to be back in court in Quebec City in February in connection with charges of theft.

The victim did not know the suspect and there was no link between the crime and Cournoyer's work as a communications officer for the Correctional Service of Canada, said Montreal police.

"I think that with the arrest of this suspect ... the citizens could fee more safe on the street," said Montreal police Insp. Daniel Rousseau.

Montreal police investigators working with Laval officers detained Larouche in Montreal around 11:15 p.m. Thursday night.

Larouche, who wore a leather jacket in court, showed no emotion as the charges were read. The investigation continues as police are still looking for some personal effects belonging to Cournoyer, said Perrault.

Rousseau said officers were executing three raids in relation to the case Friday afternoon.

Cournoyer's body was found in early October in east-end Montreal near the edge of the St. Lawrence River. She had vanished on Oct. 1 from her workplace in Laval.

Authorities spent nearly five days searching for Cournoyer after police were alerted about her disappearance. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend Michel Trottier took and passed a polygraph test.

The arrest would provide Cournoyer's family with a certain amount of relief, said Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, president of Quebec's Murdered or Missing Persons' Families' Association.

But there would also be a "sort of anger that will inhabit them for weeks," Boisvenu said.

Boisvenu's own daughter Julie was kidnapped, raped and murdered in June 2002. A sexual predator on probation was later convicted of the crime.

Larouche will be back in court Dec. 8.