Cold case that puzzled Toronto-area police for nearly half a century cracked. Here's how they did it
CTV
For nearly 45 years, the identity of the human remains found along a rural road north of Toronto remained a mystery. It was on July 16, 1980, when a Markham, Ont. resident made the discovery near a wooded area on Eleventh Concession, between 14th and Steeles avenues. Unbeknownst to them, the remains belonged to William Joseph Pennell, a convict who had escaped a Kingston prison a month earlier.
For nearly 45 years, the identity of the human remains found along a rural road north of Toronto remained a mystery.
It was on July 16, 1980, when a Markham, Ont. resident made the discovery near a wooded area on Eleventh Concession, between 14th and Steeles avenues. Unbeknownst to them, the remains belonged to William Joseph Pennell, a convict who had escaped a Kingston prison a month earlier.
York Regional Police previously announced that investigators had identified the remains in 2023 after the case stayed cold for decades. They said that investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) held the key to linking the body to Pennell after investigators positively identified his relatives.
But how did they do it? CTV News Toronto spoke with Othram, a Texas-based forensics company that assisted police in making the identification, to learn more about the process.
Pennell’s remains were first exhumed in 2007 by cold case investigators in an attempt to create a facial reconstruction and to obtain DNA, police said. A year later, a DNA profile was developed and uploaded to the national DNA database, but there were no matches.
Investigators then turned to IGG in 2021 and contacted Othram in The Woodlands, Texas in 2022 for help with the case.
“Othram received skeletal evidence, and the first thing that we need to do is we need to extract DNA from bone. And so we did that,” the company’s chief of staff, Colby Lasyone, told CTV News Toronto in an interview earlier this week.
