5 Canadian Cold Cases Solved With Genetic Genealogy

These days because genetic genealogy is on the rise, investigators can use this technology to solve cold cases. Genetic Genealogy creates family history profiles, which collect biological links between individuals. This means that when we submit our DNA to places like Ancestry, investigators can use our DNA to find someone in our bloodline who may have committed a crime.

Here are 5 Canadian Cold Cases that were solved using Genetic Genealogy.

5. Sharron Prior

On March 29th, 1975, Sharron set out to meet some friends at a pizza parlor near her home in Montreal’s Pointe-St-Charles. Her body was discovered three days later in a wooded area in Longueuil, which is on Montreal’s south shore.

Investigators had looked into over one hundred suspects, but could never make an arrest. However, that all changed thanks to Genetic Genealogy when they found her killer, who died about forty years ago.

Investigators are 100% certain that a West Virginia man by the name of Franklin Maywood Romine handled the teenager’s rape and murder.

Romine died in 1982, at age 36 in Montreal under mysterious circumstances. They exhumed his body in early May, to confirm his DNA link in the crime. Romine had a long rap sheet in Canada and the US and was in prison several times between 1964 and 1982.

 4. Ljubica Topic

It was May 14th, 1971 when Ljubica was only nine years old when she was playing outside her home on the Drouillard Road. When a stranger appeared and lured her away with the promise of money. In an alley only a kilometer away from her home, Ljubica was sexually assaulted and murdered. Until recently, investigators weren’t able to get anywhere with the case.

But, in 2019, they could identify the child’s murderer, and he too is already dead. They did not release his name to the public until 2023. His name was Frank Arthur Hall, and they found him using Genetic Genealogy.

 3. Suspect Found 4 Decades After

In July 1981, a man grabbed, dragged, and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old teenager in Northeast Edmonton.

Forty-one years later, police have made an arrest. They arrested the 65-year-old Saskatchewan man named Guy Greffard. Who handled the 15-year-old girl’s rape. This was thanks to the use of Genetic Genealogy.

 2. Same Suspect, 2 murders

The year was 1983 when Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour were sexually assaulted and murdered in their beds. They lived just kilometers apart but didn’t know each other. Earlier this year, the police identified their killer and rapist as a 61-year-old man from Northern Ontario. Joseph George Sutherland was arrested in Moosonee, Ontario, and charged with two accounts of First Degree Murder.

 1. Christine Jessop

It was the fall of 2020 when police first announced that they had identified nine-year-old Christine Jessop’s killer. A neighbor, Guy Paul Morin, was arrested and wrongfully convicted of the crime. Thirty-six years after the little girl’s abduction, sexual assault, and murder, the police have identified the right culprit. Through genetic genealogy, police could determine that Calvin Hoover was responsible. However, by the time the police identified him as Jessop’s killer, Hoover was already deceased. Morin was released and given $1.25 Million in compensation.