Genetic genealogy is about cracking cases that were once thought to be unsolvable. Not all police forces can afford to use it

As many police forces use genetic genealogy to solve decades-old cold cases, Montreal police have yet to make a big breakthrough in an individual case.

The lack of progress — at least publicly — raises concerns about Montreal's police department's priorities as the Sûreté du Québec and neighboring Longueuil police use new forensic techniques to solve long-unsolved cases.

Last spring, Longueuil police opened the 1975 murder case Sharron before and in 2022, Quebec provincial police tracked down a suspected murderer Gilein Potvin, a 19-year-old who was murdered in Saguenay nearly 24 years ago. He is currently on trial for first degree murder and sexual assault.

In both cases, DNA analysis of the Y chromosome, which traces the ancestry, was performed to help match the unknown profile with potential ancestry. Armed with new leads, cops used traditional police techniques to zero in on the suspect.

Stéphane Luce runs a non-profit organization that raises awareness of missing persons and murder cases in Quebec. He says it's time for Montreal to win.

The Service of the Police de la Ville de Montreal (SPVM) established a cold case unit in the spring of 2019, which now consists of eight investigators.

“With this new technology, investigators can put their noses in a file and see if there is DNA and good DNA,” said Luce, president of Meurtres et Disparitions Irrésolus du Quebec.

Luce's organization pushed the SPVM to reinvestigate several unsolved murders, including that of a 12-year-old. Stephane GauthierAbducted and murdered on Christmas Eve 1982.

Luce believes Gauthier's case is an ideal candidate for advanced genetic testing because unidentifiable DNA was found at the crime scene.

“The murderer may have led to other murders that occurred (in Montreal) in the 70s and 80s,” said Luce, who believes Gauthier's case could be solved quickly if the SPVM takes him seriously.

SPVM said it is impossible to determine how many cases arise from genetic genealogy. There are hundreds of unsolved murders on his books since the 1980s.

In an email, a department spokesperson says only that the cold corps is “actively working on a number of files related to technological advances in DNA identification.”

Montreal recently worked with the Ontario Provincial Police to help solve the murder of Jewell Parchman Langford, a Tennessee woman who disappeared in Montreal in 1975.

His body was found in Casselman, Ont., between Montreal and Ottawa. was found a month after disappearing from the nearby Ult River. But for decades, his identity remained a mystery until the OPP used genetic genealogy to trace his relatives.

Last year, the OPP charged Rodney Nichols a former Montrealer, with his murder. Nichols was extradited from Florida to Canada last December.

Toronto is a leader in genetic genealogy

When DNA is found at a crime scene, it is compared to samples in a national database that archives the DNA of convicted criminals.

But if there's no match, “you're basically looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Toronto police Det.-Sgt. Steve Smith, head of the cold case division in Toronto.

Researcher genetic genealogy creates a different type of DNA profile. Once it's uploaded to the ancestry database, it shows how your pattern is related to other people in the world, in other words, people who share your DNA. From there, genealogists can create family trees and weed out the suspect.

After Toronto police helped solve the 1984 murder of a nine-year-old girl, the researcher saw the potential of genetic genealogy. Christine Jessop.

In 2019, Toronto Police became a partner OtramA private laboratory in Houston, Texas to create a suspect profile from stored DNA evidence.

From there, the profile was uploaded to a DNA ancestry database to generate potential relatives. This allowed genealogists to create a family tree that led investigators to Calvin Hoover, who died in 2015.

The potential to solve cases with advanced genetic testing was clear, but Toronto needed serious funding because the testing runs between $7,000 and $10,000, Smith said.

In 2022, the Toronto Police Service received a $1.5 million grant from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

The three-year grant will cover the cost of genetic testing and help the police force hire five genealogists.

“(We're) fortunate to have genealogists because sometimes in the US they charge up to $280 an hour for genealogy. So we tried to make it as cost-effective as possible,” Smith said.

The grant funds about 36 cases a year, a mix of historical murders, sexual assaults and unidentified human remains.

Half come from Toronto and the rest from other police forces in Ontario, who also have access to the program's testing and expertise.

Investigators have prioritized “intimate relationship” murders — beatings, strangulations, stabbings, as well as sexual assaults in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — that police believe have DNA samples from the perpetrator. .

“DNA wasn't really known at the time,” Smith said. “Therefore, criminals were not afraid to leave bodily fluids at the crime scene.

Using a grant from the Attorney General, 21 cases were investigated using genetic genealogy, including a 1983 murder Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice.

Another 12 cases are awaiting closure of DNA confirmation.

“It's huge for everyone involved,” Smith said.

Toronto's success has not gone unnoticed. Smith said he knows other police departments have written to their provincial governments to see if they could receive a similar grant.

“A Canada-wide federal grant would also be great,” Smith said.

There is no specific grant in Quebec

It was one of Quebec's most notoriously cold conditions AgoThe 1975 murder. A 16-year-old girl went missing on her way to a pizza parlor in Montreal's Pointe-Saint-Charles district to meet up with friends. His body was found three days later in a wooded area in Longueuil, on Montreal's south shore.

DNA was found at the crime scene, but not enough to test. When science finally caught up, technicians were able to create a genetic profile of the alleged killer from the trace amount of DNA found on the T-shirt. Genetic genealogy helped them identify a man who had never been on investigators' radar until last year.

“It overturns every file from A to Z,” said Pierre Duquet, chief inspector of Longueuil police's major crimes unit. “This allows us to put a face on the unknown perpetrator.”

Longueuil has two special investigators who are looking into about 30 old cases one by one. If there is evidence that could provide a new clue, it will be sent to the Quebec forensics laboratory for reanalysis.

“We are awaiting results on certain files,” Duquette said. “Fingers crossed they're good.”

But he's jealous of the extra budget Toronto has access to.

Quebec doesn't have a specific grant for genetic genealogy, but if it did, Duquette said it would help increase the forensic lab's budget so they could hire more staff and do more testing.

It could also help police forces pay for specialist investigators.

“The most expensive thing is the investigation,” Duquette said. “It's too expensive to take two full-time employees to open boxes.”

For now, Quebec's priorities seem to be moving in a different direction.

In the 2022-2023 budget, the province committed $10.1 million over five years to focus on disappearances and abductions. Much of this money helped create a coordinated group of police officers in the SPVM and the Sûreté du Quebec.

This idea came after his death Nora and Romy CarpentierIn July 2020, they were kidnapped and killed by their father.

Quebec Forensic Laboratory Judges and Medical Legal Sciences Laboratory (LSJML), also received $930,000 to increase its DNA analysis capabilities.

While there is no specific funding for genetic genealogy, the money will help the lab “step up” work on unsolved files, said Marie-José Montminy, spokeswoman for Quebec's Ministry of Public Security.

The lab is currently in the process of testing a more advanced genetic testing tool that could be used in certain cases, he said.

Have privacy concerns been raised?

Criminologist Michael Arnfield has long advocated the use of genetic genealogy in policing.

He believes some police departments are reluctant to try it because it would require a public-private partnership. Others are concerned about privacy issues and are waiting to see how the cases will play out in court.

“This technology is solving on average a week in the United States, and we've seen it used with great success in Ontario.” Arntfield, a professor at Western University, said: “If you can convince government bureaucrats in Ontario to come up with $1.5 million, I'd say it passes the test.”

Arntfield is a consultant to GEDmatch, one of the largest ancestry databases. As for privacy, he said the website is transparent and requires people to consent to their information being used in police searches.

“So you want to make an argument that a child sex offender has a personal interest in what his 14th cousin does with his DNA collection at home? Good luck with that,” Arnfield said. “A person doing a home DNA kit is responsible for their genetic privacy and can take whatever steps they want to take with that information or not.”

Ultimately, all genetic genealogy can do is give police leads when other avenues of inquiry run dry, Arnfield said. Once the police zero in on a suspect, investigators must still use traditional police techniques to connect the suspect to the crime.

“That's why I call it the new fingerprint,” Arnfield said.