\u201cOthram has a long-standing relationship with the Toronto Police Service, and we are grateful for the opportunity to assist with their unsolved sexual assaults, homicides and unidentified-human-remains cases,\u201d Othram CEO David Mittelman\u00a0wrote in an email. \u201cIt is deeply gratifying when our work can help solve a case and provide long-awaited answers to a victim\u2019s family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Othram\u2019s advanced DNA testing helped police solve the case of the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., 72, of California. DeAngelo eventually pleaded guilty to 13 murders and 13 kidnappings in 2020.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Demolition workers discovered skeletal remains of an unidentified woman at a construction site near Danforth and Coxwell Avenues in 1995.<\/p>\n
Toronto police<\/p>\n
Othram earlier helped solve the murder of nine-year-old Christine Jessop, who went missing in Queensville, on Oct. 3, 1984.<\/p>\n
Her body was found three months later.<\/p>\n
Calvin Hoover, a friend and neighbour of the Jessop family, was identified by Toronto Police in 2020 as the likely killer. He had already died by suicide in 2015.<\/p>\n
Jessop\u2019s neighbour, Guy Paul Morin, served significant time in custody before he was exonerated due to advances in DNA testing in 1995.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to assist in exonerations too,\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cIn the Christine Jessop case, they initially accused and prosecuted the wrong person. He (Morin) didn\u2019t feel exonerated until we later caught the real killer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe justice system failed me, but science saved me,\u201d Morin later said.<\/p>\n
The \u2018eureka\u2019 moment\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the advances in DNA, there was bacterial contamination in the evidence for The Danforth Lady.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had two complete failures,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Finally, the murdered woman was identified as Mary McLeod Moffat (nee Davidson).<\/p>\n
Kelly\u2019s team learned that Mary was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1905 and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1913.<\/p>\n
She was likely murdered around April 1936.<\/p>\n
Police found that her husband, Andrew Lloyd Moffat, operated a tire business at 1509 Danforth Ave., adjacent to the former auto dealership where Mary\u2019s remains were eventually discovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the Eureka moment,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Moffat emerged as the primary suspect in Mary\u2019s homicide.<\/p>\n
Kelly learned that Moffat had abandoned Mary and remarried three times.<\/p>\n
Wife No. 3 left him in 1941.<\/p>\n
At one point, he was married to two women at the same time.<\/p>\n
Along the way, he changed his name to Drake Lloyd Cummings and lived in Nebraska and then Vancouver, before his death in B.C. in 1985 at the age of 77.<\/p>\n
When police felt they had finally solved the case, a living relative of Mary\u2019s with significant health issues firmly told police she wanted to be left alone by the press.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A file photo of laboratories run by Othram, the the DNA lab and forensic genetic genealogy company that helps Toronto police crack cold cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Daniel Adaclog\/Othram<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s had a very distinguished career in her field,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
In the end, the little boy who sought his mother and Crowley died not knowing answers to the grim discovery under Danforth Avenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMary\u2019s family never knew,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Mittelman said he expects artificial intelligence to accelerate forensic DNA investigations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts greatest near-term value is as an enabling layer that helps experts organize complex genetic and genealogical information, prioritize investigative paths, apply analytical methods more consistently and preserve a transparent record of how conclusions were reached,\u201d Mittelman said. \u201cFor example, we have built AI systems to automate many time-consuming aspects of forensic genetic genealogy. We use this routinely in our work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly said he thinks rapid advances in DNA technology means there will be plenty more cold cases like Mary\u2019s murder solved in the near future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis makes the otherwise impossible, possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDid Dad ever tell you what happened to my mother?\u201d he wrote a relative, when he was old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-843711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}