crime

“Now that we have the killer’s DNA, we just need a name to go with it.”

“Forensic testing was done and DNA was identified, but it does not link to any known offenders in the national DNA data bank.”

“While the offender is not on the national DNA data bank, the DNA was forensically linked to another sexual assault in 1997 where the victim survived.”

For years, this was the message from Toronto police in public video pleas for help solving long-cold homicide cases — many young women whose brutal murders have left their families with few answers for decades.

But recent successes with new genealogical techniques — testing DNA against a relatively new and growing pool of people, those who voluntarily upload their data to popular ancestry websites — are providing hope that dozens of cases could be solved this way.

And, investigators say, it should put those who have long been hiding a murderous secret on notice.

Already this past week, Toronto police say they’ve found the alleged killer behind the 1983 murders of two women killed four months apart. In the U.S., where the process has been used more frequently, a Philadelphia boy found in a box who went without a proper grave marker since 1957 was identified using genealogy.

Those recent cases follow the 2020 identification of the likely suspect in the infamous abduction case of nine-year-old Christine Jessop from her Queensville, Ont., home — years after another man was famously exonerated for her killing.

It…