For practically 45 years, the id of the human stays discovered alongside a rural street north of Toronto remained a thriller.
It was on July 16, 1980, when a Markham, Ont. resident made the invention close to a wooded space on Eleventh Concession, between 14th and Steeles avenues. Unbeknownst to them, the stays belonged to William Joseph Pennell, a convict who had escaped a Kingston jail a month earlier.
York Regional Police beforehand introduced that investigators had recognized the stays in 2023 after the case stayed chilly for many years. They stated that investigative genetic family tree (IGG) held the important thing to linking the physique to Pennell after investigators positively recognized his family members.
However how did they do it? Ontario Chronicle Toronto spoke with Othram, a Texas-based forensics firm that assisted police in making the identification, to study extra in regards to the course of.
Gathering proof
Pennell’s stays have been first exhumed in 2007 by chilly case investigators in an try and create a facial reconstruction and to acquire DNA, police stated. A 12 months later, a DNA profile was developed and uploaded to the nationwide DNA database, however there have been no matches.
Investigators then turned to IGG in 2021 and contacted Othram in The Woodlands, Texas in 2022 for assist 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 corporate’s chief of workers, Colby Lasyone, advised Ontario Chronicle Toronto in an interview earlier this week.
Lasyone stated the staff then labored to develop a brand new DNA profile that York Regional Police used to add right into a database and cross reference with profiles on sure household tree web sites earlier than ultimately discovering a match.
“If you’ve done a genealogy test with a consumer genealogy testing company, you have to actually upload your DNA profile into a database. There are specific databases where law enforcement actually can query those databases. And so in order for forensic genetic genealogy to be done in a case, we can only match against databases where individuals have consented specifically for law enforcement to do so,” Lasyone defined.
Human stays discovered by a Markham, Ont. resident on July 16, 1980 have been recognized as William Joseph Pennell. (York Regional Police)
This isn’t the primary time Othram has been concerned in cracking a chilly case within the Higher Toronto Space. In 2019, the corporate assisted Toronto police in figuring out Joseph George Sutherland as a suspect within the 1983 killings of Erin Gilmour, the daughter of a rich Toronto businessman, and Susan Tice, a mom of 4. Each ladies have been killed inside their properties and each circumstances remained chilly for practically 40 years. Sutherland was sentenced to life in jail earlier this 12 months.
“Genealogy was one time a hobby if you will, and then it was used to help locate adoptive families. And now, this application of genealogy, from a forensic perspective, allows for the identification of relatives that ultimately help to narrow down the name of individuals who have died without their identity being known, or even individuals who are suspects in a crime,” Lasyone said.
‘A huge benefit to police’
Chris Lewis is the former commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police and said recent advancements in genetic genealogy for the purposes of solving cold cases mark a turning point in the way those cases are investigated.
“Years ago, in the 80s and 90s, in the early days of DNA, you had to have a sample from a crime scene, and then, of course, a sample from a suspect to try and match them in some way,” Lewis, who’s Ontario Chronicle’ Public Security Analyst, stated in an interview. He was not concerned within the identification of Pennell’s stays.
“But now, you have the ability to identify people, unidentified human remains, etc, through this genetic approach and ultimately through a huge database that’s been developed since,” Lewis stated, calling the investigative instrument “a huge benefit to police.”
The wooded space in Markham, Ont. the place William Joseph Pennell’s stays have been discovered on July 16, 1980, is seen on this picture.
He stated it’s seemingly chilly circumstances will nonetheless exist, particularly in conditions the place no suspect or suspect DNA is recognized on the scene. However in circumstances the place police could make a forensic hyperlink to an individual who was on the scene apart from the sufferer or when human stays are unidentified, therein lies a giant benefit for investigators.
“Police services all over Canada have been reviewing those old, so-called cold cases to see if the technology has developed to the point now that we can use it…and a lot of old, previously unsolved cases are being looked after because of the science.”
Who was William Joseph Pennell?
Pennell had frolicked in a number of correctional establishments for a wide range of felony offences and was arrested for armed theft and tried homicide on June 30, 1979, whereas out on parole, police stated in a information launch issued earlier this month.
After he was charged, Pennell was despatched to the Collins Bay Establishment in Kingston.
Police stated Pennell admitted to his position within the crime and stated there have been at the very least two different individuals concerned. Nevertheless, he refused to implicate them as he believed his life was in peril.
Pennell was convicted of the theft in April 1980. Two months later, he escaped from jail. To this date, no detailed data in regards to the escape have been situated.
Whereas the main points of his escape stay unclear, police stated Pennell advised a buddy he supposed to flee to South America. Police imagine that was Pennell’s final contact earlier than his demise.
Pennell’s reason for demise was by no means decided, however investigators imagine foul play was concerned.
The investigation into Pennell’s demise is ongoing and police say they’re trying to communicate with further buddies and associates of the 26-year-old to know what occurred following his 1980 jail escape.
