Woman murdered in 1936 and buried underneath building is finally identified: "One of Toronto's oldest mysteries"
The remains of Mary McLeod Moffat, a woman murdered in 1936, have been identified using advanced investigative genetic genealogy. The discovery provides closure to a decades-old cold case in Toronto.
Why it matters
This case demonstrates the power of modern forensic DNA technology in solving historical crimes that were previously considered unsolvable.
The remains of a woman murdered nearly a century ago and buried beneath a building have finally been identified thanks to modern forensic testing. The woman was identified as Mary McLeod Moffat (née Davidson), a Scottish national who immigrated to Canada with her family in 1913, according to police and the laboratory that performed the testing.The culmination of the case brings closure to "one of Toronto's oldest mysteries," detective Michael Kelly, of the Toronto Police Service, told Canadian news site CTV News Toronto on Monday. The case couldn't have been solved without investigative genetic genealogy, a technique that uses advanced DNA profiling to build a "family tree" that can eventually help identify an unknown individual, said Kelly.
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