Toronto and provincial police say DNA testing has identified the killer of three women from separate homicide cases dating back to 1982.
Investigators have identified Kenneth Smith as the killer of Christine Prince, Gracelyn Greenidge and Claire Samson, Toronto police and Ontario Provinicial Police (OPP) officers said at a joint news conference Thursday.
The three women were killed in separate incidents between 1982 and 1997, Deputy Chief Robert Johnson of Toronto police said. Prince was killed in 1982, Samson in 1983 and Greenidge in 1997.
The cases had no leads and went cold shortly after the investigations began, police said.
“It is only through sustained collaboration and advances in forensic science that we have arrived at this moment,” Johnson said. “These women were never forgotten. And it is because of the commitment of so many that we are able to give their loved ones at least one crucial answer today.”
In 2016, police found a link between the deaths of Prince and Samson through a national DNA database, OPP Chief Supt. Karen Gonneau said. Then in 2017, they found a link between those two slayings and Greenidge’s.
From there, police began doing DNA testing, she said. They started using investigative genetic genealogy in 2022 and, earlier this month, identified Smith as the perpetrator of all three murders.
“The only thing that linked them was the offender’s DNA,” Gonneau said.
Smith died in 2019 at the age of 72 in Windsor, Ont., police said.
Johnson told reporters that were Smith alive today, Toronto police would arrest him for the murders of Greenidge and Prince, while the Ontario Provincial Police would arrest him for the murder of Samson — who was last seen getting into a car downtown in 1983, but was later found deceased north of the city.
“His death means that he will never be held to account in a court of law, and we recognize the impact that has on families who have waited so long for justice,” he said.
Police believe Smith may have been linked to other deaths in the city.
“This investigation does not end here. We know that there are unanswered questions and we hope that anyone with information will come forward and help us complete the story,” Gonneau said.
Smith lived in Toronto at the time of all three killings, investigators say. They said he was known to police, as he had a history of sexual assault and was incarcerated multiple times over that timeframe.
The three victims in the homicide investigations were not known to each other, police said. Det. Sgt. Steve Smith of Toronto police called the killings “crimes of opportunity more than anything.”
Asked if Smith could be considered a serial killer, he said it is an investigation with “more than two murders and not in the same event, so he does meet the criteria.”
The first victim was Christine Prince, a 25-year-old from Wales working as a nanny in Toronto. She was last seen on June 21, 1982, getting on a streetcar on St. Clair Avenue W. after a night out with friends, Johnson said.
Her body was found the next day in the Rouge River near the Toronto Zoo, he said. Police believe she had been sexually assaulted and struck on the head, and she ultimately died from drowning.
The next year, 23-year-old Claire Samson’s body was found in a remote, wooded area about 120 kilometres north of Toronto, OPP Chief Supt. Gonneau said. She had been shot twice.
Samson had last been seen the day before, on Sept. 1, getting into a car driven by an older, white man near Jarvis and Gerrard streets, Gonneau said.
About 14 years later, Smith allegedly murdered Gracelyn Greenidge, 41, in her apartment in North York on July 29, 1997, Det. Sgt. Steve Smith said. Her body was discovered by a co-worker after Greenidge missed her shift as a nursing assistant. She died of blunt-force trauma, he said.
DNA evidence was collected in all three cases, but no suspects were identified at the times of the time of each death, police said.
“For Christine’s family, and for the families of Claire and Gracelyn, the wait for answers has been extraordinarily long,” Johnson said.
“I want to again extend our deepest condolences to their loved ones who have carried an unimaginable burden for decades.”
