The Toronto Police Services emblem during a news conference at TPS headquarters, in Toronto on May 17, 2022.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Toronto police say the alleged killer in a decades-old cold case has been identified using DNA testing and investigative genetic genealogy.
Police say if William Taylor was still alive, he would be facing a first-degree murder charge in the 1982 death of Kevin McBride.
Police say homicide cold case investigators revisited the case in 2016 with the primary focus of retesting exhibits and items from the original investigation.
They say DNA testing revealed Taylor, who was first identified as a suspect in 2022 and died in May 2023, was the source of previously unknown DNA left at the crime scene.
Police say McBride was found dead with multiple stab wounds inside his northeast Toronto apartment on May 17, 1982.
Police say investigators at the time suggested he had been killed two days earlier, the day he was last seen, and after finding his vehicle and credit card had been stolen and used between May 15 and 17, 1982.
Toronto police are using new investigative genetic genealogy techniques to help crack cold cases, including historical homicides. In November 2022, detectives said they used these methods to identify a suspect in a Northern Ontario community in connection with two 1983 killings in Toronto.
The Globe and Mail