Jewell Langford lived with Rodney Nichols in Montreal before disappearing in 1975

The only thing I can say is that they stayed together for a short period of time.said Detective Inspector Daniel Nadeau of the POPin an interview on Wednesday.

As revealed by Radio-Canada on Tuesday, the OPP has made great progress in this file, which has been under investigation for more than 40 years.

Thanks to advances in DNA, police recently identified the body of Jewell Langford who was found in the Nation River in Eastern Ontario on May 3, 1975. This was the first case of remains humans who have been identified through genetic genealogy in Ontario.

Until this discovery, the identity of this businesswoman from Tennessee had remained a great mystery, hence the use of the nickname of Lady of the River Nation over the decades to identify it.

A some urgency in matters of extradition

Once the identity of the Lady of the River Nation confirmed, the POP continued its investigation to try to identify the person responsible for his death.

Last September, the POP accused Rodney Nichols of the murder of Jewell Langford. He did not appear in connection with this charge and did not enter a plea.

The latter is now 81 years old and lives in Florida. Radio-Canada tried to reach him without success at the residence where he lives.

The filing of a charge against Rodney Nichols had not been made public by the POP awaiting extradition to Canada.

The case is currently in the hands of US Department of Justice officials in the Southern District of Florida, who declined to comment on the status of the extradition request.

Daniel Nadeau, who has been overseeing this investigation since 2015, limited himself to saying that there are a certain urgency in the file regarding the extradition of Rodney Nichols.

Slow investigations

Leaving Tennessee for Quebec, Jewell Langford had promised his family and friends to stay in touch.

Sadly, it’s a promise she couldn’t fulfillsaid retired investigator Janice Mulcock in a video released by the POP.

Having no more news from him, the family of Jewell Langford informed the Montreal Police Service (SPVM) of his disappearance in 1975, says Daniel Nadeau.

Nevertheless, no one SPVM did not make a connection at the time with the discovery in May of the bound body of Jewell Langford 150 kilometers west of Montreal, near Highway 417 in Casselman, Ontario.

Similarly, investigators from the POP who sought to discover the identity of this murder victim never made a connection with the disappearance of Jewell Langford which was recorded a few weeks later in Montreal.

THE SPVM declined to comment on the filing earlier this week, saying that media relations on this file are handled by the Ontario Provincial Police.

Daniel Nadeau affirms that there is no reason to criticize the work of the investigators of the POP or SPVM who initially worked on the case.

Investigators back then didn’t have all the tools we have today, but what was done was done righthe explains. They just couldn’t find the key to settling the case.

Jewell Langford’s family even hired private investigators to try to move the case forward, without success.

An exhumed body

The police were finally able to solve this mystery thanks to the arrival of genetic genealogy in the late 2010s.

In 2019, the POP had the still unidentified body of Jewell Langford – who was in Toronto – exhumed to obtain a good quality DNA sample.

This was then compared to all those found in databases accessible to members of the public seeking to discover their origins.

It was from this sample that the Tennessee trail emerged, when matches were established with members of the Parchman family, on Jewell Langford’s mother’s side, in the southern United States.

In collaboration with the POP, US authorities then obtained DNA samples from his family members, including nieces, for final analysis in Toronto. This is how the formal identity of the body found in 1975 was established.

In 2020, Denise Chung and other members of her family received the news.

It broke my heart. I was relieved to hear it, but it was painfulsays the woman who was 10 years old when her aunt died. Sadly, all of her siblings, and my grandmother, died without knowing where she was or what happened to her.

According to Ontario’s Chief Coroner, this is the first time in Ontario that a body has been identified using genetic genealogy, although other cases have since also been solved using this technology.

Jewell Langford’s body has since been repatriated to Tennessee and cremated. He was placed in the same cemetery where a memorial plaque had once been placed by his mother, but with a new headstone paid for by the Ontario government.

Finally home and at peacecan we read there.

Today, Denise Chung especially wants to thank the police for never giving up their attempts to identify her late aunt.

My message to people who have lost a loved one is not to lose hope, because we had lost hope a little on our sideshe says.