Ottawa police say they have identified a suspect in an unsolved 1996 Portage Bridge stabbing murder by using DNA evidence to track down the man who was arrested in Vancouver last week.
Posted at 3:47 p.m.
Darryl Greer
The Canadian Press
Lawrence Diehl, 73, was arrested by Vancouver police on Dec. 10 and brought back to Ottawa, according to Ottawa police. He is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Christopher Smith on April 12, 1996.
Ottawa Homicide Unit investigators say this is the first time they have used “investigative genetic genealogy” to identify a suspect, using genetic databases to find “potential family lines”.
The police service explained that it had been working on this case since 2020 with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Toronto Police Service, and that it arrested Lawrence Diehl with “significant assistance” from the police. from Vancouver.
Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs said he has met with the victim’s family and that investigators want to speak with people about the time the suspect spent in Ottawa.
Christopher Smith was involved in a fight on the bridge with a stranger, an article in the “Ottawa Citizen” reported a few days after the stabbing. The suspect allegedly called 911 from a payphone located near the attack, where police found a “significant amount of blood.”
Swiss
