Forensic Genealogy Identifies British Man Who Died in Toronto 3 Decades Ago

Toronto police say its investigators have identified a man who died in the city’s downtown core 34 years ago.

Investigative genetic genealogy has identified the man found dead in the fall of 1992 as Derek, a 55-year-old British-born man who had moved to the country years earlier, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) said in a press release. TPS did not release the man’s surname. 

The mystery began in September 1992, when emergency crews reached the lawn of a downtown church and found an unidentified man unresponsive. Police said the man could not be revived and his death was ruled non-suspicious. 

The man’s identity remained unknown until Toronto police chose the case for a genetic genealogy investigation in 2025. Police said his DNA profile was obtained and uploaded to public-facing databases this January.

Months of work by the Toronto Police Service genealogy team and TPS investigators determined that their John Doe was likely a man named Derek, who moved to Toronto from the United Kingdom in the 1970s and lived alone at an apartment building near Carlton and Jarvis streets.

Derek had been reported missing by his lawyer in December 1993—some 15 months after he died—a connection police missed at the time. 

His missing persons file was later closed after he was legally declared dead for not responding to correspondence. That mistake made it difficult to connect the two cases, Det. Const. Michael Kelly, of the Toronto police’s homicide and missing persons unit, told reporters during a press conference this week.

Investigators eventually matched Derek’s fingerprints from another country to the 1992 case. Comparing those prints to the 1992 post-mortem records yielded a positive match.

Toronto police said they contacted Derek’s sole surviving relative, a nephew in the United Kingdom, to inform him of his uncle’s fate.

Kelly said that people can still be identified with genetic genealogy even if they are not “on file as missing.”

“They may not have been reported as missing, but they’re very much missing to their family and friends,” Kelly said. “Being able to bring these answers to families and also to the human beings that we’re able to identify as well … everybody deserves the dignity of their name.” 

Police said Derek is the 14th person identified through Project 31, a force initiative launched in 2022. Its name refers to the 31 cases then open for deceased people in the city whose identities remained unknown.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.