In October 1984, 9-year-old Christine Jessop got off her school bus in the small town of Queensville, Ontario, as she did every day. She dropped her school bag off at home, and walked to meet a friend at the park. Christine never made it. A massive search by the community revealed no indication of what had happened.
Christine’s body was found off a rural road in Sunderland, Ontario a few months later. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed. Initial investigations led police to believe she was taken by her next-door neighbor. Despite protesting his innocence and an initial acquittal, the neighbor was eventually convicted of Christine’s abduction and murder. In 1995, newly available DNA testing technology exonerated the accused neighbor, and the investigation for Christine’s killer resumed. In the years that followed, the Toronto Police Service pursued all leads and technologies available to advance the investigation.
In 2019, Toronto Police investigators partnered with Othram to leverage Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing™ to build a genealogical profile from the scant quantity of highly degraded DNA that remained. The Toronto Police investigators performed genealogical research to home in on a suspect that was subsequently confirmed through traditional DNA testing. Calvin Hoover, who died in 2015, has been named as the perpetrator.
Republished courtesy of Othram/DNASolves. Photo credit: Othram