Toronto police have made an arrest in a cold case that had gone unsolved for two decades. A 43-year-old man from Hamilton now faces a charge of first-degree murder in a killing that dates back 20 years to Scarborough, reviving a case that investigators once feared might never be closed.
The victim was Patrick Santos, who was just 21 years old at the time of his death in September 2006. According to police, he was found with his limbs bound and with duct tape over his face in the backyard of his father's home in Scarborough, a scene that pointed to a targeted and violent attack.
Investigators described the killing as an ambush. At the time, they believed it was likely the result of feuding friend groups, and they said the person responsible fled the scene, leaving the case cold as the years passed without an arrest.
What finally broke the case open was technology that did not exist in a usable form back in 2006. Police say there was DNA left at the scene, but the tools available then were not advanced enough to generate a link. Using advancing DNA testing known as investigative genetic genealogy, they were at last able to produce a match.
The head of the cold case unit summed up the impact of the technique, saying it has brought police to a place where cases they thought were completely unsolvable are now solvable. He compared the old approach to looking for a needle in a haystack, explaining that the genealogy work removes the haystack, provides the needle, and then lets investigators confirm it through DNA.
That match led police to 43-year-old Pierre O'Connor in Hamilton, who has now been charged with first-degree murder. According to police, O'Connor had no criminal record, an unremarkable background that had helped keep him out of investigators' sights for years.
The arrest does not appear to close the file entirely. Police believe there were other suspects present at the time of the killing, and the investigation that had gone cold is now moving back into high gear. Officers said the development is bringing a measure of comfort to Santos' family, who have waited two decades for news in the case.