Family of woman ID'd 45 years after disappearing never gave up, niece says

Jewell Parchman Langford's parents and siblings died without ever finding out what had happened to her, but the Tennessee woman's surviving relatives provided the key clue that helped identify her remains — and a suspect in her killing — nearly five decades later.

"I'm heartbroken that my family didn't get to know what happened before they passed away, but I'm just so grateful that [police] didn't give up and that they kept working hard to try to solve it and figure out who she was," Langford's niece, Denise Chung, told Radio-Canada from Tennessee on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) confirmed human remains discovered east of Ottawa in 1975 were those of Langford.

Chung and some of her relatives have known since 2020, when their DNA was used to crack what Deputy Commissioner Marty Kearns described during a virtual news conference as "one of the oldest unsolved and most unique unidentified remains investigations in OPP history."

Langford was 48 when she left Madison County for Montreal, a journey of 1,200 kilometres, in April 1975.

Chung, who was 10 at the time, greatly admired her Aunt Jewell, a prominent businesswoman who opened a health spa in Jackson, Tenn., and was described Wednesday as "a woman ahead of her time."

"She was all about spreading love and joy and making people very happy to be around her," Chung recalled.

Langford, who had no children of her own and had kept her ex-husband's surname, promised to stay in touch, but the family soon lost contact and reported her missing to Montreal police.

According to Chung, her grandmother Eglah Mae Parchman didn't want Langford to go to Canada, and never really recovered from her daughter's disappearance.

"My grandmother sold everything, she spent every dime she had hiring private investigators trying to find my aunt," Chung said.

"I know that my grandmother constantly called the local FBI … pushing and pushing because she did not want them to forget about Aunt Jewell, and she did not want to ever quit searching, and she did not quit searching until she passed away."

Chung's uncle Ronald Parchman travelled to Montreal to join the search for his sister, but returned to Tennessee only with Langford's Cadillac, which police had recovered. Langford's ex-husband Axel also became involved in the search, Chung said.

Among the presenters at Wednesday's news conference was Janice Mulcock, a retired OPP detective.

Mulcock was described by another speaker "one of the many investigators who had been assigned to the case over the years who became personally invested in finding out who the Nation River Lady was, and who killed her."