Someone killed this Toronto woman 25 years ago — now Niagara police know who did it
CBC
Warning: This story contains distressing details.
It's been a quarter of a century since someone killed 26-year-old Nadine Gurczenski of Toronto, and now the Niagara Regional Police Service (NRPS) says it knows who did it.
Staff Sgt. Andrew Knevel, who is in charge of the NRPS homicide unit, told CBC Hamilton that police used genetic genealogy to identify the killer as Joseph Archie (Raymond) Brousseau of New Liskeard in northern Ontario.
Brosseau was 34 and working as a truck driver when he killed Gurczenski, police say. He would have been charged with second-degree murder, but he died in 2017.
"We want to recognize that Nadine was an incredibly important part of our family. She meant more than a news headline," read a statement police shared from the Gurczenski family.
"She was a beautiful young woman inside and out, mother, wife, and now grandmother who had her whole life ripped away from her and everyone who loved her. She is very loved and missed every day by her whole family and we will always make sure her memory lives on forever."
On May 8, 1999, police responded to reports of a partially dressed woman's body in a roadside ditch on May 8, 1999.
Officers found Gurczenski's body near Victoria Avenue near Eighth Avenue in Lincoln, a town in the Niagara Region.
Knevel said she died from strangulation.
Officers started to try to piece together where she came from, how she got to Niagara, who her killer was and a timeline.
"Every single investigative avenue was exhausted by the original investigators," Knevel said.
There were roadblocks early on, he said.
It took two weeks for police to identify her. They did so after sharing images of her face with the public.
Knevel said police believed a truck driver was Gurczenski's killer, leading officers to check truck stops between Niagara and Mississauga, where she worked.
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