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Toronto Police Name Kenneth Smith as the Killer of Three Women in 1982, 1983 and 1997

DNA and genetic genealogy led police to Smith, who died in 2019, as the man who murdered Christine Prince, Claire Samson and Gracelyn Greenidge.

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Illustration: open archive box of aged case folders on a wooden desk

Three women were killed in and around Toronto across fifteen years, and for decades nothing connected them but an unknown man's DNA. On December 11, 2025, Toronto police and the Ontario Provincial Police put a name to it. At a joint news conference at Toronto police headquarters, investigators said Kenneth Smith, who died in Windsor, Ontario, in 2019 at the age of 72, was the man who murdered Christine Prince in 1982, Claire Samson in 1983 and Gracelyn Greenidge in 1997. He was never charged with any of the killings.

Christine Prince, 25, was a nanny from Wales. In the early hours of June 21, 1982, she was seen boarding a streetcar near St. Clair Avenue West and Bathurst Street. Her body was found in the Rouge River in Scarborough. She had been sexually assaulted and struck on the head.

Claire Samson, 23, was last seen in Toronto on September 1, 1983, when an unknown man picked her up in front of a hotel on Jarvis Street. The next day she was found on private land in Oro-Medonte Township, north of Barrie. She had been shot.

Gracelyn Greenidge, 41, had come to Toronto from Barbados and worked as a nursing assistant. She was last seen leaving work around 11:30 on the night of July 28, 1997. The next day, when she failed to turn up, she was found dead in her apartment on Driftwood Avenue.

The women did not know one another, and the killings looked nothing alike. DNA was left at each scene, but no suspect emerged and the cases went cold. In 2016, DNA from the Prince and Samson cases was matched to the same unknown man, and the two forces opened a joint investigation. In 2017, the two murders were linked to Gracelyn Greenidge's. Then the trail stalled. "The state of the (DNA) samples and the technology available at the time limited how far we could advance the case," said Detective Sergeant Steve Smith, head of the Toronto police cold case unit.

In 2022, investigators began working with a company that does investigative genetic genealogy. Three years later they found close relatives of the man they were hunting. "With that information, the Centre of Forensic Science was then able to conduct the final comparison that led to the conclusive identification of Kenneth Smith," the detective said. That identification came on December 3, 2025. The families were told before the announcement. "They were thrilled and especially right before Christmas," he said.

Smith was born in Porcupine, Ontario, lived and worked across Toronto during all three murders, and moved to Windsor in 2013. Police said he was known to them and had a history of sexual assault, and that he meets the criteria to be called a serial killer. With no link between the women, investigators described the murders as crimes of opportunity. "Based on the evidence we have today, we believe it is possible that there may be additional victims," Det. Sgt. Smith said, and police planned to keep retesting evidence in other cold cases.

"For Christine's family and for the families of Claire and Gracelyn, the wait for answers has been extraordinarily long," said Deputy Chief Robert Johnson. OPP Chief Superintendent Karen Gonneau made clear the file was not closed. "Although the accused is deceased, the investigation does not end," she said.

The Toronto police news release could not be opened in full, so this account rests on two news reports written from the December 11 news conference. They differ on the causes of death: one says Prince was beaten to death before being put in the water and the other that she drowned after being struck on the head, and one reports that Greenidge was stabbed, a detail the other does not give. Those details are left out here until the official record settles them. Both reports spell her first name Gracelyn.

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