Serial Killers Identified Through DNA and Genealogy: Latest Cases From Toronto to Long Island in 2024 2025

# SEO-Friendly Podcast Episode Description

**Title:** Fresh Serial Killer Cases 2024-2025: Toronto, Gilgo Beach & Beyond | True Crime Briefing

**Meta Description (160 characters):**
Detective Emily Em Carter breaks down active serial killer investigations, genetic genealogy breakthroughs, and recent cases reshaping forensic science.

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## Full Description

Join Detective Emily Em Carter in the briefing room as she dives deep into the freshest serial killer investigations happening right now in 2024-2025—not cold cases from decades past, but active investigations where modern forensic science is finally catching killers who thought they were safe.

**In This Episode:**

**Canadian Serial Killer Cases:**
- **Kenneth Smith (Toronto):** How genetic genealogy identified a ghost killer responsible for three murders spanning 1982-1997, with evidence suggesting additional victims may exist
- **Jeremy Skibicki Landfill Murders:** The ongoing search for remains of Indigenous women victims and what it reveals about systemic gaps in missing person investigations
- **Suburban Toronto Female Serial Killer:** A rare case that challenges traditional offender profiling

**Gilgo Beach Serial Killings Update:**
The evolution of the Long Island serial killer case—how Rex Heuermann's indictments continue to mount while investigators solve separate murders in the same corridor, including the identification of mother and daughter victims Tanya Jackson and Tatiana Dykes.

**Key Forensic Breakthroughs Covered:**
- Forensic genetic genealogy and how it's solving cold cases
- Large-scale crime scene searches and landfill investigations
- DNA technology advances and evidence preservation
- The role of true crime media in shaping public understanding

**Topics for True Crime Fans:**
- How serial killers are identified decades after crimes
- The psychological reality of victim families receiving late justice
- The difference between TV narratives and real investigative work
- Vulnerable populations and serial predator patterns
- The ethics of genealogy databases in law enforcement

This in-depth, long-form episode is perfect for true crime listeners, aspiring detectives, forensic science enthusiasts, and anyone interested in how modern criminal investigation works.

**Listen for:** Real case details, forensic breakthroughs, investigative methodology, victim-centered perspectives, and a rookie detective's honest take on what she's learning.

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**Keywords:** serial killers 2024, true crime podcast, forensic genealogy, Gilgo Beach, Kenneth Smith Toronto, cold case investigations, DNA technology, homicide investigation

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listeners, Welcome back to the briefing room. I am Detective
Emily M. Carter, and today we are doing exactly what
I promised you when I signed on for this gig.
We are going to walk straight into the freshest true
crime headlines and pull apart the latest serial killer stories
from around the world, not cold legends from decades past.
I am talking about investigations that are still warm, victims

(00:23):
who have only recently gotten their names back, and cases
where the science caught up with the killer long after
he thought he was safe. This episode is going to
be long, detailed and a little intense. Think of it
as a ride along through several major cases at once.
I will keep it human, I will keep it clear,

(00:44):
but I will not pull punches about what was done
and how investigators are piecing it together. Let us start
in Canada, because Toronto just put a name to a
ghost that has been hovering over three unsolved murders for
nearly four years, Toronto's newly identified serial killer, Kenneth Smith.

(01:05):
Toronto police have officially identified a dead man named Kenneth
Smith as the serial killer responsible for three separate murders
of women in nineteen eighty two. Nineteen eighty three and
nineteen ninety seven, all in that city. Police announced this
in December twenty twenty five, after a long genetic genealogy

(01:28):
investigation finally nailed down his identity beyond reasonable doubt. The
three known victims are Christine Prince twenty five years old,
killed in nineteen eighty two, Claire Sampson twenty three years old,
killed in nineteen eighty three, Graycelyn Greenidge forty one years old,

(01:50):
killed in nineteen ninety seven. Two. All three were murdered
in Toronto. Graysolyn was killed in her own apartment by
blunt force trauma in July nineteen ninety. Detectives now say
the same unidentified male offender was linked by DNA to
all three scenes, but for years they had no name

(02:10):
to put with that profile. Here's where the forensics geek
in me gets excited and the human in me gets mad.
It took this long. In twenty sixteen, forensic scientists connected
the home kideses of Prince and Samson to one unknown
male using DNA. In twenty seventeen, they confirmed that the
same unknown mail was also responsible for Greenige's murder. So

(02:34):
by the late twenty tens, they knew they had a
serial killer signature across three victims, and he was living
on as a profile in a database, nameless but clearly
the same predator. Then came the next era. Toronto police
worked with the Center of Forensic Science and used what
is called forensic genetic genealogy. That is where investigators take

(02:55):
the unknown DNA from a crime scene, run it through
consumer genealogy type database or specialized law enforcement genealogy systems,
and start working backwards from distant relatives to find the
most likely source of that DNA. By twenty twenty five,
that process finally produced close familial relatives of the offender.

(03:15):
With that information in hand, forensic scientists could generate a
short list and then test a specific candidate. The final
comparison identified seventy two year old Kenneth Smith from Windsor,
Ontario as the killer. Smith died back in twenty nineteen,
which means he went to his grave without ever facing
a murder charge for any of these women. Investigators say

(03:38):
Smith lived and worked in Toronto at the times of
all three homicides, and he was already known to police
with a history of sexual assault. He had been jailed
at least once before the first two murders and twice
before Greenidge's murder in nineteen ninety seven. So this was
not some quiet unknown neighbor. He was already on law
enforcement radar as aviolent offender, just never tied to these homicides.

(04:04):
Now Here is the detail that should make every listener
freeze for a second. Toronto police are openly saying they
believe there could be additional victims who have never been identified.
That is careful cop language, for there are gaps in
this timeline, and we know this guy was violent more
than three times. It is a pattern question. When you

(04:28):
have a sexual offender with at least three known homicides
spread over fifteen years, you do not assume that is
the beginning and the end. You assume those are simply
the cases where his DNA survived and made it into
an evidence locker that was preserved and later tested. From
a rookie detective perspective, this case is a whole lesson plan.

(04:51):
One time does not save offenders anymore. The idea that
you can outlive your crimes is getting weaker every year
that DNA technology in genealogy advance. Two. Good evidence handling
is everything. If the original investigators in the nineteen eighties
and nineteen nineties had not collected and preserved the biological

(05:11):
evidence properly, there would be nothing for modern labs to
work with those texts, and detectives basically handed the twenty
twenty five team a time machine. Three victims do not
disappear from the story just because the offender is dead.
The police are still speaking directly to the families and
to the public, asking for anyone who knew Smith, worked

(05:32):
with him, or crossed paths with him in Toronto or
Windsor to come folmud so they can map his movements
and look for further cases that matches patter. We will
keep the focus on Canada for a moment because that
country has been wrestling with multiple serial killer cases in
the last few years, particularly involving vulnerable and indigenous women

(05:52):
the Jeremy Kuebiki landfill murders. Earlier in twenty twenty five,
Canadian media and police again drew attention to Jeremy Kubicki,
a convicted serial killer whose victims included at least two
Indigenous women whose remains were found in a landfill in
central Canada. The case had already been in the headlines
for the brutality of the crimes and the long standing

(06:12):
issue of idle, missing and murdered Indigenous women, but in
recent months there have been updates as more remains were
recovered and identified in that landfill search for listeners. This
is one of those cases that tells you as much
about a system as it does about one man. You
have a serial killer targeting some of the