How a missing-person report filed after four decades helped ID Canadian's remains

IDing 'vampire rapist' victim

Photo: TTHE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout — Othram

Missing Canadian woman Jeanette Marcotte is seen in this undated handout photo provided by U.S. DNA firm Othram. Othram says it has identified skeletal remains found in Florida in 1985 as those of Marcotte.  

Vancouver police say a missing-person report and a DNA sample filed by a B.C. woman four decades after her mother disappeared helped identify the remains of a woman found in Florida in the 1980s.

Othram, an American DNA firm that works with law enforcement on cold cases, announced last week that Jeanette Marcotte's remains had been identified as those found in Malabar, Fla., in 1985, in a case Florida investigators said may involve a serial killer.

Vancouver Police have now shed more light on the case, saying Marcotte's daughter provided a DNA sample after reporting her mother missing in 2021, having last seen her in the early 1980s in Saskatchewan.

Othram meanwhile used genetic genealogy — based on familial links to unidentified DNA — to home in on Marcotte as a possible match for the Florida remains.

Vancouver Police spokesman Darren Wong says Florida investigators reached out about the possible match and late last year the daughter's DNA profile was forwarded to them with her consent, resulting in confirmation that the remains belonged to her mother.

Wong says the daughter was notified and the case closed, and he couldn't provide the woman's name due to privacy considerations.

Tod Goodyear, a public information officer with the Brevard County Sherriff's Office, said in an interview on Monday that Marcotte's remains were found mixed in with those of another woman, Kimberly Walker, who was earlier identified through dental records.

He said the causes of death for both women couldn't be determined, but there was "always a theory" that they fell victim to a suspected serial killer named John Crutchley.

Crutchley, known as the "vampire rapist," was convicted of rape and kidnapping but never homicide, and Goodyear said he lived in Malabar in the 1980s.

He said Crutchley was suspected of being a serial killer after being found in possession of identification of missing people.

Florida Today, a newspaper in Brevard County, reported in 2010 that Walker's driver's licence was found in Crutchley's desk by police, along with those of five other dead women.