Police say they have now identified a serial killer responsible for the murder of three women in Toronto in the 1980s and ’90s.
During a news conference at Toronto police headquarters on Thursday, investigators confirmed that the late Kenneth Smith has now been identified as the man responsible for the murders of 25-year-old Christine Prince, 23-year-old Claire Samson, and 41-year-old Gracelyn Greenidge.
Prince, a nanny from Wales, was last seen getting on a streetcar in the area of St Clair Avenue West at Bathurst Street in the early morning hours of June 21, 1982.
Her body was found in the Rouge River in Scarborough later that morning. Police said she had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death before being dumped in the water.
The following year, Claire Sampson, a sex worker in Toronto, was picked up by an unknown male on September 1st, 1983 in front of a hotel on Jarvis Street. Her body was found the following day in a wooded area just north of Barrie.
Police said she had been shot in the head and left in a farmer’s field.
Although DNA was left at the scene of both homicides, investigators were not able to connect the two cases until 2016.
In 2017, the murders of Prince and Sampson were linked to a third homicide in 1997. Gracelyn Greenidge, a 41-year-old nursing assistant, was found stabbed to death inside her apartment on Driftwood Avenue on July 29, 1997. Police said she was last seen leaving her place of work the night before at around 11:30 p.m.
In 2025, through the use of Investigative Genetic Genealogy, Det.-Sgt. Steve Smith said police were able to identify a possible offender.
“We execute a warrant, we test his DNA, it comes back a trillion to one that he is the offender that left his DNA at all three scenes…Unfortunately he is deceased but we are able to identify him and say that he was the killer,” Smith said in a video posted online.
“This case had haunted our office. We had been working at this for years. When you have unknown DNA profile and no matches on the national DNA databank, it is looking for a needle in a haystack.”
source: CP24 photo: Toronto Police
