Toronto police have identified the victim of a 1936 homicide, whose body was found underneath a building during construction in 1995.

Officers say they’ve also managed to identify a woman whose burned body was found in a vehicle fire on Highway 401 more than 20 years ago.

The two cases were solved, police said, using new DNA techniques.

Police called the breakthroughs two of the most significant unidentified human remains identifications in the force’s history.

On May 18, 1995, police were called to the Danforth Avenue and Coxwell Avenue area after demolition workers discovered the skeleton of an unknown woman beneath a building.

At the scene, investigators found she had been intentionally buried after suffering at least six blunt-force injuries to the head from a hammer-like weapon. Her death was declared a homicide.

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The case was selected in 2022 as a candidate for new investigative genetic genealogy methods. It took two years and multiple lab tests before a DNA sample could be obtained.

The woman was identified as Mary McLeod Moffat (neé Davidson). She was born in Scotland in 1905 and came to Canada in 1913. Historical records, interviews with family and evidence from the burial site indicate she was likely murdered in April 1936.

Investigators determined Mary’s husband, Andrew Lloyd Moffat, later abandoned her and entered into multiple additional marriages. He operated a tire business near where her remains were discovered.

Andrew later assumed an alias and lived in the United States and Vancouver before his death in 1985.

Although he cannot be prosecuted, investigators have named Andrew, also known as Drake Lloyd Cummings, as the primary suspect in Mary’s death.

The second successful remains identification centres on the badly burned body of a woman pulled from a crash on Highway 401 in April 2004. It involved a vehicle intentionally colliding with a tractor-trailer and bursting into flames, according to police.

The Office of the Fire Marshal investigation determined the fire had been deliberately set using gasoline, and that the woman had died before the fire was ignited, with the fire believed to be a method of concealing the cause of death.

The driver of the vehicle, 38-year-old Suimi Kilflu “Simon” Habteab of Toronto, was convicted in 2006 of multiple arson charges and indignity to a human body, among other crimes. He received an eight-year custodial sentence and was deported in 2012.

DNA analysis identified the victim as Patsy Flora Lagarde, who had Indigenous ancestry connected to Cree communities along James Bay and the Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba.

Lagarde was born in Ontario in 1962 to parents from the Berens River First Nation and the Long Lake #58 First Nation. Investigators determined she had two biological children.

Both investigations enabled notification and reunification with the victim’s surviving family members, who have waited decades for answers.

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