Most days, Rodney Nichols is on another planet. The 83-year-old is suffering from dementia, trapped in his diseased mind, apparently unaware of the heinous crime he's accused of committing. Nichols has been deemed unfit to stand trial in the horrific 1975 sex slaying of a woman known for decades only as the Nation River Lady, whose body was found in the water east of Ottawa.
Time is the Cops' Enemy
Forensics — particularly genetic genealogy — has completely changed the game for cold case detectives. Across the continent, one unsolved murder after another is being solved. In Canada, some of the most vexing homicides are now being cleared. But the problem for cops — and the victims' loved ones — is that the alleged killers are aging. Many are now dead. Others, like one-time rugby player Rodney Nichols, have brains that are scrambled.
Time is the sworn enemy. Det. Sgt. Steve Smith, head of the Toronto Police Service's widely acclaimed cold case unit, told The Toronto Sun that, unfortunately, sometimes the clock runs out. Does the killer get away with it? Depends on how philosophical you want to get.
Often, the main thing the family wants to know is the motive. The why. Smith said sometimes, a burst of bloodshed is utterly inexplicable.
"Investigators can often give families the names of those responsible, but not always the reasons why," he told the Sun. "While all involved would prefer to see these individuals face justice and acknowledge their crimes, there remains a lingering question: 'Do they bury their actions, or lie awake at night anticipating the truth catching up to them?'"
'The Weight of What They Have Done'
He added: "One can only hope they are left to confront the weight of what they have done." Smith knows of what he speaks. The detective solved one of Canada's most infamous and longstanding unsolved murders, the Oct. 3, 1984 abduction and murder of 9-year-old Queensville girl Christine Jessop. From the start, the investigation was a gong show, and neighbour Guy Paul Morin was convicted and caged. Morin was the wrong guy.
By 2020, the case had been transferred to Toronto homicide. Using genetic genealogy, Smith and his team identified the killer, a Jessop family friend named Calvin Hoover. Hoover killed himself five years before the cops could come knocking. "It brought the family answers they had been waiting to hear for decades and it vindicated, once and for all, Guy Paul Morin," Smith said.
Kenneth Leslie Smith
In 2025, the Grim Reaper again beat detectives to the punch. Kenneth Smith was identified as a serial killer responsible for the cold case murders of Christine Prince (1982), Claire Samson (1983), and Gracelyn Greenidge (1997). Kenneth Smith passed away in 2019 at age 72. Cops have speculated that he may have claimed more victims.
At a recent court appearance, Rodney Nichols looked every minute and then some of his more than eight decades on the planet. It took nearly 50 years for OPP detectives to catch up with Nichols. He was charged in 2022 with the murder of 48-year-old Jewell Parchman Langford. For decades, Langford went unidentified, a Jane Doe known by the sobriquet, the Nation River Lady. Langford had been Nichols' girlfriend back in the Me Decade. Her remains were identified in 2020. When cops caught up to Nichols, he was rotting away in a Hollywood, Fla., retirement home.
A Price in the Hereafter?
But at the end of a three-day fitness hearing in L'Orignal, Ont., east of Ottawa, it was pretty clear that the old man in the wheelchair didn't understand a goddamn thing. He is a shambles of a man, once robust, now diminished. Still, maybe when the hourglass runs dry on alleged cold case killers, the karma cops step in to mete out justice that was missed in this realm.
