Toronto Police Deputy Chief Robert Johnson, left, and cold case Detective Sergeant Steve Smith announce an alleged suspect in a series of murders at a press conference last week.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
A man posthumously identified last week as a serial killer, who police believe is responsible for three cold-case murders in Ontario in the 1980s and 90s, had a history of committing violent crimes, including rape.
However, Kenneth Smith remained biologically off the radar of law enforcement for decades, police say, because his prior convictions occurred before the creation of both the national DNA data bank and the sex-offender registry.
The Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police used modern DNA technology and genetic genealogy to identify Mr. Smith as the killer of Christine Prince, Claire Samson and Gracelyn Greenidge.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Toronto Police Detective Sergeant Steve Smith shared more details about the suspected serial killer’s troubled life and criminal history – and gaps that remain in the investigation’s timeline. Investigators believe there may be more victims, and are hoping to speak with anyone who knew Mr. Smith, who died in 2019, to help map his whereabouts and cross-check other potentially linked cold cases.
Cold case Detective Sergeant Steve Smith is hopeful that DNA will help them connect any other potential dots to other cases and victims.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Kenneth Smith died in 2019 at the age of 72 in Windsor, Ont.Supplied
Born in South Porcupine, Ont., now part of Timmins, in 1946, Kenneth Smith moved with his family to the Toronto area as a young man, Det.-Sgt. Smith said.
Mr. Smith “had a number of different addresses anywhere from York Region to Peel Region, and I would say 16 or 17 different locations in Toronto,” the detective said – including in the west end, High Park, downtown, both South and North Scarborough, and Rexdale.
He did administrative work for a security company, and also worked at a couple of different mattress and furniture stores, the detective said, adding that most of the companies don’t exist anymore.
“We think he was probably a salesman, but we aren’t sure if he was involved in the deliveries or not,” he said.
In 1976, when he was 30, Mr. Smith was convicted of raping and kidnapping a 14-year-old girl from Barrie, Ont., according to an archived newspaper clipping that The Globe unearthed and confirmed with police.
Today, this type of conviction would have automatically triggered a court order for a sample of his DNA to be added to Canada’s national data bank, which is run by the RCMP. The bank maintains samples of DNA from both offenders and crime scenes, which can be used to solve future crimes. But that data bank did not come into force until 2000. Canada’s sex-offender registry was established in 2004.
Mr. Smith went to prison for the Barrie rape, Det. Sgt. Smith said, where he remained until 1981, when he was released on parole in York Region.
The following year, Ms. Prince was killed. She was last seen on a Toronto streetcar; her body was found in the Rouge River in Scarborough.
Ms. Samson was killed in 1983. Her body was discovered in a wooded area in Oro-Medonte, north of Toronto.
The next known offence Mr. Smith committed was in 1985, when he was convicted in York Region for weapons offences and sentenced to two years in custody, the detective said.
In 1987, after his release, he was convicted on weapons charges again – this time in Toronto – and was sentenced to seven years in custody. He was released from prison in 1994.
In both these cases, Det. Sgt. Smith said, charges related to sexual offences were withdrawn as part of plea agreements.
The detective said that “the eighties into the early nineties is kind of where his record trails off.”
It is this period – from the time of his release in 1994, leading up to the murder of Ms. Greenidge in the summer of 1997 – that investigators are especially interested in, Det-Sgt. Smith said.
DNA was collected at the time of each killing, but no suspect was identified, police said.
Michael Arntfield, a criminologist and professor at Western University, said the years between the second and third homicides, when Mr. Smith wasn’t incarcerated, are key. “I would think that police would be cross-referencing open, unsolved or missing persons in that period.”
Given that the DNA data bank hadn’t fully come into force, and that Mr. Smith’s last known victim was in 1997, “he would have narrowly missed that window,” said Dr. Arntfield, who teaches a seminar on the Christine Prince case.
Mr. Smith moved to Windsor around 2013, according to Det. Sgt. Smith, who said police are not clear on what spurred that move. He was in his late 60s by that point and did not appear to be working.
Eventually, the detective said, Mr. Smith ended up in a cancer hospice in Windsor, Ont., and died in 2019.
He was estranged from virtually all of his family, which included an ex-wife and children, the detective said.
In 2016, Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences flagged a connection between DNA samples uploaded to Canada’s National DNA Data Bank from Ms. Samson’s case and Ms. Prince’s case. The two cases were confirmed as having the same unidentified offender.
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From there, TPS and the OPP launched a joint investigation. In 2017, the centre identified another match – confirming the same offender was also responsible for the killing of Ms. Greenidge.
Det. Sgt. Smith described the DNA retrieved in this case as “a super complex mixture,” and said it took a long time to be able to deconvolute the samples. Once they did, in 2025, they uploaded them to FamilyTreeDNA, a Texas-based genealogy database.
From there, they were able to identify several family members who led them to Mr. Smith.
Det. Sgt. Smith is hopeful that DNA will help them connect any other potential dots to other cases and victims.
“It’s amazing … the cases that were unsolvable in the past are now solvable,” he remarked at a news conference last week.
Christine Prince, 25, from Wales, was living and working as a nanny in Toronto when she was found dead in the Rouge River on June 22, 1982.Supplied
Claire Samson, 23, was found dead on Sept. 2, 1983 in a remote wooded area in Oro Medonte, Ont.Supplied
Gracelyn Greenidge, 41, was found murdered in her Toronto apartment on July 29, 1997.Supplied
A clearer picture is also emerging of Mr. Smith’s victims.
In an interview, Ms. Prince’s former employer described her as nurturing, talented and dedicated.
Emile Kruzick said Ms. Prince, 25 at the time of her death, was from Porthcawl, a seaside community in South Wales. She had arrived in Canada in 1981 to work as a nanny, taking care of his then four-year-old daughter.
She became “very much a part of our family,” Mr. Kruzick said. She had recently gotten engaged to a young man from England and had developed a close circle of friends, he said.
“The circumstances of Christine’s disappearance and death devastated our family and continues to this day with the unhealed wounds as a result of her tragic loss,” Mr. Kruzick said in an e-mail.
Ms. Samson, the second identified victim, was 23; the Toronto Star reported at the time that she was a sex worker. She was last seen outside a hotel on Toronto’s Jarvis Street, entering a beige vehicle driven by an older white man.
The OPP quoted Ms. Samson’s family in a statement: “Claire had a beautiful soul. She was a young, caring and loving person who was taken away too soon.”
Ms. Greenidge, 41, was originally from Barbados and worked as a nursing assistant in Toronto.
On Facebook last week, a woman who identified herself as Da’Moniqua Brathwaite posted that Ms. Greenidge was her aunt. She said the news brought mixed emotions and lingering questions. “Either way there is no true justice for our family,” she wrote.