They identify a woman who appeared floating in a river five decades ago in Canada

() — Canadian police have identified a woman known as “the lady of the Nation River” nearly five decades after she went missing and was found floating down an Ontario river, police said.

Jewell “Lalla” Langford, whose maiden name was Parchman, had traveled to Montreal in April 1975 but never returned home and was reported missing by her family, the Ontario Provincial Police said in a news release Wednesday.

According to police, Langford, 48, was known as “The Lady of the Nation River,” after the Nation River in eastern Ontario where her remains were found on May 3, 1975.

In March 2022, his remains were repatriated to the US, followed by a funeral and burial, the statement said.

Langford had been strangled with a flat, plastic-coated television cable, according to the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit organization that works to identify missing persons using investigative genetic genealogy and which assisted police in the Langford case. Her hands and ankles had also been tied with men’s ties and a kitchen towel wrapped around her face, according to the organization.

Renderings by the forensic artist and three-dimensional facial approximation developed in 2017 were unable to help identify Langford or any potential suspects until late 2019, when the Toronto Center for Forensic Science obtained a new DNA profile of Langford that matched the samples. collected from two individuals listed in a family DNA tree, according to the statement.

After a long investigation of 47 years, the authorities managed to arrest an individual residing in Hollywood (Florida).

Rodney Nichols, 81, was criminally charged with Langford’s murder in the Ontario Court of Justice late last year, according to the statement.

“Thanks to advances in the science of genetic genealogy and the collective commitment of all the researchers involved, we have provided a solution for the families and friends of this missing person who was met with foul play,” Detective Detective said in a statement. Inspector Daniel Nadeau, of the Criminal Investigation Branch of the OPP. “We can be pleased with the results of this investigation and that we have been able to return Jewell Langford’s remains to his loved ones.”

Police also say Langford and Nichols knew each other, but did not elaborate on their relationship.

Langford “was a prominent member of the Jackson, Tennessee, business community” and had co-owned a spa with her ex-husband, according to the statement.

“In this sense, she was really a woman ahead of her time,” said Janice Mulcock, a retired detective with the Ontario Provincial Police, during a video briefing shared by the Ontario Police Department in Facebook this Wednesday. “In fact, she was so successful that she was president of the Jackson, Tennessee, chapter of the American Association of Business Women, and in 1971 she was voted ‘woman of the year’ by her peers.”

Officials believed the Langford case would be resolved, Marty Kearns, OPP Assistant Commissioner for Investigations and Organized Crime, said during Wednesday’s briefing.

“Members of our local criminal investigation branch’s crime unit have always believed that this case could be solved, that one day we would identify the person who became known as the Lady of the River Nation,” Kearns said.