Toronto Police Identify 1936 Murder Victim Using Modern Forensic Testing

Two women whose remains sat unidentified in separate Toronto cold cases for decades now have their names back.

Toronto police say investigative genetic genealogy and DNA analysis identified Mary McLeod Moffat, née Davidson, whose skeletal remains were found beneath a building near Danforth and Coxwell avenues in 1995, and Patsy Flora Lagarde, whose badly burned body was found after a vehicle collision and fire on Highway 401 in 2004.

DNA restores two names

Police described the breakthroughs as among the most significant unidentified human remains identifications completed by the Toronto Police Service through investigative genetic genealogy.

“These identifications represent the significant impact that investigative genetic genealogy can have on long-term unidentified human remains investigations,” Det. Sgt. Stephen Smith of the Homicide and Missing Persons Cold Case unit said in a statement.

“After decades without answers, we have been able to restore the identities of Mary Davidson and Patsy Lagarde, provide information to their families, and uncover important facts about the circumstances surrounding their deaths.”

The woman beneath Danforth

The older case began on May 18, 1995, when demolition workers found the skeletal remains of an unknown woman buried beneath a building in the Danforth and Coxwell avenues area of Toronto.

A forensic examination found she had been intentionally buried after suffering at least six blunt-force head injuries from a hammer-like weapon. Police treated her death as a homicide.

For years, she remained unidentified. In 2022, the Danforth case was selected for investigative genetic genealogy. Because the remains were degraded, repeated testing was needed before investigators obtained a usable DNA profile.

That work led police to Mary McLeod Moffat, née Davidson, a woman from Scotland who immigrated to Canada with her family in 1913. Investigators say she was murdered around April 1936.

The identification closes the mystery of who was buried beneath the east-end building, but it does not bring a living suspect before a court.

A suspect beyond prosecution

Investigators identified Moffat’s husband, Andrew Lloyd Moffat, later known as Drake Lloyd Cummings, as the primary suspect in her homicide. He died in 1985.

Police said Andrew Lloyd Moffat later entered multiple additional marriages and operated a tire business beside the location where Mary Moffat’s remains were found decades later.

Because he is dead, he cannot be prosecuted. Still, naming Mary Moffat changes the frame of the case. What had been an unidentified set of remains is now the story of a woman who came to Canada with her family and disappeared into a violent death that went unresolved for nearly a century.

The Highway 401 case

The second identification comes from a different era and a different scene.

In April 2004, a badly burned woman was found after a vehicle intentionally collided with a tractor-trailer on Highway 401. The Fire Marshal determined the fire was deliberately set with gasoline after the woman had already died. Police said her cause of death was never determined.

The woman has now been identified as Patsy Flora Lagarde, an Ontario-born Indigenous woman born in 1962. Police said she had two biological children.

The driver in the Highway 401 case was convicted in 2006 of charges including arson and indignity to a dead body. He received an eight-year sentence and was deported in 2012.

Cold cases, living families

The two cases are separated by decades, but police presented them together as examples of what newer DNA work can do for long-stalled investigations.

One involved remains buried beneath a city building. The other involved a fatal Highway 401 collision and a deliberately set fire. In both, the central question persisted for years: who was the woman?

Toronto police say that question has now been answered for Mary McLeod Moffat and Patsy Flora Lagarde, giving their families information that earlier investigations could not provide.

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