Somewhere in a lab sits some DNA that could put a second name to some 40-year-old unidentified bones.
With one identity nailed down, police are hoping they may soon be able to determine the second name of a person whose silent remains have revealed so few clues.
Times change and so does science, which is why Richard Hovey now has a name, a face and a clearer picture of what happened to him is emerging.
ON THE VERGE
And now the OPP could be on the verge of identifying the recreated likeness of another young man whose identity has been unknown since he was found slain in similar circumstances back in 1967.
To do all of this, detectives and forensic experts have gone back in time, created likenesses of these victims and are delving into what life was like for "hippie" teenagers in Yorkville's 1967 Summer of Love. "For young artists, Yorkville was a clarion call to be part of a miraculous unfolding of people getting out of the psychological prison of their parents," said producer Gene Mascardelli. "Kids from all over migrated to Yorkville like birds."
Trusting kids like Dickie Hovey from Fredericton, New Brunswick, who ended up dead and missing for four decades until this week. This is not a TV show. But there will be ones made about this and the time of free love, drugs, peace and maybe even a serial killer.
Some 40 years removed, with a little luck, some more impressive police work and some exact modern-day forensic sleuthing, the OPP could go two for two in the ambitious plan they undertook to identify two anonymous murder victims. "So far two families have come forward with DNA and testing is under way," said Det. Insp. Dave Quigley.
No one is celebrating yet and the OPP still want people to call in tips "because it may not match."
All of it has come from a sophisticated reconstruction project in which Pete Thompson created likenesses from skeletal remains -- something that has the investigative world buzzing. Just consider that Quigley, at 38, was not even born when the murders occurred. And neither was all this technology.
Now that it is, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino believes it's time for a national "databank for DNA of missing persons and found human remains." He said the "remarkable and diligent" efforts by the detectives will encourage "fresh" thinking in cold cases. "We have more than 100 cases of unidentified human remains in Ontario," he said.
For the cops working this case there was no time to take a bow. They want to determine who is the second person and then pursue a potential killer. "That is what we are trying to do," said Quigley. "We still have a long way to go."
But they are coming. Quigley, a 17-year veteran detective, shied away from questions about the striking resemblance to the methods used in these murders to that of other crimes involving convicted killer James Henry Greenidge.
SERVING TIME
The Toronto man was 28 at the time, served time for a manslaughter and attempted murder of two young men around the same time. He is in his late 60s and serving time in prison for murder in British Columbia and has not been interviewed.
But make no mistake -- the police are on the trail of a killer and will not use just science to do it. "We want to retrace Richard Hovey's final steps," said Quigley.
This requires old-fashioned police work where cops would like to know if anybody has an idea what happened to the 17-year-old's painted Sears guitar. Is it in someone's basement or garage? Was it found along the side of the road?
To help them find it, police must step back in time and talk to people about Yorkville in 1967 and music cafes like the Mynah Bird where Juno winning artist Cathy Young was the "house act" and "recalls" Hovey. "He was pretty good," she said. "He had a good voice -- kind of a James Taylor thing."
How a young man from Fredericton with a dream could be swept up and taken away doesn't surprise regulars of the day like Keith McKie, who came down to be part of it from The Soo. "We were all babes in the woods and there but the grace of God go I," said McKie of the band Kensington Market. "It never occurred to us that something bad could happen."
Something bad did happen to a kid named Richard Hovey and at least one other young man who remains unknown.
For now.
