TORONTO — A man has been arrested and charged in the 1998 homicide of a 24-year-old pregnant woman in Toronto after police say they used investigative genetic genealogy to crack the cold case.
Det. Sgt. Steve Smith said Ronald Gordon Ackerman of Gander, N.L., had just gotten off a flight from Edmonton when he was intercepted and arrested at Toronto's Pearson International Airport.
Ackerman, 50, has been charged with first-degree murder.
"We knew he was working out in Alberta for two weeks at a time and then flying back to the East Coast for two weeks at a time," Smith said Friday.
"We were able to determine that he was going to be coming through Toronto."
Smith said Donna Oglive was a sex worker form British Columbia and had been in Toronto for only about five weeks when she was allegedly strangled to death by a client in a parking lot on Carleton Street.
"In Canada, she has very little family, there's only really one person," he said.
Smith said police found a suspect's DNA at the crime scene, but they could not identify the person after running the evidence through a national data bank.
He said police used investigative genetic geneology to track down the accused man's family last year and have used that technology to solve several cold cases over the last months.
"Ontario's basically the leader in IGG testing, as you've seen by the number of arrests that we've put forward," he said. "Hopefully we continue this program over the next few years."
Smith said the accused man was living in the east end of Toronto in Scarborough and worked as a truck driver at the time of the homicide.
Police are investigating what he has been doing since then, Smith added.
"We need to find out what he's been doing over the past 25 years and make sure that there are no other victims, whether sexually motivated or homicides that he could be involved (in)," he said.
Smith said police have more than 800 historical homicides alone that are not solved.
"When you're able to solve these cases, it's a great feeling," he said. "It's nice to make sure, especially when these people are still alive, that they have to come and face justice no matter how long it's going to be."
Smith said investigative genetic genealogy will be a big help in finding those offenders.
"Anybody that committed sexual assaults or homicides over the past 40, 50 years, if they're still alive, I mean, they'd be expecting a knock on their door at any point," he said.
The accused man is remanded in custody in Toronto after he appeared via video link at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre on Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 7, 2025.
Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press
