Warning: this story describes sexual assaults against children.
Between 1992 and 1995, a man attacked three children in parks in southern Ontario. He tied them up, sexually assaulted them and got away each time. Police never caught him. On Monday, in a courtroom in Brampton, Ont., prosecutors told a jury that DNA evidence now connects all three attacks to Richard Neil, who is 67. [CBC News reported](<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/richard-neil-trial-sex-assaults-children-ontario-9.7369806>) the Crown’s opening statement.
Neil has pleaded not guilty to 17 charges, among them kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and administering a stupefying drug. An indictment filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice also accuses him of making “a video tape recording constituting child pornography” on the day of the Oakville attack. He sat in court in a dark suit jacket and white shirt next to his lawyer, Leo Adler. According to CBC, he appeared to glance at the jurors while the prosecutor spoke.
Crown attorney Shazin Karim described the attacks to the jury in graphic detail, including urination and anal penetration, and explained how each was reported to police at the time. She said the victims were an eight-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. “They were children,” she told the jury, and she warned that some of the evidence “may be difficult to hear.” A publication ban protects the victims’ identities.
How a cold case gets a name
The attacks took place at Idlewood Park in Kitchener, Norton Place Park in Brampton and Wildwood Park in Oakville. Earlier CBC coverage, citing court records, [dated them](<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/richard-neil-background-documents-1.7156091>) to Aug. 21, 1992 in Kitchener, Sept. 29, 1994 in Brampton and Aug. 31, 1995 in Oakville. Investigators said back then that DNA linked all three attacks to the same man. They just couldn’t tell who he was. CBC has reported that the original task force received about 1,300 tips before it was disbanded in 1996. The case was reopened in 2009, and nobody was arrested until 2024.
Two separate steps produced the answer, and the Crown’s opening kept them apart. Karim said investigators first identified Neil as a suspect in recent years through genetic genealogy analysis carried out in the U.S. That technique compares crime-scene DNA with genetic profiles people have voluntarily uploaded to consumer genealogy services. It didn’t exist in the 1990s. If the attacker never sent his own spit to an ancestry company, that doesn’t stop the search. A cousin who did can put investigators onto a family tree, and then they narrow it down. One alleged victim [told CBC in 2024](<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/victim-in-historical-sex-assault-speaks-1.7171193>) that investigators said a relative of Neil’s had submitted DNA to an ancestry-type website. CBC also reported that a retired lead investigator said Neil had not been on the original suspect list.
A genealogy match points you to a family. It doesn’t tell you which member of it did anything. So the Crown says police then went looking for direct evidence and found it. In Karim’s account, Neil’s fingerprints matched prints police lifted decades ago from a bag and a bottle the attacker carried, and his DNA matched samples taken at all three scenes. Neil was [arrested in Toronto on March 3, 2024](<https://cbc.ca/amp/1.7142304>) after a joint investigation by Peel, Halton and Waterloo regional police. When the charges were laid, local B.C. outlets reported he was a [Vancouver Island man facing 20 charges](<https://vicnews.com/2024/04/08/vancouver-island-man-accused-of-20-historical-sexual-assaults-in-ontario/>), and that number has since come down to 17.
The Crown also offered circumstantial evidence. Karim said employment records show Neil worked for Canada Post in Waterloo, next door to Kitchener, when the 1992 assault happened there. She also told jurors that after his 2024 arrest, police seized his electronic devices and found photos and videos that point to an “interest” in urine drinking.
The one disputed question
The trial has an unusual shape. Karim said the defence does not contest the victims’ accounts of what happened to them. It disputes only that Neil was the man who did it. That means the jury isn’t really being asked whether these crimes took place. It is being asked whether the DNA, the fingerprints and the paper trail add up to proof that this particular 67-year-old committed them. When he was charged, Adler said Neil “has no knowledge of these crimes and maintains his innocence.”
Neil was [granted bail](<https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2062211/richard-neil-charged-in-ontario-woodland-rapist-cold-case-granted-bail>) after his arrest, on conditions that included electronic monitoring. Separately, one of the alleged victims has [sued him for $1 million](<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/richard-neil-lawsuit-alleged-victim-1.7317852>), according to CBC. None of the allegations has been proven in court. So far the jury has heard only the prosecution’s outline.
The physical evidence at the centre of the case was gathered by officers who had no means of using it the way it eventually was used. It stayed in storage for about three decades until the science caught up. The trial continues.