A body pulled from the Fraser River in Coquitlam 24 years ago has been identified as that of a Prince George man.
And the case, in which the corpse floated downstream nearly 800 km, is changing the way the B.C. Coroners Service conducts its investigations.
Brian Carman Law's body was pulled from the river in 1989 but, because of the distance it had travelled, investigators had difficulty identifying the remains.
When a recent DNA database search turned up a match with a sample provided by the deceased's mother in Prince George, investigators were shocked.
"A completely unexpected match came up completely out of the blue," said Bill Inkster, an identification specialist with the Identification and Disaster Response Unit (IDRU), a section of the coroners service. "Our jaws dropped when we realized how far [the body] had travelled."
Normally, when a body is pulled from the Fraser River in the Lower Mainland, investigators will look as far as Hope or Lillooet for matching files. But because of this recent case, Inkster said investigators will likely start to widen their search parameters.
Law was 29 when he was reported missing in Prince George in May 1989. His body was recovered later that year and transported to Royal Columbian Hospital for further examination.
BCCS would not say what caused the death but added that the family of the deceased had been notified of the identification.
Inkster credits changes made at IDRU for closing the cold case and believes that new methods of data collection will help the coroners service put more names to unidentified bodies currently being investigated. In the past, the RCMP would send remains to the coroners for case-to-case analysis. If the body did not match a particular file, the remains were sent back to police.
Today, however, the coroner compiles data from all of the remains it receives, allowing investigators to match bodies with other missing persons cases. In the last few years, they have also begun to include DNA samples from family members of missing persons, data that was crucial in identifying Law.
"It didn't make sense to target one-to-one comparisons," said Stephen Fonseca, the manager of IDRU. "We looked at creating a more holistic approach."
The changes have helped the office close 82 files in the last few years and there are still 187 cold cases being investigated.
For the families, identifying a cold case brings closure, Fonseca said, noting that the coroners service tries its best to explain the circumstances of each investigation and why some take longer than others.
"In some ways, it is unfortunate that it brings up the past," he said. "But we haven't met a family that hasn't... wanted to know. We have made some very strong bonds with families."
