Richard Neil guilty on 17 counts: 'Woodland Rapist' cold case solved after 30 years
Richard Neil, 67, was convicted Friday in Brampton on 17 charges including sexual assault and kidnapping of three children in the 1990s. Forensic genealogy cracked the decades-old cold case.
'Woodland Rapist' convicted after 30 years as forensic genealogy cracks cold case
More than three decades after a series of brutal child sexual assaults in Southwestern Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area, Richard Neil has been found guilty on all 17 charges against him, the Toronto Sun Crime reports.
Neil, a 67-year-old Toronto resident and former courier driver, was convicted Friday in a Brampton court of sexual assault, kidnapping and uttering threats. The charges relate to three separate attacks on two young boys and a teenage girl carried out between 1992 and 1995.
Three attacks spanning three years
The first assault took place on Aug. 21, 1992, when an eight-year-old boy was lured into the woods at Idlewood Park in Kitchener and sexually assaulted by a knife-wielding man. More than two years later, on Sept. 29, 1994, a 10-year-old boy was similarly attacked at North Place Park in Brampton. On Aug. 31, 1995, a man forced a 15-year-old girl at gunpoint into a wooded area at Wildwood Park in Oakville and raped her over the course of five hours.
During the attacks, police said the perpetrator wore underwear on his head, tied his victims to trees and forced them to drink urine. The three incidents were linked through DNA evidence — investigators recovered sperm from the crotch of one victim, ejaculate from another and semen-stained underwear at the third crime scene.
Task force launched, then disbanded
The Project Woodland task force was established to identify a suspect. A composite sketch of the so-called "Woodland Rapist" generated approximately 1,200 tips from the public. Despite investigating 875 potential suspects, police made no arrests, and the task force was disbanded in 1996.
The case remained cold for decades. Neil was arrested in British Columbia in March 2024 by Peel Regional Police following a multi-jurisdictional investigation. He went on trial last month and denied being the perpetrator of the assaults, arguing authorities had the wrong man — despite DNA and fingerprint evidence presented before the court.
Investigative genetic genealogy cracks the case
The breakthrough came through investigative genetic genealogy (IGG), a forensic technique that uses DNA from crime scenes to trace family lineages and identify previously unknown suspects. Toronto Police Service's cold case unit worked alongside Peel and Waterloo police to apply the technology to the decades-old file.
Det. Sgt. Steve Smith, head of the TPS cold case unit, told the Toronto Sun that the method is transforming historic investigations. "IGG is making these cases and other historic investigations solvable," Smith said. "Science is allowing us to solve more of these cases particularly in investigations where we have particularly vulnerable victims, as in this case which were children."
Smith noted that Neil had never previously appeared on investigators' radar. "The funny thing is, he looks exactly like the composite done at the time," he said. "Those kids did a great job."
Police services across North America are increasingly applying IGG to cases previously considered unsolvable, often identifying perpetrators who had never been suspects.
Smith added a pointed message regarding remaining cold cases: "There really is no longer a safe place for these guys. We will get them."
Unit's track record
The TPS cold case unit has resolved several of the city's most long-standing investigations using similar techniques, including the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop.
Neil's conviction marks the conclusion of a case that haunted investigators and communities across the region for more than 30 years.
Source: Toronto Sun Crime