UNFORGETTABLE SAGAS, SCOOPS AND SCANDALS
 from Toronto Life’slong-form archives

Dear Reader,

Last week, Charles Mustard was found guilty of stabbing Barbara Brodkin to death in 1993—officially closing a haunting decades-old Toronto cold case. Police said that investigators had canvassed for witnesses and interviewed over 100 people in the months following the murder. But they had no good leads on the killer’s identity until additional forensic tests were conducted nearly 25 years later. Mustard’s lawyer said they are considering an appeal; he will be sentenced on March 13. 

Breakthroughs in forensic science have helped crack several high-profile cold cases in recent years, including the murder of nine-year-old Christine Jessop. In his riveting feature “The Hunt for a Killer,” Toronto Life editor-in-chief Malcolm Johnston takes readers inside the fascinating—and chilling—investigation into the Jessop tragedy.

The Hunt for a Killer

For three decades, the murder of nine-year-old Christine Jessop was unsolved—until a tenacious Toronto cop cracked the case last year. A story about miscarried justice, blinkered policing and how forensic genealogy is revolutionizing law enforcement

BY MALCOLM JOHNSTON | NOVEMBER 29, 2021

When Christine Jessop went missing in 1984, her disappearance defied explanation: in the quaint town of Queensville, Ontario, under the watchful eye of so many friends and neighbours, how could a little girl simply vanish? It would take more than thirty years—and one wrongful conviction—for police to identify her killer. As Malcolm Johnston writes in this award-winning feature from 2021, the investigation was aided by “science, time, persistence and a little luck.”

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