Crown says DNA evidence helped ID man now on trial for decades-old sex assaults against children

Richard Neil, on trial in Brampton, Ont., for a series of sex assaults against children in the 1990s, has pleaded not guilty to the 17 charges he's facing including kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and administering a stupefying drug. (Peel Regional Police)Social SharingWARNING: This story contains details of sexual assaults against children.

For three decades, the brutal cold case confounded police. 

An unidentified attacker had violently tied up three children as young as eight in southern Ontario parks between 1992 and 1995. He sexually assaulted each of them and got away every time.

At a court in Brampton, Ont., on Monday, prosecutors told a jury how DNA evidence had finally linked each attack to Richard Neil, now 67.

As Neil's trial got underway, Crown attorney Shazin Karim went into graphic detail about the attacks — involving urination and anal penetration — and how they were reported to police at the time.

The victims were an eight-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl, Karim said. 

"They were children," she said, underlining to the jury some of the evidence "may be difficult to hear."

One of the three attacks was in September 1994, when a 10-year-old boy was sexually assaulted by a man in Brampton's Norton Place Park. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)Neil has pleaded not guilty to the 17 charges he's facing, including kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and administering a stupefying drug. 

Karim told the jurors investigators had first identified him as a suspect in recent years thanks to genetic genealogy analysis conducted in the U.S.

The investigative technique — which involves comparing crime scene DNA to genetic data voluntarily submitted to direct-to-consumer genealogical services — was unavailable to police in the 1990s.

Karim said police later uncovered further evidence that positively identified Neil as the assailant. 

According to the Crown's opening statement to the jury, Neil's fingerprints matched those lifted by police from a bag and a bottle carried by the attacker all those years ago.

Lawyer Leo Adler is representing Neil at his trial. (Thomas Daigle/CBC)His DNA also matched samples recovered from each of the three crime scenes — Brampton's Norton Place Park, Idlewood Park in Kitchener and Wildwood Park in Oakville — the Crown said.

Neil wore a dark suit jacket and white buttoned shirt in the courtroom, seated next to his lawyer Leo Adler. The accused appeared to glance over at jurors during Karim's opening statement. 

According to an indictment filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Neil is also accused of making "a video tape recording constituting child pornography" on the date of the Oakville attack on the girl.

The victims' identities are covered by a publication ban.

Karim told the jury employment records show Neil worked at Canada Post in Waterloo at the time of the assault in neighbouring Kitchener in 1992.

What's more, the prosecutor said when police seized Neil's electronic devices following his arrest in 2024, they found photos and videos pointing to an "interest" in urine drinking.

Karim said the victims' accounts of what happened is not contested. But she said the defence disputes the allegation that Neil was the assailant.