A remarkable achievement — but for the killer’s name

It’s a remarkable achievement.

The kidnapping, sexual assault and brutal killing of six-year-old Ljubica Topic, lured away by a stranger while she was playing outside her home on Drouillard Road in 1971, shocked police and the city.

Through almost half a century, despite 500 persons of interest, the case remained unsolved.

Until last week, when investigators learned that the DNA of a man who lived in the neighbourhood at the time matched DNA collected at the crime scene.

It is the oldest cold case in Canada and among the oldest in North America to be definitively solved, according to criminology professor and cold case expert Michael Arntfield of Western University.

As Arntfield said in an interview Monday, it’s a testament to the extraordinary resolve of caring investigators.

Investigators under eight different police chiefs meticulously preserved the evidence, including the DNA, collected decades before the technology for testing it was even invented.

Imagine the moment Det.

Scott Chapman, who took over the case in 2015, finally learned the killer’s identity. Imagine family members finally getting an answer — and knowing people cared enough to get them that answer no matter how long it took.

This case shook the community. Parents kept their children inside after this, fearful that a monster was still out there.

Solving this case sends a potent message to those who commit such atrocities. We will find you.

It also sends an equally potent message to members of the public who look to the police for help when faced with the unspeakable. They are there.

But in refusing to name the perpetrator because he died recently and can’t be charged, the police stopped short, sullying their remarkable achievement and raising all kinds of other questions.

The police cited Ontario’s Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. They can disclose the name of a person who has not been charged or convicted only if it’s in the public’s interest, for example, to further an investigation, prosecute a crime or protect the public.

This is in the public’s interest. The biggest question in this case is, what else did this man do?

“The crime scene speaks for itself,” said Arntfield, referring to Topic’s broken and bloody body. “This is not someone who just decided one day he’s going to try this. There were underlying, disordered sexual drives that informed these actions.

“We know how these offenders operate,” he said.

They don’t stop.

The man was 22 when he targeted Ljubica, Windsor police said. He died recently. What did he do for 48 years?

Age 22, when the libido peaks, “is the optimal age for commencing a criminal career in serial sexual homicide,” Arntfield said. “Those who start at this age, I don’t know of any who would just then completely stop.

“It would be naive to suggest he was not actively involved in other crimes that would satiate these drives,” he said.

A U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation study in 2014 showed that people ages 22 to 25 who commit a crime like this and dump the body at the scene, like this man did, go on to kill an average of two to three more times before they’re caught, Arntfield said.

Windsor police don’t believe this man committed other crimes here. But they acknowledge that he moved out west in the 1970s and police elsewhere may look at him for other crimes.

One of the main strategies in solving cold cases is publicizing them and asking people for tips. An estimated 95 per cent of cases not solved immediately require the public’s help, said Arntfield. If the public knew his name, former friends, neighbours and work colleagues might be able to help police in other jurisdictions.

OPP announced in 2005 they had finally solved the savage killing of university student Lynda Shaw near London in 1990. But they didn’t release the name of the killer, who had died four years after the crime. OPP also cited the Privacy Act.

Then-deputy privacy commissioner Brian Beamish, now privacy commissioner, said at the time there was no reason the name couldn’t be released.

The name was later leaked to the media.

The commission said Monday it wouldn’t be able to comment on Ljubica’s case until the new year.

There will never be proper justice. This man won’t be tried before a jury of his peers. But disclosing his name would be the next closest thing.

“We know exactly who it was,” Chapman told the media.

But even dead, he seems to have more rights than the victim and the public.