Toronto police identify man found dead in 1992 as Derek

Toronto police have identified a man found dead near Queen Street East and Church Street on Sept. 15, 1992, as Derek. Police said they do not consider his death suspicious.

Derek was found on the lawn of a church without identification, according to police. Attempts to establish his identity using conventional investigative techniques were unsuccessful.

DNA work led investigators to Derek

Police selected the case for investigative genetic genealogy in 2025 and uploaded a DNA profile to public-facing databases on Jan. 8, 2026. The closest matches were very distant, but suggested the man was from the United Kingdom.

After months of work, the police genealogy team and investigators determined that the man was likely Derek, who had moved from the UK to Toronto in the 1970s, police said.

Derek’s lawyer reported him missing in December 1993, but the two cases were not connected at the time. The missing-person case was closed years later after investigators were told he had died. Police said this was a miscommunication: Derek had been declared legally dead after years without replying to correspondence, and there was no official record accounting for where or when he died.

Toronto police later located Derek’s fingerprints in another country. A comparison with the fingerprints of the man found in 1992 confirmed his identity, police said. Officers contacted his family in the UK to notify them.

Project 31

Derek is the 14th person identified through Project 31, a Toronto police initiative that began in summer 2022. The project is named for 31 open cases involving long-term unidentified deceased people for whom DNA material is readily available. It aims to identify them using DNA-based techniques, including investigative genetic genealogy.