The ministry’s two-page refusal, dated Aug. 17, does not specify whose personal privacy is at issue.
The Star sought clarification from the FOI deputy co-ordinator and reiterated that it wanted only the dates when samples matching Williams were submitted for testing, and when those samples were registered in the national DNA data bank.
The deputy co-ordinator responded, saying the ministry had nothing to add to the decision letter.
Timely testing of DNA samples in Ontario came acutely under the public microscope following the1995 murder trial of serial killer Paul Bernardo, whose DNA sample from an earlier serial rapist investigation disappeared into a “black hole.”
In his 1996, 500-page review of the case, now-deceased Justice Archie Campbell noted an under-resourced Centre of Forensic Sciences as part of the reason for the delay, which resulted in Bernardo, the so-called Scarborough rapist, remaining uncaught and going on to kill three teenage girls with his wife, Karla Homolka.
Much has changed since then. Police have better case-management systems, and turnaround times on DNA testing have improved.
In the Williams case, a sample suitable for DNA analysis that was later determined to match Williams’ profile was collected from the scene of the Sept. 17, 2009 sexual assault on victim Jane Doe, who lived very close to Williams’ Tweed cottage