Mystery of body recovered from Lake Ontario 29 years ago is solved after exhumation

The mystery of a 33-year-old Canadian man who went missing nearly three decades ago has been solved following the exhumation of a body buried in Niagara County.

Niagara County law enforcement authorities said this week the buried man – who was pulled from Lake Ontario in 1994 – had been positively identified but they declined to publicly name the individual.

However, Niagara County authorities had obtained a judge’s permission to exhume the body in October from a Newfane cemetery after telling a county judge they were investigating if it was the remains of Paul Tenke of St. Catharines, Ont.

After exhuming the body, Canadian authorities planned to compare DNA from the remains to DNA taken from relatives of Tenke, a Niagara County Sheriff’s Office official said in a court filing last year.

On Jan. 4, the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario announced that the remains had been identified.

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“The recovered male has since been laid to rest here in Niagara and at the request of the family his name is not being released,” the Niagara Regional Police Service said in a news release.

Nearly three decades ago, the Niagara Regional Police Service had launched an investigation into the disappearance of Tenke, who was reported to be suicidal when he was last seen alive leaving his home on May 21, 1994, according to Niagara County’s court filing.

On June 17, 1994, Niagara County Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to Lake Ontario, about 7½ miles from Olcott Harbor, where they found the body of a 6-foot, 2-inch white man weighing about 190 pounds, described as having been between 25 and 30 years old, with brown hair and a receding hairline.

Superficially, the description matched Tenke, but given the limits of DNA science at the time, attempts to positively identify the body proved unsuccessful, according to First Assistant Niagara County Attorney Katherine D. Alexander. Instead, the remains were buried by the county on Nov. 2, 1994, at a private cemetery in Newfane.

Details about the case were entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Person System.

According to Canadian authorities, in July 2018, the Ontario Provincial Police Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Unit completed a standard analysis identifying potential unidentified remains that could be associated with their initial missing person investigation begun 29 years ago.

In February 2019, Canadian investigators received from Niagara County officials dental records from the unidentified remains. Subsequently, a Canadian dentist concluded that, although there was a probable identification that the remains were Tenke’s, a positive conclusion could not be made, according to Niagara County court records.

In late 2020, the case was assigned to the Niagara Regional Police Service Missing Person and Unidentified Remains Coordinator for further investigation. A consultant in forensic dentistry from the University of Western Ontario completed an additional review of the dental records, and determined that there was “an excellent correlation between the missing male and that of John Doe” buried in the Newfane cemetery.

After the exhumation, an examination of the remains by the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service Forensic Anthropology Unit positively identified the remains as being a match to the Canadian man reported missing in 1994, the Niagara Regional Police Service said.

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