Body found floating in Canadian river in 1975 identified as prominent U.S. businesswoman Jewell “Lalla” Langford

Canadian authorities have identified the victim of one of the country’s most notorious cold case murders, nearly five decades after the woman’s body was found floating in a river in Ottawa. Known previously as the “Nation River Lady,” after the name of the river where her body was discovered in 1975, Ontario Provincial Police confirmed Wednesday that the remains belonged to Jewell “Lalla” Langford, a resident of Tennessee who was 48 years old at the time of her death.

Police described Langford in a news release as “a prominent member of the Jackson, Tennessee business community” who had co-owned a health spa with her ex-husband while she was alive. 

“In this respect, she truly was a woman ahead of her time,” said Janice Mulcock, a retired detective constable with the Ontario Provincial Police, during a videotaped briefing shared on Facebook Wednesday morning by the police department. “In fact so successful she was the chair and president of the Jackson, Tennessee chapter of the American Businesswomen’s Association and in 1971 was voted ‘woman of the year’ by her colleagues.”

Police say Langford had traveled to Montréal in April 1975 and never returned home after that. Her body was found around one month later, on May 3, in the Nation River by a farmer.

According to the DNA Doe Project, she had been strangled with a TV cable and her hands and ankles had been bound with men’s neckties.

Despite forensic artist’s renderings and a three-dimensional facial approximation created in 2017 to help identify Langford’s remains, authorities were unable to move the case forward until 2020, when genome sequencing performed at Toronto’s Centre of Forensic Sciences matched a DNA profile of the victim to two other people listed in a family DNA tree. Police said Langford’s case is believed to be the first in Canada where human remains were identified using forensic genealogy.

The investigation that followed Langford’s identification involved law enforcement agencies across both Canada and the United States, eventually leading to one man’s arrest in Hollywood, Florida. The man, 81-year-old Rodney Nichols, was arrested and charged with murder at the Ontario Court of Justice late last year. Police said Nichols and Langford knew each other, without elaborating on their relationship.

“Thanks to advances in genetic genealogy science and the collective commitment of all of the investigators involved, we have brought resolution to the families and friends of this missing person who met with foul play,”  Detective Inspector Daniel Nadeau said. “We can be satisfied with the results of this investigation and that we were able to return Jewell Langford’s remains to her loved ones.”