By The Canadian Press

Montreal police resolve cold case from 2008 using genetic genealogy to ID killer

Sep 17, 2025 | 12:27 PM

MONTREAL — A long-standing cold case was cracked using genetic genealogy to identify the man who killed a Montreal woman in her apartment in 2008, police said Wednesday.

Catherine Daviau, 26, was killed in her Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie apartment in December 2008. Investigators had not identified a suspect in her brazen murder under recently, naming Jacques Bolduc as the man who killed Daviau.

Bolduc died of natural causes in 2021 at the Archambault Institution, where he was serving time for two robberies and two attempted murders. But it was diligent scientific work that ultimately linked him to the homicide.

“The resolution is entirely thanks to genetic genealogy, which pointed us to that name, and it never came up in the investigation at any time,” Cmdr. Mélanie Dupont, head of the Montreal police major crimes unit, told a news conference.

Bolduc was serving an indeterminate sentence at the time of his death handed down in 2020, earning dangerous offender status. His criminal past dated back to 1979 mainly for similar offences.

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Bolduc did not know Daviau and there was no connection between the two. Bolduc had only contacted her a few days before the killing by phone, after she’d posted a vehicle for sale on an online classified site.

“There was a possible appointment, but he never showed up. Was he observing at that time? We can hypothesize that he was observing because the planned meeting was on Dec. 10 and he didn’t show up for the appointment,” Dupont said.

“We know for sure that on Dec. 11, he was there.”

Police say Bolduc attempted to set fire to the unit to cover up evidence. Investigators still found traces of DNA at the scene, but without a match in the system.

Bolduc was on parole at the time and living at a halfway house that he did not return to on Dec. 11, 2008. He was later caught in Sherbrooke, Que., east of Montreal, trying to steal a car.

Diane Seguin of the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, the provincial criminal crime lab, said genetic genealogy for the Daviau killing began in 2021, creating a profile checking weekly for any matches. It’s not about a perfect match between the profile and what’s available in the databases, but pointing them in the right direction using very distant genetic links between individuals.

From there, they can start to build a family tree, which provides a list of potential persons of interest that can then be investigated through traditional policing methods.

“The interesting match that we got for this case was in fall 2024,” Seguin said. “We did the genealogy, our genealogist did the research, and then we were able to provide the investigators with a name.”

Dupont noted that Bolduc died on Sept. 8, 2021, but an order for a DNA swab following his conviction in June 2020 never made it into the national DNA bank, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Police, who never had Bolduc on their radar during their probe, began to investigate the individual.

“In this case, Jacques Bolduc was dead and incinerated, so we could not do DNA match with the body,” Dupont said. So they went to family to confirm DNA from the scene was compatible with that of Bolduc.

There are more than 800 unsolved cases in Montreal, most predating 2010 and the vast majority dating back to before 2000. There are currently 16 investigators working full time, with the unit expanded last April, Dupont said.

Investigators met with Daviau’s relatives earlier Wednesday to discuss the resolution. Dupont said she hoped it helped bring some peace of mind in their grieving process.

“Of course, our goal is to bring people to justice,” Dupont said. “However, providing answers to the family is just as important.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2025.

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press