Toronto police delays in Indigenous woman’s suspicious death echo past failings, cold-case researcher says

The suspicious death of Jennifer Johnson, whose body was found in a Toronto ravine in 2023, sparked a “bleak déjà vu” for one cold-case researcher, who says it reflects broader institutional failures to take the disappearances and deaths of Indigenous women and those from other marginalized communities more seriously. Ms. Johnson’s death was the subject of a recent Globe and Mail investigation that showed police failed to take basic steps, such as examining her cellphone, for more than a year after her body was found. Her friends grew so concerned over what they saw as a lack of police effort that they began an investigation of their own.