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.
“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….
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