WATCH ABOVE: 16×9’s “Dead or Alive”
Judy Peterson’s decade-long campaign for a national DNA-based Missing Persons Index has finally succeeded, with royal assent for what is widely known as Lindsey’s Law.
READ MORE: 16×9: Putting a name to human remains
Peterson’s daughter Lindsey Nicholls disappeared in 1993 from her Vancouver Island home and has never been found. Peterson, of Sidney, B.C., believes a national DNA database could have helped police forces and medical examiners solve cases like Lindsey’s, by matching the DNA of the missing against hundreds of unidentified remains and DNA from crime scenes across Canada.
Her advocacy was featured in this 16×9 story last season.
‘Seeing this announcement in print and naming it Lindsey’s Law is surreal,” she told 16×9. “Now we just have to make sure the implementation moves quickly so that families of the missing don’t have to wait any longer than necessary.”
The database will be part of the RCMP’s National DNA Data Bank, and it may take a year or more before it becomes fully operational.
A prototype of the database already exists in British Columbia, and has been successful in solving cases of missing people.
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