DNA research helps solve 26-year-old mystery in Regina

It was a mystery that captured the hearts of many people in Regina and persisted for 26 years.

But now, police have identified a man killed by a train in Regina 26 years ago.

The Saskatchewan Coroners Service and Regina Police Service say Michael Kirov, also known as Michael Lewis, was the man who died July 28, 1995 after laying down on the track in front of a train near Courtney Street and 13th Avenue.

Kirov’s identity was verified early this month with the help of U.S.-based company Othram, which was hired by the Saskatchewan Coroners Service to use genealogical DNA research to help solve the case.

Kirov’s cousins were on hand in Regina for the announcement Thursday, making the trek from Winnipeg — Kirov’s hometown.

Michael Kirov’s cousins Sandra Zamonsky, Sarah Paulson and Karen Clawson (left to right) and coroner Jerry Bell were on hand when Kirov was identified as the man who died when he was struck by a train in Regina on July 28, 1995. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

“Michael has been on our minds for the last 26 years. He was a young man when he left. We know he was very upset when he left with his mother’s passing. He was so close to his mom,” said Karen Clawson.

She was on hand with Sandra Zamonsky and Sarah Paulson; all three were Kirov’s first cousins.

Kirov’s mother died in 1991, according to the cousins, and he was very upset by it and left soon after. They had always thought he’d headed west and may have gone to Vancouver.

“He was always in our thoughts and our minds and we just always thought that he was living a really happy life out there,” Clawson said.

The three are still trying to process the fact Kirov is dead.

“To us, this news is just new to us,” Clawson said. “It’s like he just passed away even though it has been such a long time. So we’re still trying to process all of this and grieve for Michael and our aunt.”

They said Kirov was a “shy, cute little guy,” that he was inquisitive and smart and that he was always reading.

Eight months after he died at the age of 30, Kirov was buried in a Regina cemetery, with donations coming in from the community, including to pay for a headstone.

The headstone names him only as John Doe, and includes a quote from the bible: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.”

The cousins said when they found out that money had been donated for a headstone, it was a comfort.

“It gave us such peace,” Clawson said.

“It meant a lot to us,” Zamonsky chimed in.

“Yes,” Clawson continued. “To know that people cared about him — they didn’t know him, but they truly cared about him. They looked after him until we were found.”

They’ll be adding Kirov’s name to the headstone, but will keep John Doe on there as well.

“As soon as we saw the John Doe, it had such impact to us and our first thought was we had to get his name on there, but it was (coroner Jerry Bell) who said to us that John Doe meant so much to the Regina community,” Clawson said. “Then we just started processing that and thinking about that and thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s right. Regina has looked after our cousin for the last 26 years.’

“We felt it was important to the people of Regina to respect that (and) leave his name on there. I don’t think, between the three of us, we can ever thank the Regina community as well as the police and the coroners office for everything that they’ve done for us.”

How they did it

The 26-year timeline of the case includes news releases to generate tips, countless leads, attempts to find DNA markers and compare them to databases, and even an attempt to get the case onto the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Saskatchewan chief coroner Clive Weighill explained the case took so long because all the normal avenues of identification, in 1995, were missing. Kirov didn’t have any identification on him, investigators didn’t get any matches for his fingerprints or dental records, and no missing person reports came up on the databases they checked.

Kirov was wearing a distinctive shirt at the time of his death and investigators even tried to find the maker and the place where the shirt was purchased.

In 2019, the thought of sending a sample to a DNA sequencing company was brought up, and so the case was opened up to Othram, a company in Texas.

The company works with evidence or a piece of DNA from a case and works to build a much larger DNA profile. Testing done by police will often including 21 markers, while David Mittelman, CEO of Othram Inc., said its profiles can including tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of markers.

“With that, we can do a little bit more long-range testing and we can compare and identify very distant relatives,” he said. “And in identifying enough of these distant relatives, we can then sometimes piece together family trees from public records, what we know about how folks are related, and in doing that we can infer, based on these family trees, who that unknown person might be.”

The company was actually able to drill down and identify the three first cousins who were at Thursday’s announcement.

That’s where the Regina Police Service’s cold case unit came in.

Detective Sgt. Troy Davis said they got the information from Othram and it was kind of hard to believe, at first, that the company had gotten so close.

“The genealogy is amazing technology,” said Davis.

From there, police had to do their research to locate and get contact information for the cousins.

“From there it was to make that hard phone call and first contact and drop a bombshell on these poor ladies what we were investigating. I think that was really hard on them but they did great, and we were able to meet with them. They came up right away and, through speaking with them and looking into the past, we were all fairly confident at that point that it was Michael.”

Davis called the identification a big victory, and said the many officers who’ve worked the case over these years are ecstatic that there’s finally a name to put to it.

There is still more work to do, though, according to Bell. There’s still a lot they don’t know about Kirov’s story.

“When you start trying to unravel a story and understand the why behind the situation, you always wonder ‘Is this the story?’ ” Bell said. “And I have work to do now because I and the family are just getting to know each other, and so we still have work to do, to talk, and try and understand Michael’s journey and Michael’s life and what led him to Regina.”

The success of this case could mean the DNA sequencing technology could be utilized in other cases as well, for criminal cases as well as remains and missing people.

“I think the technology will be huge and hopefully we can put it toward some more files,” said Davis, although he didn’t say whether that was already happening on any cases.