One of Canada’s best-known cold cases has been cracked, with ramifications in Ontario, Quebec, Florida and Tennessee.
Found dead after being dropped from a bridge on Highway 417 between Montreal and Ottawa in 1975, an unidentified woman was known for decades by a single moniker: “Nation River Lady.”
According to information obtained by Radio-Canada, the victim has now been identified as Jewell Parchman Langford, a longtime resident of Tennessee who was 48 at the time of her death.
Her identity was recently uncovered by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), which also laid a murder charge against Rodney Nichols, a man who had been among Langford’s acquaintances in Montreal in the 1970s.
Nichols is now 81 and residing in Florida, where he is the subject of an extradition request.
Mysterious disappearance
Langford came from a family of seven in Madison County, where her parents owned a farm.
While she was in Canada at the time of her disappearance, Langford had long worked in the fitness industry in Jackson, Tenn. According to local newspapers, she and her then husband Atlas Langford had opened a centre dedicated to exercise and weight loss called the Imperial Health Spa in 1972.
Const. Duncan Way, left, and Const. Guy Prévost, right, hoped the reconstruction would look enough like the victim that people who knew her would recognize her face. (Denis Babin/Radio-Canada)
According to a source, Jewell Langford was reported missing in the spring of 1975 to police authorities in Montreal, where she had recently moved.
She’s believed to have been seen for the last time at the end of April 1975, and police started to look into her disappearance later that May. Montreal police investigated the case but never solved it.
According to the source, the “link was never made” between this missing woman in Montreal and the body that was found about 150 kilometres west, near Highway 417 in Casselman, Ont., on May 3, 1975.
At the time of her discovery, the woman’s decomposed body was wrapped in scraps of cloth, towels and rags, while her hands and feet were bound with neckties, according to OPP. She could have been thrown from the bridge over the highway, where traces of blood were found, into the Nation River, police said.
Rodney Nichols was a well-known rugby player among fans of the sport in Montreal, mainly among the English-speaking community in the western portion of the city.
According to documents filed at the courthouse in L’Orignal, Ont., east of Ottawa, he was formally charged with Langford’s homicide on Sept. 8, 2022.
OPP never publicly announced the laying of the charge in this case, which was initially subject to a publication ban pending Nichols’s return to Canada. The publication ban has since been lifted, but the case had not yet been reported in the media.
The gravestone of Jewell Parchman Langford at a cemetery in Jackson, Tenn. (Denis Babin/Radio-Canada)
Nichols currently resides in Hollywood, Fla., and is the subject of an extradition request by Canadian authorities. He has yet to appear in court in connection with this charge and has not entered a plea.
Nichols could not be reached for comment at his residence in Florida.
OPP spokesperson Bill Dickson said he had no further comment on the matter, as did a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Case reopened
The filing of a murder charge in this case came after the OPP decided in the mid-2010s to reopen the cold case.
In 2017, OPP experts unveiled a three-dimensional clay bust based on the body found in the Nation River in 1975, hoping to generate tips about her identity.
However, the breakthrough came from the use of DNA testing and genetic genealogy, which helped OPP to identify the victim. Once they had Langford’s name, investigators were able to make significant progress on the case.
For years, Langford’s unidentified body remained in Canada while a plaque commemorating her disappearance was installed at a cemetery in Jackson, Tenn.
“Missing, but not forgotten,” it read.
After Langford was identified, her body was brought back to the United States and laid to rest under a new monument that says, “Finally home and at peace.”
Radio-Canada made contact with Langford’s family, but a spokesperson said they are withholding comment for now at the request of law enforcement.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A linebacker at Division II West Virginia State was fatally shot during what the university said Thursday is being investigated by police as a home invasion.
The body of Jyilek Zyiare Harrington, 21, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was found inside an apartment Wednesday night in Charleston, police Lt. Tony Hazelett said in a statement.
Hazelett said several gunshots were fired during a disturbance in a hallway and inside the apartment. The statement said Harrington had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said they had no information on a possible suspect.
West Virginia State said counselors were available to students and faculty on campus.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Jyilek’s family as they mourn the loss of this incredible young man,” West Virginia State President Ericke S. Cage said in a letter to students and faculty.
Harrington, a senior, had eight total tackles, including a sack, in a 27-24 win at Barton College last week.
“Jyilek truly embodied what it means to be a student-athlete and was a leader not only on campus but in the community,” West Virginia State Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics Nate Burton said. “Jyilek was a young man that, during Christmas, would create a GoFundMe to help less fortunate families.”
Burton said donations to a fund established by the athletic department in Harrington’s memory will be distributed to an organization in Charlotte to continue his charity work.
West Virginia State’s home opener against Carson-Newman, originally scheduled for Thursday night, has been rescheduled to Friday, and a private vigil involving both teams was set for Thursday night. Harrington previously attended Carson-Newman, where he made seven tackles in six games last season. He began his college career at Division II Erskine College.
“Carson-Newman joins West Virginia State in mourning the untimely passing of former student-athlete Jyilek Harrington,” Carson-Newman Vice President of Athletics Matt Pope said in a statement. “The Harrington family and the Yellow Jackets’ campus community is in our prayers. News like this is sad to hear anytime, but today it feels worse with two teams who knew him coming together to play.”
DETROIT (AP) — Joe Schmidt, the Hall of Fame linebacker who helped the Detroit Lions win NFL championships in 1953 and 1957 and later coached the team, has died. He was 92.
The Lions said family informed the team Schmidt died Wednesday. A cause of death was not provided.
One of pro football’s first great middle linebackers, Schmidt played his entire NFL career with the Lions from 1953-65. An eight-time All-Pro, he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973 and the college football version in 2000.
“Joe likes to say that at one point in his career, he was 6-3, but he had tackled so many fullbacks that it drove his neck into his shoulders and now he is 6-foot,” said the late Lions owner William Clay Ford, Schmidt’s presenter at his Hall of Fame induction in 1973. “At any rate, he was listed at 6-feet and as I say was marginal for that position. There are, however, qualities that certainly scouts or anybody who is drafting a ballplayer cannot measure.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Schmidt played college football in his hometown at Pitt, beginning his stint there as a fullback and guard before coach Len Casanova switched him to linebacker.
“Pitt provided me with the opportunity to do what I’ve wanted to do, and further myself through my athletic abilities,” Schmidt said. “Everything I have stemmed from that opportunity.”
Schmidt dealt with injuries throughout his college career and was drafted by the Lions in the seventh round in 1953. As defenses evolved in that era, Schmidt’s speed, savvy and tackling ability made him a valuable part of some of the franchise’s greatest teams.
Schmidt was elected to the Pro Bowl 10 straight years from 1955-64, and after his arrival, the Lions won the last two of their three NFL titles in the 1950s.
In a 1957 playoff game at San Francisco, the Lions trailed 27-7 in the third quarter before rallying to win 31-27. That was the NFL’s largest comeback in postseason history until Buffalo rallied from a 32-point deficit to beat Houston in 1993.
“We just decided to go after them, blitz them almost every down,” Schmidt recalled. “We had nothing to lose. When you’re up against it, you let both barrels fly.”
Schmidt became an assistant coach after wrapping up his career as a player. He was Detroit’s head coach from 1967-72, going 43-35-7.
Schmidt was part of the NFL’s All-Time Team revealed in 2019 to celebrate the league’s centennial season. Of course, he’d gone into the Hall of Fame 46 years earlier.
Not bad for an undersized seventh-round draft pick.
“It was a dream of mine to play football,” Schmidt told the Detroit Free Press in 2017. “I had so many people tell me that I was too small. That I couldn’t play. I had so many negative people say negative things about me … that it makes you feel good inside. I said, ‘OK, I’ll prove it to you.’”
