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WARNING: This story contains details of sexual assaults against children
A Toronto man accused of grisly attacks on children in public parks in southern Ontario in the 1990s repeatedly this week disputed evidence against him and insisted police arrested the wrong man.
“It’s not my DNA,” Richard Neil testified at his trial in Brampton. “It’s not me.”
Crown prosecutors say DNA evidence links Neil to crime scenes in Kitchener, Brampton and Oakville, three decades after the “woodland attacker” case baffled investigators.
Two boys, aged eight and 10, and a 15-year-old girl each told police they’d been lured into wooded areas, tied up and raped by a stranger. The victims all said they’d been forced to drink the assailant’s urine during the attacks, which occurred between 1992 and 1995.
The jury heard Neil wasn’t arrested until March 2024, after forensic genetic genealogy pointed to him as a suspect. Prosecutors said further laboratory analysis found it’s “20 quadrillion times more likely” that the DNA at the crime scenes belonged to Neil, rather than another, random person.
Warning: Story contains details of sexual assaults against children | 31 years after a teen girl was forced into the woods and attacked in an Oakville, Ont., park, a jury has been shown underwear worn as the assailant’s mask. A forensic scientist testified that DNA on the underwear matched the accused, Richard Neil, who is on trial for a series of sexual assaults against children in the 1990s.
“I’m not a scientist,” he said from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice witness box on Tuesday, according to an audio recording reviewed by CBC News.
“All I can say is it was not me. I had nothing to do with it.”
Neil, 67, has pleaded not guilty to the 17 charges including kidnapping, sexual assault causing bodily harm and administering a stupefying drug.
Assistant Crown attorney Monica MacKenzie said it was an “impossible coincidence” that multiple pieces of evidence — including fingerprints — also connect Neil to the three attacks.
The jury was previously told Neil’s fingerprints were lifted from two shopping bags and a two-litre pop bottle located at Wildwood Park in Oakville, where the girl was assaulted in August 1995.
An ‘interest in urine’
During her cross-examination, MacKenzie also zeroed in on the accused’s “interest in urine.”
Neil acknowledged that he developed a urine-drinking “fetish” around 2012, insisting “it’s actually quite common.”
“Anytime I’ve engaged in that act,” he said, “it’s been with consenting male adults only.”
The court heard the British-born Neil immigrated to Canada with his family as a child. He grew up in Kitchener, where the first boy was assaulted in the city’s Idlewood Park, in August 1992. At the time, the jury was told Neil had a home in neighbouring Waterloo.
He spent much of his career working as a Toronto-area driver for employers such as Canada Post, UPS and Bell.
MacKenzie, the prosecutor, said Neil happened to be unemployed when the first two attacks — in Kitchener in 1992 and in Brampton’s Norton Place Park in September 1994 — occurred. She said at the time of the 1995 Oakville attack, Neil’s job involved delivering phone books and that he had a “very loose schedule.”
The jury was shown this image of a two-litre pop bottle recovered from the scene of a brutal attack in Oakville, Ont., in 1995. The 15-year-old victim told police the unknown assailant forced her to drink urine from the bottle. (Ontario Superior Court of Justice)
When he was arrested in 2024, Neil was splitting his time between his Toronto condo and a house in Victoria. The court previously heard officers searched both addresses after he was detained.
Neil testified that he was awoken from a nap when police showed up at his door in Toronto to arrest him and seize his electronic devices.
Previously detained, not fingerprinted
Once DNA evidence had linked all three assaults in the 1990s, forensic scientists looked at roughly 310 persons of interest over the years, a witness previously testified.
It appears likely they would not have had Neil’s DNA or fingerprints in their database, or his name on their list of suspects, at the time.
Other than traffic violations, the court heard Neil had only one previous run-in with police.
He testified that he was 19 years old when he and another man had been detained for “two, three hours, tops” for a drinking offence in Toronto. They weren’t charged and officers didn’t take their fingerprints, Neil said.
The jury also previously heard contemporaneous police interviews of the three victims, who were not required to testify at trial. The Crown and defence both agreed the attacks took place as the children described at the time.
“There’s no quarrel as to what occurred, or that these crimes took place,” Neil’s defence lawyer, Leo Adler told the jury.
“The issue has been from the start, who is the individual responsible.”
Neil, a divorced father of three, is set to resume his testimony on Friday.
In September 1994, a 10-year-old boy told police he was walking through Brampton’s Norton Place Park, when he was approached by a stranger and lured to a nearby wooded area where he was sexually assaulted. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)
