Human remains found in Ontario, Canada, in 1980 have been identified as Eric 'Ricky' Singer, from Cleveland, Ohio. He was last seen in Ohio, in October, 1973. Photo / Ontario provincial police
Eric Singer was a true child of the 1960s.
With long hair, bell bottoms and a guitar slung over his shoulder, he quit university and, to escape the potential of fighting in Vietnam, he considered leaving Ohio in the United States for Canada.
In 1973, at the age of 22, a backpack-carrying Singer vanished. He was last seen on his bicycle in Cleveland.
“He had left his beloved guitar, which almost never happened, so he was in a hurry, and he hadn’t even stopped to pick up his pay cheque” at a hospital where he had been working, said his older sister, Ruth Singer.
His family filed a missing person’s report at the time.
They eventually hired a private investigator, and they searched for Singer, who commonly went by the name Ricky.
More than 50 years after last seeing him, Ruth Singer was in her living room in New Mexico when she got a phone call from an unidentified number.
It turned out to be Sergeant Philip Holmes, a detective from the Ontario provincial police in Canada, which announced the result of an investigation on Friday.
“The very strong voice inside of me said, ‘Take that call,’” she said in an interview yesterday.
“And it was this very fine, gentle voice saying, ‘I’ve got some difficult news to share with you right now.’”
Even before the detective had explained, she said: “The tears started coming from me, you know, I just knew they had found him, in my heart. I just knew it.”
Partial remains for Eric Singer were found in Algonquin Provincial Park, in Whitney, Ontario, about 740km from Cleveland and about three hours north of Toronto, in 1980. More remains were found in 1995.
The remains were linked to Eric Singer after advances in DNA investigations made it possible. The circumstances of his death are still unknown, though no signs of foul play were found.
The cross-border investigation started after a hiker veered off a marked trail in the park in April 1980 and spotted the remains.
Search teams combed the park, finding more remains as well as a boot, a leather wallet, camping gear, clothing, and a sleeping bag, police said.
Testing revealed that the remains belonged to a white man who was between the ages of 18 and 21. Tests placed his death in the 1970s.
Then, in 1995, a family hiking in the area found a jawbone, Holmes said.
At first, investigators thought it was a jawbone from an animal, but one of the hikers had knowledge of dentistry and said it belonged to a human, the detective said.
More testing connected that bone to the previous remains. Still, the man was unidentified.
Police created a 3D model of the man’s head out of clay in 2017 and held a news conference to publicise the results.
His DNA was compared to those of people in other missing person cases but had no match.
Police said that the man’s DNA was sent in 2022 to the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit that tries to solve cold cases using genetic data.
In June 2023, a possible match was found, linking the DNA to a distant cousin in the US, police said. The search was narrowed to two women, Merry Singer Lugasy and Ruth Singer, who are sisters.
“This turned out to be a lot more complicated than just matching DNA,” Singer Lugasy said.
“It took almost two years, the exchange of many emails, texts and phone calls with our dedicated detective and various members of the forensic team.”
The sisters provided cheek swabs, which got stuck in customs at the border and were then held up when Canada had a postal strike last year, Ruth Singer said.
When authorities asked if she had anything that could possibly have her brother’s sweat or DNA on it, she provided an envelope that he used to send their parents a letter.
On Valentine’s Day this year, Eric Singer was finally identified.
“It gave me comfort in that he wasn’t a mean person living somewhere with another family not wanting to re-engage with his little sister,” Singer Lugasy said in the news release issued by police. “We were able to put him to rest and put ourselves to rest.”
Eric Singer was cremated, and his remains are kept at Singer Lugasy’s home in Ohio, Ruth Singer said. After finally having him back, the sisters are in no hurry to decide where to spread his ashes.
Eric Singer was a clever man who didn’t always apply himself, Ruth Singer said. She believed that he had neurodivergent traits and that, at times, he coped by turning to drugs, she said.
Her “tenderhearted” brother was the best in the school orchestra at playing violin, she said.
He travelled, and he had lived in Israel for about a year, she said. After that year, he visited Ruth Singer in Europe, where she was playing with an orchestra.
After Eric Singer’s bones were identified, his sisters went to the park with Holmes to see where he was found.
The moment was captured in a police video.
Ruth Singer said she had tingles “from head to toe”, the recording showed.
And, she said, “I sense that my mum, my dad and my brother are all here.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Rylee Kirk
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