It was a vicious attack that has haunted Belleville, Ont., for more than two decades: a woman sexually assaulted and beaten inside a hotel change room during a festival weekend in the summer of 2000.
Nearly 25 years later, DNA evidence found on a cigarette butt helped police identify the man responsible.
William Dale, 54, was arrested in Kewsick, Ont., in April. On Sept. 18 he pleaded guilty to assault and sexual assault, receiving a sentence of more than 12 years in prison.
A crime woven into the city's fabric
Insp. Jeremy Ashley said the Belleville Police Service never gave up on the case, praising the tenacity of investigators while acknowledging the shadow it cast over the city for years.
"It was so such an incredibly violent attack on a stranger and in ... what you would think would be a safe place," he said in an interview with CBC.
"It's just one of those really unique cases in the sense of it weaved itself into the history and fabric of this police service and the community at large."
Some of those threads and their ties to Belleville are "pretty remarkable," according to Ashley.
He first covered the attack as a reporter at the local newspaper, interviewing detectives before becoming an investigator himself.
Then there's Grant Boulay, the forensics officer who collected DNA evidence at the crime scene in 2000.
Twenty-five years later, Boulay's daughter, Det.-Const. Andrea Boulay, led the team that arrested Dale, according to Ashley.
The case is a testament to the persistence of investigators and the power of new technology to solve crimes. It's also evidence of the lasting impact the brutal attack has had on a person's life.
Victim tried to forgive
According to a victim impact statement, the survivor of the assault had tried to forgive the man who attacked her. People had advised her to consider him dead, and she said it was easier that way.
"[H]ere he is come back to life and the worst of the fear is right here with him," her victim impact statement reads. A publication ban prohibits reporting of any information that could identify the victim.
The attack happened on the morning of July 9, 2000, during a waterfront festival in Belleville, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court.
The woman went for a swim at the Ramada Inn around 6:10 a.m. While doing laps in the pool, noticed a man — later determined to be Dale — smoking and watching her from a nearby balcony.
He had made me feel that any random stranger might hurt me, but it was him I feared the most.- Victim impact statement
After finishing her workout, the woman saw the man again, this time inside the hotel's fitness area. She asked if he was a guest there, and he replied that he was.
The woman headed to the change room, turned on the shower and heard the door open behind her as Dale entered.
She tried to get past him, but Dale grabbed her and hit her in the head six times as she started to yell and fight back.
During sentencing, Dale disagreed with the number of blows, arguing through his lawyer that he'd only hit the victim once.
Court heard he then dragged her to the lockers and tore off her bathing suit. The woman pretended to pass out in hopes Dale would leave, but he pulled her into a toilet stall where he sexually assaulted her.
He sexually assaulted her a second time before stealing the watch off her wrist and leaving, according to court documents.
The woman wrapped herself in a towel and ran to the front desk where she collapsed. Emergency crews arrived to find her with a cut lip and abrasions and bruises on her arms, legs and back.
Police found palm prints on the stall door, and DNA on a cigarette butt found on the stairs near where Dale had been smoking. There was more DNA on toilet paper left at the scene of the attack.
Then, decades passed.
The case has haunted the community Belleville for 25 years, according to an investigator. (Dan Taekema/CBC)
A break in the case
In 2018, Ashley heard how DNA had been used to track down and capture the Golden State Killer, one of California's most prolific serial murderers and rapists.
Ashley, a forensic officer at the time, wondered whether the same technology could help solve the cold case in Belleville.
He got in touch with a lab called Othram Inc. and a not-for-profit called Seasons of Justice, which funds investigations after all other options have been exhausted.
According to a news release from Belleville police, it was the first time the organization had ever bankrolled an investigation outside the continental U.S.
In 2021, police began using genetic genealogy to identify the man whose DNA they’d found.
That led them to a distant relative of Dale's who had uploaded their DNA to genealogy sites, and who had given consent for law enforcement to compare their DNA to DNA taken from crime scenes.
Police were able to identify Dale as a person of interest in November 2024.
Police surveilled him, eventually securing a fresh cigarette butt he’d discarded. DNA from the butt was compared to the material recovered at the hotel years earlier, and investigators determined it was "one trillion times" more likely that Dale was the source than someone unrelated to him.
Dale was arrested, and a month later police matched his palm prints with those left on the bathroom stall years earlier.
The victim impact statement filed by the woman he attacked describes the lasting impact of that crime.
“I am in prison,” the woman wrote, explaining that the attack left her feeling shame, anger, bewilderment and sorrow over lost relationships — but most of all, fear.
"He had made me feel that any random stranger might hurt me, but it was him I feared the most." she wrote.
Police hope outcome offers comfort
Ashley, the Belleville police inspector, said he wants the victim to know she was "front and center of every investigator's thoughts when we took this on and when we kept with it."
He said it's only the first or second time these methods have helped solve a case in Canada while the victim is still alive.
"I can't speak to what closure is, but hopefully it gives her some measure of comfort to know that this person was identified, arrested, charged, convicted and now is in jail for a very long time," he said.
Latest News Articles
Do you have an RSS newsreader? You may prefer to use this newsletter's RSS feed at: