Since posting recently about the 40-year-old unsolved murder of Christine Ziomkiewicz, I’ve learned that investigators approached a family member in the past few years and discussed leads that were being tracked. Bernie Ziomkiewicz, a younger brother of the missing Kingston, Ontario woman, says he met with a Kingston Police officer. He also revealed that he provided DNA samples to police.

Bernie Ziomkiewicz said, in an email to me in June 2018, that the police officer told him of “intercepted letters from a prison inmate which contained information he felt could be interpreted as material to the case.”

Ziomkiewicz said he wasn’t told what information was contained in the intercepted letters and whether it was “specific” or “suggestive.”

He also told me that police determined that at the time of Christine’s disappearance, June 23, 1978, someone lived in her neighbourhood who was later convicted of a murder. At the time she vanished, the person was believed to be in Western Canada, in the Edmonton area. Ziomkiewicz wasn’t told the name of the person, who told police investigators that “he knew of more bodies to be discovered in the Kingston area.”

Bernie Ziomkiewicz also said he provided to authorities three cheek swab DNA samples.

Canada now has an operational DNA databank program for missing persons and unidentified remains. One component of that program provides for the possible matching of samples from close relatives of missing persons to the genetic profiles of unidentified remains. A close relative is defined as a biological parent, a brother or sister or child of the missing person.

Christine Ziomkiewicz was 27 when she vanished on June 23, 1978, leaving behind all of her possessions except a leather purse. Police found no signs of violence in the Kingston apartment where she lived alone. They have never found a crime scene or a body. Ziomkiewicz worked in a physiology research lab at Queen’s University and did not live a high risk lifestyle. She was close to her family and was considered a conscientious worker.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact Kingston Police at 613-549-4660.