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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. The filing of a murder charge in this case came after the OPP decided in the mid-2010s to reopen the cold case.
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Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. OPP spokesperson Bill Dickson said he had no further comment on the matter, as did a spokesperson for the U.S. Nichols could not be reached for comment at his residence in Florida.
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He has yet to appear in court in connection with this charge and has not entered a plea. Nichols currently resides in Hollywood, Fla., and is the subject of an extradition request by Canadian authorities. Guy Prévost, right, hoped the reconstruction would look enough like the victim that people who knew her would recognize her face. The publication ban has since been lifted, but the case had not yet been reported in the media.Ĭonst. 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. 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.Īccording to documents filed at the courthouse in L'Orignal, Ont., east of Ottawa, he was formally charged with Langford's homicide on Sept. She could have been thrown from the bridge over the highway, where traces of blood were found, into the Nation River, police said.įor decades, her identity remained a mystery to police, who referred to her as the Nation River Lady in their public comments. 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.Īt 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. While she was in Canada at the time of her disappearance, Langford had long worked in the fitness industry in Jackson, Tenn. Langford came from a family of seven in Madison County, where her parents owned a farm. Nichols is now 81 and residing in Florida, where he is the subject of an extradition request. 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. One of Canada's best-known cold cases has been cracked, with ramifications in Ontario, Quebec, Florida and Tennessee.įound dead floating in the Nation River 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."Īccording 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.
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