An “extensive excavation” of an area off Highway 57 has resulted in no new evidence in the unsolved, decades-old disappearance of a Bowmanville girl, investigators say.
Noreen Greenley disappeared from her hometown on Sept. 14, 1963 after a night spent bowling with friends.
According to documents from Western University’s Cold Case Society, Greenly was last seen at a bus stop near her best friend’s house at around 11:15 p.m. Witnesses reported seeing her get into a vehicle around that time.
She was never seen since.
The then-Bowmanville Police Department conducted an exhaustive investigation, but never found the girl.
Durham Regional Police revisited the case in 2005 but no new leads were uncovered.
In 2016, information provided by a tipster related to her disappearance renewed the investigation.
Multiple media reports suggest the tip came from a deathbed confession. A dying man’s son reportedly told police in 2016 that his father may be responsible for the young girl’s disappearance. Police have not confirmed that information to CTV News Toronto.
That same year, the girl’s family brought in a team from the Cold Case Society, who called on forensic anthropologist Renee Willmon to perform a magnetic radar field scan of the field now in question.
Dr. Michael Arntfield, the Cold Case Society founder, told CTV News Toronto back in September that based on the results of the scan, he’s convinced there is an object or artifact buried in the ground, possibly a car.
The Cold Case Society documents suggest Greenley got into a vehicle driven by her bus driver.
Her family has said they believed Greenley got into a car with someone familiar to her, as she would have never accepted a ride from a stranger.
The documents allege it was the driver’s son who came to police in 2016 with new information. He reportedly told police that his father was a construction worker working on repaving Highway 57 at the time. According to the documents, the son alleged that his father told his coworkers that he no longer wanted his vehicle before burying it, with Noreen inside, near the site.
“In the 1960s there were no environmental regulations and when such construction and road work was taking place, it was common to bury all of the garage, debris, old materials, etc.,” the document reads.
“He took a digger and dug a hole somewhere between six and 10 feet deep, drove the car into the hole, then took a backhoe and filled it in.”
Arntfield said he believes police initially had skepticism about the credibility of the tipster, which may have delayed the process of getting a court order to excavate the property.
None of these details have been confirmed by police.
According to Willmon’s case report, the results of the scan showed a large object somewhere toward the north end of the property.
Based on the results, Willmon reported that she believes the object is “consistent with the area described by the witness as the location of a buried vehicle.”
“There were certain areas of the property that showed a significant anomaly that could be consistent with a car,” she told CTV News Toronto on Thursday. “However, using that technology it was impossible to determine how deep that object was, the size or shape of it, or if it was a piece of garbage or a vehicle with, of course, no remains inside, that we could not determine.”
Willmon said the scan – like a “very sensitive metal detector” – sends out a signal in a large cone-shaped area, which may mean a large swath of the area will require excavation.
Members of Greenley’s family visited the construction site with police on Friday, hoping to get closure.
“The tipster had told us that his father had killed Noreen and put her into the trunk of his car,” Kathleen Greenley, Noreen's sister-in-law, told CTV News Toronto.
“Apparently he was a bulldozer driver and he pushed the car into the hole with her in the trunk. I know it sounds like a crazy story but, you know, they never did find Noreen or the car. It only makes sense that they’re together.”
Durham police said the story of the car being buried has come up repeatedly over the years.
“The story is that while the construction (on the highway) was going on, he buried the car because it wasn’t working properly. We don’t even know if that’s true, but we’re looking,” Homicide Det. Sgt. Mitch Martin said. “From there on in it’s become, ‘Well maybe she was murdered and put in that car.’ We have no evidence or truth of that, but people keep on bringing it up so we’re investigating that angle.”
Investigators say they dug two trenches in the area, one about 150 feet long and the other 100 feet long. Each trench went down seven feet and metal detectors were used to scan the area.
The dig started early Thursday morning, but by late afternoon, police announced that they found no new evidence. There was no indication if the dig would continue or expand at another time.
