They are murder mysteries that have endured for a generation: three young men brutally killed, hands tied behind their backs, their naked bodies dumped along remote country roads north of Toronto -- their remains only discovered by accident. For nearly four decades there was no way to identify the skeletal remains that were stored in plastic bins at the morgue at the Ontario Coroner's office. Then, in 2006, with advances in forensic science, the Ontario Provincial Police were finally able to identify one of the victims and the hunt for a killer could begin. Now police are hoping to identify the other victims and bring a possible serial killer to justice.

In the spring of 1968, a farm worker taking a lunch-break discovered a skeleton in a hedgerow, in a remote field near Schomberg, Ont., about an hour north of Toronto. According to OPP Detective Inspector Dave Quigley, except for the shoelace used to tie the victim's hands behind his back, no other clues were found. There was nothing to identify the young man. But the condition of the body and the fact that his hands were tied behind his back, immediately led police to believe that he had been murdered.

The find was eerily similar to another body that had been found just five months earlier, about 100 kilometers away in Coboconk, Ont. The grisly discovery of a skeleton was made by a hunter. Once again, police were stymied by the lack of clues: no clothing, except a pair of shoes, and this victim also had his hands tied behind his back.

Police immediately linked the two cases. But, despite their best efforts they were at a loss to identify the victims. An OPP news release at the time asked the public for any information but garnered little attention. And, as the decades went by the mystery remained unsolved, classified as cold cases with a murderer somewhere on the loose.

However, homicide cases are never closed. Advances in forensic science and DNA technology led the OPP to re-activate the two cases 38 years after the remains were first discovered. A world-renowned forensic anthropologist, Kathy Gruspier, was called in to take a fresh look at the old bones. She was able to give police a lot more detail about the victims' physical appearance and pinpoint their ages. The victims were teenagers; one possibly as young as 14.

"We should be able to figure out who they are. Somebody must be missing them in some way. They deserve to go somewhere and not be stored in a box," said Gruspier at the time.

In a continuing effort to help discover the identities of the two young men, a forensic artist was hired to do facial recreations. There wasn't much to go on, just the skulls. But in November 2006, the OPP unveiled the startling recreations and appealed to the public on national television to help them solve the puzzle.

The very next day there was a stunning breakthrough. A thousand kilometers away, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, two different people had been watching the television coverage and thought one of the victims looked like a long-lost teenager named Richard Hovey, missing since 1967. Back then everyone called him Dickie.

The OPP couldn't believe their luck. "We had two totally independent people see those reconstructions and forty years later say within minutes, 'Oh, my God, that's Dickie Hovey,' and call us independent of each other," marveled Quigley about the quick turn of events.

After contacting relatives of Hovey, police obtained DNA samples and compared them to DNA recovered from the decades-old skeletal remains. It was a match. Police finally knew the identity of the murdered young man discovered near Schomberg. After 40 years Dickie Hovey was on his way home, to be laid to rest by his three surviving siblings, Marcia, Carolyn and Kevin.

'Down the road'

Hovey, one of four children in an average middle class family, had disappeared just a week after his seventeenth birthday. For all these years, his family had no idea where or why he had gone.

"He had gone before but he came back, recalled Hovey's younger brother, Kevin, in an interview with W-FIVE. "This time he never came back. So you wait and wait."

Older sister Marcia added: "I remember my mother sitting on the couch looking out the picture window waiting for him to walk up the street."

But Dickie Hovey never returned to his Fredericton home, his parents eventually passed away, and his brother and sisters grew to middle age. His absence tore the family apart and for years they buried their pain. "We learned not to bring it up. So it was almost like he didn't exist. And yet we were all thinking about it all the time," said his sister Carolyn.

With the identification of Dickie Hovey, a cold case suddenly got very hot and OPP Det. Inspector Dave Quigley began looking into the victim's background. Quigley discovered that Hovey was a very talented musician who had played lead guitar in a local Fredericton band called Teddy and the Royals.

Former band-mates Terry Arnold and Charlie Chaisson recall how talented a musician Dickie was and that his passion was playing guitar. Dickie's dream guitar was to own a white Fender Stratocaster, but he couldn't afford one, so he customized his standard electric guitar to look like a Stratocaster. According to Arnold, "It was his pride and joy."

The 17-year-old Hovey dreamed of being a rock star. The OPP discovered that the teen had left home to chase that dream, hitchhiking to the bright lights of Toronto, and to Yorkville - in 1967 a Mecca for aspiring young musicians.

Four decades after he disappeared, the OPP have managed to find crucial eyewitnesses who place Hovey in Yorkville in the summer of 1967. Homicide investigator Quigley believes that these eyewitnesses were the last people to see Dickie alive before he was murdered.

Quigley shared information about the investigation with W-FIVE that was never-before revealed. Investigators learned the teenager got into a light-colored Corvair one night in June, 1967. Witnesses told police that the car was being driven by a muscular black man, and was last seen turning off Yorkville Avenue, north onto Avenue Road - a street that, if followed far enough, leads out of Toronto. Police believe the killer was driving the car.

Linking the crimes

The eyewitnesses provided homicide investigators with the first direct evidence tying Dickie Hovey to a possible suspect, someone already on police radar, a convicted sex offender and killer, a known predator named James Greenridge. In the summer of 1967 he owned a light-colored Corvair.

Greenidge had been on a murderous rampage that summer. He killed a 17-year-old boy and dumped his body in Markham, just north of Toronto. He also attacked a 21-year-old and left him to die in a field north of Barrie, Ontario. But that intended victim survived and identified Greenridge as his attacker and also the car he was driving: a light-colored Corvair.

From the beginning of their investigation the OPP believed all four crimes, the Markham murder, the attempted murder of the young man dumped near Barrie, and the two unidentified skeletons found near Schomberg and Coboconk could be the work of a serial killer whose hunting ground was downtown Toronto. But police couldn't find the crucial link that would allow them to investigate that theory until they identified Dickie Hovey and found the witnesses who saw him get into the Corvair.

W-FIVE has also learned there is a third unsolved murder that is also being investigated with Greenidge as a possible suspect. In 1980, another male was found dumped in the woods along a secluded road in the town of Markham. Similar in stature to the 1960s victims, he was also found bound, but this time police found a red and pink high-heeled shoe, a powder pack and jeans; ladies clothing that lead police to believe the victim may have been a cross-dresser. Decomposition of the remains suggested he could have been killed three years earlier.

Greenidge was charged with manslaughter and attempted murder in 1967 and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was in jail from 1968 until 1977, when he was transferred to a minimum-security facility and allowed passes to spend weekends out of prison.

Checking parole records, York Regional Police Detective Doug Clarke, who is investigating the Markham case, discovered that Greenridge was free on about a dozen unescorted weekend passes between 1977 and 1978, the same time when police believe the later Markham victim was murdered. Greenridge's alibi was that he was in downtown Toronto visiting a friend while on his unescorted passes. Yet, when police interviewed his friend, he stated that Greenridge had only visited once.

Parole denied

One murder and an attempted murder, for which James Greenridge was convicted, and three unsolved homicides - and all the victims were found in the farm belt north of Toronto. Police theorize these crimes are linked and could be the work of a serial killer.

The man they most suspect, James Greenidge, is back in prison, a place he has spent most of his adult life. He is now serving a life sentence for the 1981 rape and murder of a 24-year-old Vancouver woman, Elizabeth Fells. It is Greenridge's second conviction for murder, but he could be free again. His current conviction allowed him to seek parole after 25 years and that has police worried.

Detective Clarke considers Greenridge a dangerous offender and argues that he should never be released, but concedes: "That'll be up to the Parole Board."

In its first review of Greenridge's sentence, the Parole Board decision obtained by W-FIVE, noted a lifelong pattern of violent crime: "You have a lengthy history of sexually related violence which started when you were merely 16 ... You have offended against males females ... one 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. Your violence has escalated with every offence," said the decision, which rejected his application. But the violent killer is free to apply again.

Meantime, the Ontario Police believe a sadistic killer may be getting away with murder. They are desperate for clues that could be the key to three unsolved homicides in Ontario and are once again appealing to the public for any information. They hope new clues will not only help them solve those killings, but may help identify the two young men whose skeletal remains are stored in the morgue, bringing closure to families, like Dickie Hovey's, who are still wondering what happened to their loved ones after many decades.