Shirley Ann Duguay was a 32‑year‑old mother of five from Prince Edward Island who disappeared on October 3, 1994. Her car was discovered days later, splattered with her blood. On May 6, 1995, her partially decomposed body was located in a shallow grave in North Enmore—her hands had been tied and she had been strangled. The key evidence came from a blood-stained leather jacket found near the body that contained strands of white cat hair. Investigators traced those hairs through novel DNA analysis back to Snowball—the white cat owned by Shirley’s estranged partner, Douglas Leo Beamish, marking the first-ever use of non-human (animal) DNA in a criminal trial. Beamish was convicted of second-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 18 years. After multiple appeal attempts were denied, he remained incarcerated until recently being released on day parole in May 2025 (or full day parole) with strict conditions. Let me know if you’d like more details.