(CNN) — Canadian police have identified a woman known as ‘the Lady of the River Nation’ nearly five decades after she disappeared and was found floating in an Ontario river, police said.

Jewell “Lalla” Langford, whose maiden name was Parchman, had traveled to Montreal in April 1975 but never returned home and was reported missing by her family, Ontario Provincial Police said in a statement Wednesday.

Police say Langford, 48, was known as “The Lady of the Nation River”, named after the Nation River in eastern Ontario where her body was found on May 3, 1975.

In March 2022, his remains were repatriated to the United States, followed by a funeral and burial, according to the statement.

Langford had been strangled with a plastic-covered flat television cable, according to the Doe DNA Project, a non-profit organization that works to identify missing persons using investigative genetic genealogy and which assisted police in the Langford case. His hands and ankles had also been tied with men’s ties and a tea towel wrapped around his face, according to the organization.

The forensic artist’s renderings and the three-dimensional facial approximation developed in 2017 failed to identify Langford or any potential suspects until late 2019, when the Toronto Center for Forensic Science obtained a new Langford’s DNA profile that matched samples taken from two of the individuals listed in a DNA family tree, according to the statement.

After a long investigation of 47 years, the authorities succeeded in arresting an individual residing in Hollywood (Florida).

Rodney Nichols, 81, was criminally charged with Langford’s murder in the Ontario Court of Justice late last year, the statement said.

“Thanks to advances in the science of genetic genealogy and the collective commitment of all researchers involved, we have brought a solution to the families and friends of this missing person who was the victim of a crime,” said Detective Inspector Daniel in a statement. Nadeau of the Ontario Provincial Police Criminal Investigations Branch. “We can be pleased with the results of this investigation and that we have been able to return Jewell Langford’s remains to his next of kin.”

Police also said Langford and Nichols knew each other, but did not elaborate on their relationship.

Langford “was a prominent member of the Jackson, Tennessee business community” and co-owned a spa with her ex-husband, the statement said.

“In that sense, she was truly a woman ahead of her time,” Janice Mulcock, a retired Ontario Provincial Police detective, said during a video briefing shared by the Edmonton Police Service. Ontario to Facebook this Wednesday. “So successful, in fact, that she served as president of the Jackson, Tennessee, chapter of the American Association of Businesswomen, and in 1971 was voted ‘woman of the year’ by her peers.”

Officials believed the Langford case would be solved, Marty Kearns, assistant commissioner for investigations and organized crime for the Ontario Provincial Police, said at Wednesday’s briefing.

“Members of the crime unit of our local Criminal Investigations branch always believed that this case could be solved, that one day we would identify the person known as the Lady of the River Nation,” Kearns said.