My name is Ian Urbina. I've reported on some pretty mind-blowing stories, but nothing like what happens at sea.

If they got within 800 meters, that is when we would fire warning shots.

Murder, slavery, human trafficking, and staggering environmental crimes.

Men have told me that they've been beaten with stingray tails, which means...

If you really want to understand crime, start with a law of the land ends. The Outlaw Ocean.

Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast.

The following episode contains difficult subject matter, so please take care.

On Monday, August 25th, 2003,

Miss Doe, who was working as a sex trade worker, had two dates set up for the day.

She was living with a family member at that time. She asked her family member to leave for a couple hours while she had her dates over.

They never received the call to come back, so eventually they decided to go back to the apartment, which they found the door locked.

So they called some more family members who also came down, and three family members entered the apartment,

and found Cassandra deceased in the bathtub with marks on her neck.

It turns out once the officers got there, that Cassandra was manually strangled to death during the day.

I'm Justin Leng, and this is The Village.

Cassandra Doe's murder has hung over the trans community in Toronto for almost two decades.

When I first started looking into her death, I really didn't know whether the Toronto police service still cared about this case at all.

I thought maybe the file on Cassandra's murder was like so many others, living in filing cabinets at police headquarters, open technically but mostly forgotten.

That was until I got a call back from Detective Sergeant Steve Smith from the cold case team.

It's not just open, but being actively investigated, and he said they know someone who could help identify the killer.

So in spring of 2021, I went to Toronto police headquarters to meet Smith and his colleague, Detective Barb Douglas.

...