David Michael Nixon's sister says many questions remain about his disappearance in 1984 despite his remains now identified from a body buried in Toronto 30 years ago.

Janis Nixon, flanked by another brother, Steve, at a police press conference Thursday, said the past three decades have been very difficult for the family, and especially for her mother, Isabel.

The family is in the process of bringing David's remains home to Hamilton "to celebrate his life and give him the dignity he deserves," she said.

David and his siblings grew up in east Hamilton where he attended St. David elementary school and later graduated from Cardinal Newman high school, she added.

"He had beautiful blue eyes and a perfect smile. He was very outgoing and loved sports, especially hockey and karate. He lived life to the fullest, but his life came to an unfortunate end during the summer of 1984 at the tender age of 23. It's a travesty."

David went missing on July 6, 1984, after he was last seen by a family member at the corner of King and James streets downtown. Hamilton police now say the remains of a partially exhumed body in Toronto are his.

Det. David Brady said almost a month after David went missing - in August 1984 - that Toronto police pulled an unidentified male body out of Lake Ontario off Scarborough near Bluffers Park, but based on the condition of the body, it did not appear to match David's.

The unidentified remains were buried in an unmarked grave in Toronto.

Brady has worked on the cold case since 2004 with the OPP's Project Resolve involving the coroner's office and the Ontario Missing Adults Organization. Project officials exhumed the unknown Lake Ontario body in 2012.

In August, Brady was contacted to ask the family for DNA samples, and in October he learned the samples matched those of the remains.

Brady said the investigation into David's disappearance remains open and that Hamilton police continue to probe the circumstances of his death.

Janis Nixon, who was 13 when David disappeared, said that since her brother's body was found in Lake Ontario, "we strongly believe foul play was involved," and that there are people who have information and know what happened. She appealed for them to come forward.

"For all of us who knew and loved Dave, he was too young and beautiful to meet this fate," she said.

This past July, on the 30th anniversary of David's disappearance, Brady said he believed that the religious young man met with foul play.

It is "the most likely explanation I can come up with," he said.

David had left behind his ID, his latest unemployment cheque, his clothes and never touched his bank account. He was devoted to his mother and had no criminal connections.

OPP Project Resolve, more formerly called the OPP Missing Persons Unidentified Bodies Unit, is dedicated to solving missing persons and unidentified human remains cases, with a database storing and analyzing information from the public, the OPP and other police services. It works in partnership with the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario.

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The Coroner's Office said the project conducts regular case comparisons in hopes of finding matches. In David Nixon's case, seven possible matches were found with four cases having DNA available. Hamilton police were then asked to obtain DNA samples from David's parents to see if there was a match.

The project has 556 missing persons and 281 unidentified remains in its database.

- People don't just vanish. So where is Hamilton's David Nixon?