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Police have yet to determine cause of death, and exactly when and where the alleged murder took place.

Ms. Liu, 41, was last seen on Friday, August 10 when friends dropped her off at work. She was a licensed body-rub practitioner and owned the Forget-Me-Not spa on Eglinton Avenue near Midland Avenue.

On Wednesday, August 15, hikers found a partially submerged foot with painted yellow toenails in the Credit River in Mississauga’s Hewick Meadows Park, near Eglinton Avenue and Mississauga Road. Over the next two days, police search teams scouring the river for evidence found a human head and two hands.

Toronto police contacted Peel police after more body parts – a thigh, an arm and two calves – were discovered in the West Highland Creek near Sheppard Avenue East and Kennedy Road about a week after Ms. Liu was reported missing. There is no direct connection between the two waterways.

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Forensic tests confirmed that all the body parts belonged to Ms. Liu. Body parts are still missing, but both Toronto police and Peel police, convinced they wouldn’t find anything further, called off their searches in the Credit River and the West Highland Creek early last week.

Ms. Liu lived a private life in a Scarborough townhouse complex on Huntingwood Drive near Kennedy Road with her grown son and a basement tenant. Police have said she was a single mother of three, but her neighbours and colleagues said they only knew of the son she lived with. It is not known if she had any other family in Canada and she may have been planning on moving to China to be near her former husband and two younger children.

According to local residents, many of whom speak only Mandarin or Cantonese, Ms. Liu rarely had friends over nor did she mingle with her neighbours. Ms. Liu spoke very little English herself. Some neighbours said they never saw her and didn’t even recognize her picture in the news after Peel police confirmed she had met with foul play.

National Post, with files from Canadian Press