Police have strong suspicions that Sonia Varaschin may have met her killer on the dating website PlentyOfFish.com, the Toronto Star has learned.

Entering a new phase of the investigation, the Ontario Provincial Police openly taunted the killer at a news conference Wednesday.

“We have your DNA and it's only a matter of time before we find out who you are,” OPP Const. Peter Leon said.

Using computer files seized from her Orangeville home at the time of her murder, police are tracking down the men who contacted Varaschin online to see if they can match up DNA evidence — or exclude them as suspects.

Only recently, DNA evidence recovered at the crime scene — in the form of semen, blood or saliva — was assessed as likely belonging to her killer.

Varaschin, a 42-year-old nurse who was working at a Mississauga pharmaceutical company at the time of her murder, was on a couple of dating sites while she had an on-again, off-again relationship with a boyfriend.

However, the free online website PlentyOfFish.com is where Varaschin met and interacted with a variety of men, posting pictures and sending messages.

Police will not speculate if jealousy was a motive for the attack on Varaschin, who was reported missing Aug. 30, 2010.

Her body was found Sept. 5 in a wooded area of Caledon.

Police have never revealed how she died.

There was no evidence of forced entry into her two-storey townhouse on Aug. 29.

In an exclusive report on Monday, the Star reported that the nurse was active on the dating sites, even though she had a boyfriend.

The boyfriend, who has since moved to England, has been cleared as a person of interest.

The Ontario Provincial Police announced that they are going to canvass a select group of men who were over 18 at the time of the killing for voluntary DNA sampling.

Police are casting a wide net around all her personal and work associates, including those at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, where she had work conflicts before she quit a month or so before her murder.

However, police said they are paying particularly close attention to the online dating site PlentyOfFish.com, and to men Varaschin might have dated.

At the same time, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is condemning the mass DNA canvass.

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The group called this practice “highly coercive” and said it will “leave individuals feeling that they have no other option than to hand their most private information over to the state.”

However, Leon, spokesman for the OPP, defended the canvass.

“If you have nothing to hide, then it is your obligation to provide that DNA sample,” he said.

Asked whether requests for DNA samples could be seen as an invasion of privacy, Leon said the need to solve the case trumps those concerns.

“We respect the fact that someone may wish to say no,” he said, but “each and every person who is approached has a moral obligation to participate.”

The Star has also learned that the OPP have studied the Toronto police investigation into the slaying of 10-year-old Holly Jones in 2003 and how police caught the man after he refused to provide a DNA sample.

Michael Briere, who was 35 at the time of his arrest, was one of only two men out of 300 who refused to provide a sample and aroused suspicion because of it.

After a month under around-the-clock surveillance, Briere was arrested when his DNA, taken from a discarded pop can, matched DNA in blood found under Holly's fingernails.

He is now serving a life sentence.

Although this investigation is more complex in that Holly's murder involved a straight line from her house to the killer's house, police say they will look closely at people who refuse to provide a saliva sample.

While police expect to have samples in the Varaschin case collected by mid-June, results depend on how quickly the “very, very busy” Centre of Forensic Sciences can examine each piece of evidence, Leon said.