Hmmmn, worth thinking about.
Leaves open even more doors, from the plain old street thug, to the more important scientist connection.
Yep, all the way from street thug, to a random drive-by, or an accidental hit & run & hide the body.... all the entire spectrum of humanity between THAT street crime unto colleagues or the military industrial complex or organized state sponsored terrorist groups or rogue states wanting nuclear expertise... the list becomes infinite when you add in the fact that this scientist is brilliant enough to have successfully staged his own disappearance and is already happily engaged in an entirely new life.
Just an infinite range of possibilities; although my intitial suspicion is that he took a long unvoluntary trip on the 'Tehran Express' -- but evidentally there are very active Asian tongs in Canada, and he had publically denounced a couple Chinese scientists for their fraudulent work. I've not read anything about the Asian tongs in Canada, but I noticed that on the Canadian website called Prime Time Crime that there is a link to a section about them on that site.
I hope that Dr. Cranswick is alive & well, surely all the rivers in Ontario are thawed by this time and were he a drowning victim his remains would have been recovered.