EDITOR'S NOTE: This article has been updated from an earlier version to specify the charges laid against the suspect.
Hamilton Police have charged a 40-year-old man with the murder of Waterdown resident Dirk 'Jeff' Nyhuis.
Cory Mahoney, an Alberta native, was charged with second-degree homicide in the shooting death of Nyhuis, 55, who was found by police in his Wakefield Lane home on March 6.
Nyhuis was the third person murdered in Hamilton in 2025.
Det. Sgt. David Brewster said Mahoney was arrested in Alberta earlier this week by RCMP officers, in conjunction with Hamilton police officers who travelled out West to complete the investigation.
After Mahoney was arrested, Hamilton police executed a search of his home in a small community just south of Calgary, said Brewster.
“The investigation moved very quickly and covered a large geographic area, and I'd just like to take a minute to thank the Halton Regional Police for their assistance as well as the RCMP division out in Alberta,” Brewster said.
He said police would not be providing more information on the community where Mahoney was living as it is a small rural town in Alberta, where the suspect’s family lives.
Nyhuis's family and friends have set up a GoFundMe to help pay for his funeral expenses.
Motive for murder still unknown
Mahoney has been brought back to Ontario to face homicide charges, said Brewster.
He told reporters that Nyhuis and Mahoney were friends and shared friends in common. Police believe Mahoney was at Nyhuis’s home as a guest when the homicide occurred, said Brewster.
He said the murder weapon has not been found.
“It does not appear to be a robbery, and we have no information that it was drug-related,” Brewster said.
Police were not able to give more information on the scene of the homicide, whether there appeared to be a fight or struggle, or any insight into what led to Nyhuis's death. Brewster said that information will go before the courts.
“We can establish a pretty good timeline of when the accused arrived there, but it seems like everything was fine in the home and then… ultimately an interaction occurred between the two of them,” he said.
Through their investigation, said Brewster, police discovered Nyhuis was killed on the morning of March 3 — three days before a friend checked in on him and police discovered his body.
Brewster thanked Nyhuis’s group of friends, who cooperated with police and helped establish a timeline in the homicide, which allowed police to focus on Monday March 3 as the possible time of the murder. He confirmed that Nyhuis and his friends frequented Shooterville Billiards Bar & Grill in Burlington, but did not confirm if that is where Nyhuis and Mahoney met.
“Before our initial media release, [Nyhuis's friends] started to reach out to us and were very cooperative in assisting,” Brewster said.
