Posted on 11/28/2022 5:38:58 PM PST by jerod
Joseph George Sutherland faces 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for deaths of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour
A 61-year-old Northern Ontario man has been charged with first-degree murder in the grisly killings of two women in Toronto nearly four decades ago, with police saying advances in DNA technology helped them find him.
Joseph George Sutherland was arrested by provincial police in Moosonee, Ont., on Nov. 24 and brought to Toronto to face two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour.
Interim Toronto police Chief James Ramer announced Sutherland's arrest at a Monday morning news conference.
Tice, 45, and Gilmour, 22, were both sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in their beds in August and December 1983. They lived just kilometres apart in the city core — Tice in the Bickford Park neighbourhood and Gilmour in a Yorkville apartment.
Police say the two women didn't know each other.
Gilmour was an aspiring fashion designer and the daughter of mining tycoon David Gilmour, and Tice was a family therapist and mother of four teenagers.
"As relieved as we are to announce this arrest, it'll never bring back Erin or Susan," Ramer said.
Gilmour's brothers Sean and Kaelin McCowan also appeared at the news conference.
Sean McCowan thanked police for their work and said the family will "always wonder what could have been" if Gilmour had not been killed.
"This is a day that I, and we, have been waiting almost an entire lifetime for," McCowan said. "It finally puts a name and a face to someone who for all of us had been a ghost," he added.
"In a way, it's a relief that someone has been arrested. But it also brings back memories of Erin and her brutal, senseless murder."
Detectives were able to link the two killings using DNA technology in 2000, Ramer said, with investigators determining the same man killed both women.
In 2019, police began using a technique called "investigative genetic genealogy" to identify the suspect's family group. The process involves cross-referencing DNA found at crime scenes with DNA samples voluntarily submitted to services like 23andMe or Ancestry.ca and then uploaded to open-source databases.
Researchers worked backwards, building a family tree of the suspect's relatives, said Det.-Sgt. Steve Smith, lead investigator on the cold case. The same process was used to identify the man Toronto police say raped and killed nine-year-old Christine Jessop in 1984.
As they narrowed in on Sutherland, Smith said police served him with a warrant for his DNA to test directly against the samples recovered from the scenes...
Justice delayed, is justice denied.
William E. Gladstone
He would "skip bail", and the authorities would never be able to track the "bail-jumper" down...
I disagree.
Justice delayed IS justice long overdue. But at least in the case of delayed justice, it gets served. Far too many things don’t get justice at all, because of courts or lawyers or politicians, and sometimes there’s nothing to even go on.
We’re used to waiting. Bill and Hillary, Obama, Joe and Hunter Biden. Settle in and relax.
My old coworker, a black woman in her late fifties, pointed out every time the news stories said a criminal was on the loose and “Police have no suspects” or “Police are reaching out to ask if the public has any knowledge of the whereabouts of the men who did this.”
She said “I picture the guy in his easy chair with his feet up watching the TV news and cheering with a beer in his hand.”
There are ‘old’ men, 60’s/70’s, who have been able to live their lives, while victims they killed have not. These guys thought they were home ‘free’ after decades .... I hope they’re all looking over their shoulders and suffering sleepless nights, waiting for a knock on the door (or a ‘felony’ traffic stop by a team of cops one day).
The hardest murders to solve are the ones without a reason or strong connection to the victim.
Most of those are committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens.
IF there is a newspaper in Heaven, THAT WILL be a headline!
...........after all the criticisms leveled at cops, much of it deserved (Uvalde), the COPS in this case deserve a big giant ATTA BOY !!!
usually dirt bags like this keep on killing Wonder what made him stop
Yet not a peep about the husband and wife billionaires, pharma people, connected to Clinton, found murdered in their Toronto mansion a few years ago. I think the name was Sherman.
Moosonee IS a bit North.
Who says he did...
“Sutherland was living in Toronto at the time of the killings and has lived in multiple other locations since. He said that police will be exploring any possible connection between Sutherland and other killings in the province in the intervening 39 years.”
I am sure that has happened before. 🤗🤪
If Erin Gilmour was the daughter of the mining tycoon Gilmour, how come her brothers have the last name McCowan? How can the last name of men change like that?
Maternal half siblings.
I worked with a guy 35 years or so ago who was connected to the murder of a BYU student in 1974. He had already been retired for several years before he was connected to the murder with DNA in 2007 and he spent his last few years in prison. There had been suspicion but no proof for all those years. Somehow he was still able to get a security clearance for the job though.
Of course not!
NOTHING will be allowed to tarnish the image of Prime Mistake True-dolt before his coronation as lord and Emperor of PRC (Politically Repressive Canada)! Look at Don Martin’s puff piece (aka verbal fellatio?) on True-dolt’s lies, er testimony, before the Roleau Commission.
“Somehow he was still able to get a security clearance for the job though.”
IIRC, only convictions count. Innocent unless proven guilty, and all that. Though I’m sure if they got wind of some info gave them pause, they can always find a reason to not hire someone.
It depends on the clearance. The one we had could be denied based on things like interviews with neighbors or relatives and unexlained bank deposits. Of course things were a lot less strict in the late 80s early 90s. After 9/11 clearance investigations got more intense.
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