Man arrested and charged in grisly 1983 killings of 2 women in Toronto, police say | CBC News
Toronto police have charged a 61-year-old man with two counts of first-degree homicide in reference to the grisly killing of two ladies within the metropolis almost 4 many years in the past.
Joseph George Sutherland was arrested in Moosenee, Ont., on Nov. 24 and delivered to Toronto to face costs the next day, interim Toronto police Chief James Ramer stated at a news convention Monday.
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Ramer was joined by Deputy Chief Pauline Gray of the specialised operations command and Det.-Sgt. Steve Smith of the drive’s murder and lacking individuals unit chilly case part.
Susan Tice, 45, and Erin Gilmour, 22, have been each sexually assaulted and stabbed to demise of their beds in August and December 1983, respectively. They lived simply kilometres aside within the metropolis core — Tice within the Bickford Park neighbourhood and Gilmour in a Yorkville condo.
Gilmour was an aspiring clothier and the daughter of mining tycoon David Gilmour and Tice was a household therapist and mom of 4 youngsters.
In 2021, Toronto police advised CBC’s The Fifth Estate that they have been near figuring out the killer accountable for the ladies’s deaths. The investigation was featured in The Fifth Estate‘s report The Gene Hunters.
The Fifth Estate goes behind the scenes with Toronto Police as they mine genetic family tree to seek out the killer behind two-decades-old chilly circumstances. RECIPE FOR GENIUS: The Fifth Estate appears to be like on the renewed curiosity within the sport of chess and a fascination with kids who present early genius for the cerebral sport.
The crimes have been “absolute overkill,” Smith advised The Fifth Estate. They have been “overly violent … it was almost like it was gratuitous.”
In 2000, by way of DNA checks, police decided the identical man killed each ladies.
Then in recent times, detectives entered DNA from semen left at one of many crime scenes into the favored household tree database GEDmatch. It makes use of uncooked DNA knowledge submitted voluntarily by members who use firms like 23andMe or Ancestry.ca to do household historical past analysis.
In November 2020, police researchers efficiently recognized the unknown suspect’s great-grandparents. Since then, household tree researchers have been working their method down from that set of great-grandparents to attempt to confirm the id of the unknown great-grandson they imagine is the killer.
“We’ve narrowed it down to basically two families,” Smith stated final yr.
