DNA evidence has helped uncover new leads in the killings of Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice.Supplied
When Toronto Police cold-case investigators used new techniques of genetic genealogy to re-examine DNA evidence from the 1983 murders of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour, they soon made a break in the case: the killer was likely one of five brothers in a remote community in Northern Ontario.
But that discovery in the spring of 2021 left them with a new hurdle that set off a nearly two-year-long investigation to determine which sibling was the killer. Undercover officers shadowed several of the brothers so they could gather DNA from their discarded items, which included pop cans and a COVID-19 mask.
The police force’s use of genetic genealogy to uncover a pool of suspects and then narrow its search is detailed in newly released court documents that were prepared as investigators sought a warrant last year for a DNA sample from the sole remaining suspect brother. Joseph George Sutherland, of Moosonee, Ont., later confessed when confronted by police. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of second-degree murder and is awaiting sentencing.
The prior police probe found that two brothers were dead and their DNA was already on file. Two other brothers had been ruled out after police managed to obtain their DNA samples, leaving Mr. Sutherland as the sole remaining suspect in the historic crimes.
In August of 1983, Ms. Tice, a 45-year-old mother of four, had been fatally attacked inside her Toronto home and stabbed 13 times while trying to defend herself. Five days before Christmas that same year, an attacker broke into the second-floor apartment of Ms. Gilmour, 22, whose father David was the business partner of Canadian business magnate Peter Munk. The young woman’s hands were bound with a scarf and she had been stabbed twice in the chest.
The police methods of the 1980s yielded no clues about who could be behind these murders. Investigators looked at people who knew the women, and workers who had recently visited the women’s homes – but this approach failed to reveal a suspect.
The story of how the case was revived and eventually solved is laid out in a 160-page document filed in court by Toronto Police Detective Stella Karras, an officer in the force’s cold-case unit. These materials include the officer’s affidavit, which was sworn in November, 2022, to get the warrant police used to obtain Mr. Sutherland’s DNA.
These documents add new insights into the Canadian police use of the emerging technique of genetic genealogy, which was popularized after investigators in California used it in 2018 to catch the Golden State Killer, who murdered 13 people and committed dozens of rapes in the 1970s and ‘80s.
In Toronto, the first major development in the murders of Ms. Tice and Ms. Gilmour came in 2001, when police in Canada were building up their own DNA databases. Those tools allowed investigators to confirm that the two women had indeed been killed by the same man, but they were unable to identify him as there were no direct matches of that DNA profile in registries of convicted Canadian offenders.
In 2019, Det. Karras’s affidavit says, the Toronto Police Service took inspiration from the Golden State Killer case and relaunched several cold-case investigations, including the two 1983 killings.
During the renewed probe, investigators compared the unidentified killer’s DNA profile against new private-sector databases that draw data from users of online ancestry services who hand over their genealogical profiles and consent to having them searched by police.
In 2021, those DNA profile searches led Toronto Police to Mr. Sutherland and his siblings. “The donor of this unknown male DNA profile can only be one of the five sons,” reads Det. Karras’s affidavit, dated Nov. 22, 2022, which was unsealed by a court order earlier last week.
Police turned their minds to Moosonee, a community of about 1,500 people just south of James Bay. Investigators began asking provincial records clerks and Nishnawbe Aski Police Service (NAPS) officers about the Sutherland brothers and their past travels through Ontario. Some or all of the brothers were living in Toronto in the early 1980s, when some were high-school-aged students or recent graduates.
Police then set out to take a closer look at each one. The first brother, who was already dead, was eliminated as a suspect through police searches of crime databases, as his DNA had been added after criminal convictions.
The second brother was also dead, killed in a murder. Coroners at Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences had uploaded his genetic material into a database distinguishing crime victims’ DNA from the DNA of suspects. He, too, was cleared of involvement.
The third brother’s DNA was not in hand so police had to acquire it – surreptitiously. An Ontario Provincial Police surveillance team tracked this brother in his community, and eventually seized upon a trash bag he left on a curb and found “two pop cans and a face mask commonly worn during the COVID pandemic” inside, according to the search warrant affidavit.
Once these DNA samples were analyzed, he was also ruled out as a suspect.
The fourth brother, who lived in a community patrolled by NAPS, was brought in for a police interview on an unrelated matter. During the interview, officers offered him a cup of water, and an analysis of the discarded plastic cup disqualified him as a suspect.
That left only the fifth brother: Joseph George Sutherland.
Efforts to secretly gather DNA evidence from him were unsuccessful after undercover officers who had been sent up north on ice roads in February, 2022 returned empty-handed.
“Upon reaching Moosonee they were able to locate the target’s [Mr. Sutherland’s] home but discovered it is remote and that there are no buildings or other structures around the home to be able to set up surveillance,” the affidavit says.
But months later, once all the other brothers were eliminated as suspects, investigators sought a court order for Mr. Sutherland to surrender a blood sample.
In the affidavit to support that application, Det. Karras argued that the investigation remained urgent even four decades after the murders.
“Susan Tice and Erin Gilmore were violently attacked in the sanctity of their own homes,” Det. Karras wrote.
“I have reasonable grounds to believe they were murdered by the same man. It is paramount that the perpetrator of these crimes be brought to justice.”
Det. Karras wrote that because the other brothers had been ruled out as suspects, police anticipated that “Joseph George Sutherland will ultimately be charged in relation to these two homicides,” the affidavit says.
The warrant application was approved. On Nov. 23, 2022, police officers flew to Moosonee to take a blood sample.
Within hours, Mr. Sutherland admitted everything and surrendered himself to arrest the very next day.
“Shortly after providing his DNA sample, and before knowing the results, Mr. Sutherland called a friend, who was a retired police officer. He confessed to murdering two women when he was living in Toronto,” reads an agreed statement of facts filed in court earlier this year.
Mr. Sutherland formalized these admissions in October when he pleaded guilty to murdering Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour in Ontario Superior Court. He is scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Colin Freeze