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The investigation ‘was one of the most difficult in Toronto history’
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Two of Toronto’s most infamous murders are getting the Dateline treatment on Friday night.
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Over four terrifying months in 1983, two single women were brutally sexually assaulted and murdered. The victims lived just blocks apart.
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And then the killings simply stopped.
The sex slayings of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour would vex generations of Toronto Police homicide detectives. Despite Herculean efforts and baby steps to resolution, the murders would take four decades to close.
Tice was 45 at the time and a mother of four, and Gilmour was just 22 when her little brothers’ childhoods were obliterated forever.
Using DNA, detectives determined in 2010 what they had suspected for years: The two murders were committed by the same monster.
Toronto Police cold case Det. Andrew Doyle — featured on the Dateline episode — described the killer as a “ghost.”
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“The separate murders of two women in Toronto ignite an investigation that spans four decades, taking detectives from the big city to a remote, northern town,” Dateline says in a promo.
“The case is finally cracked when diligent, old-fashioned detective work is combined with modern breakthroughs in genetic genealogy.”
The two-hour episode features ace TPS cold case detectives, the unit’s leader Det. Sgt. Steve Smith, and Doyle, along with family members and friends of the two victims.
DNA science was evolving and after the arrest of the Golden State Killer through genetic genealogy, TPS homicide detectives began zeroing in on their man.
In 2022 they got a hit linking DNA found at the crime scene to a family in Northern Ontario. After eliminating the suspect’s brothers, Joseph George Sutherland, a 62-year-old IT pro, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
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He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder last October.
On March 22, the Moosonee man was sentenced to life in jail with no chance of parole for 21 years. He will be in his 80s if he’s ever allowed to emerge from the perpetual darkness that is prison.
Smith told the Toronto Sun that if it hadn’t been for genetic genealogy, it’s almost certain the case would have remained cold forever.
“It was like finding a needle in a haystack, this guy was never on our radar,” he said, adding that the investigation “was one of the most difficult in Toronto history.”
He added: “I’m so happy for the families. For 40 years they’ve been waiting for this. This is one of the hardest cases on a personal level, most of the people affected by this were children, kids … their childhoods were taken away from them by Sutherland’s horrific actions.”
Dateline’s Evil Walked Through the Door airs April 19 at 9 p.m. ET.
@HunterTOSun
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