Ontario man gets life in prison in 1983 killings of 2 women

An Ontario man convicted in the killings of two women in Toronto that took place nearly four decades ago was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 21 years on Friday.

Joseph George Sutherland, of Moosonee, Ont., was sentenced in Ontario Superior Court. He pleaded guilty in October 2023 to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour in 1983.

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. The two women didn't know each other.

Gilmour was an aspiring fashion designer and the daughter of mining tycoon David Gilmour. Tice was a family therapist and mother of four teenagers.

Sutherland was arrested by provincial police in his home town in November 2022. He was 61 at the time. His period of parole ineligibility begins at the time of his arrest.

The women's murders went unsolved until a breakthrough was announced last year. Police credited advances in DNA technology in recent years with helping to find him.

Detectives were able to link the two killings using DNA technology in 2000, according to the Toronto Police Service, 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 samples voluntarily submitted to services like 23andMe or Ancestry.ca and then uploaded to open-source databases.