‘Really long road’: Cold case killer sentenced to life for ’80s Toronto murders

The man who murdered two Toronto women in the 1980s, and was free for almost four decades, has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 21 years.

Joseph George Sutherland sat quietly in a Toronto courtroom as his sentence was handed down by Justice Maureen Forestell on Friday afternoon.

The judge told the court that “given the vulnerability of the victims, the violation of the homes and their bodies and the brutal nature of their killings, both murders fall close to first-degree murder.”

The Crown had suggested Sutherland be ineligible for parole for 22 years, while defence lawyers argued the period should be 18.

She pointed out that the two deaths Sutherland pled guilty to were neither quick nor painless.

In August 1983, Sutherland broke into the home of 45-year-old Susan Tice on Grace Street in Toronto. She was sexually assaulted and stabbed 13 times.

That night, Tice was supposed to visit her sister. She was a mother to four children, a social worker and described by friends as a true life force.

Four months later, he broke into Erin Gilmour’s Hazelton Avenue apartment. She was bound and gagged, sexually assaulted and stabbed twice in the chest.

Gilmour was found dead by a friend in her apartment, aged just 22.

For decades, the two murders went unsolved, while surviving friends and family kept the memory of the two women alive.

Christian Tice, Susan Tice’s daughter, said the delay had been “a really long road” for the families.

“Forty years is a long time,” she said, speaking outside the Toronto courtroom on Friday.

“There’s no closure, there’s no justice, it’s something that stays with you and we’re just happy they got the guy, he’s finally going to be put in jail and for me, I feel safe now.”

In 2000, DNA analysis suggested to police that the two women had been murdered by the same suspect. After that breakthrough, the families of the two women continued to wait for more than another two decades before they were given a name.

Sutherland was identified through genetic genealogy as a person of interest in 2021. The next year, he was arrested in Moosonee, Ont., after police went to his home with a search warrant for his DNA.

Sutherland was 21 at the time of the murders, with no previous criminal record.

He was married between 1995 and 2000 and had one son, a 22-year-old who lived with him at the time of his arrest. Sutherland’s ex-wife said he was never violent during their relationship.

During the trial, Sutherland said he had no memory of the first homicide and only vague memories of the second. He said he had blocked or erased the memories from his brain.

The judge said they did not accept his lack of memory, pointing to his decision to go on a spirit quest over the two deaths and the fact he understood why his DNA was being analyzed before his arrest.

“The pain of the losses was magnified for both families by the uncertainty that the perpetrator of the murder had never been found,” the judge said Friday.

Through the trial, the court heard how Sutherland had been impacted by colonialism and Canada’s residential school system. The court was told he had been sexually assaulted and struggled with addiction.

Other mitigating factors presented when deciding his sentence included his decision to plead guilty in October 2023 to the two counts of second-degree murder and express remorse.

“I give little weight to the expression of remorse,” the judge said.

Tice’s daughter said she was happy to hear the expression of remorse from her mother’s killer.

“I actually liked hearing that he had remorse,” Christian Tice said. “I think I was more terrified of finding some cold psycho that just had no feeling. So whether or not it was genuine, I can’t really talk about that but I appreciated more that he took the time to make a statement.”

Sean McCowan, Erin Gilmour’s brother, said he felt he could begin to move forward.

“I’m happy to have the legal aspect of it done, this has been dogging all of us for forty years,” he said. “We wanted to find out who did it and why and what this guy’s name was. And, finally, we got there.”

Sutherland, who has been held at the Toronto South Detention Centre since his 2022 arrest, will be ineligible for parole for 21 years.

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