Hunter: Are the men accused of two murders in Toronto in 1983 related to others?

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Police called him a “ghost”.

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A violent homicidal maniac who violently sexually assaulted and stabbed the 42-year-old single mother of 22-year-old career girl Erin Gilmore and Susan Tice of four for four months in 1983. he disappeared into the shadows.

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On Monday, detectives in the Toronto Police Open Case announced they had finally found a suspect.

Joseph George Sutherland, 61, was arrested Thursday by the OPP in Musoney and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. He will be transferred south to Toronto in the coming days to face arraignment in two counts of murder.

More Sergeant Steve Smith, who also acquitted of the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop, said Sutherland was living in Toronto at the time the particularly violent killing took place.

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“After that, he moved around Ontario until he moved to Mooseney. He was a ghost, a nobody,” says Smith. “He was never on our radar. He had no criminal record and quite frankly, without the technology, finding him was like finding a needle in a haystack I guess.”

But Sutherland’s arrest raises an even more disturbing question: Is he related to more victims?

Detectives will closely investigate Sutherland’s movements within the state, Smith said. They also reach out to smaller communities to look for similar cold case murders.

The veteran detective said, “We will do everything possible to keep[the suspect]from being held responsible for[the alleged]crimes in the state.”

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Starting with the Golden State Killer in California, Genealogy has been a game-changer for detectives on cold-cases from Texarkana to Toronto. As with Jessop, Toronto investigators used the genetic testing company Osram, which created a family tree for the suspect’s closest relatives.

That led them to Sutherland, where a warrant was issued to provide DNA samples.

Smith said IGG would eliminate tens of millions of suspects, but warned it was “not a magic bullet” and once Osram identified family groups, investigators would start working in reverse. .

“And as one genealogist told me, genealogy is like fishing. You never know how long it will take to catch a fish,” said Smith.

More than 700 unsolved murders have been documented dating back to the 1950s, and the head of the unsolved cases said many of these investigations, especially those with a sexual component, could be solved through genetic genealogy. I was.

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Smith, Chief James Reimer, Supt. Pauline Gray and others paid tribute to generations of detectives who relentlessly pursued arrests even after they kept hitting brick walls.

Their efforts were most deeply felt by the families of the victims.

“It’s a whole gamut of emotions,” Sean McGowan, Gilmore’s brother, told reporters on Monday. She was engaging and vibrant…she was 22 and had a life ahead of her.”

McGowan added that his mother, Anna, died two years ago.

“But I am grateful to the incredible detectives who never gave up trying to solve the case. It speaks to the stubbornness of the Toronto police.”

Two different killings were linked in 2000, but police have since hit a brick wall. The suspect’s DNA was not in the system. After that, genetic genealogy research was done, and it became a domino toppling.

“This is the most complicated case of my career,” Smith told The Sun in 2021.

“Nothing comes close to that. It’s all the twists and turns we’ve been through.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun