Toronto police explain how investigative genetic genealogy led to a cold case arrest in Moosonee

A Toronto detective says police would never have pinpointed a Moosonee man as the offender in the historic murders of two Toronto women, 40 years ago, if it weren't for recent developments in investigative genetic genealogy. 

Erin Gilmour, 22, and Susan Tice, 45, were both killed in their Toronto homes in 1983; sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. 

Joseph George Sutherland, 62, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to two counts of second-degree murder in their deaths.

He was sentenced March 22, 2024 to life in prison with no chance of parole for 21 years on two counts of second-degree murder.

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.

But Det-Sgt. Steve Smith with the cold case unit of the Toronto Police Service said determining which man was the next challenge.

"You can collect as much DNA as you need to, but if nothing matches up, you're you're really looking for a needle in a haystack, as it could be any male in the world that had left that DNA," said Smith.

That's where investigative genetic genealogy, through the use of increasingly popular ancestry-tracing websites, helped lead investigators to the James Bay coast.

He said instead of looking for the one person in the world that matched the DNA sample, they were able to change the format of the DNA and use familial testing.

"There's two websites in the US, GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA, where we can upload police files and it's in their terms of service and people understand that under certain circumstances, which is basically sexual assaults, homicides and or unidentified human remains, police are allowed to match against their DNA profiles to see if there's any familial matching," said Smith.

Investigators knew through the DNA evidence that the suspect was Cree and eventually narrowed down the family to areas in northern Ontario.

But investigators found a new maze to untangle there.

"Unfortunately, because it's such a small area and people have been there for so long, you run into endogamy, which means that families over the course of hundreds of years have intersected through marriage and having children and pretty much everyone in the community is related to each other," said Smith.

He said it took a long time to wade through the the genetic details, although after the CBC's Fifth Estate aired a program about the murders, some people uploaded DNA that helped police focus on the Sutherland family.

Smith said police had been able to link some members of Sutherland's family to Toronto at the time of the murders.

Finally, in November of 2022, they were able to get a warrant to take DNA from Joseph George Sutherland and flew to Moosonee to get it.

The case unravelled quickly after that.

"Early the next day, Mr. Sutherland went and confessed to an ex-OPP friend of his," said Smith. "At that time we had to make the decision to have the OPP arrest him for the safety of everyone involved and for the fact that we now knew unequivocally that he was the offender."

Although Smith says he's not surprised Sutherland pleaded guilty when confronted with the DNA evidence, only Sutherland knows how and why he committed the murders, and he hasn't confided that to police.

Sutherland's DNA has not been linked to any other homicides or sexual assaults in Toronto, said Smith.

Toronto Police are working on an array of cold cases where they hope to use the new technique to unlock cold cases where offenders have left DNA at the scene.

""Anybody that had committed a homicide or a sexual assault back in 70s, 80, 90s, even into the 2000s, if they had left their DNA at the scene, eventually there's going to be a knock at their door because utilizing this technique, all of these cases now become solvable," said Smith.

Not only are Toronto police using the technique, they are assisting other police services to use the tool, with the help of a grant from the province's solicitor general.

"It's a very busy time right now," said Smith.