Police cleared suspect's brothers before arresting him for grisly 1983 killings of 2 Toronto women

In the afternoon of Nov. 24, OPP officers and Det. Const. Andrew Doyle from the Toronto Police Service arrived at the Moosonee, Ont., home of 61-year-old Joseph George Sutherland.

They were there to serve him with a DNA warrant to obtain a blood sample they planned to compare against the DNA from the crime scene of the unsolved 1983  killings of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour in Toronto.

Typically, police will attempt to surreptitiously collect DNA from a suspect and then match it against the crime scene evidence before executing a DNA warrant to confirm what they already suspect to be true. 

In this case, police had tried but been unable to surreptitiously collect Sutherland's DNA. In a rare move, they managed to convince a judge that it was reasonable to believe that Sutherland had committed the killings, and that his DNA could help prove it.

Sutherland is from a family of five brothers. The Fifth Estate has learned that police had already cleared the other four, and the process of elimination led them to Sutherland's door. He was arrested and has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Police had employed a technique known as investigative genetic genealogy. It involves entering suspect crime scene DNA into public DNA family tree websites to identify if not the suspect themselves then distant relatives from whom police and genealogists can eventually connect back to a suspect.

Erin Gilmour's brother told The Fifth Estate that his family knew police had narrowed the search to one family, which made the waiting process that much more difficult. 

"I think it [was] just … driving us crazy. Because we … know that you've got it … down to three people," said Kaelin McCowan. 

Det. Sgt. Stephen Smith from the Toronto Police Service's cold case unit declined to comment about the warrant or any other details related to the arrest. 

"We're looking forward to the judicial process and being able to test the process of IGG [investigative genetic genealogy] in a Canadian courtroom," said Smith. 

If the case proceeds to trial, it will be the first time a person has been tried in Canada after being arrested from genetic genealogy research.

In 2020, genetic genealogy was used to identify a killer in the case of Christine Jessop, a nine-year-old girl who was abducted from a small Ontario town and killed in 1984. However, the suspect died in 2015 before charges could be laid.

Erin Gilmour, 22, was killed on Dec. 20 1983. Her mother, Anna McCowan-Johnson, died two years ago, but she is survived by her father, David Gilmour, and her two younger brothers, Kaelin McCowan and Sean McCowan. Both brothers were present at the police news conference announcing the arrest this week. 

"[Det. Steve Smith] called … and I picked up the phone and he goes: 'We got him,'" said Sean McCowan. "I literally burst into tears … there was a lot of swearing and a lot of happy and a lot of tears.… It was the best phone call I've ever had in my life."