HUNTER: Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour killer gets life sentence

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A lousy childhood, a booze problem, a Gladue Report and 39 years of keeping his nose clean didn’t matter.

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Joseph George Sutherland has found his forever home.

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The 62-year-old Moosonee man was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 21 years on Friday. He will be in his 80s if he’s ever allowed to emerge from the perpetual darkness that is prison.

Over four terrifying months in 1983, the IT professional raped and murdered Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder last October in the brutal sex slayings.

Homicide is the most haunting atrocity we know. Few it touches are ever whole again. This was acutely true when it came to Tice, 45 at the time and a mother of four, and Gilmour, just 22 when her little brothers’ childhoods were obliterated.

“The families and friends of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour never forgot about their loved ones that were brutally sexually assaulted and murdered in their own beds,” Crown Attorney Michael Cantlon said in a statement.

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“For decades, they suffered the profound loss of these two remarkable women from their lives but never lost hope the murderer would be found.”

Sutherland, Cantlon said, “tried to forget,” got married and had a family.

But the Toronto Police Service’s vaunted Cold Case Unit did not forget – detectives hammered away over decades at the Tice-Gilmour murders.

The unit’s chieftain, Det.-Sgt. Steve Smith, told the Toronto Sun on Friday afternoon that the investigation “was one of the most difficult in Toronto history.”

He earlier told the Sun that without genetic genealogy, finding the killer would have been like “finding a needle in a haystack.”

“I’m so happy for the families,” the detective said. “For 40 years they’ve been waiting for this. This is one of the hardest cases on a personal level, most of the people affected by this were children, kids … their childhoods were taken away from them by Sutherland’s horrific actions.”

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And at 4 p.m., on Friday, Superior Court Justice Maureen Forestell told Sutherland’s that his life was officially over.

Justice Forestell summarized the nine harrowing victim impact statements delivered on March 4, noting that as one said, “the grief never goes away.”

Sutherland grew up in Fort Albany, Toronto and Moosonee, and his father died when he was young. He found himself in the notorious St. Anne’s Residential School. He was physically assaulted at the school and later sexually assaulted by a family member.

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He came back to Toronto in 1983, a full-blown alcoholic. And in this town, he killed two “vibrant” women.

His Gladue Report quotes Sutherland as saying he didn’t remember killing Tice and “barely remembered” murdering Gilmour.

Sutherland told his interviewer, Forestell said, “My mind erased it because my mind broke.”

He claimed he felt “anguish and remorse” and afterwards embarked on a “spirit quest” to become a “good human being.”

And he apologized and asked for forgiveness.

But Justice Forestell said she “did not accept” that Sutherland had no memory of his heinous crimes.

She added that whatever mitigating factors there may have been – a guilty plea, his background – were simply not enough, calling his crimes “profoundly serious.”

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“There has been no willingness to examine his actions … I give little weight to Mr. Sutherland’s expressions of remorse,” Forestell said.

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There is also the 39 years the Tice children and Erin Gilmour’s little brothers lives were poisoned by the violent deaths. Remorse has little impact now.

His legal team asked for 18 years of parole ineligibility while the Crown wanted 22.

As for other uncaught killers and rapists like Joseph George Sutherland, Smith said they should spend their days looking over their shoulders.

“Genetic genealogy has made the unsolvable solvable, whether it’s murder or sex assaults,” Smith said.

“My message is: Don’t rest easy. We’re coming to get you.”

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@HunterTOSun

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