'You ripped a hole in all our lives:' Families of victims speak at sentencing for Joseph George Sutherland

Family and friends of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour addressed their loved ones' killer in a Toronto courtroom Monday, deploring his decision to keep the crimes to himself for nearly 40 years.

Family and friends of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour addressed their loved ones’ killer in a Toronto courtroom Monday, deploring his decision to keep the crimes to himself for nearly 40 years.

“You had almost forty years to come forward and take responsibility for what you did,” Sean McCowan, brother of Gilmour, told Joseph George Sutherland, sitting in the prisoner’s box of Toronto’s Superior Court of Justice. "Your crimes took a mother and daughter and sister from two families and yet you did nothing and go on continuing to live your life.”

Gilmour, the daughter of mining magnate David Gilmour, was 22 years old when she was stabbed, strangled and sexually assaulted in her Yorkville apartment on the night of Dec. 20, 1983.

Earlier that year, Susan Tice had also been found stabbed to death after being sexually assaulted in her Bickford Park home, just a few kilometres away from Gilmour’s apartment.

Sutherland was not arrested for nearly 40 years. The court heard he considered turning himself in at several points during that time, but opted against it.

It wasn’t until advances in DNA technology led officers to link evidence from both crime scenes that Sutherland was arrested in November 2022. He was placed into custody in his home in Moosonee, Ont. by Ontario Provincial Police.

Initially charged with first-degree murder, Sutherland, now in his 60s, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in October.