FOG BLOG CAN. LOG: GEORGE SUTHERLAND ARRESTED IN 1983 COLD CASE FOR ERIN GILMOUR/ SUSAN TICE MURDER!

Joseph George Sutherland, 61, arrested in 1983 Toronto killings of Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice Nearly 40 years after the high-profile murders of two Toronto women, police announced they have arrested and charged a man with the 1983 slayings of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour — the latest decades-old cases to be cracked using genetic genealogy.

Toronto police Chief James Ramer said Monday that Joseph George Sutherland, 61, of Moosonee, Ont., had been arrested Friday and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Tice and Gilmour, who had each been fatally stabbed and sexually assaulted.

“This is a day that I — and we — have been waiting almost an entire lifetime for,” Sean McCowan, Gilmour’s brother, told a news conference at Toronto police headquarters. “In a sense, there’s a real relief that someone’s been arrested. Yet it also brings back so many memories of Erin and her brutal, senseless murder,” he said.

Police are now reviewing Sutherland’s past, poring through his history to determine whether he may be tied to other crimes. Since the murders, Sutherland has moved out of Toronto but stayed for 39 years within Ontario, police said.

“Obviously we’re going to look into every possible connection to any possible case throughout Ontario to ensure that he isn’t responsible for any other offenses,” Det. Sgt. Stephen Smith, the lead investigator on the case, told the news conference.

Smith told the Star Sutherland could be considered a person of interest in other unsolved cases in the province involving sexual violence except where he’s already excluded via DNA evidence.

Sutherland is currently in custody, scheduled to appear in court Dec. 9.

Tice, mother of four teenage children and a social worker, was found dead in the upstairs bedroom of her recently purchased home on Grace Street near Harbord Street on Aug. 17, 1983. She had moved to Toronto from Calgary just two months before, and separated from her husband, who was living in a downtown townhouse.