Man pleads guilty in grisly 1983 killings of 2 Toronto women
Joseph George Sutherland was arrested, charged with 1st-degree murder in November
A man charged in the grisly killings of two women in Toronto that took place nearly four decades ago pleaded guilty in court Thursday afternoon.
Joseph George Sutherland of Moosonee, Ont. was facing two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour in 1983. The two women didn't know each other.
Sutherland was arrested by provincial police in his home town last November. He was 61 at the time.
Gilmour was an aspiring fashion designer and the daughter of mining tycoon David Gilmour. Tice was a family therapist and mother of four teenagers.
Tice, 45, and Gilmour, 22, were both sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in their beds in August and December 1983. They lived just kilometres apart in the city core — Tice in the Bickford Park neighbourhood and Gilmour in a Yorkville apartment.
Sutherland's sentencing is set to take place in December.
The women's murders went unsolved until a breakthrough was announced last year. Police credited the advances in DNA technology in recent years that helped them find him.
With files from Lucas Powers