Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all well. The case we bring you today is a cold case and a quintessential whodunit. It comes to us from Detective Sergeant Steve, who heads the cold case unit at his agency up in Canada and recently gave us a case we called Square One. You know, with the advent of genetic genealogy and the way investigators can use it to help zero in on unknown offenders by testing even the tiniest bit of DNA, it’s tempting to get lulled into a false sense of promise that a case which has been cold for decades can now easily and automatically be solved. That science will do most of the work and all that’s left is for the investigators to put a bow on it. But of course, it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple.

And this case proves the rule, which is there is no substitute for hard work, for the dotting of I’s and the crossing of T’s when it comes to making sure the bad guy is held responsible for the horrific crimes he committed many years ago. And the families of the victims get some long-awaited answers. Here is “Epilogue.”

Yeardley: Hi there, I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave: -And retired detectives from Small Town, USA.

Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul: Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave: -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

[unison]: Thank you.

Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks, guess what? You’re lucky cause we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello. Listed first.

Yeardley: [laughs] Because you’re at the top of my Zoom screen. I’m like, “I’m looking you right in the eyeball.”

Dave: We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hello there.

Yeardley: Hello you. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Hello again.

Yeardley: Hello, Hello. Always good to see you. And Small Town Fam, we are so pleased to welcome back to the podcast Detective Sergeant Steve.

Steve: Hi, thanks for having me.

Yeardley: Thank you so much for giving up one of your very precious days off, having hung around these guys for a long time. I know what that means. Steve, if you all will recall, has had a long and storied career in law enforcement and is now on a cold case task force at his agency. And that is in fact how Steve, you and Paul Holes met because of Paul’s work with the genealogy lab Othram. And for our listeners, Steve gave us another cold case this season that we called Square One. It’s about the murder of Christine Jessop. It’s a fascinating case and I might add, a cold case no more. So, Steve, sticking with the cold case theme here, please tell us how this case came to you.

Steve: Yeah, when I arrived in the homicide and missing persons unit in 2018, I dug through a number of cases and some of the high-profile cases I really took to. So, this is a case where there were two ladies murdered over the course of four months in 1983, both were sexually assaulted and viciously stabbed to death. In the year 2000, we were able to connect the DNA of the offender from both scenes and determine that it was the same offender that had killed both women.

Yeardley: And these two women did not know each other or were they connected somehow socially or family wise?

Steve: That was the exact feelings of the investigator, was there must be a connection between these two women somewhere because how do two women alone in their homes in different parts of the city, both get broken in, attacked, sexually assaulted and murdered by the same man without any sort of connection? It was four months apart, about four miles apart in Toronto. But that distance in Toronto from the two different areas is night and day. It’s very different parts of the city.

Dave: So, can you walk us through the first crime, kind of how the investigation went and then I’m guessing with it not being solved, it rolls into the second crime. Give us a summary of what happened in those two cases.

Steve: Absolutely. So, the very first case was Susan Tice. So, she was a 45-year-old, mother of four children and she had just moved back from Calgary to Toronto in July of 1983 in a working class area, very nice, very eclectic little area in Toronto. And she was a freelance counselor. August 14th of 1983, Susan was actually up in Owen Sound, Ontario, visiting her parents. She had taken a friend with her at the time. And that Sunday on the 14th, she had returned from Owen Sound. She drove her friend home, came home to her house, parked, went inside, and that’s the last anybody had ever seen of Susan. So, early in the morning on August 15th. So, the Monday morning about 01:30 AM, neighbors had heard a woman screaming, but nobody ever called the police at the time.

So, we believe that was probably the point where Susan was attacked and most likely fighting back on her offender. Unfortunately, until the Wednesday of that week, the 17th of August 1983, nobody had went to check on Susan because she was an independent woman. Her kids were away, but her family started to think that it was a bit unusual that she hadn’t contacted them. And her brother-in-law went over to her house, found her rear door ajar, went in and found her in the bedroom, naked, stabbed to death and covered with a blanket.

Yeardley: Wow.

Paul: Steve, the rear door that was open, had it been forced open?

Steve: No, it hadn’t been forced open. So, we don’t know if the offender was already inside her place at the time or whether he blitzed her in the evening hours when she was going into the house. But I guess in those days there may have been a window open. We aren’t really sure how he gained entry, but there wasn’t any forced entry that we saw.

Paul: When you read in the case file, no signs of forced entry. Entry still could have been forced. You just don’t have the evidence that it was forced. So, it doesn’t mean that the victim allowed the offender into the house.

Yeardley: Sure, she could have answered the door and he forced his way past her, but there’s no damage to the door jamb or the door. Yeah, it’s a good point.

Paul: Steve, you mentioned that Susan was found covered. This sometimes can be very behaviorally significant, indicating a relationship between the offender and the victim. But sometimes it’s just to delay discovery of the body. Do you have a sense at this point in the investigation why the offender covered Susan?

Steve: So, in both cases the offender actually covered his victims. We think maybe after he had taken a step back from what had happened, he was a bit ashamed of what he did and he covered them with a blanket. That’s our guess. So, we believe that it started out with probably a sexually motivated attack. And when the women fought back, he upped the violence and took a step back and it was what have I done?

Paul: And that is one of the reasons for offenders to cover victims.

Yeardley: Right. So, you have this murder of Susan and then four months later you have another murder.

Steve: We do so in December Erin Gilmour, 22 years old. So, a much different demographic than the 45-year-old Susan. Erin, her dad was very prevalent in the Toronto community. They were one of the wealthiest families in Toronto. She worked at a store called Erin’s Knits which was actually directly under her apartment. So, her apartment was on top of this store and it was at Yorkville in Toronto, which is one of the most affluent areas. And you don’t see this sort of crime up there. Erin was just living there, working at the store downstairs, still traveling, enjoying life as a 22-year-old. The unique part of this is she worked at the store till 08:45 PM that evening.

She was being picked up to go to a party by a friend and Erin had left the store at 08:45 and the friend was to pick Erin up at 09:00 PM. So, there was only about a 15-minute window. Unfortunately, her friend got tied up at a bank machine picking up money for the night, because as you know, in the 80s you have to carry cash. But he showed up about 09:20 PM and between 08:45 and 09:20, Erin was in her bed, she’d been undressed, sexually assaulted. This time the offender didn’t take any chances. He actually gagged her, tied her up, sexually assaulted her, stabbed her to death, and was in and out within about a 20-minute window. And again, the front door was left open, but there was no signs of forced entry.

Yeardley: Wow.

Dave: So, Erin’s discovered by her friend that evening when she’s overdue for the ride.

Steve: Yeah, correct. Her friend comes in and we believe that Erin probably left the front door open knowing that her friend was going to arrive to pick her up. Now, is that how the offender arrived? I mean, just think of how short of a window that was. How was this offender picking these women that he knew were going to be alone at these times and with such a short window to be able to enter her place, sexually assault her, murder her and make good his escape, it’s a real whodunit at that point.

Paul: And I imagine, Steve, that this male friend is initially investigated as a potential suspect.

Steve: Absolutely. The original officers, I don’t know if I could say they believed that it was him, but they really put a lot of effort into that. They made sure that they opened every book on him, followed everything up, and eventually they were able to prove that he was actually at the bank just prior to his arriving on scene. So, they were able to eliminate him as a suspect.

Yeardley: You’re talking about Erin’s friend who was coming to pick her up for the evening.

Steve: Correct, Erin’s friend. They really focused on him as the actual offender early on in the investigation. He was quickly cleared. But as Paul said, “An opposite sex friend finds somebody deceased, that’s initially where your thoughts are going to go to the offender.”

Dave: So, you’ve got two cases with not really any great solid leads. This is how things become cold, is you run out of places to look for information or find facts and evidence. And this is the early 80s. What’s happening in the years after this investigation?

Steve: Yeah. So, obviously these cases were investigated separately because there was no way to say that they were connected. But talking to the original investigators, they believed that these two were connected. We just had no way to prove it because there was no forensics to say that at the time. These cases were never stopped being worked on. They were worked on all the way through by the original investigators, passed over to the Cold Case Unit, who worked on it for years. That’s how in 1997 we were actually able to send what we believe to be the offender’s DNA back and develop a profile of the offender.

Yeardley: The offender from Erin Gilmour’s case.

Steve: Correct. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that we resubmitted Susan Tice’s crime scene property and developed the offender profile from that. But at that time, once we developed both profiles, we were actually able to make the connection that this was 100% the same offender at that time then you had to merge both cases into one case to see where the overlap was.

Yeardley: And was there any similar pieces of evidence connected at both crime scenes that once this DNA connection is made and you realize it, it is the same offender, you go, “Oh, this piece of evidence was left at Erin’s as well as at Susan’s,” Anything like that?

Steve: Not really. I mean, it was actually the lack of evidence that was interesting because nothing was taken from either scene. They fingerprinted the houses, but as everyone knows, you’re going to get who knows how many fingerprints. But what we didn’t get was our offender’s fingerprints. So, this wasn’t a break in where the offender just happened to find a female in there alone. We believe that he actually set out to sexually assault these women. How he determined who and where, I mean, both are reasonably close to the subway line. So, he could have got off the subway and walked five minutes in either direction. But for him, again, to pick people out of a metropolitan city like Toronto and to not know that there may have been a male in that house when he entered, he must have been fairly confident on that.

But he wasn’t there to steal anything because nothing went missing. Just in Erin’s jewelry alone, this guy could have lived for years if he had taken any of that jewelry, and he didn’t take any of it. So, we believe there was sexually motivated offenses. Once we knew that these cases were connected, we ripped through both cases. We went through everything down to movers, cleaners, restaurants they frequented, bars they frequented. We went over every sexual offender, every miscreant in the area, friend lists, anybody that socialized with these people. And with Erin’s case, you can imagine because she was a bit of a socialite. The list that that created, right. You’re talking thousands of people that they had to go through and systematically eliminate each one of these people.

We went through everything, and I will tell you, there is no connection between these two women.

Dave: Man.

Yeardley: Crazy.

Dan: So after the initial linking of these two cases through DNA, you don’t have the case yet. Is that correct Steve?

Steve: That’s correct. I don’t have it till about 2018.

Dan: Yeah. So, these detectives are trying to piece together and find any overlaps between evidence, circumstances, anything in these cases, and obviously, nothing really comes to fruition. And then you get this case. Do you just start reading through the case file?

Steve: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, this was a good one because both of these were already digitized for us, so we didn’t have to go through that process. So, as you guys know, how much easier it is to sit in front of a computer and pull up all the different files that you have than to try to leaf through binders. So, we really familiarized ourselves with this case, and we familiarized ourselves with everything, and we used everything at our disposal to overlap these cases to see if anybody appeared in both cases, and they didn’t.

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[Break 1]

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Dave: So, you’ve got DNA that links these two crime scenes, but you don’t have a name to go with the DNA.

Steve: Correct.

Dave: It’s unidentified.

Steve: Yeah. We’re back to the needle in the haystack again. [laughs]

Yeardley: My God. So, take us how you then proceed. Because you have the golden egg, but you don’t know what goose laid it in terms of the DNA. You’re like, “Well, we have answer, but we don’t have the whole answer.” How do you work backward from that?

Steve: Yeah, well, DNA was obviously a huge game changer for us because we could actually go out and solicit DNA from people that were in the case to clear them 100%. So, we collected hundreds, again, hundreds and hundreds of DNA samples from people, and a lot of it was on consent. We would call people, especially people that knew Erin and moved in her social circles. They were more than willing to come in and give us their DNA to match against the offender’s crime scene profile, and we’re easily able to eliminate all these people. But once we did all that elimination, we’re still back to nowhere. We have no leads. This is when investigative genetic genealogy comes into play.

Yeardley: Is the DNA samples that you have, are they degraded, are they pristine? Because sometimes in these old cases, the DNA hasn’t been stored properly and it’s a problem.

Steve: Yeah, we’re lucky in these cases. The DNA was fine. It was usable DNA, mostly because we’d re-sequenced it in the 2000s, so it was then stored properly, and we had a fair bit of DNA in these cases, and it was sole source DNA. So, it was perfect to use for IGG.

Yeardley: And IGG stands for Investigative Genetic Genealogy.

Steve: Correct.

Yeardley: So, investigators already generated a DNA profile back in 2000 when you all realized that these two murders were committed by the same man. Are you able to use that profile to start to build a family tree or does the lab have to start over and basically do their own testing?

Steve: Yeah, so in forensics and law enforcement, traditionally we use DNA in an STR, short tandem repeat profile, which is basically your genetic markers. So, it shows how you’re different from everybody else. But it’s great for policing because it’s very definitive in its ability to weed out and to actually say whether an offender did leave that DNA or not. It’s very definitive in that. To use IGG, you have to use it in a different process. So, it needs to be sequenced, which is why we need labs like Othram in the US because we have to send our DNA down, they sequence it and turn it into a SNP profile or an SNP, which is a single nucleotide polymorphism, and that’s basically your genes between your genes that show how related you are to anybody else in the world. So that’s how we’re able to build the trees and identify the offender.

Yeardley: I have to say, that is a very impressive knowledge base of something that seems massively complicated. You say you’re not the expert, but Steve, I’m pretty impressed by you. Do you take this case to Othram, which for our listeners is a genealogy lab down in Texas that our own Paul Holes is now an investigator for.

Steve: We do. We sent it down actually the same time we sent the Jessop case down.

Dave: I’m guessing similar process to Christine Jessop’s case is you’ve got an initial list and now you guys have to start being detectives again.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. Paul will laugh at this, but we sent this case in, we uploaded to GEDmatch and FamilyTree. And literally, I sat there with our genealogist when the match list came in. And the Centimorgans and Centimorgans are basically how related you are to anyone else in the world. It’s the markers for genealogy. I sat with our genealogist, we looked at our match list, and he said, “We’ll be done this case in 24 hours.”

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

Steve: Because we had such high matches.

Paul: Do you remember how high.

Steve: It was in the, like, the thousands.

Paul: Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Yeardley: Why would this case, for instance, be particularly high versus any other case?

Paul: Well, that’s dependent on who’s in the database. So, the amount of centimorgans that you share with somebody, that’s what tells you how close or distantly related you are. So, you inherit half your DNA from mom, half your DNA from dad. So, you share roughly 50% of your DNA with your siblings, plus or minus. And there’s reasons for the variance. So, if I upload into the genealogy database and I get a top match that shares 3,000 centimorgans, I know I’m dealing with a sibling. I just have to figure out, okay, who are the brothers or sisters. But usually, it’s the males that I need to identify in that family. If I’m seeing what Steve is telling me with a thousand centimorgan matches, I’m dealing with a first cousin, so that person is related to my offender at the grandparent level.

Yeardley: That’s incredible. So, they’ve essentially assigned a value to the amount of connectedness you have with your relatives.

Paul: Yeah. There’s been plenty of these studies that show roughly how much DNA you share with a certain type of relative, with their siblings, roughly 50% plus or minus first cousins. Now you see a drop off into that, whether it be 800 to 1200 centimorgans, second cousins, down into the 200 centimorgans, third cousins, now you’re dealing with 70 to 110. These are just very rough numbers I’m throwing out. And so, a genealogist, when you see these matches and you see 1000 centimorgans as your top match, I mean, this is now you’re pushing the easy button.

Yeardley: Right. So, you’re in the thousands. You’re looking at first cousin Steve. Is that so?

Steve: So, we thought.

Yeardley: Oh. [laughs]

Steve: Then endogamy reared its ugly head.

Paul: Oh.

Yeardley: What’s that word?

Paul: Endogamy.

Yeardley: What’s that?

Paul: Endogamy is sometimes you get isolated populations that interbreed. So, let’s say you have a small island and you have a small population there, and they’re just having kids and their kids are having kids. Now what you see is you see a lot of genetic overlap where now you share a lot more DNA with people who are more distantly related to you on paper, endogamy is the genealogist’s nemesis.

Yeardley: Okay, so you run up against endogamy, Steve.

Steve: Yeah. So, we were able to determine that our offender was actually of Cree origin from a tiny fly in area almost at the Arctic Circle called Moosonee, Ontario. So, when we looked at all the matches, everybody in that community, because the community had been there for hundreds of years because it was the old trading ports and you had your indigenous community and there was only a few hundred people in the community that everybody was related, probably close to six times over. So, our numbers were inflated. Usually, when you’re doing genealogy and you’re utilizing some of the probability websites, you get what looks like a shish kebab as your family moves through how related you are to each other. Well, we use these probability websites and we had a giant orange pumpkin.

It was just a complete circle because everybody was related to everybody numerous times in the entire community. So, now you had to start pulling at strings to pull this pumpkin apart to determine who our offender was, even though the community is so small.

Yeardley: Wow.

Dave: [laughs] Like, where do you go from there?

Steve: Yeah. So, we had conversations with certain prominent members of that community and they were able to put us in touch. And to be honest, it was mostly with Cree women that spoke to us. And a lot of members of the Cree community, we found out through this investigation, we were doing their own genealogy searches because they wanted to determine who they were blood related to.

Yeardley: Within their own community or in the wide world or both.

Steve: In their own community, because their explanation to us is a lot of times in the community you don’t really know who’s a blood relative and who’s a relative. But everybody, because it’s such a small community, considers each other related. But they wanted to know a lot of times who their father was or who their brothers were or the blood brothers. But for an amateur genealogist, you have no chance. So, a lot of our conversations with a lot of the women from the community, we would make them aware that we were investigating a homicide. So, a lot of the women were willing to help us out. They would ask us a few questions.

We wouldn’t give them exactly what we were looking at, but we’d make it known enough and they would be willing to upload their DNA to GEDmatch for us in return if we could tell them some of their blood relatives. So, we were willing to make that trade off, that when they would upload their DNA, it would help our genealogists, but our genealogists would also be able to provide these people with members of their immediate family. So, we did that quite a number of times to narrow it down to a point where we couldn’t target test anymore. So, we were still a little stuck. And there were still certain people from the community that were apprehensive to upload their DNA for us because there’s obviously a mistrust from indigenous populations of governments, police, those sort of things.

And some of them still weren’t certain whether were telling them the truth or not. And we understood that, so we had to take some other drastic steps as well.

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[Break 2]

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Dan: So, you mentioned drastic steps. What drastic steps did you take?

Steve: Against our better judgment, we actually did a TV show on this case as we’re going through trying to solve it.

Yeardley: Like a dateline kind of thing?

Steve: Yeah, it’s actually called CBC Fifth Estate. So, we did an episode and we outlined that we’re doing genealogy, and it was very factual, but it was done to try to alleviate the mistrust in the community because CBC is one of the only channels that you get up in Northern Ontario. So, we purposely set this up so people could watch it and see that we were being legitimate about what were actually saying. And it actually worked. A week after we did our show, we received an upload. It wasn’t sent to us, but it was uploaded to GEDmatch. And it narrowed us in so close that we knew that it was one of five brothers. It had to be the same mother, same father. So that’s how quickly it narrowed us in.

Yeardley: Oh, wow. And are the five brothers still living in this community up in Upper Ontario, or are they scattered to the four winds?

Steve: So, we had to figure out where the brothers resided, whether they were still alive, who we were going to target first out of the five brothers? How are we going to collect all the DNA to figure out which one is our offender?

Yeardley: And presumably they would talk to each other. So, you don’t want to pick the wrong one and go, “Dude, they’re coming for you.”

[laughter]

And then he’s really gone. [laughs]

Steve: Exactly. So, it was quite a process. We were lucky in some aspects because when we did look into it, Sutherland brother number one was actually deceased. He was a murder victim himself. So, he was actually killed in the northern community of Moosonee. They were out drinking whiskey and he drank the last bit of the whiskey and his friend didn’t appreciate that, so he beat him to death with a whiskey bottle.

Yeardley: Jesus.

Steve: Yeah, I know.

Yeardley: And Sutherland is the surname of this family that you’ve now zeroed in on?

Steve: Correct. So, we were able to eliminate him quickly because his DNA was on our victim’s database. So, we knew that he wasn’t the offender. There was a second brother, Sutherland number 2. He actually died during our investigation, but his DNA was up on the national DNA data bank from a sexual offense earlier in his life. So, we were able to eliminate both those brothers right off. So, then we had three living brothers. We knew our offender was going to be living and we were going to put him before the courts. It’s just a matter of all three brothers are living in remote communities in far Northern Ontario. And how do we collect their DNA?

Dave: How did you?

Yeardley: Yeah, did you.

[laughter]

Steve: So, the first brother wasn’t in a community that you had to fly into. It was drivable. So, we were able to again rely on our partners, the Ontario Provincial Police, and they good enough to go and collect some garbage for us from this brother’s address. And when we did our DNA testing, the STR was no match. So, he was not our offender. But then we were able to utilize the YSTR testing. This was the first time we were able to do this because the other two brothers were on the database, we didn’t have access to their DNA. His YSTR was able to tell us that it was a close male relative of his. So, we knew that we now had our offender. It was one of the two brothers that were still alive and living in Northern Ontario.

So, again, because the Ontario Provincial Police polices that area, they had a relationship with Sutherland brother number 4. The OPP or Ontario Provincial Police was able to collect his DNA for us. We ran his DNA, no match. But the YSTR again said that it was a close male relative. Now, all four of the brothers that we had cleared all had criminal records. The fifth brother had no criminal record at all, which is why we left him to last. He was an IT professional his whole life. He’d worked in banks. He’d worked in Native Children Services. It went against everything that we thought. And this brother, George Sutherland, turns out to be our offender, the guy with no police involvement whatsoever.

Yeardley: Oh, my God.

Steve: So, now we have a real problem on our hands because he’s in a flying only community, they obviously don’t put garbage out on the curb because you’re going to have polar bears in your town. [Yeardley laughs] There’s no way that you can fly police officers in surreptitiously because as you said, everyone in town knows you’re there. And you’re going to fly five or six people in with brand new cars. They’re going to be like, “I don’t know about this.” We knew George was our offender, but it’s how do you get his DNA? So, this was at the point where we decided to write a proactive DNA warrant to force George to give us his DNA. We had to convince a judge that we had enough grounds to actually take his DNA and believe that he was our offender.

Yeardley: How did you do that?

Steve: We wrote a lot. [laughs]

Dave: I was going to say, I want to know what that affidavit looks like.

Steve: This was such a unique case because of the uploads we’d received that narrowed it in to say it had to be the same father and same mother, which is very rare that you get that in genealogy. So, this was a very unique case that we were actually able to make that claim. And thank God it was true, because we told the judge, we’re 100% sure that this is our offender. And our detective, Stella Kara, she did a great job in drafting that affidavit. She was losing her mind trying to put it all together. There was so much information and it was so technical, and she’d come back and ask questions, but she put it all together and the judge signed it.

We now had it in hand. But now our dilemma was we have to fly into a community, take this offender’s DNA. We know he’s a killer. He knows he’s a killer. And then we have to leave him there because we don’t have the grounds to arrest him until we get that DNA tested. So that was a real moral dilemma for us. And we debated it and we decided we didn’t have an option. I mean, yes, were going to tip George off that we knew that he was our killer, but he’s a killer anyway, and he’s been in that community for years. So, we had to bring him before justice. Again, we relied on the Ontario Provincial Police because they have a plane and they flew us up there. So, we flew into Moosonee, set up at their detachment, and then we had to go out into the community and actually find George.

So myself, Andrew and the detective inspector went out and knocked on his door, and George answers the door to us.

Yeardley: Oh, no kidding. I’m surprised he didn’t know you were coming. It seems like once the plane lands, word could spread like wildfire.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, the OPP does normally fly into that area and we weren’t wearing Toronto police paraphernalia, so they may have thought it was just the OPP. But we knocked on his door and we basically said, “George.” And he’s like, “Yes.” And we’re like, “We’re from the Toronto Police and we’re here to take your DNA.” And he says, “Do I have to come?” And we said, “Yeah, we got a warrant for your DNA, you have to come.” And he was basically like, “Okay, let me get my boots and my coat.” So, he grabs his boots and his coat and he’s yelling to his son inside, “I got to go with the police, I may not be back for a while.” And his son was playing video games, was like, “Yeah, see you.” Didn’t even bother come out to see him or anything.

We take George, it’s about a six-minute drive from his house to the detachment and he’s very quiet. He looks at me and he says, “Where are you guys from?” And I said, “Toronto.” And you could see the swallowing, like it was like he was swallowing a grapefruit. And he sits there for a minute and then he looks over at me and he goes, “When did this happen?” And I said, “A long time ago, George.” And his breathing went to the point of like, I thought he may have a heart attack. He was like [gasping] he couldn’t get his breath in. And OPP detective inspector’s looking at me like, “Oh, yeah, this is our guy.” But he didn’t really say much.

We took him in, we let him talk to his lawyer, we served him with a warrant, we took a prick of his blood and we turned around and took George back to his home. We provided him with a bunch of mental health supports, said, “If you have any problems, make sure you call us.” We let the detachment know up there what we had done in case something happened that night. And we flew back Toronto that night and put his DNA in for testing.

Dave: Just to be clear, you’ve got George and you’re basically there to get his DNA. He’s got representation so you don’t really get a true interview on George.

Steve: Correct. We asked him if he wanted to speak and he said “No, he didn’t want to say a word.” So, off we went and we get back. I actually drive to Detroit that night because my daughters are playing in a hockey tournament. It was actually the Thanksgiving long weekend in the US. I remember that because went to the Detroit Buffalo football game that day, and then we’re going back to the hotel. I’m sitting in the hotel after the football game and my phone’s ringing. So, I pick it up and it’s Sean Glasford from the OPP. And he says to me, “George just called an ex-police officer over to his house and admitted to both these murders.” George had called the ex-OPP officer and said, “Listen, I need you to come here right now.” So, he’s thinking George is in trouble.

He said he’d known George for 25 years, 30 years. He’d been hunting with him, fishing with him, stayed in tents out in the wilderness. They were friends, like close friends. So, he goes over to George’s house, thinking George was in some sort of trouble or something and he was going to give him a hand. George invites him in and asks him to sit down at the table. He sits down and George says, “I’ve done some really bad stuff.” And he’s like, “Well, you know, all of us have done bad stuff in our lives,” so how bad could this be? And he goes, “Oh, it’s pretty bad.” And he’s like, “Okay, well, what are we talking here?”

And George said, “Well, when I was a youngster, I was in Toronto and I did a lot of break and enters. I stole some stuff to kind of survive and that sort of thing” And he’s like, “Okay, well, a lot of people did break and enters when they were in their youth. And you turned it around.” Like, why are you telling me this now? George says, “Well, the Toronto police came up and they took my DNA. Can DNA convict me?” And he’s like, “Yes.” And he goes, “But, George, the Toronto police didn’t fly here to take your DNA for a couple of break and enters.” And he says, “Yeah, about that. During a couple of the break and enters, I found some women in the place and I sexually assaulted them and killed them.”

Yeardley: Jesus.

Paul: And his friend was just absolutely taken aback. He couldn’t believe that he was hearing this and from his friend. And he said, “George was the quietest, most peaceful person since he had known him.” And now he’s admitting to him that he’d sexually assaulted and murdered two women. He couldn’t even wrap his head around the fact that his friend had committed these offenses. He didn’t even know what to do at the time. That’s why he went outside and then contacted the OPP to say, “This is what’s just happened up here.” So, at that point we decided we had to arrest him and we all had to mount back up on the plane and fly back up to the Arctic Circle to take custody of George.

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[Break 3]

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So, George confessed to somebody, but he’s still in his house and everybody up there has firearms. So, the debate was, do we have to bring attack team up there to take them out or what are we going to do here? How are we going to get him out of there? Because none of us are there. We got a real problem. We have to fly back up there to deal with this, but we’re leaving it in the hands of the officers that are stuck in that community with them. Luckily enough, the ex-OPP officer was able to talk George into coming out and peacefully turning himself in. So, he was arrested without any issues at all. But we still had to hop on a plane and fly back up to Moosonee in order to bring George back and put him before the courts in Toronto.

Dave: So, how did that look? It’s the following day, you guys hop on a plane and you’re back up there. Or are you like, overnight? It’s a red eye up there.

Steve: It was as soon as the OPP could fire up their plane again. So, the next morning, back up to the Arctic Circle to take custody of George and bring him back.

Dave: So, George had just basically been hanging out in a holding cell waiting for your arrival?

Steve: That’s right. In Canada, we have to have him before the courts within 24 hours. So, we did a video remand in Toronto with him from up there at the same time we’re flying up there to transport him back. Because at this point, I mean, in the community, they’re going to know that George is taken out on an OPP plane. They’re going to put two and two together. I’m sure this could blow up really quickly. So, again, we had to quickly organize a press conference and everything else in order to get that information out. And I had to contact all the families. I had to make sure that they found out from us before they found out through social media. So, there was a lot of logistics that we had to put into that.

Yeardley: So, now George is in custody in Toronto. He has lawyered up, doesn’t want to talk to you guys. Do you guys give plea deals and stuff in Canada to avoid trial? What happens next?

Steve: We do. So, he’s before the courts. And I mean, this is one of the first genealogy investigations that we’re putting before the court. Our crown attorneys are a little bit taken back by what they actually have to disclose and how we’re going to prove our case. But we’re able to work through all that. At this point, we have to bring in Erin’s brother, Sean McCowan. He kept this case alive from the time Erin was murdered. And he was only about 12 years old when she was murdered. And we spoke daily, weekly, monthly. He never gave up hope that Erin’s killer was going to be found. So, being able to tell him over the course of this investigation was unbelievable. I mean, both families were intimately involved in this process, but it took a little bit of time.

And then George admitted that he was going to plead guilty. The families finally met at court, and it was very interesting to see. The worst part of this whole case is that all these people that were at court to support their loved ones, that were the victims, they were all children when this happened, and now they’re adults. And being able to see it come to fruition and see the offender having to stand trial for what he did, it was very unique to see, because you don’t realize that until you talk to everyone and realize that these were all kids. This murderer not only affected the women in their lives, but affected all the children that were involved in this.

Yeardley: And how old is George when you guys finally arrest him?

Steve: 63.

Yeardley: And how old was he when he committed these murders?

Steve: He was young at the time, only 18, 19 years old.

Dave: That is a long time to live with secrets.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. And we talk about that all the time. You know, was he able to sleep at night? Did he just forget it? Did he put it out of his mind? Or did this eat him alive and he really couldn’t enjoy his life because these women had their lives snuffed out in the 80s. And George went on to get married, have kids, live his life, do everything that normal people do. And knowing in his own mind that he was a killer, a double killer at that.

Dave: Is the only confession or statement given to this ex-OOP law enforcement friend guy or does George make a statement when he pleads guilty?

Steve: Yeah. So, Andrew and I sat down with George for hours trying to get him to talk to us, and he absolutely would not say a word. We provided him pictures of the scene, pictures of the women. During the trial when he did plead guilty, he came up with a couple of concoctions of stories which actually, in my opinion, probably irritated the judge to the point where he actually got a longer sentence by not being honest, because originally, he said he didn’t remember. And then, he had a spirit journey where he saw the victims. But if you didn’t remember, how did you have a spirit journey a few years after with the victims? And then it was just a break and enter for stuff, but you didn’t take anything. But then you left this carnage in your wake.

None of what he was saying made any sense. We’re hoping to give him a bit of time and go up and see him in a federal penitentiary and maybe say “You’re not looking at any more time. But how about we be honest here and let’s talk about how you found these victims, how you were able to gain entry, these sort of things. Were you stalking them?” Because on just a chance that he just happened to do break and enters at these two places to find two women alone? To me, that doesn’t seem to make sense.

Yeardley: What sort of sentence does George get?

Steve: So, unfortunately for his plea deal, we had to plea him down from first-degree murder to second-degree murder because there’s a ruling from the Canadian courts that you can’t give him two life sentences for first-degree murder.

Yeardley: Why?

Steve: The courts considered it double dipping, like we’re punishing him double. But if you commit two offenses, we believe that you should have to face both sentences. Because in Canada, you receive life in prison for any of the murders, whether it’s first or second degree. But then you have a parole eligibility, and that parole eligibility for first-degree murder set at 25 years. And for second-degree murder, it can be variable. So, when we had to give him second-degree murder, we had to put it in the judge to actually give him his time for parole eligibility, which was set at 21 years. So, George would be in his 80s before he was even eligible to apply for parole. And that doesn’t mean he’s going to get parole at that time. But he did receive life in prison with the eligibility for parole of 21 years.

Dan: I bet when you started down this road, you probably didn’t think he’d be flying up to Moosonee.

Steve: No, absolutely not. One thing I found out with these genealogical investigations is the homicides are a lot more difficult than, say, the sexual assaults or the unidentified human remains. For some reason, when we’re doing those two offenses, we’re able to identify the offender. And he just seems to live three streets over. Every one of these cases that we do with the homicides, there seems to be so many twists and turns. Like, you couldn’t make this up if you wrote your own novel. You know what I mean? It’s like they’re testing us to see if we can get through.

[laughter]

Steve: It’s like a video game where they keep raising the difficulty factor on us.

[laughter]

Dave: Right. What level are you exactly at? Easy or professional or expert?

Yeardley: Yeah.

Dave: Put me on expert level. Let’s see how this goes. How’s this hit you, Steve? You and your partner who spend so many hours and the other investigators that help, do you guys go out for drinks and have a little debrief?

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what we did. Once we were secure that his conviction was in at court, we went out and had a few drinks and some food. We were joined by some of the family members. Sean McCowan, that’s Erin Gilmour’s brother. Sean really kept our hopes up even. He was so positive in the fact that he was sure that were going to solve this at some point. He just didn’t know when. And it actually gave us the fuel to keep going, when we ran into that endogamy, we’re throwing our hands up because we’re like, “Well, it could be anybody in the community.” We weren’t giving him specifics of the case, but we were saying, “We need more time. We’ve run into some roadblocks. And he’s like, “Well, let’s keep going. Whatever we can do, let’s keep going.”

So, it was really a big celebration for everybody involved. It was 40 years, right? It was a long time coming, and it was a big relief for everybody.

Yeardley: What a fascinating case. Thank you so much for bringing that to us today. Amazing, incredible work. Even if it’s been 40 years, you want people like you and like Paul and Dan and Dave, if they had done cold cases, to be the ones who are going to get justice for those victims.

Steve: Thanks. Really appreciate it. We’re just glad that we could solve these cases for the victim’s families.

Dan: Thank you, Sergeant Steve. Appreciate it. Very good work.

Dave: What Dan said. I agree.

[laughter]

Paul: [laughs] Well, I think this case also underscores, you know you read the headlines and the articles about the case, but there’s so much more that goes into it. And again, great job, Steve.

[music]

Steve: Thanks, everybody.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Gary Scott is our executive producer, and Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

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