Killers ‘don’t just stop after two’: DNA proves one man killed these Toronto women. Does it say where he went?

There's an obvious similarity between the murders of Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice.

Both murders were horrific," Det. Sgt. Stephen Smith of Toronto Police said in an email.

Both women were bound and stabbed repeatedly in their Toronto homes in late 1983.

Both scenes represent a sadistic offender," Michael Arntfield, a Western University criminologist and former police officer, said in an interview.

Gilmour was 22.

Tice was 45.

Gilmour was a single, aspiring clothing designer from an extremely wealthy family.

Her father, David Gilmour, was the business partner of tycoon Peter Munk, co-founder of the mining company, Barrick Gold.

Tice was a recently divorced social worker and mother of four teenage children.

Tice earned a nursing degree from McMaster University and a Master's in social work from The University of Toronto.

They were similar in death if, not in life.

Both Erin and Susan were found in their beds and both suffered significant physical and sexual violence," Smith said.

Both women lived alone.

Both Gilmour and Tice lived low-risk lifestyles.

In 2008 - a quarter-century after the murders - improvements to DNA testing and filing allowed police to conclude that both women were assaulted and murdered by the same man.

How did their killer connect with each of them?

Why did the killer seem to disappear after the murders?

There's no indication that the two women knew each other.

Where did Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour's lives intersect?," Arntfield asked. They had dramatically different lifestyles."

Tice's body was discovered in the upstairs bedroom of her home on Grace Street near Harbord Street on Aug. 17, 1983.

Her uncle checked on her after she missed a family dinner. Her mail had piled up. Her back door had been left open.

Four months later, on Dec. 20, 1983, Gilmour was murdered in her nearby Yorkville apartment.

Gilmour lived in a particularly high-rent part of town, above the clothing boutique where she worked as manager.

Gilmour's killer had a tight window of opportunity to take her life and then escape.

On the final evening of her life, Gilmour finished work at 8:45 p. m.

Thirty-five minutes later, her body was found by her boyfriend.

Her door was also ajar.

On the surface, Tice and Gilmour appeared quite different.

There is no record of Susan and Erin having anything in common," Smith said.

There was, however, one notable difference in the two murder scenes.

Gilmour's body was covered by a comforter, while there was nothing to cover Tice's body.

That's open to different streams of thought.

We are unsure the significance of the blanket over Erin," Smith said. It could have been shame or it could have been an attempt to conceal her body."

Arntfield doubts the killer felt any particular guilt or closeness to Gilmour.

This is more of a compulsion than any act of remorse," Arntfield says.

So why wasn't Tice covered too? One can only guess.

And where did the killer go after the two murders?

No third or fourth victim with the same DNA appeared in police databases. Is this simply a sign of Canada's relatively soft DNA testing procedure, compared to the U.S.?

Whoever killed Gilmour and Tice was obviously extremely angry. Both women were stabbed repeatedly. The word overkill" has been used to describe the murders.

Did the killer just go away?

If so, where? Prison on another charge? Another country? The grave?

These two (murders) are related but there's no other crime scene that we know of," Arntfield said.

Since there was no sign of forced entry in either of their homes, it's natural to assume that the killer was allowed inside and then attacked.

Tice and Gilmour were intelligent women. What sort of man would be able to easily enter both homes?

Did they have a common delivery person? Repair person?" Arntfield asks.

Could the killer have been an electrical worker? Plumber? Property manager?

There are countless" potential names, Arntfield says. What happened to this person?"

Both women were relative newcomers to their homes.

In the month before her death, Tice had moved to Toronto from Calgary after splitting from her husband.

Gilmour had barely settled into her apartment on Hazelton Avenue in the two months before her death.

Could the killer have something to do with the moving business?

They were both attacked in a new home where they should have felt safe.

Gilmour's aunt Shelagh Vansittart told Judy Nyman of the Star shortly after her murder that she was a gentle person and by no means a spoiled brat or a socialite."

She was one of the sweetest, most understated girls you could find," her aunt told Nyman. She was always thinking of things she could do for you."

Gilmour's aunt ran a furniture store on Hazelton, steps from Erin's new home.

The reason she lived here was because she was surrounded by us and we felt she was protected by us," Vansittart said.

Did the killer live near Gilmour and Tice? The two murder sites were just a few kilometres apart.

Gilmour had recently gotten obscene calls. This was in the days before ubiquitous cell phones. Her phone number wasn't listed.

Tracking the killer is the sort of thing that haunts investigators.

Could he have been arrested since the murders? If so, was he savvy enough to plead out to a reduced charge to dodge a DNA testing order?

These people don't just stop after two," Arntfield said. The question is what happened to this person?"

Police hope advances in DNA research lead them all the way to the killer.

Perhaps the answers may come from a form of DNA analysis called genetic genealogy.

Genetic genealogy draws from DNA voluntarily submitted for family tree research to sites like 23andMe or Ancestry.ca.

Earlier this year, Toronto police announced they used a genetic genealogy database to identify a homeless woman whose body was found in June 2020 with no identification and few belongings in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

The same technique also solved the 1984 murder of nine-year-old Christine Jessop of Queensville. Police announced in October 2020 that her killer was Calvin Hoover, a family acquaintance who committed suicide in 2015.

We are still working through the genetic process," Smith said. We are making good progress but there are a number of challenges that have made things difficult to account for. We are hoping to have answers for the families sometime in 2022."

Smith doesn't go into detail about the number of challenges that have made things difficult to account for."

This is still an open ongoing investigation," Smith said. The challenges will eventually be clarified but at this time all we can say is that there is significant challenges in the investigative process."

The murders of Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice remain unsolved.

Peter Edwards is a Toronto-based reporter primarily covering crime for the Star. Reach him via email: pedwards@thestar.ca