CANADA Canada - Susan Tice, 45, & Erin Gilmour, 22, Toronto, Aug & Dec 1983

Very interesting 3/4 down, long article with good pics.
https://consideringcoldcases.wordpr...onto-serial-killer-who-has-never-been-caught/
October 14, 2017

Susan was 45 years old and a mother of four children. She worked with disadvantaged children and had obtained a nursing degree from McMaster University and a master’s degree in social work from the University of Toronto. She lived alone in her home at 341 Grace Street.

Click to expand...

341 Grace Street, Susan’s home

Snively said:

For what's it worth, if you put any connection to the phases of the moon, both murders fell very close to special moon events in 1983.

August 8, 1983 - Super New Moon
August 23, 1983 - Micro Full Moon
August 23, 1983 - Blue Moon

December 19, 1983 - Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

Click to expand...

Someone taking nightime photos of the moon?
speculation, imo.

Chorley8 said:

yes but how do you research, deal with random

Click to expand...

You have to look for similar crimes and take the geographic relationship into account. But you can't discount robberies in the area in case these were a case of someone planning to rob the place and somebody walked in. The person who pointed out the similarity in a crime just north of the area is on the right track.

Snively said:

You have to look for similar crimes and take the geographic relationship into account. But you can't discount robberies in the area in case these were a case of someone planning to rob the place and somebody walked in. The person who pointed out the similarity in a crime just north of the area is on the right track.

Click to expand...

But the motivation here is sex/rape surely. There is so little time involved in the Gilmour murder and we don't know that anything of hers was missing do we? With Tice.....she had just been away and that would have been a better time to rob the house. LE may or may not know if the Tatiana case is linked. We have to guess not or they would say so. The owner of Robins Knits was in jail for a year and lost the business in the related turmoil is that correct? I suppose that could bring in contact with some out of control characters but I cannot build anything from that. By the way did Susan shop at Robin's Knits? Not sure why LE are focusing only on bars/restaurants. The intuition of Erin's brother is that there is some connection between the two women. Like everyone else he doesn't know what that is.

IF they were stabbed in the heart that to me (and tell me if I am wrong) is unusual and strange. Oddly perhaps it seems stabbing is a more or less out of control rage crime and people just lash out stabbing people sometimes multiple times where a single stab would to the heart would do it. What does that mean?

My suspect lived equidistant between the two crime locations. He was an inveterate walker.

Was there DNA in the Christine Prince case? I think not? She and boyfriend and friends met in Yorkville I believe before she went home and was killed a few blocks away. The FBI profile there though was of two men.

I think you're right about the motivation of these two being rape, but almost always a murderer begins with lesser crimes like robbery. Somebody breaking into a house to rob it, then finds it a "rush" and it goes from there, progressing to murder.

Somebody that murders once often have no priors. Things just got out of hand. But somebody that has murdered twice had built up to that first murder with prior criminal behaviour. Most people breaking into a place for the first time would run if confronted. I have a feeling prior to these murders, this person had been breaking into places and getting away. It's possible they may have even got caught. Searching for break-ins within 5 to 10 years prior, in this area, you may find a pattern. They likely continued after this, and this being before DNA samples were kept, this person may have got caught but no DNA sample was ever taken.

I think the police have already rundown every person they could be connected to. It's the only reason I think it's a random murder. Chorley's idea of somebody being a walker would fit.

Chorley, was your suspect known to either of the two ladies?

Hoping to learn more about Susan Tice's personality and interests.
Wondering if she shared any with Erin, such as photography?
Judging by Susan's first name and Erin's second name, assuming they are both of Irish ethnicity- do they have anything else in common?
rbbm. speculation, imo.
http://www.readersdigest.ca/features/heart/never-give-one-familys-hope-justice/view-all/

Tatar tells me and laughs at the memory of her friend who loved dancing, mischief, Asian food, Spanish culture and taking pictures with the Nikon she carried everywhere. But she was introspective, too. A deep thinker who was preoccupied with injustice, she always went out of her way to extend love. On Christmas day in 1983, the day after Erin was buried, one lone present remained under the tree after the others were opened: a sweater Tatar had admired. This makes her cry, after all these years, about her kind friend whose absence leaves a “hole that can never be filled.” If Tatar could talk to her again, just once, she would ask her, “Erin, where have you been? Everyone’s been looking for you.” Erin and her friend Karen O’Connor used to run around The Bishop Strachan School in matching engineer overalls and raccoon coats. “Erin had so many close friends,” she tells me. They all gravitated to her cool rec-room parties and her kitchen, where her striking and glamorous mother held court, dispensing food and advice, and attracting, like her daughter, flurries of besotted young men.

“It is the biggest catastrophe of my life,” says O’Connor, who works on Wall Street. Like everyone I speak to, she emphasizes Erin’s creativity, flair, popularity and sweetness.

Click to expand...

Re Snively's question did they know her? I don't know. I am afraid I only meant suspect for the most part in the websleuths sense. Note: I now know Hemingway's was around then in terms of bars. Question: years ago I could have sworn I read about a sexual assault at a primary school and they had DNA. Someone had brazenly entered the school and I think a washroom from the outside. They linked it to a murder of two women in Toronto . I THOUGHT it was this case. But surely LE would not hold something back that was public at some point. The focus of the article was that it was unusual to have this different kind/age of victim. I can't think of what other case it could be. I asked this here way back and was assured it could not be this case. But just trying again....

Erin's apartment now a business and you can see the interior, not that I see how this can help
Google Maps

General question not relating to this case. How difficult would it be for someone with lots of money to bribe someone to switch DNA in a dormant case file?

There is a significant reward in this case. It is not solved. That means 1. Nobody truly knows a thing other than the perpetrator. 2. Someone is really scared or really loyal or both 3. It is not a lot of money to them. Any other possibilities? Note the detective from Toronto LE cold case states in his video that somebody knows who the murderer is. If correct how does that fit in to the above?

Referenced this case on a US thread because of some similarities, fwiw, imo, speculation.
NY - NY - Sheila Shephard, 22, Saratoga Springs, stabbed in bed,23 Nov 1980
Spa City police take a fresh look at a cold case
"SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Spa City police, aided by modern technology such as DNA testing, are taking a fresh look at a gruesome unsolved murder that shocked the area 38 years ago this week.

Sheila Shepherd’s nude, lifeless body, with hands and feet tied to bedposts, was found in her second-floor apartment at 125 Church St. two days after she was killed, at about 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 23, 1980.

The cause of death was asphyxiation, from choking on a blouse shoved in her mouth. A four-inch steak knife protruded from her abdomen, but it’s believed the stabbing occurred after death because she didn’t bleed from the wound."

If the perp cannot be identified, maybe a projected description can be released?

Ellen Greytak: New DNA Techniques Will Keeping Cases From Going Cold | Inverse
By Ellen Greytak, Director of Bioinformatics at Parabon NanoLabs on May 3, 2019
"When detectives come to us with crime scene DNA, they’ve already uploaded the DNA to a database and not gotten a hit, and they’ve already excluded all the obvious suspects. These cases often have no witnesses, so the only information detectives have about the perpetrator is whether they are male or female, which is one of the only things that can be determined from a traditional DNA profile. Beyond that, it could be anyone.

Our goal is to use innovative forensic techniques, such as DNA phenotyping and kinship inference, which I helped create, as well as the genetic genealogy methods created by my colleague, CeCe Moore, to generate information from DNA that couldn’t have gone any other way.

Without this new information, a lot of these cold cases might never be solved.”
Frankly, without this new information, a lot of these cold cases might never be solved. There is just not enough evidence to point to the perpetrator. But what we’re consistently finding is that if there’s DNA — even if it’s from 50 years ago — it still ties that perpetrator back to that crime scene. The DNA just needs to be analyzed in a new way, such as using DNA phenotyping to generate a description of the perpetrator’s physical appearance.

In cold cases, it could be that one piece of new information that suddenly changes everything. Maybe it changes how the investigator is looking at their case file or prompts them to look in a different direction.

In some of the cases we work on, investigators think they have a description of the person, and all the case information has been interpreted in light of that description. But when we analyze the DNA, we find the perpetrator’s appearance is actually quite different. And just pivoting toward that new description is enough to get them on a path that leads to an ID.

In addition to cold cases, we’re also seeing that these techniques can be used to keep cases from going cold in the first place. Now, when crime scene DNA doesn’t hit in a database or match any of the suspects, detectives don’t have to wait 30 years for a new technology to come along.

With DNA phenotyping, for example, those detectives can know immediately that they’re looking for someone of a particular description and avoid chasing false leads. Or, through genetic genealogy, our analysts can build a family tree around the DNA and help figure out who that person was."

ETA This is the first time to read that a drug- addled person crept up behind Erin and pushed her inside the apt.

Palm Beach resident channels the pain of losing child into helping at-risk kids
By Wendy Rhodes Apr 29, 2019 rbbm.
"Fiji Water founder and his wife donate $10M for Opportunity school in West Palm Beach
Some people say there is no greater heartbreak than that of losing a child.
David Gilmour is one of those people.
“It’s with you every day,” Gilmour says of having his only child, Erin, die when she was 22.
Gilmour and his wife Jillian, Erin’s stepmother, have lived part-time in Palm Beach for 25 years. Gilmour is best-known as the founder of Fiji Water but has also started 15 other companies and authored a book.

Like many Palm Beach residents, the Gilmours are philanthropic. They recently donated $10 million to start an endowment fund for Opportunity, an upscale preschool in Westgate, a blighted, unincorporated area of West Palm Beach."
"Gilmour’s passion for early childhood education was inspired by his daughter.
She was an amazing little pied piper,” he says. “She loved kids, and kids loved her.”
But Erin was never able to fulfill her dream of working with children. On a frigid night in 1983, she was murdered.
It was Christmastime in Toronto. Erin had just moved into a new apartment — her first taste of independence. She was so excited.

One evening, Erin arrived home and put her key in the front door lock. She didn’t know that a drug-addled man had crept up behind her. He pushed her inside.

“After the rage subsides and the watershed is subsiding, you learn to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Gilmour says of living with the horror of knowing what happened to Erin. “My daughter is in a better place.”

Today, Gilmour smiles when he talks about Erin. But that peace of mind did not come easily. After Erin’s murder, Gilmour grew despondent and began to self-medicate with Valium and vodka.


Two years later, he was on a downward spiral — until something strange and wonderful happened when he and Jillian were on a getaway in France: Erin visited him.

A message from beyond

“She said, Daddy, what are you doing? I just want to be proud of you. I’m all right — you’re not. Make me proud of you,” Gilmour says of Erin’s words.

That morning, he flushed the Valium down the toilet. “I think the fish in the Avallon river are still stoned,” he says.

With Jillian’s love and support, Gilmour pulled himself together. However, still consumed by grief, he vowed to never have more children.

“David didn’t really want to be that vulnerable again,” Jillian says. “He couldn’t even take the dogs leaving the room.”

The couple channeled their anguish into action, opening nine schools worldwide before partnering locally with Opportunity."

"It has been more than 35 years since Erin died. Her case has been reopened five times, but her murderer, whose DNA also links him to other murders, has not been caught.

At 87, Gilmour knows he may never see his daughter’s killer brought to justice. But his dedication to fulfilling her dreams gives him purpose and hope.

“Daddy . . . I just want to be proud of you . . . Make me proud of you.”

Through what they call the most important philanthropic undertaking of their lives, the Gilmours have found a way to ensure that the ethereal presence of their beautiful pied piper endures: They have named Opportunity’s new building The Erin H. Gilmour Early Learning Center."

Toronto Police Service :: To Serve and Protect

Erin
GILMOUR
Age: 22

Gender: Female

Murdered on: December 20, 1983

Location: 53 Division

Details of Investigation:
On Tuesday, December 20, 1983, at about 9:20 p.m., police responded to an emergency call on Hazelton Avenue near Scollard Street.

The victim was discovered inside a residence, suffering from stab wounds. Despite life-saving efforts by emergency personnel, the victim was pronounced dead at the scene."

The thing that never quite worked with the drug addict theory was the area that Gilmour lived in around Hazleton Lanes, a drug addict would have stood out if they were hanging around those shops and houses. That day she was murdered wasn't the first time that individual had been in that area. He knew it well. Most drug addicts I've seen in a high end area are well known by the people in the area. Ask any five people and they can all tell you who the person is with a very good description. People do pay attention to things like that.

Snively said:

The thing that never quite worked with the drug addict theory was the area that Gilmour lived in around Hazleton Lanes, a drug addict would have stood out if they were hanging around those shops and houses. That day she was murdered wasn't the first time that individual had been in that area. He knew it well. Most drug addicts I've seen in a high end area are well known by the people in the area. Ask any five people and they can all tell you who the person is with a very good description. People do pay attention to things like that.

Click to expand...

The drug theory does not seem likely to me either as both murders involved sex assault and nothing was said afaik, about any theft, plus the obscene phone calls that Erin received beforehand, do not seem to fit a drug addict.
Wondering if a mistake was made in the article, or if there was some type of evidence in the perp's DNA that showed drug use, if so, at that time, in that neighbourhood, cocaine might be a possibility.
When i first moved to the city, fairly close to the area a year after the murder, people kept telling me to be careful, i did not pay close attention to crime as i do now, although i received those type of calls too both at home and at my then day job, as did a couple of the other females.
Although the club/restaurant that Erin and Susan apparently both frequented has not been named, it would not surprise me if it was one that i would have also spent time, i often wonder
who the perp could be, what he might look like and if he is out there somewhere..?
Oh, and why the perp plunged a knife into Erin's heart, is there significance in that particular action?
speculation, imo.

It's certainly possible, as you said Dotr, that our vision of a drug addict differs from her parents. Certainly there were high rollers with a coke problem all around the area, but that just doesn't seem to be what they are describing. Also as you said there was no report of anything being stolen and the drug addict I'm picturing would have taken anything of value they could carry.

I know all of her friends were apparently looked at but I wouldn't be surprised if it was either someone that she knew in passing that worked around the area, like a bartender at the restaurant or a patron. They wouldn't stand out hanging out around the area like a drug addict.

New to the thread. I've read it all but will also try to read more about the cases from news articles. So sad. Both Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour seemed like such kind people who cared about the world around them.

I agree with @Snively & @dotr that based on what I've read, it also seems to me that the offender would have blended in the area. If the offender stood out, then there would have been reports of a suspicious figure, perhaps even a witness.

I'm not familiar at all with Toronto, so please pardon any ignorance. Just wanted to ask if Susan Tice's neighborhood was considered safe in the early 80s. It's clear from this thread that Yorkville is and was upscale, but wasn't so sure about where Tice lived.

Also, I google mapped the locations and saw that both Tice and Gilmour lived near parks. Maybe that is relevant to the case. Tice lived near Bickford Park and Gilmour near Jesse Ketchum Park.

DSCrime said:

New to the thread. I've read it all but will also try to read more about the cases from news articles. So sad. Both Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour seemed like such kind people who cared about the world around them.

I agree with @Snively & @dotr that based on what I've read, it also seems to me that the offender would have blended in the area. If the offender stood out, then there would have been reports of a suspicious figure, perhaps even a witness.

I'm not familiar at all with Toronto, so please pardon any ignorance. Just wanted to ask if Susan Tice's neighborhood was considered safe in the early 80s. It's clear from this thread that Yorkville is and was upscale, but wasn't so sure about where Tice lived.

Also, I google mapped the locations and saw that both Tice and Gilmour lived near parks. Maybe that is relevant to the case. Tice lived near Bickford Park and Gilmour near Jesse Ketchum Park.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the thread, DSCrime, nice to have you here!
Unsure about Susan's neighbourhood at the time, but i believe it was a safe, family oriented area,it is also near the U of T.
Yorkville was and is (post hippy era) an upscale, trendy type area, lots of restaurants, shops ect. in the 80's there were also a number of venues for shows, bands ect.(the good ol' days)

The victims were different ages and did not resemble one another at all.imo.

Cold Case Files: Toronto police searching for killer linked to 2 murders from 1983
November 1, 2016 rbbm.
“I think the DNA link with Susan Tice was a real eye-opener because all of a sudden you had two victims from the same guy. The (modus operandi was) the same. They were both raped (and) they were both stabbed,” McCowan said."

“There is something there that this guy picked these two woman. They were both at very different points in their life. They didn’t look similar and they lived in different areas, but there is some connection to this guy for sure.”

Police haven’t given up.

“Ultimately, to solve one of the cases means we solve both,” Gallant said."

dotr said:

Very interesting 3/4 down, long article with good pics.
The Toronto Serial Killer Who Has Never Been Caught
October 14, 2017

341 Grace Street, Susan’s home

https://consideringcoldcases.wordpr...onto-serial-killer-who-has-never-been-caught/

Click to expand...

Very interesting article. Both women had recently moved into their homes. Wonder if any service workers were looked into? Cable/Electric/Etc; These women were not similar looking which makes me wonder if the perp didn’t care about a type but looked for opportunity instead. Or he had a convo with these women and their personalities were similar, which could’ve been the attraction. MOO

https://www.readersdigest.ca/culture/never-give-one-familys-hope-justice/


Sean cannot speak for the tears. He misses that she will never meet his four children. He misses talking to her and getting advice, as he so often did when he was having a hard time at school. It is a wound that never heals.

Sean wants that name.

“We just need one name.”