Day specializes in true-crime programs, an increasingly popular genre. [78] Saunders, who had been a homicide detective for nine years, was an investigator first and spoke in terms of evidence that could be presented in court. Hank Idsinga and Toronto Star crime reporter Wendy Gillis, who has covered the case extensively since 2018. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. "He had wonderful clients and he was kind and generous to them," said Fraser on As It Happens, describing McArthur as a "cheerful, kind grandfather," who would make her laugh with stories about demanding clients. [71][68], On January 29, police announced that they had found the dismembered skeletal remains of at least three people in two of twelve large planter boxes seized from the Leaside residence. Each of 600 cold cases was being looked at for consideration of further attention. [42] Police briefly investigated a possible link between Navaratnam's murder and convicted murderer Luka Magnotta, although this lead was eventually abandoned for lack of evidence. Lerner noted that a long and complicated trial could put a burden on the jury and create a risk of mistrial. [106], The police investigation had a continuous presence at the Leaside residence, often described as "ground zero",[107] and police established a command post on the property. Not just what happened, says Day. One of his victims was a homeless sex worker, another an asylum-seeker evading deportation. In production since December 2017, the event went public on March 7 through a news release and Facebook page, described as "part vigil, part celebration". A large planter was wrapped on January 22 and brought to the coroner's office. The police found it intact and had it towed away, also copying surveillance video of McArthur visiting the shop. When the police came to McArthur's door, the serial killer's potential next victim was handcuffed to the bed with a black bag without holes to see or breathe pulled over his head. He will not be eligible for parole until he's 91. Newspapers Limited, 8 Spadina Avenue, 10th Floor, Toronto, ON M5V 0S8. He was born on October 8, 1951, in Lindsay, Ontario, and grew up on a farm in the Kawartha Lakes region. [120][116], A free concert called #LoveWins was initiated by Kristyn Wong-Tam, the only openly LGBTQ member of city council. In 2019, McArthur was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. He said that most of the men appeared to be "East Indian" and that Todd said that they were men whom his father knew. [220] On August 23, 2021, Gauthier was found not guilty on charges of insubordination and neglect of duty. Years on the road as a salesman would have given him ample opportunity to kill. But instead of it being a time of joy, as it is for many, for the roly-poly sock salesman it appeared to add more torment and anger. A colleague who installed water features on three of McArthur's projects described him as more of a gardener, operating out of a little van with old tools. [142][143], Five victims were noted by investigators for similarities: middle-aged, bearded, patrons of The Black Eagle bar, and self-identified as "bears" (gay men with overtly masculine traits). [205], The story was widely cited by other media outlets and caused a backlash against Saunders, with his comments taken by LGBTQ leaders and the community as victim blaming. When Bruce left Janice in 1998 or 1999, under amicable circumstances, he moved to Toronto to begin his new life as an out gay man. [16][8], McArthur, who turned himself in after the attack, said he did not remember the incident or why he might have done it. expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Missing persons posters plastered the sidewalks. [40], Police officers surveilling McArthur decided to apprehend him shortly after they saw a young man enter his Thorncliffe Park apartment on January 18, 2018, believing the man's life was at risk. . Perhaps some lives could have been saved if that was the case. His 2002 Nissan Sentra was found abandoned on Moore Avenue,[145][41] steps away from the Beltline Trail, a small ravine which is a popular cruising spot for gay men. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. [8], McArthur began working for Eaton's department stores as a buyer's assistant around 1973, in a downtown Toronto building later demolished for construction of the Eaton Centre. On January 29, 2019, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in Ontario Superior Court[1] and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for twenty-five years. [233], In a March 9 statement, Saunders said that he understood the public's frustrations with the limited information that had been released during the investigation. Wells' friends say that this resulted in her body being unidentified for months. They took more than 18,000 photographs and collected over 1,800 items. Like Navaratnam, both men were middle-aged immigrants of South Asian origin who disappeared from Church and Wellesley between 2010 and 2012. [61], The investigation picked up in January 2018, when Idsinga noted they had many 15-hour days and a 72-hour stretch of intensive investigation in mid-January. The house was sold in 2000, and records indicate that at that point, McArthur was still married. These three properties were released back to their owners by January 23. [212][213] McArthur either claimed it was the man who had choked him,[207] or that the man had asked to be choked then panicked and fled. [98] Additional planters were seized from across the city,[99] including one from the Danforth neighbourhood[100] and two properties in North Rosedale were searched. Who is Toronto Village Killer Bruce McArthur and where is he now? After watching him walk into his apartment building with a Middle Eastern man on January 18, 2018, they decided to rush inside - believing the man's life was at risk. [22] A criminal defence lawyer found the list of conditions uncommon and suggested that the judge was concerned that McArthur was a danger to all male prostitutes. In 2020, the CBC docudrama The Detectives explored the TPS investigation in two episodes, the first covering Project Houston and the second Project Prism. At the time, they were living in Oshawa, a small city east up the coast of Lake Ontario from Toronto, where there was no such thing as a gay scene. This area contains a virtually infinite number of places to hide bodies. Toronto's Bruce McArthur was a regular feature in the city's gay village. When circumstances permitted, he also strangled them to death. As Australia's 7News reports, the landscaper who was great with his clients' kids (he was Santa, after all) "was turning their gardens into graveyards.". The man was shaken but not injured. Despite this, he felt that the sentence should not be one of vengeance given McArthur's age and his guilty plea. And when the foreboding doors at Millhaven slammed shut behind serial killer Bruce McArthur, probably forever, the end was decidedly unsatisfying. Born in 1951 and raised on a farm northeast of Toronto in a considerably less liberated era, Lee believes that McArthurs battle with his homosexuality lasted a lifetime. [270] He reports leaving McArthur after feeling increasingly uncomfortable in his company. [31] On October 23, 2017, Tampa's interim police chief avoided the term serial killer when three victims had been killed with the same weapon;[198] it was only used after a fourth murder in November when police obtained surveillance video of the same suspect at two crime scenes. He also speaks about the systemic racism that led to lack of police followup when men of colour started going missing in the Village. Hunter recalled the work of German political theorist Hannah Arendt and her term to describe Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann: "the banality of evil." [85] Police initially described Esen as a man of no fixed address who often pulled a wheeled suitcase. Cadaver dogs were having trouble detecting scents due to the cold weather and frozen ground. Detectives had found more disturbing evidence, including images of the eight missing men dressed up - one wearing a fur coat, another with a cigar in his mouth - which police say McArthur had been keeping as trophies. McArthur's childhood was spent in Woodville, Ontario, a small rural town northeast of Toronto. [40][200][151][201] Idsinga denied this, noting that Project Houston was a bigger investigation. [217] Gauthier had fifteen years on the job and was highly regarded by colleagues, praised for his work with difficult cases involving human trafficking. [107][118] Michael Pollanen, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, said his organization had never before been involved in an investigation with such scope, drawing on the skills of each member for many unique challenges, such as scientific issues related to decomposition and post-mortem dismemberment. By 1979 he had married and the couple went on to have a daughter in 1981 and a son in 1986. [27] A 2011 change to the criminal code permits a judge to order that parole ineligibility periods be served consecutively[189] for offences committed after that year, which would include six of McArthur's murders. [128] They drew up a list of fifteen homicide cold cases linked to the gay village,[129] and fitting the general profile of the victims identified thus far. Police have 'no idea' how many more victims", "Gay Village stalked by a serial killer a second time? [48] Police had been told that he had a romantic relationship with Navaratnam and had visited Kayhan. McArthur and his sibling were raised together by their parents who also took in troubled foster children from Toronto. On Oct. 21, 1989, a man's body was found in an isolated area . The Act was passed in March 2018[236] by Ontario's Liberal government as part of Bill 175, but as of October2018[update] it has been stalled by the new Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford with no timeline for bringing it into effect. [271], In 2022, British journalist Mobeen Azhar presented a six-part true-crime series on McArthur titled Santa Claus the Serial Killer, broadcast on BBC Three. [150] He was an immigrant from Afghanistan. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. [116][117] They also announced that a seventh set of remains had been recovered from the Leaside planters. [123][125] McArthur killed him on or about January 6, 2016. In that time and era, the LGBT community was basically frowned upon and more so in that church, Lee said. [197], Arntfield had been critical of the TPS for not admitting that there was a serial killer, suggesting that they could have made an arrest sooner if they had. A welcome email is on its way. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. [141] Jon Riley of Meaford is another possible victim; he had gone to Toronto to find work in landscaping, planning to stay in a shelter at Church and Wellesley, and disappeared in May 2013. [50] The task force also included an officer from the sex crimes unit and six officers from Police 51 Division, three of whom had been members of Project Houston. [52] He was killed by McArthur on or about April 23, 2016. [65][66] McArthur was named in a September 8 request to place a judicial seal on the warrants, and a later request to seal warrants issued from September to November noted "the investigation into Bruce McArthur. He was actually exiled from the Gay Village in 2003, after he used a metal pipe to assault a man there in 2001. [86] Police had received tips from around the world, including countries where McArthur had vacationed. [219] Gauthier wrote that this changed after Saunders' February 27 interview in The Globe and Mail. [35], McArthur had become a self-employed landscaper, operating under the name Artistic Designs. tap here to see other videos from our team. [7] He frequented the bars of Church and Wellesley, Toronto's gay village, and moved into an apartment on Don Mills Road[6] while pursuing a four-year relationship with another man. They were from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, and believed that they had come to a safe country where they would be free from persecution or discrimination. ", "Tory doubles down on call for probe into police handling of missing persons cases linked to Gay Village", "Saunders vows to make changes, explore bias amid criticism of McArthur case handling", "Police chief defends handling of McArthur case", "Police search gardens for alleged serial killer victims", "Did cops let Bruce McArthur slip through fingers in 2016? The voice thats missing is the killers. [27][30] He had met McArthur through dating app Growlr[30] and said that they had met for sex several times. He took staged post-mortem photographs, typically with ropes around their necks or with them nude in a fur coat or hat; some photographs had them with their heads and beards shaved, with McArthur having kept their hair[188][27] in Ziploc bags in a shed at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. He tries to approach true crime stories with sensitivity, not glorifying a serial killer, he says. Navaratnam also worked for McArthur's landscaping business and friends said that they were still involved in 2008. Paul Gauthier from 32Division was charged by the professional standards unit with insubordination and neglect of duty[213] regarding policy on reporting domestic violence, such as videotaping the complainant's statement and obtaining photos of the complainant's injuries. The group consisted of TPSB member Ken Jeffers, ASAAP board member Shakir Rahim, sex-worker advocate Monica Forrester and lawyer Sara Mainville who specializes in cases involving indigenous peoples. [235], In January 2018, the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP) demanded that the TPSB commission an external review of the investigation. On Halloween2001, he attacked a man with a metal pipe in Toronto, and in 2003, was handed a two-year conditional sentence for the assault. [26] Most records and exhibits were destroyed in 2010, in compliance with Toronto Police Service (TPS) retention policy. "He was the best friend, neighbor, relative, anyone could want," she told 7News. Investigators had finished searching the Leaside planters, from which the remains of all but Kayhan had been identified; they had one set of unidentified remains. In mid-December, 519 executives apologized for their "mishandling of information" but placed full blame on the police. permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com. That conflict remained with Faizi, who was not out to his family. McArthur spent years preying upon mostly gay men of colour and, in the end, in 2019, he pleaded guilty to murdering eight men. [34] In 2014, Todd was sentenced to fourteen months in jail for making multiple obscene phone calls. He was born on October 8, 1951, in Lindsay, Ontario, and grew up on a farm in the Kawartha Lakes region. [213] McArthur allegedly began throttling the man, who broke free and said he would report what happened to police. [208] Mayor John Tory defended Saunders as a leader who could repair relationships with the city's communities, despite his "awkward language" in the interview.[206]. [73] Police then covertly entered McArthur's residence and cloned his computer's hard drive. [63], Dean Lisowick, 43 or 44, was not reported missing. [23] The search of the property was extended to an adjacent ravine, aided by cadaver dogs[91] and members of the heavy urban search and rescue team. [260], The investigation, and its possible link to the still-unsolved 1970s murders, were the subject of Bob McKeown's television documentary "Murder in the Village", which aired in April 2018 as an episode of CBC Television's The Fifth Estate. [70][82] Police seized electronic devices from the apartment, including five cellphones, five computers, three digital cameras, and about a dozen USB flash drives. Read more about cookies here. [32] Idsinga was satisfied that there was enough evidence for murder convictions even without the bodies. Even an exhaustive trial may not have provided an answer, but the search for an explanation after a horrific crime is common, experts say its part of how we cope. He moved to Toronto and regularly spent time in the gay village while entering into relationships with men. [13] In October 2018, homicide detective David Dickinson said that they had not yet found any links between McArthur and the cold cases. [182], Reading from an agreed statement of fact,[183] Cantlon divulged details of the killings, which took place in Toronto between 2010 and 2017. the police involved in the investigation declined to speak about the killer's motive. McArthur did not hide the fact, laughing over it at breakfast. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Lives could have been saved: Family of McArthur victim Selim Esen calls for public inquiry, Eight men, eight stories: What we know about serial killer Bruce McArthurs victims, McArthur is the oldest confirmed serial killer in Canadian history. With a potential break on the horizon, the police examined surveillance footage from across the street where Andrew's house was located. TORONTO, Jan 29 (Reuters) A Canadian man charged with the murder of eight men who disappeared over several years pleaded guilty to the charges on Tuesday, police said, in a case that shook Toronto's gay community. His age may have helped him hide 'in plain sight', "Why experts say we should investigate Bruce McArthur's motive even if we never get answers", "BRUCE McARTHUR: Does suspected serial killer embody 'banality of evil? [258] Nikki Ward, a director of the Church-Wellesley Neighbourhood Association and graphic artist, obtained a photograph of Lisowick at a vigil which she cleaned up and shared with media outlets so that his mug shot would not have to be used. There was one job description that McArthur did not list on his resume: that of an undertaker. [7] In addition to raising McArthur and his sister, his parents fostered troubled children from Toronto, often with six to ten in their care at any given time, and had a good reputation in the area according to a family friend. [211][212] Sources then vary, with McArthur following the man to a police station[211] or driving to a Scarborough police station while the man phoned police. When search suggestions are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. [143] According to Lusia Dion, who runs the website Ontario's Missing Adults, missing men are taken less seriously as, "We tend to think they can take care of themselves. Like a lot of his ilk, McArthur probably suffered a traumatic event in his childhood. [41], Jooyoung Lee suggested that there was racism within the gay community, indicated by the relatively weak responses to the disappearances of the brown-skinned men in contrast with the campaign to find Kinsman. He was sentenced to life in . Canadian serial killer Bruce McArthur has been handed a life sentence for the murder of eight men. According to the Toronto Star, a psychological report on McArthur prepared for his sentencing in 2003 concluded that the risk that he would go on to commit more violent acts was "very minimal." However, they were all unfortunate enough to have met Bruce McArthur. McArthur's childhood was spent in Woodville, Ontario, a small rural town northeast of Toronto. He saved these digital photos in order to be able to relive his crimes later. In 1986, the McArthurs bought a home on Cartref Avenue in Oshawa. Younger men, who appear to be of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent, show up in several of his vacation and nightlife pictures. Bruce McArthur, who has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder, apologized in court in a 2003 case to a man he beat with a metal pipe. In McArthur's bedroom, officers found a bag with duct tape, a surgical glove, rope, zip ties, a bungee cord and syringes as well as DNA belonging to multiple victims inside McArthur's van and . [154] He was reported missing by his wife[52] in August. Ive had pretty good success at talking with serial killers over the years, says Day. Now, a new documentary called Catching A Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur airing Friday at 9 p.m. on Super Channel Fuse hopes to peel back the layers of this chilling enigma. All [85] Additional charges were laid and at the end of February, the investigation was expanded to outstanding murder cases, hundreds of missing-persons cases and sudden death occurrences, coordinating with other Canadian and international forces. McArthur was also a client of St. Stephen's and very trusted within the community support organization. A new Canadian true-crime documentary about notorious serial killer Bruce McArthur is the first "super deep dive" broadcast about the murders of eight men in Toronto's gay village, says . He worked for department stores as a buyer's assistant in his twenties in an area which later became known as a gay village. The event was chaired by Salah Bachir, president of Cineplex Media, who identified as a "queer Arab man" and was both sad and angry about the crimes, having known some of the victims personally while his sister was a landscaping client of McArthur's. Before that point youre kind of frozen, he explained. Statement of Facts in the Bruce McArthur Case; 2019 v. McArthur: Admitted Facts. But criminologists and sociologists have been studying the motivations for violence for millennia and we still dont really have a foolproof answer.. Privately, cops and other experts will tell you on pain of death, that yeah, in all probability there are other victims of Bruce McArthur. He was, at this point, charged with the deaths of all five men from the Project Houston and Project Prism investigations. [77] He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder[219] and wrote that he is undergoing treatment due to the toll of being blamed for the murders of Esen and Kinsman. Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur begins streaming on Super Channel Fuse April 30. McArthur, 69, was arrested in January 2018 for murder. The prosecutor wanted to see McArthur jailed with no chance of parole for 50 years, however the judge decided on half that to account for his age. Toronto alleged serial killer case draws parallels to Robert Pickton, 'To know that it's this close to home it's kind of out of Stephen King', With multiple victims and no bodies, police are in 'uncharted territory' in McArthur case, says criminologist, Man missing since 2010 was romantically involved with accused killer Bruce McArthur, says friend. [174] On November 5, he first appeared at the Superior Court of Justice before Justice John McMahon,[175] who noted a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada ruling, by which the trial should conclude before August 2020. McArthur, whose full name is Thomas Donald Bruce McArthur, attended Fenelon Falls Secondary School in the Kawartha Lakes area. He interviewed cult leader Charles Manson not long before his death for the 2017 documentary Charles Manson: The Final Words.. The latest unidentified remains were found in 2018 inside a planter at the same Canadian home where six others were unearthed. Such surroundings were obviously not conducive for coming out as gay. [151] Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, whose ward includes Church and Wellesley, supported police at the time of McArthur's arrest when they expressed gratitude and noted that it was a complicated case. [257], Editor Kathy English said that the Toronto Star would continue to publish Facebook photos of McArthur as a journalistic duty to report reality. [195], While defending the Project Houston investigation and responding to criticisms that police should have recognized the alleged serial killer sooner, Saunders expressed his frustrations to The Globe and Mail that some sources were reporting incidents after McArthur's arrest which could have changed the course of the investigation had they been reported at the time.