Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Between 2010 and 2017, a series of disappearances of vulnerable men in Toronto’s gay Village raised suspicions of a serial killer. Bruce MacArthur, initially an unlikely suspect, was eventually linked to the cases through investigations into missing persons and online activities. His arrest in 2016 led to the discovery of human remains in planters at his home, shedding light on his crimes against the LGBTQ community
between 2010 and 2017 vulnerable men keep disappearing from Toronto’s gay village
are they simply leaving of their own accord?
there were an awful lot of occurrences of of missing men ,guys who just wanted to disappear do we have a serial killer toronto police just simply did not know .
the same name keeps crossing detectives desks but he makes an unlikely suspect ,he lived in a family that was very religious ,he comes across a very softspoken very gentle older man
while investigators gather the evidence they need the suspect is free to target new victims.
what would it take to prove the guilt of a man who’ evaded detection for almost a decade
which part of the puzzle would reveal t the killer’s misstake?
that summer in Toronto was overcast and depressively humid towards the end of june
friends of 49 year old andrew kinsman reported in missing he
had a regular routine, appointments that were missed, textmessages emails that were missed
right away people knew something was wrong and it was completely out of character
project houston was launched after a spate of disappearances from toronto’s gay villages some seven years earlier .
Skandaraj Navaratnam went missing in late 2010.
he had last been in the early hours of september 6th leaving a bar near chuch street with an unknown male.
40 year old sri lanka refugee Skandaraj felt that he had found his forever home in toronto’s gay community
for a long time the chuch and wellesley community has been a center in the city for the Queer community in terms of being a place to gather to socialize to celebrate to find support.
when people talk about the church they think of it as averall a safe neighborhoood ,it’s known for being a very and open an tolerant space
it’s a the site of gay pride parades and it’s a space that draws LGBQ folks from all over the country and other countries
Skandaraj Navaratnam disappearance went unsolved and over the next two years two more men wer reported missing
Abdulbasir Faizi was a 42 year old husband and father, his family knew nothing about his secret visits to gay bars, he was reported missing in december 2010
in october 2012 another family man who was leaving a double life disappeared from toronto street Majeed Kayhan
you had people who had full lives, social lives, support networks ,family, hobbies there was no logic to why they would suddenly disappeare.
you’ve got three missing men,between 2010 and 2012 that the police simply not know what happened to them
then in late 2012 an unexpected lead
after several en had gne missing there was a tip that linked one of the men to a potenial international or some kind of cannibal ring .
the police in switzerland were contacted by an informant the informant told them he was part of a online cannibal fetish community
and he had been chatting with a user on the website who was identified at the time as john jacob
and john jacob told this informant that he had killed and eaten a brown skin male from from toronto’s gay village.
so the informant went online himself to see if there are any murder victims or missing men from toronto’s gay village and he happpened to find the press release about Skandaraj Navaratnam
it sounds like a bit of an unbelievable story but the last time he had given them similar information it was about a cannibal in slovakia.
based on his information the police in slovakia ended up finding a cannibal serial killer and finding multiple victims around his property.
it was an intriguing lead but it came to nothing the individual posting online about killing and eating another man was nothing more than a fantasist
all the conclusions that police came to essentially in may of 2013
was john jacob was not responsible for killing Skandaraj Navaratnam or any of these men and at that time there is no evidence to sayany of those men had been murdered
project houston did not find the missing men and in 2013 after all leads had been exhausted the investigation was brought to a close.
but 3 years later men began going missing from chuch and wellesley again
a 50 nyear old professional painter Soroush Mahmudi was another refugee this time from Iran he was last seen in august 2015 near the home in scarborough toronto that he shated with his family
his wife notified police when he failed to return home from work one summer evening,the police was unable to trace him
in spring 2017 another man was reported missing Selim Esen he was a 44 year old turkish citizen the last known sighting of him was at his home near chuch and wellesley around april 15th
selim Esen a lot like Skandaraj resident of the gay village didin’t have a permanent address wasn’t reported missing for about 2 weeks after he disapeared.
five missing men over a 7 year period,police couldn’t tell if the incidents were linked
was a predator targeting some of the most vulnerable members of torontos LGBT community at this stage detectives were unsure.
did police have a serial killer they just simply didn’t know at that point in time what they were dealin with.
this are people who do not receive the same kinds of attention from the media or from police when they go missing.
if you loook on the west coast to the story of the highway of tears there are generations of missing and murdered indigenous people who have vanished without much media attention or police resources to find them.
and serial killers are very aware of this thing s they know that they can gety away with it with certaine people easier than others.
but when andrew kinsman disappeared in summer 2017 there
was a nes surge of interest in solving the mystery of Torontos missing men.
andrew kinsman probably had the most prominent stature in terms of the most social connections,did a lot of volunteer work with Queer organizations
and so his disappearance compared to others really got on the radar and he had a group of people who were really advocating for his disappearance to receive high priority in the investigation
kinsman had last been seen near to his home in the victorian neighborhood of cabbagetown northeast of toronto city center on june 26th.
a man of regular routines detectives were able to focus on his last known movements.
one thing that jumped out from the surveillance video from the neighborhood was a red dodge caravan that circled the block twice right around the time when andrew kinsman went missing which was at about 2:30 in the afternoon june 26th
to find it on a camera a couple blocks away from andrew kinsmans house but there’s over 6,000 red dodge caravans in the city of toronto
but detectives also knew on andrew kinsman’s calender ,he had a appointment noted -bruce so out of those over 6,000 red dodge caravans how many of them were registred to somebody named bruce
there were 5 one of them being bruce mcarthur.
it was a name detectives had heard before it had cropped up 5 years earlier during project houston.
the investigationinto the disappearances of Skandaraj Navaratnam Abdulbasir Faizi and Majeed Kayhan
the forces computer experts had been trolling the gay hookup websites used by some of the missing men in an effort to find out who they may have met up with in the days before they went missing
they had identified a username of silverfox as being somebody that detectives wanted to interview in relation to these missing persons .
silverfox was the online handle used from time to time by bruce MacArthur
in november of 2013 ,51 division actually identified who sillverfox was and interviewed bruce MacArthur -he was strictly a wittness at the time of the interview
his name now linked half a decade later to yet another missing person’s case
could MacArthur shed any light on the disappearances .
MacArthur was brought to the attention of the police for having assaulted a male prostitute in a bar.
Toronto, 2012
as detectives in toronto ,canada looked into the disappearance of six men the same name had twiceappeared on their radar
who was Bruce MacArthur?
did anything about his background make him a likely suspect
we know that MacArthur came from a religious household,his father was presbyterian, his mother was catholic
and there was some bullying of him by his father at least what MacArthur alleges is that his father was harder on him because he sensed his son’s lack of masculinity.
he grew up in a world that was very intolerant and thhat was not accepting of people who were not straight .
and that this was something that he may have been struggling with for who knows how long,he could have been having desires to be with other boys and men since his adolescence or teenage years
he lived in a world where in a sense he had to hide his true self from not only his family but the rest of the world and this can be a traumatic experience for a young person to grow up in a world where you feel like you constantly have to have a mask
detectives found out that it wasn’t until his late 40s that MacArthur felt able to let the masks slip a little
MacArthur was married for 25 years , this isn’t uncommon,he told his wife he came out to his wife and left her
and had this sort of second birth, this rebirth into the gay world, started socializing in the gay bars meeting other gay men .
Toronto is a very active vibrant gay community, it’s a neighborhood that has a long- standing history for being this space that is very tolerant towards LGBTQ folks
it has a very active night life there are bars there are sex clubs there’s a lot of activity and somebody like bruce MacArthur after living repressed for so long comes to this and he feels like a kid in a candy store.
he starts meeting other gay men , tall , short, out of towners, foreigners masculin and feminine
he’s at this point somebody who’s very eager to get caught up with this life that he’s been repressing for so long .
he throws himself wholeheartedly into this lifestyle and tries to really catch up on time that he’s missed
as they studied his habits and pastimes officers discovered a man who participated in the wider community in positive ways
he comes across as a very softspoken, very gentle older man who played santa in a shopping mall
he worked as a landscape gardener and was was popular with his wealthy often elderly clients, but combing through old arrest records officers also discovered another side to MacArhtur.
they found that the transition into his new lifestyle of a gay single man had not always gone smoothly
we knoe that in 2001 MacArthur was brought to the attention of the police for having assaulted a male prostitute in a bar
he claims that it was a result of him being off his medication for epilepsy this shows that he’s beginning to experiment with different kinds of domination and that he’s enjoying the sense of power that he has over people
at this stage it can still be purely sexual he also may have felt rejected in that moment and feltt angered by the fact that he was finally trying to live his true life his true self and embrace this and then somebody told him “no”
MacArthur was senteced to 2 years probation a psychological assessment concluded that the risk for further violence from him was very minimal
reading the report 16 years later in 2017, the investigators vondered if the incident was a red flag.
as part of his probation arrangement MacArthur is ordered to stay out of the gay area of toronto this would been the straw that broke the cow”s back
this was the stress he’s finally come out of the closet ,he’s leading this life that he enjoyed leading, now he’s barred
even if the probation condition was intended to protect toronto’s gay population from MacArthur’s violent tendencies detectives would later discover it had not been successful
in june 2016 MacArthur had once again come to the attention of the police
there’s an incident in north toronto where MacArthur is arrested for choking a male in te back of his van.
the same red dodge vans seen passing andrew kinsman’s house that day that he was last seen alive.
he was interviewed by the police and he sort of denied what happened the database wasn’t search to look for the prior conviction and they just believed his word.
and that was that , that was the end of that 2016 investigation.
there were just a litany of examples where you could have caught MacArthur that weren’t followed up on,
looking back in 2017 at the spate of suspicious disappearances detectives realized that there were plenty of reasons to view MacArthur as a potential suspect.
the 2001 occurence comes up and in the meantime since the 2013 interview there also an incident in 2016 so that ‘s a red flag that goes up as well.so the investigation focuses at that point in time onon Bruce MacArthur
in august 2017 toronto police launched project PRISM
a new task force to investigate the disappearance of andrew kinsman and Selim Esen
MacArthur was their prime suspect but they needed more evidence finding his wan was an urgent priority.
in the days following the public announcement of project PRISM he gets rid of the red dodge caravan
discovering that MacArthur’s rusted van was no longer in his possession officers from the project prison team began the painstaking process of contacting every secondhand dealer and wrecking yard in the Toronto area
in late september they finally struck gold at an auto parts business 66 km outside of the city .
what they discovered would be the first significant break in the investigation
the red dodge caravan is forensically examined .
and in the back of the van there is blood,which is found and eventually identified as belonging to andrew kinsman
so once the police had that information in november of 2017
now it becomes evidence of a murder and evidence obviously linking MacArthur to that murder
it was compelling evidence of MacArthur’s involvement in whatever had happpened to andrew kinsman.
but what about the other missing men ,were they alive or had they become victims of a serial killer ?
detectives decided not to bring the suspect in just yet…
as much surveilllance as detectives can muster keeping an eye on him identifying his associates .
he lived in a high -rise apartment building and he had a roomate
surveillance was able to identify an opportunity in the middle of the night where the police were able to go in to his apartment.
there was much more that investigators needed to finnd out about MacArthur’s activities
detectives were headed down the path of preparing a wire tap investigation and once they had the blood they had enough evidence where detectives could go to a judge and get a warrant to allow the police to surreptitiously enter MacArthur’s apartment and clone his computer
you can imagine the logistics of obtaining that judicial authorization to do it having the surveillance teams watching him around the clock
having tech officers ready to go at a moment’s notice and also forensic investigators to take photographs as detectectives executing the warrant
the date was december the 7th 2017
toronto police were able to go into MacArthur’s apartment.
clone 45 % of his computer before surveillance team notifies detectives MacArthur is actually headed back so they have to get out of there and they were lucky enough to be able to get that 45% of his computer.
what digital analysts found on MacArthur’s hard drive was more shocking than they could ever have imagined.
when project PRISM officers examined bruce MacArthur’s digital footprint they were left with little doubt that they were on the trail of a serial killer.
he created a file for each of his victims he had photographs in there of them when they were alive,photographs that he had taken of them
photograph of them on camping trips with a couple of the victims
photographs of them in previous visits
and relationship type photographs
but he also had photographs in their posed postmorten photographs.
the images showed the bodies of the murdered men in posed positions partially clothed or dressed in a fair coat an unlit cigar hanging from their lips.
the photos also revealed two other unknown victims they had never been reported missing.
Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam a 37 year old sri lanka refugee who hadn’t been seen since december 2015
photographs which detectives had recovered from MacArthur’s computer of what turned out to be Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam they had no idea who he was so detectives had to release that to the media .
police released a postmortem image in an effort to find out who the dead man was .
a clear pattern was emerging in what kinds of victims MacArthur chose to target
Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam was a refugee claimant from sri lanka outstanding immigration warrant for never reported as missing and detectives can only narrow down the timeline of his murder very loosely
he was a refugee aboard a bit of a infamous cargo ship called the sun seag which docked in vancouver in 2010 was several hundred refugee claimants on board so really sad vulnerable victims-most of them.
MacArthur got very careful after that 2013 interview to target some people who he knew probably wouldn’t be reported missing.
there wer photos too of another unknown victim Dean Lisowick
who again was never reported as missing was a resident of the shelter system in Toronto
MacArthur sought out a certain type of victim immigrants individuals who may not have their whole family with them in Toronto.
this fit the profile of the type of serial killer who goes for victim that will not go noticed if they go missing .
certain that they were dealing with a serial killer detectives used MacArthur’s digital activities to build a picture of how he had become a killer and why he had chosen to take so many lives
he stumbles across this website Recon which is a fetish website,it’s known for bondage discipline Sadomasochism BDSM
once he had discovered this world it was something that intrigued and excited MacArthur and he knew exactly ther role he wanted to play….
he assumes a more dominant role and seeks out this men who are the subs the subordinates
for MacArthur and his sexual partners this could have been a consensual way of enjoying one another’s company.
but MacArthur seems to have enjoyed going beyond what was normal …..
or safe .
sometimes what happens is that you have a person who is experimenting with rough sex is immersing themsekves in a world of bondage and domination and they enjoy the power that they feel over another person
and it gets to this tipping point where the violence and play escalate to a point where they feel swept up in the moment and the violence takes over and it becomes fatal
and in the aftermath they relive those moments and they realize how much they enjoyed killing
it had happened once perhaps MacArthur saw no reason why it should not happen again and again .
once he decided he was going to kill he created those folders and definitely speaks to premeditation-the power the thrill of dominating them up to the point of killing them is a rush
and they continue having that sense of power by treating the remains the corps of their victims like dolls they have this sense of complete an utter domination over them and they enjoy the sense of humiliation and shame that they can put these poor people through.
in the early days of 2018 bruce MacArthur was under constant surveillance as investigators gathered the evidence they needed to prove the full extent of his crimes.
january the 18th it was a thursday morning detectives had a surveillance team following him and he’s not allowed to go behind a close door with another man unless he does that detectives were’re going to leave him alone till saturday morning .
well, murphy’s law of course, thursday morning he picks up a male who detectives had seen him pick up before and he takes him back to his apartment at about 10:00 in the morning.
the man in MacArthur’s apartment was at risk of becoming his next victim surveillance officers needed to act fast .
within 18 minutes , seeing him go into the building they knocked on the door and MacArthur came to the door and he was placed under arrestright there and then for two counts of murder
and the ninth victim who has never been publicly identified detectives call him “john” was found tied to MacArthur’s bed
and he had a hood placed over his head by MacArthur and he had managed to wiggle the hood off of his head
and sure enough there was a file folder on MacArthur’s computer with the name of tha ninth victim on it .
so there’s no doubt in detectives mind whether it had been that day or a subsequent day that “john” would have been victim number nine.
six men reported missing .
another two identified from MacArthur’s photo album
but the hard hard work was not over for project PRISM, new bodies had been found, victims friends and families had no prospect of closure.
MacArthur was a landscape gardener
had this given him a unique opportunity to conseal eight bodies?
detectives searched the properties where they knew he had lived and worked. they were able to obtain search warrants for the properties and the one property where ultimately all the victims were found on mallory crescent here in Toronto.
and the ravine behind mallory crescent ,this was a location where MacArthur stored his landscaping equipment and it was an older couple who actually owned the house but they had vacation property in northern ontario
so he really had open access to the property during summer months and you can imagine their shock and their suprise when detectives show up and basically tell them you have to get out of your house we don’t know when we’re going to be able to give it back to you .
but with temperatures rarely creeping above freezing at january excavating the ground was going to prove difficult.
it was a really cold winter here in toronto so the ground was frozen solid and the K9 units were first used on the property on mallory crescent
and one of the dogs gave the law enforcement an indication on a planter and the planter was frozen solid so detectives ended up seizing three planters.
and detectives brought them to their property bureau because they had to thaw out so they could so they could search them .
they started thawing out and then the smell of decomposition coming from them was so bad that they were pretty confident that there was something in those planters.
investigators waited in hopes of evidence that would bring project PRISM to a neat conclusion .
and allow eight missing men to finally be laid to rest
everytime detectives identified another victim they laid another murder charge
excavations and exhumations are rarely simply procedures, in january 2018 detective’s team were facing an unusally complex operation to recover the remains of eight murder victims.
a series of giant garden planters with a focus of the search
they ended up taking them to the morgue the first thing the pathologist was able to do was x-ray one of the planters ,he could make out that there was what appeared to b a rib cage in that planter.
it was the first of many distubring discovering by forensic experts .
they had to hoist this planter using a crane up onto an examination table and then yse power saws to cut away the sides of the planters and the first planters they cut open there were some human remains found in that planter
and subsequently in the other planters that detectives recovered from mallory crescent were the bulk of the seven of the eight victims all of them had been dismembered some showed signs of strangulation
MaxArthur’s methods for killing suggest that he was somebody who enjoyed having control, he was somebodywho enjoyed dominating his victims and ffelling the sense of power the thrill of having power over another human life
this is something that he expressed with bondage and with binding his victims it’s also something we see quite often in victims who enjoy strangulation
his method for disposing victims show that he’s somebody who’s very calculating and rational he’s using objects that he has acess to which are planters to hide the remains of his victims
this is also something that allows him to revisit these places where he feels a connection to the remains of these victims that he’s killed .
the actual identification of the remains in the planters needs to be based on dental records,fingerprints, or DNA.
andrew kinsman was in one of the planters and andrew had titanium knee replacements so when detectives found a set of titanium replacements in the remains detectives were pretty confident that that was andrew kinsman
but he was actually still preserved enoug that law enforcement were able to identify his fingerprints.
Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam was identified by fingerprints
Dean Lisowick who is never reported missing was identified from the photographs that was found on MacArthur’s computerand ultimately DNA from the remains
the makority of them were identified through either DNA or dental records at the end of the day.
MacArthur’s method of hiding his victims bodies was not only practical it may also have given him an elicit thrill whenever he was near their remains.
MacArthur discards of his victim’s body in the same place that he’ working in these gardens in these ponds . now one could perhaps assume that this is a disregard for his victims MacArthur might have wanted them close to him
these would have been his totems his trophies his talisman around him while he’s working.
MacArthur kept lots of momentos from his victims including their hair and this is another common practice amongs killers they enjoy having small items that temind them of their victims
this are things that serial killers return to between kills because it gives them a small dose of the rush that they felt when they killed
but ultimately over time the gratification they get from these items begins to taper off and they begin to seek out a new victim because these items can’t ever live up to the real thing through the act of killing another person .
over the course of five long weeks ,investigators continue to unearth human remains.
every time they identifiedanother victime they laid another murdre charge and every time they did that they had to bring MacArthur back to court
advise him of the new charge and put him before the courts -again and he never said anything during any of those interactions
throughout spring and into summer specialist officers continued to search MacArthur’s home and places of work, as well as a forested ravine behind the property where seven sets of human remains had been found
they discovered a bag in his bedroom containing duct tape a surgical gove rope ,zip ties a bungee cord and syringes.
they also uncovered another body .
it wasn’t until july law enforcement recovered the eighth victim he was in a rubber garbage can that was buried in the ravine at the back of mallory crescent
the eight victim was Majeed Kayhan missing since mid-october 2012
after the biggest gorensic investigation in toronto’s historythe search for victims and evidence came to end in late july 2018
the police had their case against bruce MacArthur
in january 0f 2019 he pled guilty to eight count of frst-degree murder.
in february 2019 bruce MacArthur was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of eight men.
he will be eligible for parole in 25 years when he will be 91 years old.