Relief, anger for members of Toronto LGBTQ community after arrest in missing men case

Some members of Toronto’s LGBTQ community are expressing relief that an arrest had been made in the presumed deaths of two men who went missing from the city’s gay village last year, but say they’re also angry police didn’t heed their concerns over a possible serial killer earlier.

Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old Toronto man, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder Thursday as part of an investigation into the disappearance of Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman, who were both reported missing from the Church and Wellesley streets area at separate times.

McArthur made a brief appearance in court Friday and was returned to custody until Feb. 14, when he will appear in court through a video link. Alphonso King and his husband John Allan were among those who packed the downtown Toronto courtroom. King said they wanted to see the face of the man whose alleged actions kept the gay village on edge for the better part of a year.

“It was intense,” he said. “For a lot of people, I’m sure that they were really nervous because you didn’t know who it was.” Now that an arrest has been made, there is a sense of relief and hope for closure, King said.

But the pair also said they felt police had put lives at risk by ignoring the community’s concerns over the disappearances for so long. “The community tried to tell them, ‘We think it’s a serial killer, we think that the cases are related, we think that there’s a possibility that it was all tied to one of the (dating) apps or something like that, that there has to be a link,’ and they assured us that there wasn’t,” King said.

“They completely dismissed that notion. They guaranteed us the cases weren’t related, they guaranteed us there wasn’t a serial killer around,” Allan said. “So that’s why we’re pissed off.”