Police end search of McArthur’s apartment

An exhaustive and exhausting four-month search of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur’s apartment has concluded, Toronto police announced Tuesday, saying their probe of the unit where multiple murders are alleged to have occurred necessitated painstaking forensic examination.

The scrutiny of the apartment, combined with the search of other related scenes, have made the case the largest forensic examination in the force’s history, police said. “Our team is tired, but proud,’’ said Det. Sgt. Hank Idsinga, who is leading the investigation. McArthur, a 66-year-old self-employed landscaper, was arrested in January and faces eight counts of first-degree murder in connection with the disappearances of several men, most of whom had ties to Toronto’s gay village.

Police have so far recovered the remains of seven men from large planters at a Toronto home where McArthur worked and stored his equipment. The forensic work on McArthur’s apartment was extensive, Idsinga said, performed by 10 officers, with two of them on the scene every day since police took over the unit in mid-January.

“You can imagine when you open the door to that place, you’re proceeding inch by inch going into the premises, literally, examining every square inch,’’ Idsinga said. “It’s extremely labour intensive when you tackle a scene like that.’’ Investigators snapped more than 18,000 photographs of the apartment in midtown Toronto and seized more than 1,800 items, Idsinga said. Examining McArthur’s apartment also required a different approach from going through a scene where a crime is thought to have recently taken place as the alleged murders in the case date back several years.