Amid grief, a shattered family shows love to community, police
Deeper and darker than anybody had imagined.
And the imagination had certainly run rampant in the Gay Village.
Missing men, from years ago, and no one talked about them much anymore as time passed. Too much time gone by.
Except suddenly there it was again, within the past nine months, familiar faces which had disappeared from their midst: Selim Esen, vanished on April 14, last seen near Yonge and Bloor Streets, not far from his apartment building. Two months later, Andrew Kinsman vanished, last seen near Parliament and Winchester Streets on June 26.
Inside a community perhaps unparalleled in self-knowledge, in keeping an eye out for one another, the dread began to be voiced aloud: Is there a serial killer out there? Police said no. The police chief said no. But now, with 66-year-old landscaper Bruce McArthur, arrested on Thursday — the one-time mall Santa, according to his own social media footprint, made a first court appearance Friday morning, charged with two counts of first-degree murder — and investigators actively looking for further victims, the answer is presumed: Yes.
McArthur is charged in the deaths of Esen, 44, and Kinsman, 49. There are other men, however, individuals who frequented the Village, of whom nothing has been seen or heard, missing since between 2010 and 2012, all of whom appear to share physical and ethnic characteristics.
McArthur had been under police surveillance for a while, a police source said. Investigators intercepted a vehicle McArthur had allegedly taken to a wrecking yard and found blood stains in the truck, according to CP24.
That finding allowed police to execute a search warrant at McArthur’s Thorncliffe Park residence, the CP 24 source said.
From that search, investigators obtained evidence that allegedly connects the suspect to four possible victims, including Selim and Kinsman.
No further charges have yet been announced.
It was the gay community, and Kinsman’s family, which brought the disappearances forward and kept them there over months and months of searches they organized themselves, following town hall meetings they organized themselves. Hope dies hard. It died with a thud when Patricia Kinsman received a phone call from investigators on Thursday morning while she was babysitting her grandchild.
What she asked immediately: Has his body been discovered? No, it hadn’t. Nor has that of Esen.
“For six months, we’ve been searching for Andrew, with his friends, with his co-workers and even strangers,” Kinsman told a press conference at the 519 Church Community Centre, flanked by two sisters and Greg Downer, a friend of Andrew Kinsman who founded the Facebook group, Toronto’s Missing Rainbow Community, and coordinated multiple volunteer searches as the neighbourhood was plastered with missing person posters.
“We looked for him in the rain, in the heat and in the snow,” continued Patricia Kinsman.
“There was no reason for him to die. Andrew was well-known and loved in the community. He was a happy, caring individual and he would give you the shirt off his back, even if he’d got that shirt at the Salvation Army.”
Said Karen Coles of the finality of the grim news: “To have your hopes just taken in one breath, that’s it. There’s no way you can prepare for this. From when he first went missing, it was surreal. At least now we know what happened.
“That’s the hard part when somebody’s missing. You live with hope and you live with despair.”
None of the Kinsman sisters, Patricia, Karen Coles and Shelley Kinsman, had ever heard of McArthur before.
But police have said the victim had had a sexual relationship with the accused.
“We weren’t privy to that personal part of his life,” said Coles. “I’ve never met any of his partners. But I knew when he had a boyfriend and things like that.”
The sisters don’t drop words like “alleged” into their comments, because they’re not cops and they’re not reporters. They’re loved one still reeling from the shock of what’s been confirmed. He is an alleged killer. The incomprehension is staggering and somewhat paralyzing, as Downer admitted.
“As a community we were asking . . . how do we protect ourselves from hooking up with strangers and it turns out that this wasn’t a stranger. When I look at the image of (McArthur), whatever I had in my head certainly wasn’t what I’m seeing.”
Because so little is known about Esen, believed to have arrived in Toronto from Turkey about three years ago, and even less about the other men who may have been murdered, the impact of so horrific a crime can be measured only, at this point, by Kinsman’s family.
Downer had tried reaching out to other families of the missing. “The common message we got back is it was something they’d already closed and left in the past. So they didn’t want to be part of this process.”
This family, however, put all their energy into ensuring that their brother’s disappearance would not fade away from the public’s mind.
“Andrew is my baby brother,” said Shelley Kinsman. “I’m here today to express my heartfelt thanks to all of those who worked to find him. Above all, I would want to thank those who were a part of Andrew’s life. It shows you shared my love for Andrew.
“Andrew was the best of the best. He loved life. He cared for people and above all, he loved his community.”
What the sisters and Downer made clear is that they are grateful to the police for making an arrest and they don’t — unlike many critics who’ve been loudly dismayed by the apparent failure of investigators to make relevant connections among the missing men sooner — blame cops in any way.
“No video surveillance,” said Patricia Kinsman, apparently referring to a lack of CCTV captures which could have helped investigators track her brother’s movements before he disappeared, or anybody that might have been in his company.
“He didn’t tell anybody where he went. There were no clues. He just didn’t come home. How do you go from having nothing to finding a killer in seven months?” She was, in fact, impressed by that. So little is known yet. What police know, or believe they know, is evidence they aren’t in a position to share with an open investigation.
Had police revealed more, earlier, Patricia Kinsman speculated that “perhaps it would have scared the person back into hiding.”
Downer revealed that, “from my understanding,” the accused had been Facebook friends with two of the missing men.
“One of my frustrations, from the beginning, was the lack of information. But when I met with 51Division, I got interesting insight into how their world works. When they came out and said there was no link between all these cases, that’s because they didn’t have one.
“Were they thinking it? Once all the information starts coming out in weeks and months ahead, we’ll learn that perhaps they did. Because a lot of us from the community thought so.
“Perhaps we will later know why they kept tight-lipped is what helped them bring this to a conclusion so fast.”
None of the sisters were in court for McArthur’s appearance yesterday. There’s a trial ahead, likely not for at least a year, which they will have to endure when grim details will be revealed.
Asked what she would say to the accused, if she were able to look him in the eye, Patricia Kinsman was clipped: “Nothing. I wouldn’t waste my time.’’