Friends say missing men led double lives
When Abdulbasir Faizi and Majeed Kayhan vanished without a trace from Toronto’s Gay Village more than six years ago, it may have taken a while for people to realize the men were missing because they were living double lives, friends say.
“Every now and then, I wouldn’t see (Kayhan) for a couple of weeks or a month,” said Billy Gentile, a former bartender at the now-closed Bar 501 on Church St.
“He was in and out of the community. He would come and be around for a while, and then he would disappear for times on end,” and go back to his family.
The disappearances of three men — Faizi, Kayhan and Skandaraj Navaratnam — between 2010 and 2012 were investigated by Toronto police as part of Project Houston, a task force launched in November 2012.
Last week, 66-year-old Bruce McArthur was charged with firstdegree murder in the disappearances of two other men in a separate but parallel investigation, Project Prism. Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman went missing from the Village in April and June 2017. Police believe there are more victims but have not recovered any bodies. Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray said investigators are continuing to work with officers in charge of Project Houston to “see if there’s any connection.”
All three missing men in Project Houston had similar skin colour, were active in the same bars and quiet about their personal lives.
People who knew Kayhan said he would live in his partner’s unit at the City Park Co-operative on Church St. when he was in the Village.
Kayhan’s partner also had not come out to his family, Gentile said. Kayhan’s life at home with a wife and kids was not something he talked about.
“He did have substance abuse problems. He drank, and he would get agitated and sometimes violent,” Gentile said.
Gentile said Kayhan was active in the Church and Wellesley area since at least the mid-1990s.
Kayhan’s partner died before the man went missing, Gentile said.
Kayhan’s adult son reported his disappearance to police on Oct. 25, 2012, after last seeing his father at a family function a week or so earlier. A friend of Kayhan’s told police he last saw the man on Oct. 18.
“They held his apartment for a year thinking he (Kayhan) might have went away or something, but it turned out he went missing instead,” said Freddy Day, who lived in the same building and described Kayhan as friendly and outgoing.
“I think the community is somewhat relieved knowing this has finally come to a head, and the thing that disturbed me is that they can’t find the bodies for the sake of the families,” he said.
Greg Downer, a friend of Andrew Kinsman, had tried reaching out to other families of the missing men. “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,” he said at a Jan.19 news conference.
Faizi’s family, a wife and two teenage daughters, declined to comment.
Faizi was last seen leaving his workplace — he was the assistant machine operator at a printing company in Mississauga — and was reported missing to Peel Region police on Dec. 29, 2010.
His car, a 2002 Nissan Sentra, was found abandoned on Moore Ave., near St. Clair Ave. and Mount Pleasant Rd.
Doug Dube, a friend of Navaratnam, would often see Faizi at local coffee shops near Church and Wellesley.
“I’d say hello. He was always cor- dial,” Dube said. “He usually kept to himself.”
Navaratnam was at the bar Zipperz the night he was last seen.
Dube recalls that Navaratnam was “incredibly social, gregarious, outgoing,” but he never spoke about his family.
Occasionally, he would relay concerns about immigration authorities, as he was a refugee from Sri Lanka, and what would happen if he went back to his family.
“With our community, you can be gay and disowned or abandoned,” Dube said.
“There could be a number of reasons why you don’t talk about family . . . it’s not something we pry into that much.”
It was odd, then, said Dube, when he saw Navaratnam with McArthur five or six times, speaking “one-onone.”
“That was out of (Navaratnam’s) character because he liked groups of people.”
Harry Singh, former owner of Zipperz, said all three missing men and McArthur were regulars at his bar.
Bar-goers used to call McArthur by his nickname, “Santa,” Singh said.
“I felt like somebody was targeting my clientele because (all) of them used to come to the bar,” Singh said. “(Kayhan) used to sing Indian songs to me. They (Kayhan and Faizi) were very quiet, reserved.”