More remains found
Police can’t confirm if remains found on back-to-back days are from the same person or not
Human remains have been found for the second straight day in the ravine behind a Leaside home linked to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, Toronto police said Friday.
The remains were found Thursday, near where the first set of remains was found the day before behind the Mallory Cres. home where McArthur worked as a landscaper.
Det. Hank Idsinga said police can’t confirm if the two sets of remains are from the same person until results are in from fingerprint, dental or DNA testing.
Finding the new set of remains wasn’t “much of a surprise,” Idsinga told re- porters at an impromptu media update.
Idsinga said he could not describe the state of the remains until Monday, after a post-mortem. He said that since the remains found this week and in previous excavations in the investigation were dismembered, police have to wait as pathologists and anthropologists match them up.
Idsinga was asked if police contacted more families of missing people following their discoveries this week.
“I won’t get into specific numbers but we do have outstanding missing persons’ cases and I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up,” Idsinga said. “We’ve laid eight charges and we may, at the end of the day, only have eight victims.”
While excavation efforts were cut short by thunderstorms Thursday, Idsinga said his crew plan on being at the site all day Friday, with about a dozen people digging.
Idsinga said he could not estimate how long his team would remain at the site but they would not be digging over the weekend.
Police will continue to dig as long as they get reactions from cadaver dogs at the site.
He said Toronto deputy police chief James Ramer had stopped by the excavation in the morning to “see what type of work was going on.”
McArthur, 66, is charged with firstdegree murder in the deaths of Majeed Kayhan, Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi and Kirushnakumar Kanagaratnam. Their deaths range from 2010 to 2017.
Kayhan’s remains haven’t been found. The remains of the other seven victims were found earlier this year in planters at the Mallory Cres. home, shortly after McArthur’s arrest in January.