Rosie DiManno
In the courtroom, when it was all done, after Bruce McArthur had shuffled off to begin serving at least a quarter century in prison, in concurrent life sentences for murdering eight men, investigators shook hands with Crown prosecutors.
They were pleased at wrapping up in mere days, because the 67-year-old landscaper pled guilty, what might, otherwise, have been a prolonged trial, stretching for months of gruesome evidence, replete with forensic detail and graphic photos and post-mortem expositions, doubtlessly torturous for family and friends of the victims. But it was a qualified success. Not the 50 years the Crown had been seeking, however symbolically, because McArthur will be, if still alive, 91 before he can even apply for parole.
There is consternation. There is bitterness.
Why did it take nearly seven years for the reckoning of this serial killer?
Where did Project Houston fail in what was originally an investigation into three missing men?
How could police not connect the dots of males who continued to vanish from the Gay Village area, even as an alarmed community shouted their fears from the rooftops?
The short answer: There were no bodies. No evidence, detectives insists, of any foul play. No verifiable crimes.
Yet had it been, say, eight women who’d disappeared over seven years from a geographically narrow vicinity, would there have been a greater sense of urgency and vigorous response?
(Not that there had been when that other mass killer, Robert Pickton, preyed on sex trade workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.)
Drug-addled prostitutes and mostly Southeast Asian gay men, some who had kept their homosexuality a dark secret from spouses and sibling and children; among them, two men who were never even reported missing.
Detectives are confident there are no more McArthur victims, although they continue reviewing cold case files within a designated missing persons unit established only last October.
But internal and external scrutiny of the investigation is just beginning.
There are just too many questions that still hover over Project Houston and its successor, Project Prism.
How is it possible that all the money and resources thrown at Houston came up empty, and the investigation was shelved, when the casualty list was still at three, before five other men were murdered?
Why did McArthur slip through police fingers when he’d been interviewed as a person of interest in the disappearances in 2016 — an individual with a record (not yet expunged) of severe violence against gay men, one of whom had been beaten with a pipe years earlier and another who’d been throttled in McArthur’s van but managed to escape and reported the incident to police?
And, the oft-posed query: Why did Police Chief Mark Saunders, on Dec. 8, 2017, about five weeks before McArthur was arrested, claim, at a press conference, that there was no evidence of a serial killer out there in the city?
Because, at that point, Project Houston had 24/7 surveillance on McArthur, who’d rapidly gone from person of interest to serious suspect.
One life likely saved — “John” — when, on Jan. 18, 2018, detectives observed a man accompany McArthur into his Thorncliffe Park apartment building. Within 10 to 15 minutes, they entered the unit to find “John” tied up, but unharmed.
Eight lives, however, extinguished, the bodies dismembered and buried in large planters at a property where McArthur worked, and in a garbage bin discovered in an adjacent ravine.
Detectives did a bang-up job finally, during Project Prism, uncovering leads that took them to McArthur, securing evidence to support an arrest and bringing the murders to a halt, but there is so much that remains patchy and opaque, certainly unsatisfying for many in the gay community.
So it was rather awkward for Saunders and the lead investigators in Project Prism, homicide Inspector Hank Idsinga and Det. David Dickinson, to take bows for a case concluded on Friday while simultaneously being pummelled with who-what-why inquiries by reporters.
“One of the luxuries I do not have is hindsight,” said Saun- ders. “We, as law enforcement, have to deal with the evidence that we have at that time.
“At the time when I made that statement, it was very, very specific. It was accurate and right. There was no evidence to say that we had a serial killer. We have to look at who committed the murders. We have to look at whether it was one person who did it, whether or not there was a copycat, where or not there was a multitude of people.
“With no evidence to suggest that (there was a serial killer) at that time, it would have been inaccurate on my part. I can tell you the moment that we knew what we had, that we had evidence to tell us that, we acted immediately.”
Perhaps it is impossible for Saunders to ever provide a response that will quell the dismay. It was certainly asked over and over again Friday, as it has been since McArthur was arrested and charged, initially, with murdering two men, Andrew Kinsman, the last of his victims, and Selim Essen, who disappeared in April 2017.
It was Kinsman, who’d known McArthur for years, writing the name “Bruce” in his calendar, an appointment to keep, which cracked open the case.
“As the primary investigator, I support the chief,’’ Dickinson said, referring to the now misleading statement about there being no evidence of a serial killer. “We did not have the evidence to arrest Bruce McArthur for anything at that time.’’
All the same, surely Saunders would have been aware of the surveillance and that McArthur was a suspect.
“That’s a good question,” Saunders acknowledged, “because there is confusion. At that point in time, it was not for a multitude of murders, it was for one. We had evidence for a homicide. That was the status.
“We had some tangible stuff only on that, not on everything else. As the investigation continued to evolve, and accelerate at an incredibly fast pace, in a short period of time, it exploded into multiple victims. So when I made that comment, we had a person that we were interested in. He wasn’t even a suspect at that point in time, if I’m not mistaken. He was a suspect for a homicide, not for a serial killer.”
Revisiting Project Houston, the chief explained investigations are complex; that detectives had taken a “large bandwidth” in their probe of what was then a few missing men.
“It wasn’t until mid-January of last year that we had that tangible connection.’’
Saunders did vow that the Toronto Police Service would be “transparent” and “accountable” for decisions made, which is the focus of two reviews: one internal and the other external, more broadly, by Justice Gloria Epstein, into missing persons investigations generally.
“I feel very strongly about the hard work that was done by Toronto Police Service and the agencies that assisted us,” said Saunders. “But I do believe that the public has some questions. Alot of people are satisfied with the investigation. When you sit down and listen to how it happened and how it broke down, with the exposure of the (in- formation to obtain), they understand the comprehensive investigation that took place.
“We did not sit flat with this at any moment. So, some people are very satisfied with what happened; some people need answers to questions that you are asking right now. And others are not satisfied …. The ability to learn … is most important and the right forum for discussion. I’m looking forward to those opportunities.”
The unanswerable question: Could deaths have been prevented if police had been more forthright, had warned the public sooner, when there was a strong suspicion of a serial predator?
Saunders: “No. What I said is what I stand by.
“The true test is, what did you do with the information at the time? And I can tell you, from what I know, things were done properly. The messaging put out there was accurate at the time.” But wrong. And time had already run out for eight poor souls.