Police facing backlash as serial killer gets life
For years, members of Toronto’s gay community warned that there was a serial killer on the loose, that vulnerable men were going missing, that the streets were not safe. They were right.
Yesterday, Bruce McArthur, a 67-year-old landscaper and former mall Santa Claus, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years on eight counts of first-degree murder, ending a trial that shocked a city – and a country – that likes to see itself as inclusive and safe.
McArthur was accused of killing and dismembering eight men between 2010 and 2017, hiding seven of the corpses in planters and the eighth in a ravine. He pleaded guilty last month.
At a sentencing hearing, Canadians heard how he lured and murdered men he met in Toronto’s Gay Village, then posed the corpses in costumes, keeping pictures of each victim in labelled digital folders.
They learned that McArthur was stopped when police raided his home, finding a man tied to a bed. He was a potential ninth victim, the court heard, and McArthur had a folder waiting.
In a city that prides itself on being gay-friendly and welcoming to new Canadians, McArthur sought out men marginalised by their sexuality, ethnicity, immigration status or poverty. Most of his victims were refugees or immigrants. Several struggled with substance abuse. Some had not revealed they were gay.
Now, with the trial over, advocates want to put the focus back on why so many died before police cracked the case. Some have argued that the police response was slowed by homophobia and racism – that the force might have acted more quickly if different men had disappeared.
Asked about allegations of bias, Toronto police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray said the force launched two investigations, Project Houston and Project Prism, ‘‘to do everything possible to locate the missing men’’.
‘‘We will continue to do what we can to support the community and look for opportunities to improve our relationship,’’ she added.
Haran Vijayanathan, executive director of the South Asian Alliance for Aids Prevention and a longtime advocate for the victims and their families, praised the team of detectives that caught McArthur, but expressed anger that it seemed to take the murder of a white man, Andrew Kinsman, to spur action.
McArthur was a regular in the Gay Village area. Kyle Rae, Toronto’s first openly gay city councillor, recalled seeing him. ‘‘I remember seeing Bruce McArthur sitting outside Starbucks. He was a fixture,’’ he said.
The first victim to go missing was Skandaraj Navaratnam, a Sri Lankan refugee. He was last seen leaving a village bar in September 2010. In December that year, Abdulbasir Faizi, originally from Afghanistan, vanished. By 2012, Majeed Kayhan, another Afghan immigrant, was gone, too.
The disappearances of the three men sparked Project Houston, during which officers interviewed McArthur. Eventually, the effort was disbanded. The killing resumed.
In 2016, McArthur was interviewed for a second time after a man claimed McArthur had tried to choke him. Detectives did not press charges. The officer who handled that case now faces professional misconduct charges.
The break in the case came in June 2017, when Kinsman, a white, Canadian-born activist with deep ties to the LGBTQI community, went missing. By July, Project Prism was launched to look into his disappearance and another recent case.
Many in the community say they were convinced a serial killer was on the loose, an idea police dismissed about a month before McArthur was caught.
Rae said the resistance to believing there could be a serial killer reflected the city’s need to believe it was safe.
‘‘This is part of the culture of Toronto and Canada. We are ‘Toronto the good’. That can’t happen here. But this type of murder can happen here,’’ he said.