‘Kind’ grandpa a serial killer suspect
He came across as a kindly guy but Bruce McArthur is now suspected of five murders – and there may be more bodies
HE LIKED him at first, the restaurant owner says. He seemed like a cool guy as he sat in a booth, tucking into one of his regular orders – either the Big Bear breakfast or the tandoori chicken omelette with extra spice.
“He gave hugs to my children,” says AJ Kahn, who runs the eatery in Gay Village, a predominantly gay neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada.
Bruce McArthur (66) didn’t only eat at the restaurant. The self-employed landscape gardener also planted the foliage at AJ’s beloved business.
“He was sitting right there, at the corner table,” AJ says, pointing to a booth with pretty patterned cushions and a potted plant hanging from the ledge above.
“Honestly speaking, he seemed like a nice gentleman.”
But he’s seeing his customer and landscaper in a different light now.
McArthur has been arrested in connection with the death of five people and authorities suspect there may be more victims.
Cops have found the dismembered remains of several people in large planters in gardens McArthur designed through his company, Artistic Design.
“The city of Toronto has never seen anything like this,” Hank Idsinga of the Toronto police told reporters.
Police have been inundated with calls from people asking them to dig up gardens, verges and flower pots McArthur planted.
Investigators are combing through another 30 sites where the suspect may have done work.
“We’ve seized quite a few planters from around the city and we’ll continue to do that,” Idsinga said. “There are at least two sites we want to excavate where people might be buried but we believe there are more. I have no idea how many more there are going to be.”
He urged anyone who used McArthur’s services to contact the police, and phones have been ringing off the hook.
“I’ve got a log like you wouldn’t believe,” Idsinga said.
RESIDENTS of Gay Village have been vanishing mysteriously since 2010, prompting fears of a serial killer on the loose. “There were whispers,” says Michael Reyes, who lives in the area. “I’d go for my morning coffee and I’d hear people talking about it.
“When you have an entire community of people saying, ‘Hey, we noticed this . . .’ and then police release a statement saying what we reported at the time was true, it’s a little concerning.”
Police started ripping apart flower boxes and planters after sniffer dogs detected signs of decomposition, Idsinga said, which led to the grisly discovery of body parts.
If police hadn’t made their breakthrough, the alleged victims’ dismembered bodies would probably have
remained in the giant flower pots forever, pushing up the pretty plants their killer had so carefully potted.
McArthur has been charged with the deaths of five men: Andrew Kinsmen (49), Selim Esen (44), Majeed Kayhan (59), Soroush Mahmudi (50) and Dean Lisowick (44).
Majeed was reported missing by his son, who last saw him in October 2012. Three years later the family of Soroush reported him missing. Selim was last seen in April 2017 and Andrew in June, both in Gay Village.
Police have revealed that Andrew had a relationship with McArthur.
Dean, who was homeless, was never reported missing. Investigators believe he was murdered between May 2016 and July 2017.
At first it seemed the common thread was that all the victims were from or associated with the Gay Village and were of Middle Eastern descent, Idsinga told a news conference.
“Unfortunately, I can’t continue with that common thread,” he said, as two of the men weren’t Middle Eastern.
“We don’t know how many more victims there are going to be, but it’s more than the gay community,” he added. “It encompasses the city of Toronto.”
THE man accused of the gruesome crimes has a son and a daughter and several grandkids and even worked as a Santa Claus at a Toronto shopping mall over several festive seasons.
Before his Facebook page was deactivated after his arrest, he appeared to be nothing more than a jovial granddad who enjoyed sharing recipe videos, cat pictures and photos of his family, Canadian broadcaster CBC reports.
Kevin Nash, a friend of McArthur’s ex-boyfriend Skandaraj Navaratnam, says McArthur “came into the picture” in 1999 and the pair were involved until 2008.
McArthur was “a jolly-looking man, pleasant, courteous but seemed straitlaced”, Nash says.
Skandaraj disappeared in 2010 and hasn’t been seen since.
Karen Fraser, who owns one of the houses where police found human remains, says she allowed McArthur to store tools in her garage, an arrangement set up by his sister.
He and his son would take care of her garden while she was on holiday.
She describes him as a “cheerful, kind grandfather” who make her laugh with tales about his customers.
“He had wonderful clients and was kind and generous to them.”
But concealing the remains “essentially in plain sight” shows a level of brazenness on the part of the killer, says Michael Arntfield, a criminologist and professor at Ontario’s Western University.
“The question is, was [McArthur] drawn to this occupation [landscaping] as a means of facilitating [the crimes he’s accused of], or did this just occur to him after he’d already gone down this road?”
Only 4% of serial killers dismember their victims and dispose of the remains, according to the Atypical Homicide Research Group at Northeastern University in Boston, USA.
“If [McArthur] does indeed fit into [the disposal of remains] category, the alleged illicit knowledge that body parts belonging to missing persons are hidden in plain sight would be immensely alluring to him,” said the organisation’s co-director, Enzo Yaksic.
“These accomplishments confounded the public for so long that [he] undoubtedly believed he’d outsmarted everyone.”
Unfortunately for restaurateur AJ, he hasn’t been able to get through to the police. His calls have gone straight to their answering machine every time he’s phoned to plead with them to root around in his pot plants.
“Trust me, I’m scared right now,” the entrepreneur said. “God knows what’s inside.”
Residents of Gay Village have been vanishing mysteriously since 2010