Van’s chrome siding led police to killer
2004 model identified in video; distinct look prompted search for owner, turned up McArthur
TORONTO — In October of 2017, police detectives on the trail of Bruce McArthur drove to a wrecking yard east of Toronto in Courtice, Ont., where they found the red 2004 Dodge Caravan with chrome siding Andrew Kinsman had entered on the last day he was seen alive.
Officers knew to look for the vehicle by linking surveillance footage of the area outside Kinsman’s home with video of the parking garage underneath McArthur’s east Toronto apartment building — an address McArthur had divulged to police the previous year.
The discovery of the Caravan was a crucial addition to the mounting record of evidence that convinced police McArthur was a serial killer, Crown prosecutor Michael Cantlon said Monday as McArthur’s sentencing hearing for eight counts of first-degree murder opened in the city he preyed upon over the better part of a decade.
For the first time, the Crown presented a methodical account of how investigators came to train their sights on the 67-year-old former landscaper, one of the worst serial killers in Canadian history.
McArthur has confessed to murdering eight men in Toronto between 2010 and 2017. In addition to Kinsman, they are Selim Esen, Abdulbasir Faizi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi and Skandaraj Navaratnam.
Most of his victims were immigrants of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. Many had ties to Toronto’s LGBTQ community, though some weren’t openly gay and felt compelled to live that part of their life in secret.
“There is evidence Mr. McArthur sought out and exploited these vulnerabilities to continue his crimes undetected,” Cantlon told Ontario Superior Court of Justice John McMahon.
Kinsman, who now is known to be McArthur’s eighth and final victim, was spotted on video getting into McArthur’s van just after 3 p.m. on June 26, 2017, an afternoon on which, police later learned by reading Kinsman’s calendar, he had scheduled an engagement with “Bruce.”
When police asked the manager of a local Dodge dealership to review still shots from the video, he advised detectives the van was a 2004 Dodge Caravan, the vehicle’s 20th anniversary edition.
Officers then sought from the provincial Ministry of Transportation a list of 20032006 Dodge Caravans registered in Toronto. Of the 6,181 cars that fit these criteria, five were linked to men named Bruce.
McArthur was the only one who owned the 2004 model, the only one whose car had chrome siding and lacked fog lights, and the only one Toronto police had recently brought in for an interview — an encounter in June 2016 during which McArthur, under arrest for assault but never charged, told his questioners where he lived.
At McArthur’s apartment complex officers found footage of him driving the Caravan in the underground garage, which gave them a clear look at the licence plate. After police tracked that plate to the wrecking yard and seized the Caravan, forensic analysts detected specks of blood throughout the vehicle, as well as semen and traces of Kinsman’s and Esen’s DNA.
In December 2017, police obtained a warrant to do a covert search of McArthur’s apartment, where they downloaded the contents of his computer and other digital devices on which McArthur had stored graphic photos of most of his victims in individualized folders.
In several photos, Cantlon said, McArthur had arranged the men’s dead bodies in similar poses. Some were naked; others were made to wear a fur coat. McArthur shaved some of their heads and beards, and placed a cigar in some of their mouths. The presence of a rope and pipe signified that he had restrained and strangled some of the men.
Court heard when McArthur entered his guilty pleas last week that six of the eight murders were sexual in nature. After killing and dismembering each man, McArthur concealed their remains in flower planters outside the home of a landscaping client.
Officers who were watching McArthur moved to arrest him on Jan. 18, 2018, when they saw him bring a Middle Eastern man into his apartment. After knocking on the door and detaining McArthur when he opened it, they found the man naked and handcuffed to McArthur’s bed.
Cantlon said on Monday that the Crown doesn’t have evidence to indicate McArthur killed anyone else, though Toronto police continue to investigate cold and missing persons cases.
For each of guilty plea, McArthur will receive a sentence of life in prison without eligibility for parole for 25 years.
The judge will decide at the end of the three-day hearing if McArthur should serve those sentences concurrently or consecutively. The latter option would bar him from seeking parole for 200 years.
On Monday McMahon heard from 15 family and friends of the victims, who read their victim impact statements aloud.
Navaratnam was practically unbeatable in Scrabble, his friend Phil Werren remembered. Esen supported his sister when her husband died, Nadia Wali said on behalf of Esen’s family. Kinsman was endearingly grumpy, loved to bake banana bread and cared for his neighbour Meaghan Marian’s birds for months when she was working abroad.
Some speakers reported losing self-confidence or trust in others. Some feel unsafe in their neighbourhood. Some still struggle to fall and stay asleep at night. Some say they have mostly withdrawn from the world.
“A wonderful man gone from the world, murdered by him,” Patricia Kinsman said of her brother Andrew as she stared at McArthur, who remained silent as he sat in the witness’ box throughout the proceedings.
“We never say his name.”