Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

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Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby blehblah » Thu Feb 01, 2018 2:28 pm

http://www.macleans.ca/news/what-we-kno ... -mcarthur/

- Bruce McArthur was first arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder on Jan. 18 in connection with the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen, both reported missing from the Church and Wellesley streets area at separate times last year. All three were on dating apps and police said McArthur had a relationship with Kinsman for “some time”. The nature of his relationship with Esen is not known at this time.

- On Jan. 29, police laid three additional first-degree murder charges against McArthur in the deaths of Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi and Dean Lisowick. Police say there are likely more victims but they have “no idea” how many more.


McArthur appears to have targeted ethnic, gay men. He worked as a self-employed landscaper. Police have found remains in planters, and are looking at the properties of the rest of the 30-odd clients he had, and other properties he was associated with.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/0 ... -home.html

As Ron Smith watched the detective announce on live TV that investigators had found human bones buried in his backyard flower planters, he clutched his partner Karen Fraser’s hand.

“This is what we were afraid of,” Smith said.

For years, Bruce McArthur mowed their lawn and tended to their gardens, filling enormous planters with begonias and flowering vines. Now, McArthur is an accused serial killer and Fraser and Smith’s Leaside home has become a crime scene.


The police had apparently been looking into McArthur for some time. It is unclear how far back his killings go, and how many other victims there may be. Note that McArthur is a sixty-six year-old grandfather who used to be a mall Santa, because mall Santa's weren't already the creepy clowns of Christmas.

McArthur has been charged with violent crimes before.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/to ... e37759243/

In the fall of 2001, a few weeks after his 50 th birthday, Mr. McArthur assaulted a man in Toronto, wounding him with an iron pipe. As a result, on April 11, 2003, he was convicted of assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon.

He received a two-year conditional sentence, with several conditions requiring him to stay away from a downtown area that included the Village, and specifically from the City Park Co-op apartments on Church Street, the same building that Mr. Kayhan was known to be living in, across the street from where Mr. McArthur was known to park his van.

He was also under order not to be in the company of male prostitutes and had to abstain from using amyl nitrate, the same drug he allegedly used during the encounter with Mr. Sgromo.


There have been suggestions that the police didn't deal with the case properly.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/christi ... m-in-probe

Idsinga is the Toronto police homicide detective-sergeant in charge of the Bruce McArthur investigation, the alleged serial killer who already faces five counts of first-degree murder and may yet face more, as forensic experts continue to sift through the large flower pots that appear to have been McArthur’s disposal site of choice.

Idsinga was responding to the suggestion, made recently by some gay activists and editorial writers, that police only got serious about the disappearances of missing gay men when a white one, Andrew Kinsman, hit their radar.

[...]

Kinsman’s disappearance — he was reported missing in June last year — was central to the start-up of a second major investigation, Project Prism, not because of his skin colour, but because toward the end of July, police got a break.

Idsinga can’t say what that was, for investigative reasons.

In this, he is almost as cautious and close-mouthed as his former first partner in the homicide squad, Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders, whom he says has the sort of ability to see down the road, rather as Wayne Gretzky could so famously “see” the ice and all of the players on it.

“We’d get called to the scene of a murder,” Idsinga said, “and he (Saunders) could already see the Crown closing address at trial.” In other words, Saunders, who spent almost nine years in homicide, remains an investigator first.

And thus last December, when at a press conference Saunders denied police had any evidence a serial killer was at work, he was being both forthright and true to his investigative roots: Police were then about five weeks shy of knowing — which in their world means, having enough evidence — that McArthur was their man in the Kinsman disappearance, least of all of the carnage he is alleged to have wrought.


McArthur appears to be a nightmarish rarity amongst serial killers.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/0 ... ryone.html

The case of five men who Toronto police believe were murdered by the same person suggests a rare, brazen and organized killer, say homicide experts.

[...]

Enzo Yaksic, co-director of Northeastern University Atypical Homicide Research Group, said “the risk involved in identifying victims, subsequently killing them and then concealing evidence of such actions probably provided (the killer) an unmatched level of excitement and morbid sense of achievement.

“These accomplishments stymied police and confounded the public for so long that (he) undoubtedly believed he has outsmarted everyone,” Yaksic wrote in an email.

Just four per cent of serial killers dismember their victims’ bodies and dispose of the remains, according to data compiled by the research group.

[...]

Another rare aspect of the Toronto case is the arrest of a 66-year-old suspect. To begin killing in one’s late middle age would be “very unusual, statically speaking,” said Arntfield.

American serial killer Albert Fish, who was known as the “Gray Man,” was believed to have started killing in his 50s. He was executed in New York at age 65.

“For years, he was sort of held up as a rarity,” Arntfield said of Fish. In the Toronto case, the killer “would seem to have started actually even later than him. So the question is — is he that rare, that he’s starting that late? Or has he started much earlier and just carried on?”

Serial offenders also tend to wind down as they grow older, Arntfield said.

“There’s a term actually in criminology called ‘aging out,’ where as the offender becomes less agile, less virile. They begin dabbling in other forms of crime,” he said.

“They don’t necessarily try their hand at killing.”


I am guessing it's quite rare for police to save what may have become the latest victim in the nick of time...

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/0 ... urces.html

Alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur was under police surveillance when officers were forced to make a quick decision to enter his home and arrest him, believing a life could be in danger, police sources confirm to the Star.

On the morning of January 18, police watching McArthur observed a young man entering the Thorncliffe Park building where there the 66-year-old landscaper rented an apartment. When he walked in the 19th floor unit, they knew they had to intervene, according to a police source with knowledge of the events.

When officers decided they had to take action, they entered McArthur’s apartment and found a young man tied up but unharmed, according to the source.


The parallels with Robert Pickton have been quick to pop-up.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/b ... -1.4509608

The details of the case revealed so far have prompted some to point to similarities between McArthur and Pickton, who was convicted in 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder after the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his Port Coquitlam pig farm, about 25 kilometres east of Vancouver. He was suspected of targeting sex workers and other vulnerable women on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, whose families accused the police of neglecting the alarm bells raised about the number of women going missing in the area for years.


It is, I think, difficult to retrospectively criticize police by saying they ignore marginalized communities, therefore marginalized communities are a target. Serial killers prey on the communities because they are marginalized, and they are marginalize due to wider social-economic factors.

Killers like Pickton, and it seems, McArthur, don't want to get caught, and are - for lack of a better way to phrase it - good at what they do. Catching serial killers who don't prey on marginalized communities, like Paul Bernardo, doesn't happen overnight either (and goodness knows the police and prosecution did their fare share of bungling aspects of that case). It all adds-up to very difficult cases to piece together.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby DoglovingJim » Thu Feb 01, 2018 2:38 pm

Bloody hell, Blehblah you certainly earned that upvote from me. You did good research.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby blehblah » Thu Apr 12, 2018 9:53 pm

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43704632

Toronto police named Abdulbasir Faizi, 42, who disappeared in 2010, as the latest alleged victim.

His remains were identified as one of at least seven dismembered bodies found in plant pots on a midtown property.

Mr McArthur is believed to have targeted men who frequented Toronto's Gay Village neighbourhood.

Toronto police detective Hank Idsinga said on Wednesday that investigators are also reviewing 15 homicide cold cases from 1975 to 1997 as part of the inquiry into the suspected killer.


They know of at least seven victims, at this point. They aren't ruling-out there being more, based on the remains recovered.

Given the age of the accused, it's not unreasonable to look through older cases.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/0 ... cases.html

The lead homicide detective investigating alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur says it wouldn’t surprise him if the accused was linked to Toronto cold cases, including a series of murders in the Gay Village in the 1970s.


https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-co ... -case.html

Listening attentively to the magistrate, via video-link appearance on Wednesday morning, indicating that he understood: a seventh first-degree murder charge had formally been laid against him, by the top boss in the Toronto Crown Attorney office.

Seven and counting.

Because there are still a set of remains, retrieved from a planter, which haven’t been identified.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby blehblah » Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:13 pm

Police were able to identify the 8th victim. They had released a picture of him to appeal to the community to try to figure-out who he was. Unusual, and creepy (they strongly believed the man was dead when the picture was taken), but it sounds as though they had exhausted every other option.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/0 ... onday.html

A reserved Sri Lankan man who was among hundreds of Tamil asylum-seekers to land on Canadian shores in 2010 has been identified as the eighth victim of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur.

Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam arrived on Vancouver Island as one of 492 refugees aboard the ship MV Sun Sea, and later settled in Scarborough. He was named by Toronto police Monday as the dead man whose photograph investigators had released last month after all other attempts at identifying him had failed.

[...]

After five weeks of “enormous” stress and anxiety, with police sifting through hundreds of missing person occurrences and dozens of leads, Idsinga said, Kanagaratnam’s identification was a major relief.

“While we are saddened, we are also tremendously proud and relieved to have been able to bring closure to the friends and family of Mr. Kanagaratnam and the seven other victims,” Idsinga said.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby DoglovingJim » Wed Apr 18, 2018 1:47 am

Good work with the updates Blehblah, do you live in Toronta by the way? Since it seems like you have some sort of vested interest in this case.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby blehblah » Wed Apr 18, 2018 2:25 pm

DoglovingJim wrote:Good work with the updates Blehblah, do you live in Toronta by the way? Since it seems like you have some sort of vested interest in this case.


I live in the same part of Canada, so it's unavoidable in the media.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby blehblah » Sat May 19, 2018 8:29 pm

The police aren't taking any shortcuts.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/b ... -1.4662278

Toronto police say investigators collected more than 1,800 pieces of evidence from the apartment of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, as part of what the force is now calling the "largest forensic examination" in its history.

Officers have now finished an inch-by-inch search of the apartment, which started after McArthur's arrest in mid-January. In addition to the items recovered, police said they took some 18,000 photographs inside the Thorncliffe Road apartment McArthur rented near Toronto's Don Valley.


That's about five months of work.

There is good reason for it.

"Hypothetically speaking, let's say you have an apartment where you know a murder has taken place, you're going to go in and you're going to be looking for trace evidence such as blood, hair, fibres, DNA, and get focused on a particular area by doing a visual overview very quickly," Idsinga explained.

"You're not looking at a place like this ... we're alleging our oldest murder is over eight years ago in 2010 and we don't know if it occurred there or not. But if Skanda Navaratnam was killed in that residence and there is one hair belonging to Skanda Navaratnam that is still present somewhere, you better find that hair.

"It's definitely a bigger task than a regular murder scene," he added.


Police are also searching other properties. McArthur was a landscaper, and put parts of several victims in large planters. The psychology of it is difficult to fathom.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/c ... -1.4651731

Toronto police are sending out teams of cadaver dogs this week to some 100 properties linked to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur.

The dogs are sniffing for human remains, according to Homicide Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga, the lead investigator in the case. Police will excavate parts of the properties if the dogs find anything relevant to the ongoing investigation, he said.
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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby Kivutar » Sun May 20, 2018 12:02 am

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Re: Alleged Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Arrested in Toronto

Postby JamishT » Wed May 23, 2018 8:03 am

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