Bruce McArthur: Canada’s deadliest killer hiding behind a Santa suit

From 2010 to 2017, Toronto’s Gay Village was haunted by a series of disappearances, and the man behind this was Bruce McArthur, a self-employed landscaper and part-time shopping mall Santa Claus.

McArthur murdered eight men and concealed their remains in planters, and his case became one of the deadliest in the history of Canada. It shook the nation and also aggravated the long-running tensions between Toronto’s LGBTQ+ community and the police.

The case will be covered on Oxygen’s Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur, which is reairing tomorrow. The show was originally aired on April 11, 2021.

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About Bruce McArthur: The Canadian serial killer

Bruce McArthur, who hailed from Toronto, was a jovial man who was divorced with two children. He worked as a landscaper and a shopping mall Santa Claus at Agincourt Mall during the holiday season.

However, in 2001, McArthur came under scrutiny of authorities when he attacked a male s*x worker with an iron bar, for which he was given a conditional sentence and probation, and was banned from the Gay Village during that time. But soon after a pardon, he resumed frequenting bars and dating apps under the moniker “Silver Fox" to lure vulnerable men, as per the Guardian.

Despite early signs of warnings, McArthur never became a suspect in the disappearances and murders that occurred from 2010 to 2017 in Toronto. A breakthrough only came in 2017 after the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman.

When detectives found the name “Bruce” in Kinsman’s calendar, a forensic test was conducted, which uncovered Kinsman’s blood in a van linked to McArthur. By January 2018, McArthur became a primary suspect in the disappearance and murder cases of young men, and came under surveillance.

As per the Guardian, when he was seen bringing a younger man into his apartment, officers stormed in and arrested him. They found the man handcuffed to the bed and rescued him. What followed this was the largest forensic investigation in Toronto’s history.

The outlet reported that investigators uncovered human remains from more than a dozen planters at a home where McArthur had worked as a gardener. They also recovered 1,800 pieces of evidence, including hundreds of photographs McArthur had kept as grisly trophies where he made his victims pose in a fur coat, hooded, and bound, both before and after death, as reported by the BBC.

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Victims of McArthur

Bruce McArthur was arrested at his home (Image via Getty)

Bruce McArthur’s list of victims included mostly migrant men of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent who were living complex lives where cultural and religious pressures often forced them to hide their sexuality. Most of them were married and had children.

As per the BBC, his victims included Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, and Soroush Mahmudi.

It all began in 2010, when Navaratnam, a Sri Lankan immigrant, vanished, and later that year, Faizi disappeared. Toronto Police launched Project Houston to investigate this, but despite their ties to McArthur, no evidence linked him to a crime.

The investigation was dropped after 18 months, only to be picked up years later with the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman.

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Trial and sentencing of Bruce McArthur

Following his arrest, Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in 2019. He had been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole only after 25 years of serving his sentence, as per CBC News. It is not known where McArthur is serving his sentence.

As per the Guardian, since Bruce McArthur’s arrest, the Toronto Police have reopened 25 cold cases dating back to 1975, many involving missing or murdered gay men. A dedicated Missing Persons Unit was also set up in 2018.

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Catch more about the case tomorrow.