Original subtitles

Christi: Toronto police discovered the remains

Of six men linked to a suspected serial killer.

Woman: Their lifeless bodies dismembered.

Man: There could be more victims out there.

- The city of toronto has never seen anything like this.

(camera shutters click)

- There is a concept of what a serial killer looks like.

Do you expect a grandfather,

Who worked as a santa clause,

To be killing and dismembering men?

You don't.

♪♪♪

- The idea that I was watering planters with bodies in them...

I don't know where to put that.

Wendy: There were men going missing from the gay village.

- I'm looking at these pictures that look like me.

(siren wails)

Wendy: Police get this call;

There's a cannibal within the greater toronto area.

- We had 300 people at a packed meeting.

I wonder if the serial killer is in the room.

♪♪♪

- The reality is that the police had no idea

What the hell they were dealing with.

♪♪♪

- They run into the bedroom

And they find a shocking discovery.

- Someone's life is on the line.

- This morning, police arrested

66-year-old bruce mcarthur.

- I opened the door;

"you've got to get out of your house, now."

♪♪♪

- Were we gonna find remains all over toronto?

- I don't think anybody on this planet

Has seen something quite like that before.

♪♪♪

- I think I could've been one of them.

(indistinct police radio chatter)

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

- As the crime reporter for the toronto star,

I've covered this case extensively.

Toronto often gets compared to new york city.

It's a city of neighbourhoods.

We have little Italy,

Korea town, and we also have the village,

Which is an lgbtq-centred community.

James: The village in toronto has been around a long time.

I've been playing in it, living in it, working in it

For over 50 years.

It's something that's very deep to my core.

- Two million people have poured into toronto

And down church street

For the annual pride event.

For decades, it has been the heart,

The pulse of toronto's gay community.

Church street is meant to be a safe space.

But those days,

And the details that came out,

Were horrific.

♪♪♪

- I used to live about a block or two from the village.

In the midst of all of these festivities,

There were rumblings and rumours

About missing people.

Adrian: Myself, my colleagues,

We had done reports for years

About missing men in the village,

And about concerns from the community.

- For years, men had been disappearing from the village,

Without a trace.

Their faces were on missing persons posters

All across church street.

- People were wondering, what is going on?

Why are there multiple men reported missing?

You know, something afoul is happening.

Haran: There wasn't a lot of information,

Just these men are missing, and that's it.

As the community was talking about it,

And I'm looking at these pictures

Of men that look like me,

That look similar to each other,

I started believing in 2013, 2014,

That there is something wrong.

- There was a small minority

Who worried about a serial killer,

But there wasn't much pressure put on the police.

- Residents of this neighbourhood,

And the people who frequent it,

Say they feared a serial killer was in their midst.

- There were men going missing from the gay village

As early as 2010.

(car horn honks)

The first was skanda navaratnam

On September 6, 2010.

Newsreel: Navaratnam was last seen living zippers,

A nightclub on carlton.

He was with an unknown man, and never returned.

- He was a very jovial person.

He was articulate, and he was intelligent.

He got a degree at the university of toronto

And was working as a teaching assistant.

- He had a lot of friends in the village.

He was from sri lanka.

When he came to toronto,

He was able to more fully be himself.

- He had his own struggles with coming out,

But he was out to his brothers, not to his mother.

Wendy: He didn't have any family in canada,

So he was reported missing to the police by friends.

Part of the gay village

Is that people kinda come and go,

So it didn't necessarily set off a lot of alarm bells.

♪♪♪

But then, four months later,

On December 29, 2010,

Abdulbasir faizi went missing.

He had been working at a mississauga printing factory,

And he had told his wife

That he was going to go meet a friend.

Haran: Abdulbasir faizi was married,

They lived in the suburbs.

Wendy: His wife didn't know that he was gay,

And he went to toronto's gay village.

Newsreel: Abdulbasir faizi went missing.

Police have only found his vehicle.

- He was last seen at steamworks,

Which is a bathhouse,

Where um, men can hook up.

18 months later,

Majeed kayhan went missing.

He hadn't been seen in a few days.

His son, actually, was the one to report him missing.

He was last seen

Inside his alexander street apartment.

Newsreel: People who live in this area say

Kayhan lived a double life - one as a gay man,

And one with his family.

- Certainly, back in 2010, someone disappeared,

Which is not a big deal.

By three people disappeared,

Then it became a big question.

Wendy: All of this was happening

Within a few blocks' radius.

These men go missing within a relatively

Short period of time.

That's really scary.

- In the span of a few months,

A couple different men reported missing

From the same neighbourhood.

This is usually a red flag,

For people who study serial killings.

My mind always goes to the worst things

Because I study this stuff.

Often times, it's really just coincidence,

But this one felt a little different

Because this is such a tight-knit community.

It tends to be the case

That people who are responsible for serial killings

Are hunting for their victims

In places that they're familiar with.

(ominous music)

My first thought was that this is somebody

Who knows his way around this place.

- Three people just disappear without a trace,

But they were all recent immigrants to canada

From foreign countries.

They all had a gay village connection, in toronto.

Haran: In 2010,

I would see posters of skanda,

And then a few years later, in 2012,

I started seeing pictures of majeed kayhan

And abdulbasir faizi.

Three brown men were missing.

You would see the posters in convenience stores

All over church street.

You would hear comments on the streets, like,

"oh, they've probably gone back to their wives

To live out their heterosexual lives."

I was hoping and praying that they would be found.

(camera shutter clicks)

- A lot of people were willing to believe

That they just left for various reasons - financial,

Or because they were married, or because of islamophobia

And islamic forces were coming to kill their gays

Who were married, leading gay lives.

My perspective was both.

You see, I was not immune to the uh,

Unconscious racism that we all have.

(siren wails)

- There were certainly people saying the police

Are not paying attention because they're three brown men:

They're being racist, like that.

If they were white people, they would've found them already.

♪♪♪

- If the three people that had been missing

Had all been native bond canadian,

People who lived in toronto,

Then there would've been far, far more pressure

On the police, and everyone else in the community,

To find out what happened.

But because they were all immigrants,

There wasn't that pressure.

- For years, people in the community

Were saying something's going on, something's wrong,

And for years, nothing happens.

(ominous music)

Everything changed in 2012

When toronto police received this tip from interpol.

Wendy: Interpol is an international policing agency.

They take tips from around the world

And help notify the police within a certain jurisdiction.

The tip originated in switzerland.

Someone within the toronto police service gets this call

(phone rings) that, might sound strange,

But potentially there is a cannibal working within

The greater toronto area.

(ominous music)

- When you're first told, it's unbelievable,

You're like, "really? Come on, a cannibal?"

It's somebody online,

Confessing to a murder, to somebody else who's online.

And then, well, hold on a second,

Actually we do have a missing man from toronto

Who fits the profile that this individual was talking about.

- This source helped authorities over in europe

With a cannibalism investigation over there,

And was determined to be, uh, credible.

- They were able to identify that skanda navaratnam,

One of the men who'd gone missing from the gay village,

May actually be the victim involved here.

(ominous music)

So, they began looking into skanda's disappearance,

And then realized,

There's actually other men who fit into this category

Who have gone missing from the gay village.

Newsreel: Police now believe the disappearances

May be connected.

- Police are wondering, and investigating,

Whether or not these missing men had been killed,

And then, potentially eaten.

- I was working at homicide at the time.

I became involved in the investigation

That became "project houston," December of 2012.

- The toronto police named this investigation

"project houston" because it was

"houston, we have a problem."

(ominous music)

(siren wails)

Wendy: Who is bruce mcarthur? Man: I only knew him as bruce.

- How serious did police take this investigation?

- We didn't know how big this was gonna get.

- The police asked us to come for a meeting,

And then they said, "we found several bodies."

- This is, bar none,

The biggest crime story to ever hit this city.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

- I was called into a meeting

With my unit commander at homicide

And briefed on what they had.

James: A source in switzerland,

Had infiltrated a cannibalism ring online,

Discussing torture scenarios.

It was out of toronto.

- Based on the information that that witness

Had gathered online;

He'd believed it was skanda

That the cannibal was talking about.

(siren wails)

We were actually able to go to switzerland

And interview this person.

They had identified the username as john jacobs,

In a website that catered to people

With cannibal fetishes.

John jacobs was identified as james brunton.

- James brunton,

He started being the focus of this investigation.

- He was married

And would frequent the gay village in toronto.

We could place him in the village on several occasions.

- The investigation ramped up.

Police started really looking at his online activity.

They ended up searching through his home.

They began realizing that he taped

Male hockey players, without their knowledge,

While they were in a change room.

- And there was an awful lot of surveillance conducted.

It was a very, very large

Investigation and operation

To get us to the point where we were finally able to say

This guy hasn't killed anybody.

- It ends up not being a cannibalism ring,

But what they end up uncovering is child pornography.

Newsreel: 65-year-old, james alex brunton,

Walked out of court today,

After being sentenced for making, possessing,

And distributing child pornography.

- He was ultimately charged with child pornography

And sexual offences,

And he was arrested, and ultimately,

He pled guilty to some of the charges.

(siren wails)

Wendy: Toronto police came to the conclusion that,

While he was involved in things

That many of us would consider to be disgusting

And reprehensible,

Ultimately, they weren't able to find any evidence

That connected him to skanda navaratnam

Or any of the men

That had gone missing from the gay village.

♪♪♪

- The project then resorted back

To a missing person investigation.

A missing person investigation is far different.

For the most part, statistics are the person is missing

Because they wanna be missing.

Missing persons are not criminal offences.

- They'd opened up an investigation

Into these missing men

And had nothing to show for it.

♪♪♪

(cars whoosh by)

- In June of 2013,

We made a public appeal

Specifically about those three missing persons.

Newsreel: With posters now up around the neighbourhood,

Local residents are on the lookout.

- Yeah, it is a little bit scary to know

That three people vanished.

- They started doing more interviews

With members of the gay village community.

- A lot of people came forward

And attempted to help provide information.

Wendy: One of the men that was interviewed

Had come onto the radar for police

When they found his email address

In the phone that belonged to skanda navaratnam.

That same email address was also written

On a notepad owned by abdulbasir faizi.

- We have a username of silver foxx,

But we didn't know exactly what the relationship was

Between silver foxx and these men.

They had identified the username and ip address;

Within 24 hours,

Silver foxx was identified as bruce mcarthur.

(ominous music)

He was from the village; maybe he can help us out

And explain what's happened to these guys.

♪♪♪

He was interviewed as a witness.

- When toronto police interviewed

Bruce mcarthur in 2013,

They would have seen an older man, kind of portly guy.

He was relatively newly out, as a gay man,

And had just started a landscaping company,

And was doing pretty well.

- Bruce mcarthur had been interviewed

By some of my team-mates,

And I watched the interviews that took place that day.

That interview had been scheduled,

And rescheduled, several times, and to my understanding,

He was very receptive of changing the interviews,

And had no issues coming in.

Wendy: He was a grandfather.

He sometimes worked as a mall santa.

He came across as very affable.

I don't know that alarm bells were going off about him.

- I thought, I-I saw that he was a very credible,

Believable person. Uh, he wanted to help;

He seemed genuine.

When we interviewed him,

He denied knowing abdulbasir faizi,

But he admitted readily to knowing majeed kayhan,

And skandaraj navaratnam.

Skanda worked for mcarthur

And had been in a relationship with him.

- Mcarthur had a close relationship

With skanda navaratnam.

He had hired him to help him with his landscaping business.

He'd helped bruce out on job sites.

- We know that bruce mcarthur's clients met skanda.

(dog barks in the distance)

♪♪♪

- Bruce had about 100 clients; he liked them,

And they all thought he was fantastic,

Which he was with us.

(birds chirp, grass rustles)

Skanda handed me plants and said hello.

I thought he was delightful.

Very sweet, very humours.

I liked him because when I made jokes

Sort of at bruce's expense, because he never caught on,

Skanda laughed right away

And he realized that it was funny

That bruce wasn't getting it.

Wendy: Not only did he know skanda navaratnam,

But he also admitted to hiring majeed kayhan.

(ominous music)

Karen: I noticed him

Because he seemed so out of his element.

He was in the background,

Right by the edge of the hill,

Standing just there,

And leaning on the shovel.

I could tell from the way he handled the shovel,

It, I don't think he'd ever touched one before.

He was awkward with it.

And just seemed miserable,

Kinda sad.

At the time, I was so concerned about him,

And bruce was annoyed with him.

"it just isn't working out," he kept saying,

"he's just not working out"

And bruce very rarely got annoyed about anything.

So, that night,

I sent an email to bruce and said,

"so, how's it working with that guy?

Is he, is he going to work out?"

And he never responded,

And I never saw that man again.

(ominous music)

- The point of interviewing mcarthur, at the time,

Was an attempt to find out what had happened;

Where are these guys, does anybody know.

♪♪♪

Obviously, if we had three missing persons,

And perhaps, any evidence

That they had actually been murdered,

Or met with some foul play,

Something more possibly could've been done.

- Bruce mcarthur was a witness, just like anybody else,

And you could link him to two out of three.

But we had investigators on our own team

Who were within the community, who told us,

That we're a small community, you know.

Everyone knows everybody.

- Certainly, wasn't unusual in houston,

To interview people from the village,

Who knew skanda, majeed, and-and basir.

- When he left that interview room,

There was little follow up.

♪♪♪

- "project houston" was unceremoniously

Disbanded a few months later.

Newsreel: An 18 month investigation

Called "project houston," into those three men,

Wrapped up in 2014.

It was never resolved.

Wendy: "project houston" effectively ended

Without finding out what happened.

We have a lot of questions

About why they didn't probe further,

Either into mcarthur,

Or the missing men investigation,

And try to find out what happened to them.

- A traditional homicide investigation, you know,

A murder's taken place.

You look at your victim's steps, moving backwards.

A missing person investigation is far different -

A lot of times, you don't even have a starting point

Of where that person went missing from.

Skanda was staying on a few peoples' couches,

So you're not permanently staying at a certain address.

You know, people are assuming he's staying with friends

Or staying elsewhere.

Abdulbasir faizi phoned home to say that

He was gonna go out for drinks with friends from work,

And just never came home.

(siren wails)

When you look at most of the missing men,

There's a natural delay in reporting,

And in those delay, unfortunately,

You lose evidence.

I just know that our team was fully invested

In attempting to find out what happened to these men.

♪♪♪

Wendy: Toronto police closed down "project houston"

In April of 2014,

But this was just the beginning

Of a horrifying pattern emerging.

And no one detected that for years.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

Wendy: Soon after "project houston" closes,

Three more men go missing in the village.

Soroush mahmudi went missing

Around the time of August 2015.

Khrishna kumar kanagaratnam,

A few months later.

And then, dean lisowick

Goes missing April of 2016.

So, the phenomenon of men going missing

From the gay village is continuing,

But it's not widely known,

And certainly, police were not investigating.

- Soroush mahmudi was married with children.

He went to bed, and then when they got up in the morning,

He was gone.

The assumption was he left for work.

He was reported missing, but because nobody knew

About the lifestyle that he was living,

Nobody thought to make a connection at all

To the church and wellesley street area.

No one even looked to see if it was a possibility

He might be tied to other missing men.

(computer beeps)

Wendy: Khrishna kumar kanagaratnam

Had been living underground.

He wasn't allowed to be in canada;

He'd been denied refugee status.

So, it was immediately apparent when he went missing.

Newsreel: Kanagaratnam arrived in vancouver on a cargo ship,

Called the sun sea, in August 2010.

One of nearly 500 sri lankan tamils

Looking for a better life.

Haran: He was fleeing sri lanka because of the war.

He actually saw his brother

Murdered by the army,

In his front yard.

He made his way over to toronto when he was cleared,

And he claimed asylum here.

His claim got denied, twice.

He went underground.

- He was a refugee claimant

Who was going to be deported.

Other than that, there were no other records

With regards to uh, him being missing.

Haran: A few years later,

I met with khrishna kumar's mother.

Listening to the mom and understanding

Some of the tragedies that she's gone through

In sri lanka with her other kids,

It was just too much.

Wendy: Dean lisowick,

He sometimes would work as a sex worker.

He also was homeless, and so,

He used the city's homeless shelters.

James: He was basically living on the street.

You would see him sitting right at the corner

Of church and wellesley.

He would ask for money, and chat.

I had a friend who had a relationship with him.

We were really quite shocked when he disappeared.

Wendy: These men were exceptionally vulnerable people,

Some of whom had sought refuge in the gay village,

Because they could be who they were.

Some of them came from countries where

You are not allowed to be out, as a gay man.

- When people who are marginalized, go missing,

They sorta just disappear and vanish,

And people don't blink an eye.

That's one of the big red flags.

These are weird disappearances;

There has to be something going on.

To me, it tends to signal that somebody

Might be looking for victims

That they can get away with.

♪♪♪

- On April 17, 2017,

A seventh man went missing.

This was selim esen.

He didn't have a home at the time.

- He wasn't residing at an address.

He went missing with all his belongings;

He basically had a suitcase.

It was his partner who had not heard from him

In a couple weeks and reported him missing.

Haran: He loved life, he loved adventures.

He had also struggled with um,

Mental health and substance use.

♪♪♪

Jooyoung: The universal theme about serial killers

Is that they opportunists.

They think about how they can get away with things.

(dirt thuds lightly)

They pick certain places to hunt.

They pick certain victims,

And part of that is just having access to a person

That might be vulnerable.

After many years of getting away with the crimes

That they've committed,

Serial killers develop this sense of confidence.

Over time, they might become sloppier, less risk averse,

And they might do things that increase the likelihood

Of them getting caught.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

- A few months later, at the end of June,

In the middle of pride celebrations,

Andrew kinsman went missing.

He was the eighth man to go missing.

Haran: Andrew was a gentle giant.

He was really a good guy, and very,

Very community oriented.

- I'd met him in passing at a party.

He was sort of eccentric.

A lot of people liked him.

Jooyoung: The victim that got everybody talking

About the fact that there could be a serial killer,

Was andrew kinsman,

Who was very connected in the village.

- The other missing men were a bit more transient -

They'd come in, they'd go out,

They were in shelters.

Andrew kinsman was different -

Had a really strong community

Of friends around him in toronto's gay village.

- Andrew was a superintendent of his building.

He had set routines, and set responsibilities,

And when those uh,

Responsibilities weren't being done,

People in the building noticed immediately.

- He was reported missing within a day or so,

Of last being seen.

- Serial killers believe they're invulnerable,

But this was somebody who

Was starting to maybe get sloppy.

♪♪♪

Newsreel: Andrew kinsman,

Who worked at the toronto hiv aids network,

Disappeared more than two weeks ago,

Setting off a massive search effort

By friends and colleagues,

Who say this is out of character.

- When andrew kinsman went missing,

It really, really exploded in-in the public,

And in the media,

And there were ground searches organized

By members of the public, and a lot of outcry.

Newsreel: Men who frequent or live

In the church and wellesley area

Have disappeared since 2010.

Without clues as to what happened,

The community is on edge.

- Kinsman's disappearance mobilized the gay community.

- And it did attract a lot of media attention.

There was absolutely some pressure put on the police.

- When kinsman goes missing,

It's impossible to ignore anymore,

And the light gets shone brighter, and brighter,

And brighter on this investigation.

Haran: This is yet another incidence

Where a white person goes missing

And there's an automatic reaction,

But when people of colour go missing,

It's not paid attention to.

Until something terrible happens.

- It's a fair assumption to make

That that changed the complexity of the investigation.

When you look at systemic racism in policing,

And in society.

♪♪♪

Newsreel: A community meeting will be held

In the neighbourhood next Tuesday night.

Police will be there.

James: We had about 300 people at a packed meeting

At our community centre, the 519.

I remember saying to the person sitting with me,

"I wonder if the serial killer is in the room?"

Newsreel: Tonight, members of a police task force

Gathered to try and calm fears.

Newsreel: The recent disappearance of two men

From the heart of toronto's lgbtq community

Has caused deep concern.

Their disappearances follow several

Unsolved missing persons cases going back to 2010.

- It was decided that we needed to

Re-launch "project houston"

To investigate these latest missing persons.

- And that is the genesis of "project prism."

The second investigation that was launched

Into the gay village missing men.

David: I was asked to oversee "project prism,"

As the lead investigator.

- Selim esen and andrew kinsman

Were missing within a few months of each other,

From the church and wellesley street area.

- Within days, they go into andrew kinsman's apartment.

- We looked around for any signs of struggle,

Any evidence where he might have gone.

There was a traditional calendar that we located

And on that traditional calendar

Was medical appointments, bill payments,

And then, on date of June 26,

Around 2:00 p.M. Or 3:00 p.M.,

There was the name of "bruce".

(ominous music)

♪♪♪

- You could see the seeds of shame, and rage,

And resentment planted very early on.

Wendy: He lived a double life.

This is an individual who is quite skilled

At deceiving everyone around him.

♪♪♪

- I opened the door,

"you've got to get out of your house, now."

- You could actually see a ribcage,

That was visible in the x-ray.

- This is as horrible and horrific as it gets.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

(traffic sounds)

- It looked like andrew kinsman went missing

Right around the 3:00 p.M. Mark on June 26.

And with that information,

We looked at the surveillance video

From all over the area

In which andrew kinsman had lived.

- There had been a red van that stopped

Outside of andrew kinsman's apartment, on the same day,

Around the time that he was known to have gone missing.

♪♪♪

- A person came out of andrew kinsman's house

And got into the passenger's side of that van.

Unfortunately, the quality of the video at that location

Wasn't enough to identify a person;

Wasn't enough to, for sure, identify a vehicle.

It didn't automatically jump out at us to say,

There's your killer right there.

♪♪♪

- There was a lot that you couldn't tell from that video.

Picture sort of, like, grainy footage.

David: I believed it was andrew kinsman,

But I believed the strongest we could probably say in court

Was "a person came out of that house

And definitely gets into the passenger's side

Of that vehicle."

Wendy: You can't see the driver;

You can't see the licence plate,

But they're able to determine

That this is likely a red dodge caravan.

So, they take stills of the van

To a dodge dealership,

And see if they can determine the make and model.

(camera shutter snaps)

If they narrowed down the year

It was likely made to 2004.

- We needed to find this vehicle.

Wendy: Toronto police request ownership information

For that make and model of van.

When that ownership list comes back,

There are 6,000 owners of that make in ontario.

- I had gone home for the day,

I was in court that day with another murder,

And I was at my dining room table,

Looking through the excel spreadsheet.

Had the name of bruce in the back of my mind.

Bruce was a name from the calendar,

Who we had not identified.

So, I just happened to run bruce in the excel spreadsheet,

And it minimized 6,100-plus lines, down to five.

I looked at each individual person

And into their background,

To see if they had any dealings with the police,

And, and everyone didn't,

Except for bruce mcarthur.

(computer beeps)

♪♪♪

When I looked into bruce mcarthur's background,

I learned he had been involved in a violent interaction

In the back of that van, a year prior.

(ominous music)

- There is no doubt in john doe's mind

That bruce was trying to kill him that day.

- Bruce mcarthur turned himself in later that night,

And told police,

Actually it had been all a misunderstanding.

- Bruce mcarthur got ahead of things

And told his side of the story.

James: Cop basically believed what mcarthur said,

And that it was just hanky-panky, and let him go,

And didn't file anything.

Wendy: Toronto police, they're supposed to take pictures

Within 72 hours after an alleged incident like this,

And that just didn't happen.

- When two people tell their versions of events,

As an investigator, you need to determine,

Is there evidence that suggests that

One is more truthful than the other?

Is there evidence outside of the two statements?

At the end of the day, the investigator decided

He shouldn't be charged at that time.

- Here is the opportunity for police investigators

To recognize him, for what he is.

He was sophisticated enough in his ability to lie,

In his ability to manipulate.

The police had no idea

What the hell they were dealing with.

♪♪♪

- Immediately, based on the records that I reviewed,

I knew that bruce mcarthur is a gay male,

And at least on one occasion,

Had been involved in a violent interaction.

Understanding what had happened a year prior,

Was very helpful to me.

- When we interviewed him,

We learned a lot about bruce mcarthur.

He became a person of interest

In andrew kinsman's disappearance.

(ominous music)

- I was briefed by dickinson

In September 2017.

What triggered my recollection was

Bruce mcarthur having being interviewed,

And I said, "was he silverfoxx?"

(ominous music)

And that's when it kind of triggered in my mind,

Okay, we might be on to something here.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

- When bruce mcarthur came on our radar,

It was our job to figure out

Everything there was to know about him.

So, we started conducting surveillance on him.

It was during that period,

Our investigation determined what he did for a living,

And where he went, his lifestyle,

And his patterns, and his trends.

- They start to pick up on his daily habits.

He lives in a big apartment building, mid-toronto.

He's working for the landscaping company.

- I wanna know everything there is to know about him.

We are now looking into his family, and his friends,

And his partners,

Attempting to learn as much as we can about this person.

♪♪♪

He was married, and he had children himself.

He came out and moved to toronto.

♪♪♪

Peter: I met bruce maybe 20 years ago, at least.

Bruce would be the kinda guy

That if I ran into him in the village, and we were bored,

It's like, hey, let's wolf down a pizza

And, you know, watch an episode

Of "the golden girls", or something.

- Bruce was kind, helpful, good at his job,

Loved doing it. Good to his family.

He helped us with our- our charitable projects.

- Our circles seemed to cross paths, so I'd see him often.

- I've known the family all my life.

- Bruce mcarthur is originally from woodville, ontario.

He grew up on a farm, and he had a sister.

- His father was an alcoholic, and very abusive.

(film reel clicks)

Jooyoung: His father was very domineering,

Was somebody who didn't express a lot of love

Or affection towards him, and he grew up feeling

Like he had to hide who he really was around his father,

And maybe felt like he could never really live up

To his father's expectations of him.

Karen: Bruce used to lock

His younger sister in the bedroom,

To keep the abusive father away from her,

And I think some very bad things happened

That I don't think he's ever told anybody.

- There's a lot of variation in serial killer families,

But typically, there is a history of abuse -

Whether that's physical abuse,

Or psychological abuse, or neglect.

Serial killers, from a very early age,

Often don't have the same kind of loving connections

To their parents that you know, most people do.

- Bruce mcarthur grew up in the 1950s and 60s.

You can imagine what kind of environment

That is for someone who is realizing that they're gay.

- A flood tide of filth is engulfing our country.

Think, then, of the consequences

To put these homosexuals.

- You can see the seeds of shame, and rage,

And resentment planted very early on,

As bruce mcarthur grew up in a society

That was not tolerant towards lgbtq people.

- It wouldn't be something that I would imagine

He'd be discussing with even his closest friends,

Let alone his family.

Jooyoung: He grew up in a family

That was highly religious,

That probably also looked down upon this, so,

From a very early age, he learned to repress

Who he really was,

And tried to hide this and conceal this from everyone.

Wendy: He went to high school and met his future wife,

And he married his high school sweetheart.

- They had two children,

And now he has grandchildren.

His daughter and his son, and his wife,

They all got along extremely well.

Very comfortable family.

- They lived in a nice house.

You know, I don't know if there was a picket fence,

But you get the impression.

- He realizes that he can hide in plain sight

If he has this idyllic family

With a wife and two kids,

Working a regular job,

But there could've been another side of him

Where he may have had urges,

Or fantasies that even pre-date any kind of violent assaults,

And was hoping that getting married,

Starting this life, was gonna be enough

To kinda keep him from doing those things.

James: He led a double life in so many ways.

For many years, living in the-in the country,

With his wife and having children,

But also a secret interest in men.

- This wasn't something that he dealt with

In early adulthood, and then he came out,

This is something that he lived with and tried to hide

From the world for most of his adult life.

- He discovered he was gay and had some gay affairs

In the 70s and 80s.

(traffic hums)

(glass shatters)

- This was probably a very painful experience for him -

A traumatic one that's led to the disillusion

Of his marriage,

That led to the crumbling down of his life.

- Did he have a resentment against toronto's gay community

Because he was outed to his wife,

And that wrecked the second life

That he was-he was living?

- The fact that the felt like he lost control

Over his identity, over his true self,

Over the capacity to come out on his own,

Could've been a traumatic trigger.

- He divorced his wife late 1990s

And set up an apartment in toronto.

- The kids would've been in their teens.

I don't think they were totally comfortable with it.

- I had a partner at the time that belonged to

A group called "gay fathers".

They were um, middle-aged men that came out later in life.

It was a support group.

They'd have meetings in the village,

And then later, meet for coffee,

Or a drink on one of the patios,

And bruce was there.

- Him and his wife split.

That's when he moved to toronto

And began living as a gay man,

Frequenting toronto's gay village,

And subsequently, starting his landscaping business.

- I've known the family for years.

Wendy: Karen fraser, she's neighbours

With bruce mcarthur's sister,

At her cottage north of toronto.

Karen: He bought the gardening business.

His sister called me and said,

"you have a double garage that you don't use,

Would you let my brother store his equipment?"

And I said, "well, if he cut the lawn, it's a deal."

Wendy: He offered to take care of their lawn

While they were away for long stretches of the summer,

At their cottage.

So, it was a-a mutually beneficial agreement.

- It was simple,

And then of course,

He started decorating all the planters around our house.

I thought it was the greatest deal I'd ever made in my life.

(ominous music)

I asked him, "what do you do the rest of the year?"

He said, "I also work in a mall as santa claus."

♪♪♪

He was good at it.

He got along well with children.

Jooyoung: Serial killers like to construct

This mask of normalcy that they wear,

Participating in wholesome activities

Like being a mall santa, or being a clown.

Kind of like this front to further conceal

Their true selves from the rest of society.

- He lived a double life.

This is an individual who is quite skilled

At deceiving everyone around him.

- His double life then was that he was a landscaper

Who was frequently meeting people uh, for sex.

He was online all the time

As a middle-aged man looking for, shall we say,

Um, wilder sex.

- We have a bunch of red flags:

Traumatic childhood,

Violent urges.

There's a confluence of things.

The rough sex,

Hedonistic life that he was trying to live

After repressed for so many years, escalated,

And he realized that he enjoyed that.

The experience of sexual domination,

The excitement that you feel in the moment,

Having that kind of control.

Then, if he takes it to the next level

And commits lethal violence,

That that's even more of a rush.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

Wendy: Bruce mcarthur had been identified

As a person of interest

In the disappearance of andrew kinsman.

One of the first red flags

Is bruce mcarthur had been alleged

To have assaulted a man in 2016,

Inside the red van.

Wendy: While toronto police are beginning

To look into bruce mcarthur,

Fairly quickly, they actually learned

That he has sold that red van.

(traffic whooshes)

David: Bruce mcarthur was the last person,

Or at least somebody driving his van,

Was the last person to pick up andrew kinsman.

Before andrew kinsman was never seen again.

When we start looking into the van,

We discover that he's no longer driving it.

♪♪♪

We have no evidence that anyone's been murdered.

We don't have a-a body, we don't have a crime scene.

We have a missing person,

And we have someone who we believe

Picks up that missing person

On the last day that they're last seen.

At that point, it was important to find that van.

Wendy: What they did as investigators,

Was start to fan out

And go to wrecking yards,

And auto body shops in the area.

- Bruce mcarthur seemed to have a history

Of wrecking his vehicles in the past,

So, we thought we'd check wrecking yards

In the east end of toronto.

It took weeks.

I got a call from my investigator

That they located it at dom's auto in courtice.

♪♪♪

- A couple of metro detectives came in,

Asked if we had a particular vehicle in our inventory.

They just said it was involved in a crime.

We assumed it was some sort of hit and run,

Or a theft crime of some sort. We had no idea.

David: When bruce mcarthur sold it to dom's,

Not long after, there was an announcement

That, you know, we were looking into

The disappearances of the missing men.

I did believe that there was some sort of nefarious purpose

To him getting rid of his vehicle.

- Bruce mcarthur pulled up his car, uh,

With the front end facing the side door, here.

I came out, looked around the vehicle.

Made him an offer on it; he accepted right away.

We paid bruce mcarthur $125 for his vehicle.

(ominous music)

He seemed just like, a normal-normal person.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about this guy.

He didn't look nervous, at all.

The only thing that was really sorta different

Was the fact that he didn't for any more money, at all.

He just settled on the price that I offered him,

I paid him, and took the ownership, and off he went.

- They got lucky.

The red caravan owned by bruce mcarthur

Was still in the auto yard.

♪♪♪

- Obviously, most wrecking yards would wreck vehicles.

Any evidence would be destroyed.

We were very lucky that it was 90 percent intact.

- They had actually maintained the van.

It still had evidentiary value.

Toronto police seized the van,

They drove it back to toronto,

And had it tested at the centre for forensic science.

And I know that-that police actually followed the van

All the way down the highway, back to toronto,

Because they didn't wanna lose it again.

David: The van is examined and analyzed,

And this doesn't happen, you know, overnight.

Not like television.

This was about a month later

That it took for us to get the results.

- Once the forensic testing is done,

They determine that there was, in fact, blood in the van,

And it almost certainly belonged to andrew kinsman.

♪♪♪

At this point,

Bruce mcarthur is named a suspect

In andrew kinsman's death.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

Wendy: Toronto police had their suspicions

That bruce mcarthur had killed andrew kinsman

Inside of his red caravan.

Police likely could have made an arrest at that time,

But the amount of blood that was found in the van

Was not enough to automatically show

Andrew kinsman was dead,

Or that he had been killed inside the van.

David: It was small amounts of blood.

It was blood the size of the head of a pencil.

As an investigator,

I knew that it could be explained away in court.

Andrew kinsman and bruce mcarthur

Had a previous relationship.

An experienced defence counsel

Could easily explain the blood from a previous encounter,

Or andrew kinsman cut himself while in the vehicle.

- Even with kinsman's blood identified

In the back of his van,

And mcarthur's association to at least two,

If not three, of the previous missing persons,

You're not even close to having enough evidence

To make an arrest yet.

Wendy: Police wanted to continue

To investigate bruce mcarthur, from afar.

They did not want to tip him off to the fact

That he was under investigation.

David: Up until November 8th,

Bruce mcarthur was a person of interest

In andrew kinsman's disappearance,

So, any surveillance that we were doing on him

At that point was more to understand who he was.

(engines rumble)

Once he became a suspect, we're surveilling him,

To protect the public.

Hank: Surveillance had to be ramped up.

We couldn't let him out of our sight.

- If bruce mcarthur knows police are investigating him,

He may do all kinds of things,

Like, destroy information

That may tie him to these homicides.

So, it's crucial police don't provide mcarthur

With information that they're onto him.

- There was lots happening.

Ultimately, a decision was made that, you know,

We were gonna attempt to get into his apartment,

To search it for evidence.

- So, they apply for a warrant

To allow them to go into his apartment

And search covertly.

♪♪♪

- We were authorized to enter his apartment surreptitiously,

Without letting him know we were in there.

♪♪♪

We got a warrant on December 5th.

A few days later, on December 8th,

He left and went to the east end of toronto.

Well, we decided to take the opportunity

To attempt to-to go into his apartment.

Wendy: By then, they knew his

Daily movement around the city,

They knew he was off doing landscaping work.

David: Primary focus was to clone his computer.

There was also a physical search that was done,

Looking through drawers, et cetera.

Wendy: So, they go into the apartment,

They start looking through his devices.

David: We had several members of the toronto police service

Inside his apartment.

I was communicating with people

Who were watching bruce mcarthur.

He had set patterns.

We knew where he'd be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

But unfortunately, the week of December 5th,

His pattern changed.

(music intensifies)

- They get the call that mcarthur is coming back.

Hank: Last thing you want is someone to come home

And walk in on you.

And once he started heading back home,

You have to shut everything down,

And get out of there as fast as you can.

(computer beeps)

Wendy: You can imagine how stressful it would be,

As an investigator, to go into someone's home,

Then have someone radio in,

Actually he's coming back to the apartment.

- I'm liaising with my people who are watching him.

If he drove directly to the apartment,

I'd say he had ten minutes to get back there.

(music intensifies)

Wendy: They had no choice; they had to leave.

(music intensifies)

- They got out, just in the nick of time,

Before bruce mcarthur ended up coming home.

David: We were successful in getting into his apartment.

We were only able to get

About 50 percent of his computer.

- If I saw that in a scripted tv cop show,

I would be like, ugh,

You know that's not believable, but this happened.

Over the following weeks, toronto police investigators

Are frantically digging through

The contents of mcarthur's computer.

David: We were looking for google search sites,

Emails, anything that might lead us to

An idea where andrew kinsman might be.

Wendy: They're using all kinds of software

To look at his searches.

They wanna see if he's got any maps that he's pulled up.

Any kind of indication where he's been

In the last few months,

And who he's communicating with.

- It was quite a staggering amount of information

To go through.

- Mcarthur had a lot of pictures of men

On his computer.

He had pictures of andrew kinsman,

Taken when they were out in nature together,

Taking photos together, in much happier times.

- As an investigator, there was good evidence on there,

But it wasn't enough.

We knew andrew kinsman had a previous history

With bruce mcarthur.

We still think this person's responsible

For andrew kinsman's murder - we don't have the evidence yet,

But we need to keep trying to get it.

So, we were going to other methods.

Wendy: One of the detectives, part of "project prism,"

Decided to sift through the contents

Of mcarthur's computer with a different kind of

Photo-specific search device.

As a result of that search,

He starts to pick up on images

That are different from some of the ones

The police had found on mcarthur's computer, before.

- The images weren't actually still on the computer,

But we were able to recover ghosts of those images,

Because they had been deleted or removed

At some point in time or transferred

To or from the computer.

- He had other images on his computer

That included a picture of a poster

Advertising "project houston."

That obviously would've been an indication to police

That mcarthur was watching their earlier investigation

Into the disappearances.

- Serial killers get a rush

Out of knowing that people are talking

About crimes that they've committed,

And that nobody is on to them.

- After many hours of searching,

The toronto police investigator

Finds an image different from the ones

Police have found so far.

- They start pulling files off of his computer,

Which would end up being the smoking gun

For their investigation.

- This picture was on mcarthur's bed.

It was of a man who looked as though he was dead.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

(low hum of chatter)

Adrian: So, they had a photo of this man

That they got from mcarthur's hard drive.

It's shocking.

(mouse clicks)

Wendy: The toronto police investigator finds an image

That is different from the ones

That police have found so far.

It is a picture of selim esen,

And he is dead.

(ominous music)

It's difficult to overstate how important this was.

This was the first direct evidence

That toronto police had,

That selim esen was dead,

And that bruce mcarthur was involved.

- All of a sudden, you go from no evidence

To link the two together,

To right now, we can charge him for murder for it,

Because we have a photograph of-of selim esen,

Deceased in his bed.

(ominous music)

Wendy: The search through the computer had continued.

They were able to locate a deceased image

Of andrew kinsman, as well.

- As an investigator, it's a strange feeling

Because you're brought into this

To ultimately figure out what happened.

We were looking into the disappearances

Of these two men,

And we were now finding out what happened.

It's not what anyone had hoped for,

It's not what we wanted,

But we were getting those answers.

And then, we start uncovering photographs

Of the other missing men.

Wendy: They came upon images of the other missing men,

Who also appeared to be deceased.

This was huge.

I mean, this was toronto police discovering

That bruce mcarthur...

Is a serial killer.

(ominous music)

- From what we learned, most of the pictures,

If not all, were taken in the apartment,

In his bedroom.

Wendy: Bruce mcarthur took pictures of his victims.

Dressing them up, putting them near a fur coat.

In one case, he put a cigar in a victim's mouth.

It's highly disturbing.

Adrian: After he killed them, they were tied to his bed,

Then he'd dress them,

And he'd position them in different ways.

Position them in-in vulgar ways.

- Thankfully, those images have never been released.

Hank: They are gruesome and no family member

Or friends, certainly, of any of the victims,

For sure, would ever want to see those images.

I wouldn't want to re-traumatize people.

Michael: In mcarthur's case,

We see all types of elaborate poses

To offer indignities to the bodies in death.

Shrouding them in fur.

A variety of-of poses that,

Obviously, have some significance.

- The kinds of things that mr. Mcarthur did

With posing, with pictures,

You can continue to humiliate

And debase a person, even after they're dead,

And you derive this sense of power over them,

And that's something that's very tantalizing

To the serial killer.

They don't feel that kind of control, ever,

In their lives, and then, all of a sudden, they have it,

And it's this dark magic, almost.

♪♪♪

- Photographs are, inevitably,

A souvenir for any offender.

There's a whole deep-seeded experiential dimension

To-to watching, and seeing, and recreating,

That allowed bruce mcarthur to live in this dark,

Twisted world, perpetually.

- It's as horrible and horrific as it gets.

These men were individuals, like you or I.

They had families, they had friends,

They have loved ones.

And they were attacked

And played with,

Like they were a toy.

And I can't think of a more degrading way to die.

- What he did was very disturbing.

There's moments during the investigation

That will certainly stay with me forever,

Will probably stay with the city of toronto forever.

♪♪♪

- They knew that they had a serial killer on their hands,

And he's loose.

- There obviously is a big risk to the public,

Knowing what we know now. He can't be left out there.

- At that time, they had no idea

Whether bruce mcarthur was working on his own.

With every minute that passes after an arrest,

That's time when other associates

Could destroy evidence.

Items that are really crucial to a conviction.

- There were search warrants that needed to be executed

At multiple locations, and on vehicles.

- Police need to be very careful

About how they move through this late stage

Of an investigation.

They needed some time to secure paperwork.

This was a major operation.

- We were preparing for his arrest

And preparing search warrants,

And I had my investigators

Surveilling him, 24-7.

When I got a telephone call from my investigators,

Advising me that bruce mcarthur

Had just picked up a male off the street

And that they were heading back to his apartment.

- I'll never forget that phone call from dave dickinson,

When he said,

"he's going into his apartment with another man."

Wendy: By now, they know that bruce mcarthur

Has killed inside his apartment

Because they have the pictures

Of dead men on mcarthur's bed.

What was incredibly critical,

That they not allow bruce mcarthur to enter

His apartment with another person, alone.

Someone's life is on the line.

♪♪♪

- I asked hank idsinga,

"how many officers were involved in this?"

And he just looked at me.

- Police were talking about dozens of properties.

- There was a rib cage that was visible in the x-ray.

- They wanted to question us about the planters -

Were some of them ours, were some of them his.

David: I will never stop looking.

Wendy: You have to wonder if that was part of it,

For mcarthur.

- I don't even know how to form a reaction to that.

It's not human.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

- Toronto police knew that they had

A serial killer on their hands

And decided they would arrest bruce mcarthur.

Hank: Had two officers from "project prism", following him.

He picked up a man and headed back to his apartment.

- Police are in a sudden situation

Where they have to decide what to do next.

Hank: He parked in an area where he normally doesn't park,

I believe to avoid surveillance cameras.

And took that man up to his apartment.

(elevator dings)

Wendy: They knew that he had killed men in his apartment;

Someone's life is on the line.

- As an investigator, I had to look at

What are the risks to arrest him early.

What evidence could be lost?

I made a decision that he was gonna be arrested immediately.

(sirens wail)

Wendy: Mcarthur lived on the 19th floor

And when police were swooping in to arrest mcarthur,

They had to wait for the elevator.

- There was only one elevator working

In his apartment building. It was rammed full.

We packed in there like sardines, and made our way,

Very slowly, to the 19th floor,

And stopping on every third floor.

- I just can't imagine what that wait would've been like.

Ten seconds would've felt like an hour.

- We were prepared to forcefully enter the apartment,

If we had to, but we knocked.

(elevator dings)

♪♪♪

- But bruce just answered the door.

- We forced our way in, as he answered it.

- When police went into the apartment unit...

...They found a man who was bound and naked.

♪♪♪

Thankfully, he's still alive.

Mcarthur had taken this man back to his apartment,

Put a black bag on his head,

And told this man that they were

Going to try something different.

- In retrospect, in the circumstances

That he was found in mcarthur's bedroom,

Where he was bound to the bed,

I can't get too specific about what mcarthur did

With him in that bed,

But I-I do believe he would've been the ninth victim.

- Bruce mcarthur, he was arrested for the murders

Of selim esen and andrew kinsman.

Was very calm and cool. He didn't say much.

- This morning, at approximately 10:25 a.M.,

Police arrested 66-year-old bruce mcarthur.

- Mcarthur's arrest sets off

This huge investigative effort.

Toronto police begin quite an extensive search

Inside bruce mcarthur's apartment.

Toronto police didn't find any blood, or hair,

Or fingerprints of-of any of the victims,

But what they did find, was their belongings.

There was a bracelet that had belonged to skanda navaratnam.

There was a notebook,

That had been written in, by selim esen.

- We believe he is responsible for the deaths of other men

Who have yet to be identified.

- There were still no bodies.

- He was arrested,

But we still needed to continue with the investigation.

There's still evidence out there.

The strongest evidence being

The remains of the missing men.

I interviewed bruce mcarthur the next morning.

He was very cordial, he was polite.

We chatted about a lot,

But he was not helpful.

We did not know where the remains

Of any of his victims were.

I wanted to find those remains,

I wanted to collect additional evidence.

- He really didn't have much to say about it, at all.

He was willing to engage in conversation,

But not directly acknowledge any of the-

The facts that we were presenting to him,

Or anything about any of the victims.

It was a fruitless interview with him,

Despite it going on for eight to ten hours.

- We had learned about bruce mcarthur's

Circle of friends and family

And didn't know who else may have evidence to help us.

- There were a multitude of places

That bruce mcarthur may have had access

And ability to bury his victims' bodies.

As a landscaper, bruce mcarthur had really ready

And easy access to dozens of yards

In the greater toronto area,

Because there is sort of an implicit trust

When it comes to hiring a landscaper.

- Being a landscaper, you can fade into the background.

You can come and go as you please,

You have intimate knowledge about people's homes.

You're sort of a part of the scenery,

And so, nobody really thinks twice about you.

It's another part of this disguise

That serial killers can use to get away with it.

- We've never seen anything quite like this

With the number of crime scenes that we have to process.

- There was an address that we knew

Bruce mcarthur stored his landscaping equipment there.

He had full access to the property and the house,

And we knew he attended that property multiple times a day.

Karen: Normal day.

I got up with a list in my mind of what I wanted to do.

There was this incredible pounding.

I opened the door, "are you karen fraser?"

"yes." "you've got to get out of your house, now.

You have five minutes."

No information, no nothing.

We went downtown to be interviewed.

They took me in, and I knew nothing.

And then I asked, "can I know what's going on?"

When they say, "bruce murdered two people,"

Like, I-I couldn't picture it.

So, I defended him!

One of the detectives said,

"look, don't waste your time on this guy.

I don't think we've ever had as much

Evidence against a person,

As we've got against him.

Don't waste your sympathy."

Alright, I'm gonna go along with this.

Wendy: It wasn't like this was an individual

Who had no social life.

He had close friends he would meet with

On a regular basis,

He had a relationship with his family

And his grandchildren.

You can imagine their surprise

When bruce mcarthur was arrested.

- I was watching the news,

And I heard bruce mcarthur

Is being charged as a serial killer.

The bruce I knew,

I have trouble reconciling that

That is the same bruce that was chopping up people.

There's a disconnect.

Karen: "thinking back,

Were there any bad moments?"

No, there weren't!

None at all. He was flawless.

- If you ever sat down and chatted with bruce mcarthur,

You wouldn't think for a second

That this man was a serial killer.

- The fact that he really had to hide who he was,

From his family and from society,

Was something that he could draw upon later

As he was getting away with these killings.

- Bruce mcarthur deceived many people throughout the years -

His family, his friends,

And I'd say, the police along the way, too.

Karen: Police searched the house,

I mean, completely, and totally.

The garage had been emptied.

There were maybe a dozen cops,

And there were command posts, and cruisers.

And there were media trucks all the way around

The little park across the street.

- We had our cadaver dogs working with us.

They showed interest in the backyard

Of mallory crescent.

Wendy: Dogs were focusing in on a few different areas,

And namely, they were sniffing

Around these really large planters

Mcarthur had brought onto the property.

T know, okay, is he hitting on the planter,

Is he hitting on contaminated soil in the planter,

Is-is there something buried underneath the planter?

(dog sniffing)

Newsreel: On January 21,

City news captured police removing this large,

Heavy planter from the property

Of ron smith and karen fraser.

- The forensics services unit x-ray it.

You can actually see the rib cage

That was visible when they x-ray.

- They started to find, um,

Dismembered human remains.

- Bruce mcarthur had landscaped hundreds of properties.

Were we gonna find remains all over toronto?

- When we heard that they found dismembered body parts

In planters at a home,

It's like a script for a horror story.

It's unbelievable.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

- What have you learned about what police know

About the suspected killer?

- Well, christie, we know that he was

A 66-year-old landscaper in toronto.

He had access to the property where these planters,

And human remains, were found.

♪♪♪

Karen: The police asked us to come for a meeting.

They wanted to question us about the planters -

Were some of them ours, were some of them his.

There were a lot.

It turned out, there were 15 on the property.

And then, they said, "we found several bodies."

Newsreel: Three human torsos of unidentified bodies,

And assorted bones,

Have been found in large planters.

- The idea that I was watering planters

With bodies in them,

It-I don't know where to put that.

(dog sniffing)

- The pathologist was able to establish cause of death

On some of the remains,

And that cause of death was manual strangulation.

(tarp rustles)

- There's certainly something

Incredibly disturbing and unsettling

About knowing that dismembered human remains were just,

You know, in a planter

On someone's property in downtown toronto.

Karen: He ate there every day with his crew

And arranged the planters around the table.

Because you know, he was not trying to bury them

To get rid of them.

He was trying to keep them.

Putting them in a place where he could hang on to them.

So, he ate at my table,

Enjoying the fact that...

His handiwork was all around him.

♪♪♪

I don't even know how to form a reaction to that.

It's not human, to me.

Newsreel: As police unearth those planters,

And connect the dna from remains, to missing people,

More charges are expected to be laid.

- We have now identified the remains

Of three individuals from these planters -

Andrew kinsman, soroush mahmudi,

And skanda navaratnam.

- For the months after his arrest,

Hundreds of properties were searched,

With the concern that there may be

Additional victims out there.

- We started knocking on doors

And learning where bruce mcarthur's clients lived,

To go and speak with them,

While police were doing their investigation,

Which included going to each of their homes across the city,

And removing planter, after planter, after planter,

Unsure of what they were gonna find.

(ominous music)

- People who had used mcarthur as their landscaper,

Could rightly wonder whether they might find

Human remains in their planters,

And every development coming out of the story

Was worst than the last.

- They want anybody whose had their lawn serviced

By their suspect, to call in,

Fearing that they could have a potential crime scene

In their back yard.

- It took weeks to identify all the remains.

Wendy: The remains of seven of the victims

Were found within the planters.

(shovel scrapes dirt)

David: But we had not identified

The remains of majeed kayhan.

Adrian: If you look at the geography of the home

On mallory crescent,

It backs up to a large ravine area.

Off the backyard, it's just nature.

There could be more body parts back there.

- Being January, the ground was frozen.

It was not an option to search.

- Once the ground had thawed,

Police go back there,

And they start excavating the ravine

Behind the home on mallory.

♪♪♪

- They did a really big excavation in the summertime,

When they were able to penetrate the ground.

Newsreel: In the wooded ravine just below the property

Where alleged serial killer, bruce mcarthur,

Used to store his landscaping tools,

This slow and meticulous work being done

By dozens of officers sifting through dirt and debris.

Karen: When they came back,

(dog whimpers)

Within an hour, they found a body in a garbage pail.

- There were more remains found today.

Newsreel: Police hopeful they match those of majeed kayhan,

The only alleged victim whose remains have yet to be found.

- Toronto police were able to find the remains

Of the eighth victim.

Karen: When they found him,

He was about five feet,

Buried five feet away from where I saw him.

(shovel thuds)

Right by the edge of the hill.

Just frozen in my mind, that man standing there.

♪♪♪

People say to me,

"aren't you appalled that there were body parts?"

Well, the body parts aren't the men.

What upset me was,

The last moments of those guys,

When they were people,

And they were loved.

They were loved.

They had families, friends,

And he obliterated them.

For his own whatever.

That was upsetting.

(sombre music)

♪♪♪

Newsreel: We begin this noon hour with developing news.

Bruce mcarthur has plead guilty

To eight counts of first-degree murder.

♪♪♪

- That was the day everyone realized

There wouldn't be a trial. It was very emotional.

- Mixed feelings.

I'm hoping it's closure for a lot of people.

I'm hoping it's-it's starting that process towards closure.

- He pleaded guilty, and that avoided a trial.

♪♪♪

Newsreel: When mcarthur was given the opportunity to speak,

He said, "no," saying he had spoken with his counsel

And decided to say nothing.

The crown says the plea pales in comparison to the pain

He inflicted on his eight innocent victims.

♪♪♪

Karen: I knew a man who was always energetic,

Enthusiastic, always eager to get on to the next thing,

And this is just uh,

A shuffling, broken man, as he should be.

As he should be.

- Mcarthur would kind of shuffle past me.

I always in the front two rows of the courtroom.

James: I saw him in court a few times.

He just looked dishevelled and dilapidated.

You know, he just looked like a broken man, to me.

- He looked harmless, but now we know,

That that doesn't mean anything.

Nobody looks like a serial killer, necessarily.

Newsreel: First degree murder carries

An automatic life sentence

With no chance of parole for 25 years.

He will not be eligible for parole

Until he is at least 91-years-old.

- In canada, we do not have the death penalty.

He was sentenced to life in prison,

Without access to parole for 25 years,

And that is the harshest sentence

That you can get in canada.

♪♪♪

- There are a lot of unanswered questions

That I'd like to know, in order to share with family members,

So we understand, as a community, how he, you know,

Preyed and selected his victims, undetected,

For as long as he did.

I have no evidence to believe

That he is responsible for any more than the eight,

But it's not saying that I will never stop looking.

- A man who is responsible for the murders of eight men

Is exactly where he belongs,

And I don't believe he will ever get out.

And to me, that's some closure.

(metal bars click shut)

- When we talk about a serial killer like bruce mcarthur,

Certainly the nature of his crimes indicate

That he enjoyed having control and power over other people,

And that seems to fit with his profile.

Bruce mcarthur lived, for a long time,

With repressed shame, rage,

And resentment towards his father, towards society,

Toward himself, toward the gay community.

We sometimes think about sexual serial killers

Motivated by sex itself,

But the sex often represents power.

They feel like god,

Like they have total control over another human being,

And that power is so seductive,

It's so tantalizing.

♪♪♪

Haran: You hear the stories,

And you hear how lively and colourful

These individuals were, and um,

And I saw myself in that, too.

If I didn't have the graces of my mother and my sister

Accepting me for who I am...

(emotional) I think I could've been one of them.

Sorry.

- There's just an incredible sense of victimization,

From the fact that bruce mcarthur

Was known in the village.

People knew him.

It was horrifying to discover

That someone who had been part of the community

Was the one causing one of the worst things

That has happened to toronto's gay village.

Do you expect an older man,

Who is literally a grandfather,

Who worked as a santa claus,

To be killing and dismembering men?

You don't.

But I think that's what was exposed through this case

Is that you just never really know.

♪♪♪