Gay Village Serial Killer ~ The Case of Bruce McArthur Part 3

 

This section of the case, I am going to explain the case of the missing men and ultimately what it was that made Bruce McArthur the prime suspect...

PROJECT HOUSTON

"Project Houston" was created by the Toronto Police Services (TPS) in November 2012. The case that started this was the disappearance of Skandaraj Navaratnam aka Skanda. He went missing on September 6, 2010. The reason his case became so interesting is that someone created a cannibal website called "Zambian Meat" in 2012. 

The poster claimed that he had killed and eaten a man from Toronto. Initially TPS tried to find a link between this website and Luka Magnotta (I already wrote about him)... ultimately, there wasn't enough evidence to pursue that avenue and they refocused on new suspects.

In June 2013, TPS had been able to link two more missing men to Project Houston. Their names were Abdulbasir "Basir" Faizi and Majeed "Hamid" Kayhan. This almost feels like again, the Toronto Police let things slip through their fingers, causing many more deaths. They had received a tip that Bruce McArthur was connected to both these men. 

Detectives went to visit Bruce on November 11, 2013, but it appeared that Bruce was ready for their visit as he said he did have a relationship with Skanda and had hired Hamid to work for him, but he had ended their sexual relationship. It was decided that there was absolutely no evidence to tie Bruce McArthur to the missing men and left satisfied with his responses.

A few years go by...

For those of you who don't know, Toronto hosts a huge Pride Fest every year, including a parade to conclude the events. It was on June 26, 2017, a man named Andrew Kinsman was seen for the last time. A few days later, when his friends and loved ones hadn't seen nor heard from him, they went into his apartment and he was nowhere to be found; even his social media account had no activity. Police discovered that his phone had been off since the last day he was seen; which was not like the man, who was described as very responsible and stable.

In July 2017, the police force began another project called "Project Prism" which was organized to investigate the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen. They were also attempting to find any links to these two missing men from "Project Houston".

A man named Greg Downer, opened a facebook group that was intended for finding his missing friend, Kinsman. This led to big community meetings, which the police force attended and showed their support. Downer worked with dating apps, asking adminstrators of the apps to give those who were vulnerable the opportunity to share their data with the police, in the off chance that they too went missing. Downer also worked with TPS and there were hotlines set up for people who were reluctant to trust the police or being "outted".

Things seemed to be quiet for a few months, but on November 29th of the same year Tess Richey's body was found in an alley, four days after she was reported missing. The next day, the police revealed they found the body of Alloura Wells (a homeless transgender woman), she was found iback in August in a ravine in Rosedale.

(It feels at this time, the Toronto Police were not doing their jobs at all, because on December 8th, Toronto Police Chief, Mark Saunders spoke about the missing people, and inspite of them all being in fairly close proximity, they did not believe they were killed by the same person; even going so far as saying they did NOT believe they had a serial killer on their hands!!! I am sorry, this is my personal opinion, but there were way too many coincidences for them to even say that. Did they say this to try to ease the paranoia of the LGBTQ community of Toronto??? Wouldn't lying like this only cause more mistrust between an already "fragile and reluctant" community and the very people who are meant to protect them???)

There were quite a number of law enforcement officers involved in the two projects and it was confirmed that one detective working on the Project Prism cases, found a crucial piece of evidence when it came to Andrew Kinsman's murder. On his calendar, noted on the day he went missing was the name "Bruce". They obtained surveillance from the front of Kinsman's place and were able to clearly see a 2004 Dodge Caravan arrive out front; although the face was not clear enough to identify, they followed their hunches (which paid off), because there were only 5 registered to someone named "Bruce" and, low and behold, Bruce McArthur was one of them. Unfortunately by the time they got to Bruce's, the van was no longer at his property.

Subsequently, warrants were issued in 2017 for various websites and businesses to tie things to the person they had a suspect, Bruce McArthur. It took a while to get various warrants, but in October, an undercover police officer went to Courtice, Ontario to visit Dom's Auto Parts. Dominic Vetere confirmed that he had purchased the van from McArthur in September; thankfully the police found the van had not been torn apart for scrap and were able to two it. After some forensics testing, it was confirmed that the traces of blood they found in the van, belonged to missing man, Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen.

In November, police brought their cadaver dogs to a property that Bruce McArthur had been doing landscaping at; nothing came of this initial search but they were able to piece together a timeline of Andrew Kinsman's final hours and after searching McArthur's home, they released a press conference, issuing a warning of certain sites. TPS also revealed through Project Prism, they had interviewed 62 witnesses, 28 judicial authorizations for warrants and searches, assigning 308 different actions; 225 of those had been completely by the time this December 8th conference was held.

It wasn't until January 17, 2018 that detectives finally obtained concrete evidence that tied Bruce McArthur to the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen. Bruce must have let his ego get the best of him because on the deleted files on his computer they were able to retrieve pictures taken AFTER they were killed. McArthur was now under 24/7 surveillance with orders that he should be immediately arrested and taken into custody if he is seen alone with any body.

I apologize for this being split into so many entries, but there is A LOT of details in this case. I haven't even gotten to all the victims yet...

On January 18, 2018 Bruce McArthur was arrested when he was spotted a young man enter his apartment building. Police breeched the door and found the man was restrained to the bed. He appeared to be unharmed, other than being emotional and scared. He had arrived in Canada only a few years ago and his family had no clue that he was gay, He was also married, admitting they met through a dating app. He (refered to as John Doe) also told detectives that he had met with Bruce several times and appeared to trust Bruce, so much so, that just before the police arrived, Bruce was in the process of placing a bag over his head and taping his mouth shut.

The arrest was under first degree murder charges, TPS also recovered 5 phones, 5 computers, 3 cameras and approximately 12 flash drives. Even though Kinman and Esen's bodies have not been recovered, the evidence gave the police a pretty good visual of what had happened to them. As morbid as it sounds, detectives involved in the case, found some gruesome pictures McArthur had taken of his victims. They were trophies to him.

Various properties were searched, his home and his business site as well as some of the properties that he did landscape work at, including in Leaside. 

Even though it was the dead of winter, the cadaver dogs couldn't stay away from some fairly large planter boxes; because it was so cold, on the morning of January 19, they needed heaters to thaw the planters that were frozen to the ground; two days later they were brought to the coroner's office. It was confirmed at this point that there were several remains within the box, at least 2 to 3 people. 

Police at this point were ready to lay more charges, and Bruce McArthur was charged with the first degree murders of Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi (disappeared in 2015), and Dean Lisowick (another homeless person who was never reported missing). They never stopped searching until May 11, 2018. Experts felt that this may be a province wide search of missing people and murders, because Bruce McArthur was superb at this, and this would take years to perfect it the way he did.

On February 23, McArthur was charged with 6 counts of first degree murder; but TPS were not done. They found more remains in planters in Leaside, resulting in Bruce being charged on April 11th, 2018 with 7 murders and on April 16th, he was charged with the 8th count of first degree murder of Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam.

To be continued....