The Toronto man who was arrested last year for the deaths of several gay men has plead guilty to eight counts of first degree murder.
According to The Washington Post, Bruce McArthur confessed on Tuesday to murdering Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam (pictured above, not in order) between 2010 and 2017.
Court records claim McArthur met many of his victims at gay night clubs and bars in Toronto and describe most of his killings as “sexual in nature.”
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Navaratnam was the first to go missing in 2010.
As more gay men began to disappear over the next few years, Toronto’s LGBTQ community started to fear someone was targeting the city’s gay population. Unfortunately, they were right.
In January 2018, Toronto police announced McArthur had been charged with the murders of five men. The arrest came after authorities found dismembered skeletal remains of three victims “hidden at the bottom of planters” at a home the 67-year-old used as storage for his landscaping business.
Investigators have since linked the former mall Santa to three more victims: Navaratnam, Faizi, and Kanagaratnam. Several of McArthur’s victims were still closeted, and most were refugees or recent immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East.
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Each count of murder carries an automatic life sentence for McArthur. A sentencing hearing will take place next week.
While relieved the serial killer is behind bars, the local LGBT community remains unnerved as to how he was able to get away with it for so long. Police have been criticized for not taking the killings seriously until Kinsman, a white man McArthur was said to be in a relationship with, disappeared in 2017.
Our hearts go out to the victims’ families and the Toronto LGBT community.
[Image via Toronto Sun]
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