A sixth murder charge filed against the alleged serial killer of Toronto

PHOTO AGENCE QMI, PASCAL MARCHAND

QMI agency

Friday, February 23, 2018 12:50

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Friday, February 23, 2018 12:50

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A landscape gardener of Toronto, accused of killing homosexuals, was charged Friday for a sixth murder following the identification of the remains of a body discovered in planters.

Bruce McArthur, 66 years old, was arrested in mid-January and charged with the disappearance and the murder in the spring of 2017 to two men who frequented the gay and lesbian area in Toronto.

The police has yet managed to identify the remains of three of the six victims, one thanks to its “fingerprint” and the other two thanks to their “dental records,” said Hank Idsinga, responsible for the investigation of the Toronto police service.

DNA analyses are continuing to identify the remains of three other victims found in the same garden of a house whose owners had put a dependency available from Bruce McArthur to store his gardening equipment.

The victims are identified as Andrew Kinsman, a 49 years old, who had had a long affair with Bruce McArthur, Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40 years old, missing since 2010, and Soroush Mahmudi, 50 years old, missing for nearly three years.

Mr. McArthur is also accused of the murder of Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick and Selim Esen.

“I can’t tell you where the murders were committed. We believe, however, dealing with multiple crime scenes,” added Mr. Idsinga at a press conference.

“We are looking closely at at least two or three properties”, where human remains could be buried, he said.

The police also reviews “of multiple unsolved murders” and “hundreds of cases of missing persons”, sometimes dating back several decades, he pointed out.

The police expects to uncover the remains of other alleged victims of Bruce McArthur, but “has no idea” of their number, according to Mr. Idsinga.

The investigation could take several months, or even years, pointed out the police officer.

Police have sifted through a twenty planters and big pots of flowers in the garden of the house to the East of Toronto, where Bruce McArthur stored his or her equipment.

They plan to return on the scene with sniffer dogs in the spring when the ground will be thawed out to try to find other human remains.

Police elsewhere in the world take part in the survey, several of the victims are immigrants.

The police has not revealed how Bruce McArthur would have killed its victims. “We stock items for some of them,” said the investigator Idsinga, refusing to elaborate.

According to local media, it was seeing a young man enter the apartment of the suspect that the police decided on 18 January to proceed immediately to the arrest of the latter. The young man was tied to the bed in the room of the suspect, but was not injured.

Bruce McArthur had already been convicted of assault in 2001 on homosexuals, and had for a prohibition against entering the gay district of Toronto, or prostitutes.