The 67-year-old self-employed landscaper was arrested in January 2018

Bruce McArthur is shown in a Facebook photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Facebook)

An alleged serial killer accused of preying on men from Toronto’s gay village has pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder.

READ ALSO: Remains of all eight Bruce McArthur victims now identified

Bruce McArthur, who had been set to stand trial next year, entered the guilty plea during a hearing in a Toronto courtroom.

The 67-year-old self-employed landscaper was arrested in January 2018.

Police eventually charged him with first-degree murder in the deaths of Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Kirushna Kanagaratnam.

The victims went missing from the gay village between 2010 and 2017.

READ ALSO: McArthur could stand trial as early as September 2019

Police said they recovered the remains of seven men in large planters at a residential property in midtown Toronto where McArthur worked while the remains of an eighth man was found in a nearby ravine.

More to come.

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. </s> Image copyright Reuters Image caption Bruce McArthur was arrested last January and pled guilty on 18 January 2019

A Toronto landscaper accused of killing eight men who went missing between 2010-17 has pleaded guilty to their murders.

Bruce McArthur, 67, was arrested last January and charged in the deaths of two men, and police subsequently charged him in six other cases.

Most of his victims had links to Toronto's Gay Village neighbourhood.

Many of the victims' remains were found in plant pots on one property in Toronto's Leaside neighbourhood.

Each of the first-degree murder charges carry an automatic life sentence, meaning he will not be able to apply for release until the age of 91.

His sentencing hearing will begin on 4 February, in which friends and relatives will be give impact statements, describing how the killings have affected their lives.

Image caption The victims clockwise from upper left: Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Soroush Mahmudi

The judge must also decide whether to sentence him to consecutive life sentences, or whether he can serve eight life sentences concurrently.

What were his crimes?

In court on Tuesday, Crown prosecutor Michael Cantlon described how McArthur had "staged" and photographed the victims, keeping mementos such as jewellery and a notebook.

He described all of the crimes as "sexual in nature", adding that there is evidence he tied the victims up during the murders.

While many of the remains were buried in planters at 53 Mallory Crescent in Toronto, where McArthur worked as a gardener, others were buried in a nearby ravine.

McArthur had an agreement with the home's elderly residents to store his landscaping equipment there in exchange for free lawn care, according to the authorities.

Police say they found a duffle bag with duct tape, a surgical glove, rope, zip ties, a black bungee cord and syringes in his bedroom when they searched his property, according to court documents.

They say that some of the victims were killed during a sexual assault or while being "unlawfully confined".

The arrest launched a massive investigation that spanned Canada's largest city, one of the largest such investigations in the history of Toronto police.

Investigators searched dozens of properties linked to the self-employed landscaper and looked into cold cases dating back decades.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A bagpiper played a lament for victims on the one year anniversary of McArthur's arrest

Why?

By Robin Levinson-King in the Toronto court

In a packed courtroom, Bruce McArthur's eight guilty pleas marked the beginning of the end of a saga that has haunted Toronto's LGBT community for years.

Dressed in a black cable-knit sweater and a plaid shirt, McArthur spoke softly and matter-of-factly when addressing the court, which was filled with family and friends of his victims.

As the plea deal was read, they were stoic, but outside of the courtroom, many embraced with signs of relief in their eyes.

For years, rumours of a serial killer stalking Toronto's Gay Village has left the city's LGBT community afraid.

McArthur's conviction, and his subsequent sentencing to life in prison, will bring closure for many.

But nagging questions remain: how did he get away with it for so long?

Why did he do it?

Who are the victims?

So far, all of the eight victims except one had ties to the city's Gay Village.

Many were immigrants from South Asia or the Middle East.

Members of Toronto's LGBT community have criticised police, saying they did not take their concerns about the missing men seriously.

The first two alleged victims were identified in January as Andrew Kinsman, 49, and Selim Esen, 44, who both went missing in 2017.

Since then, police have named Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40, who disappeared on Labour Day weekend in 2010; Soroush Mahmudi, 50, reported missing in 2015; Dean Lisowick, 47, who is believed to have been killed in April 2016; Abdulbasir Faizi, 42, who disappeared in 2010; Majeed Kayhan, 58, who disappeared in 2012; and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, 37, who police believe was killed in January 2016.

What's the reaction?

Karen Fraser, one of the residents of the home where victims were recovered, told reporters outside the courthouse that the couple feels "violated" by the man they knew for more than a decade.

"What does remorse look like? I only saw a blank face," she said, calling him "evil" and a "shuffling, broken man, as he should be".

She had previously met two of the victims, whom she did not name, at her property with McArthur. She said thinking about their last moments "haunts her".

"They're not just on a list or a photograph, they were people standing in front of me."

Mrs Fraser said that in her mind, there were two Bruce McArthurs: "Bruce A" and "Bruce B".

Lead Homicide Detective David Dickinson said investigators are glad for the guilty plea, which will spare victims and families a trial.

An independent review has been ordered to look into how police handle missing persons cases.

"If mistakes were made we should learn from them," Detective Dickinson said.

Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention Director Haran Vijayanathan, who has been speaking on behalf of many victims' families since McArthur's arrest, said they are grateful.

"We have closure now finally. We don't have to guess and wait and anticipate and come to court meetings and just walk away with no answers," he said.

"So this is really good for closure for everyone." </s> TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian serial killer Bruce McArthur was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday in a trial that gripped the country and shocked the gay community of Toronto.

McArthur, who pleaded guilty to eight charges of first-degree murder from 2010 to 2017, was arrested in January 2018 by Toronto police and was initially charged with the murders of five men. Most of his victims had ties to the “Gay Village” of Toronto.

Justice John McMahon in the Ontario Superior Court said he had “no doubt Bruce McArthur would have continued killing” and noted McArthur had shown no signs of remorse or turned himself in.

McArthur, 67, will be eligible for parole after 25 years, the judge said.

Some victims’ remains were found in the planters of homes where McArthur did landscaping contracting. Evidence revealed in a hearing showed McArthur kept items from his victims and had photographs of them on his computer. </s> Bruce McArthur, the Canadian serial killer who murdered eight men between 2010 and 2017, was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the crimes that haunted Toronto’s LGBTQ community.

McArthur, a mall Santa and landscaper who dismembered his victims and placed their remains in potted plants, will be eligible for parole for 25 years, when he is 92 years old. If McArthur reaches the age of 92, the judge noted even then his chance for parole would be “very remote at best,” the New York Times reports.

On January 29th, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, many of who were residents of Toronto’s Gay Village.

Life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years was the lightest possible sentence for McArthur, who avoided serving the eight life sentences consecutively by pleading guilty to the gruesome murders.

“The accused has saved the family, friends and community at large from enduring a graphic public trial that would have been a nightmare for everyone,” Justice John McMahon told the courthouse upon sentencing. The prosecution sought two consecutive life sentences to ensure parole was not even an option, the Globe and Mail reports.

However, McMahon also noted that he had “no doubt Bruce McArthur would have continued killing” if he wasn’t apprehended by police in January 2018, months after the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman. Upon searching McArthur’s residence, police discovered – in addition to victims’ remains – personal items belonging to the victims as well as photographs of them on McArthur’s computer. </s> TORONTO — Bruce McArthur officially became one of Canada’s worst serial killers by pleading guilty on Tuesday to eight counts of first-degree murder.

The 67-year-old landscaper admitted in court to the grisly killings of eight men who vanished in Toronto between 2010 and 2017. Many of them had ties to the city’s gay village.

McArthur appeared before Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice for about 20 minutes on Tuesday morning. Wearing a black sweater over a plaid collared shirt, he told the judge that he understood he is giving up his right to a trial and said he was pleading guilty voluntarily.

Sentencing is expected to begin Monday, Feb. 4, at which point victim impact statements will be filed with the court.

Court heard that six of the eight murders were sexual in nature. Evidence showed that McArthur used ligatures in five of the murders and confined two of those victims with ropes.

The men McArthur murdered, in alphabetical order, are Selim Esen, Abdulbasir Faizi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Majeed Kayhan, Andrew Kinsman, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi and Skandaraj Navaratnam. Police found their remains either in planters to which McArthur tended at a property in Toronto’s Leaside neighbourhood or in the ravine behind that house.
• Are the unknown victims of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur hidden among these 22 cold cases?

The plea comes slightly more than a year after police arrested McArthur last Jan. 18 on two initial counts of first-degree murder, and precisely a year after the force upped the murder charges against him to five. By mid-April McArthur’s alleged victims totalled eight.

By confessing to the killings, McArthur averts a trial that was to begin next January and that would have attracted considerable public attention. His decision in October to waive his right to a preliminary hearing was an indication that the case could be heading toward a guilty plea.

More to come. </s> TORONTO -- An alleged serial killer accused of preying on men from Toronto's gay village has pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder.

Bruce McArthur, who had been set to stand trial next year, entered the guilty plea during a hearing in a Toronto courtroom.

The 67-year-old self-employed landscaper was arrested in January 2018.

Police eventually charged him with first-degree murder in the deaths of Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Kirushna Kanagaratnam.

The victims went missing from the gay village between 2010 and 2017.

Police said they recovered the remains of seven men in large planters at a residential property in midtown Toronto where McArthur worked while the remains of an eighth man was found in a nearby ravine.

More to come. .. </s> Bruce McArthur, the serial killer in Toronto who pleaded guilty to the murders of eight men in the Church-Wellesley Village, has been sentenced to life in prison,with no chance for parole for 25 years.

The hearings took place over the past two weeks and included victim impact statements read by Justice John McMahon. Court also heard many harrowing and gruesome facts of the case.

It was found that McArthur kept digital folders for his victims, within which he kept photos of them before and after death. He also created a ninth folder for a man he had planned to kill, but who was rescued the day of McArthur's arrest.

The court did acknowledge the commonality of the eight victims, and how they came from vulnerable backgrounds. Their names are Skandaraj (Skanda) Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Kirushnakumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman.

After being convicted on eight counts of murder, McArthur immediately faced an automatic life-in-prison sentence without a chance for parole for 25 years.

Crown prosecution, however, fought for 50 years with no parole. </s> TORONTO — Serial killer Bruce McArthur murdered eight men from Toronto’s gay village for “his own warped and sick gratification,” an Ontario judge said Friday as he sentenced the 67-year-old to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The ruling means McArthur will be 91 before he can apply for any form of release, which the judge said he was highly unlikely to receive.

“Although Mr. McArthur has taken responsibility by pleading guilty, there has been no evidence I can see of remorse,” said Justice John McMahon. “Mr. McArthur would have no doubt continued to kill if he wasn’t caught.”

McArthur, a self-employed landscaper, pleaded guilty last week to eight counts of first-degree murder for men he killed between 2010 and 2017.

His victims were Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi and Kirushna Kanagaratnam.

The judge found McArthur strangled all of them and then took photographs of their bodies in various states of undress, keeping the images on his computer and viewing them long after his crimes.

McArthur then dismembered his victims and hid their remains in planters at a Toronto residential property where he stored his landscaping equipment, and in a ravine behind the home.

“Bruce McArthur is a sexual predator and killer who lured his victims on the pretext of consensual sex and he ended up killing them for his own warped and sick gratification,” McMahon said. “The ability to decapitate and dismember his victims and do it repeatedly is pure evil.”

Parole eligibility was the only question for McMahon to settle as first-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence. The judge said McArthur’s age and guilty plea were factors in his decision.

“The accused has saved the family, friends and community at large from enduring a graphic public trial that would have been a nightmare for everyone,” he said. “The law is clear: a guilty plea is a mitigating factor. The second factor is the age of accused when he could apply for parole.”

The sentence wasn’t harsh enough for Nicole Borthwick, who was friends with Kinsman, Lisowick and Esen.

She said the punishment failed to either fit the crime or soothe the wounds of the community impacted by the men’s deaths.

“I don’t think that’s enough comfort for the families or the community or the people that he’s killed,” Borthwick said outside court. “I think that if you’re going to do a maximum crime, you deserve the maximum sentence.”

Toronto’s police Chief Mark Saunders was satisfied with the sentence, saying McArthur will never see daylight again.

“I do not see him in a public setting ever again,” he said. “In this case life will mean life.”

Saunders also defended the work of his investigators, who have been criticized for not acting sooner on concerns from the LGBTQ community that a serial killer was responsible for the disappearances of several men from the gay village.

The chief said officers had launched an investigation into the disappearances of McArthur’s first three victims, but simply never had enough evidence to proceed further until 2017.

“This was not a case of police didn’t think anything was going on,” Saunders said. “We knew something stunk and we did everything we could to find it. We just didn’t.”

Court heard that many of McArthur’s victims were immigrants and of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent. Some lived parts of their life in secret because of their sexual orientation. All of them had ties to the city’s LGBTQ community.

“This is a crime of stark horror,” prosecutor Michael Cantlon said in a statement. “Although there can be no closure from a crime of this magnitude, we hope that these eight convictions for first-degree murder will assist our community in beginning a new chapter of healing.” </s> TORONTO — Serial killer Bruce McArthur was sentenced on Friday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, the lightest penalty he could have received for the “murderous devastation” he wrought on Toronto’s gay community over most of this decade.

Crown prosecutors used those words to argue at McArthur’s sentencing hearing this week that he should be barred from seeking parole for 50 years — a recommendation Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon rejected in siding with the defence, which lobbied for the minimum punishment even as it acknowledged that McArthur’s crimes were “horrific.”

McArthur, 67, had to be sentenced to life for each of the eight first-degree murder counts to which he pleaded guilty last week. McMahon ordered him to serve those sentences concurrently, meaning McArthur could ask for parole at age 91 if he’s still alive.

McArthur, a former landscaper, admitted in court last week to murdering eight men — Selim Esen, Abdulbasir Faizi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Majeed Kayhan, Andrew Kinsman, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi and Skandaraj Navaratnam — in Toronto between 2010 and 2017. His victims were mostly immigrants of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent and members of the city’s gay community.

Police arrested McArthur in January 2018 after officers saw him lead another Middle Eastern man into his east Toronto apartment complex — a man they subsequently found naked and handcuffed to McArthur’s bed.

At various points over the next few months, they charged McArthur in all eight murders as each victim’s dismembered remains were discovered outside the home of one of his clients, either hidden in planters or buried in an adjoining ravine.

Court heard at McArthur’s sentencing hearing this week that he arranged most of the killings under the pretense of sex. He repeatedly strangled his victims and posed many of them naked after death, shaving their heads and placing unlit cigars in their mouths. He dressed some in a fur hat and coat. Police found on McArthur’s digital devices photos of several of the men in these positions.

McArthur’s arrest a year ago brought to an end an extensive police effort to find the killer in Toronto’s gay village, dating back to the creation in 2012 of a task force to probe the disappearances of Navaratnam, Faizi and Kayhan. Although the men are now known to be McArthur’s first three victims, the investigation, Project Houston, was shuttered without resolution after 18 months.

McArthur went on to murder Mahmudi in 2015, Kanagaratnam and Lisowick in 2016 and Esen and Kinsman in 2017. Police first identified him as a suspect when they obtained video footage of Kinsman entering a red 2004 Dodge Caravan — which they later determined to be McArthur’s — on June 26, 2017, the day he was last seen alive.

An entry in Kinsman’s calendar indicated who he had planned to meet that afternoon: “Bruce.”

By pleading guilty on Jan. 29 to all eight murders, McArthur stopped his case from progressing to a trial that had been scheduled to begin next January, at which the Crown would likely have been forced to present graphic evidence of his crimes.

James Miglin argued McArthur should receive the minimum parole ineligibility period of 25 years because he is already a senior citizen and he pleaded guilty.
• Only Pickton was as evil: Bruce McArthur deserves 50 years without parole, Crown says
• Bruce McArthur case prosecutors outline chilling trail of clues that led them to serial killer
• Are the unknown victims of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur hidden among these 22 cold cases?

During the Crown’s sentencing submission, assistant attorney Craig Harper compared McArthur to Robert Pickton and said the term “serial killer” is a “woefully inadequate” description of the severity of McArthur’s crimes. He called 50 years without chance of parole a “measured” penalty that would sufficiently denounce the murders and ensure, in all likelihood, that the victims’ families would never have to face McArthur at a future parole hearing.

In total, court heard 27 impact statements this past Monday and Tuesday from family and friends of the victims, as well as from Toronto LGBTQ community members. The speakers conveyed the magnitude of ways in which McArthur’s murders continue to harm them mentally, physically, emotionally and financially.

The Crown says it doesn’t have evidence that suggests McArthur killed anyone else. However, Toronto Police Det. Dave Dickinson, who helped lead the investigation into McArthur, said last week that the force is still probing cold and missing persons cases in search of other possible victims.

More to come.
Bruce McArthur, a Toronto landscaper charged on January 18, 2018, in this decade-long investigation, pleads guilty in Ontario Superior Court to murdering eight men.