The Canadian serial killer who sexually assaulted, murdered, and dismembered eight men will spend the rest of his life in prison.
On Friday, Justice John McMahon handed Bruce McArthur, 67, a life sentence for killing eight men; he had pleaded guilty in late January. McArthur “lured eight innocent men to their deaths,” McMahon said in court, calling his actions “pure evil.”
Between 2010 and 2017, McArthur terrorized Toronto’s gay community, killing eight men who were connected to the scene: Selim Esen, Abdulbasir Faizi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Majeed Kayhan, Andrew Kinsman, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, and Skandaraj Navaratnam, many of whom McArthur communicated with on dating apps. Once he lured them to his bedroom, McArthur would allegedly kill them via strangulation, pose their bodies in fur coats, and take photos of them. Later, he would dismember their bodies and bury their remains in garden planters.
“For years, members of the LGBTQ community in Toronto believed they were being targeted by a killer,” prosecutor Michael Cantlon told the court. “They were right.”
Toronto police started to look into the disappearance of three of McArthur’s victims as early as November 2012, per the New York Times, but the investigation stopped after 18 months. It wasn’t until January 2018, when police found McArthur with a man bound to his bed, that he was arrested for his crimes. McArthur will have no chance of parole for 25 years, at which point he will be 91.
