Suspected Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur to appear in trial
Suspected Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur will appear in court on Wednesday to be questioned.
McArthur, who is accused of killing eight men from Toronto’s gay quarter, will appear via video link to answer questions about the first-degree murders.
However, police have insisted that the questioning is not because they have found another victim.
Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old self-employed landscaper, has been charged in the murder of two men, both of whom disappeared last year (Getty)
It has been nearly a month since 66-year-old McArthur last appeared in court.
He last showed up in court on April 23 via video link.
Police have taken more than 18,000 photos and are collecting more than 1,800 separate exhibits of evidence, reports CP24.
The murders, which allegedly took place between 2010 to 2017, were carried out by McArthur using the likes of gay dating websites such as Silver Daddies to find and target vulnerable gay men, in particular immigrants or men of colour, in Toronto’s gay village.
However, the latest suspected victim of McArthur, Sri Lankan man Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, doesn’t explicitly fit that profile.
Kanagaratnam, who was 37 when he died, arrived in Canada in 2010, and was not on file as missing.
As Kanagaratnam does not fit the standard victim profile – he is not associated with Toronto Village – a spate of concerned relatives have been getting in touch with the police to query if their missing loved one has been a victim of the suspected serial killer.
“This does create basically a wide open net,” Detective Sergeant Idsinga said to The Globe and Mail.
A general view of the police station where Justin Bieber appeared in connection with an alleged criminal assault on January 29, 2014 in Toronto, Canada. (Jag Gundu/Getty)
“We’ve had lots of calls, international calls, since our pleas began, from people who just haven’t seen family members for years.”
Toronto Pride will end in “a sea of black” this year to commemorate LGBT+ victims.
“It’s one of the ways we want to commemorate the death of eight men in our community,” executive director of Pride Toronto Olivia Nuamah told CBC.
“The one thing that feels celebratory [about Pride] is the colour and the one thing that we’re really trying to take away this year is the colour.
“Even though we understand that we’re celebrating, we also need to deal with some hard truths about the LGBTQ community and the issues of safety that we still suffer.”
McArthur has been charged with the murders of Abdulbasir “Basir” Faizi, Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan, Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam, Soroush Mahmudi, Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Dean Lisowick and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam to date.
