CTV News' Chris Herwalt
noted that Bruce McArthur, a landscaper 66 years old already charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esem, is also suspected of involvement in another two murdered based on recovered evidence.
The source told CP24 that that McArthur had been under surveillance for some time when he allegedly attempted to enter an auto wrecking yard, presumably to have his vehicle destroyed.
Police intercepted McArthur and found blood in the trunk of his vehicle, the source said.
The blood evidence was used to obtain a search warrant for his apartment on Thorncliffe Park Drive.
In the apartment, the source said police allegedly located evidence of four homicides, including the alleged murders of Esen and Kinsman.
McArthur appeared in a College Park courtroom just before 10 a.m. on Friday.
He said nothing and was ordered remanded into custody until his next appearance, scheduled for the morning of Feb. 14.
I have been left unsettled by this. I have not been introduced to either the victims or their alleged killer. Through the miracle of Facebook, I was able to find that I was connected to
Andrew Kinsman through two mutual friends. More unsettlingly still, I was connected to McArthur through one mutual friend. These connections were weak--I happened to be connected to Kinsman and McArthur through people who can be said to lie at the heart for Toronto's queer male population--but still, these connections do exist. I would certainly expect my paths to have crossed these men's at some point: Church and Wellesley is just not that big a place. More: it could be said that I share a certain look, a certain amount of beard and a certain body shape, with the two victims.
Kinsman and Esim were not the only two men to disappear. The patterns of disappearances started back in 2010, as Justin Ling noted in his
excellent June 2017 survey for VICE. Skanda Navaratnam disappeared in September 2010; Basir Faizi disappeared in December 2010; Hamid Kayhan disappeared in October 2012. Even before the disappearance last June of Kinsman, highly connected to others in Toronto's LGBTQ communities, there was worry on the streets of gay Toronto. Andrea Houston's 2013
Daily Xtra article did a great job of reporting on the state of affairs. Something was up.
(Who are the other two men suspected of being missing? Others have noted that these five disappeared men disappeared on holiday weekends. All five? Are there
more?)
What was the police doing? As I noted earlier today, Marcus Gee
over at
The Globe and Mail is entirely right to note that the lagging response of Toronto police to LGBTQ community reports of a possible serial killer demands an explanation.
Many felt the two disappearances, which took place just a couple of months apart in the spring and early summer of 2017, must be linked. Some thought back to others who vanished over the past decade. Police insisted there was no reason to think the disappearances of the two men were linked to each other, or to the earlier disappearances.
Chief Saunders sounded like a man addressing a public-relations issue, not a criminal problem, when he announced in December that the police force was going to review how it handles missing-persons investigations. He said at the time that "we have to have some stronger relationships and stronger conversations to reduce the perception that may be out there."
Strong community relations are important, but what members of the gay community really needed was to be taken seriously when they expressed their fear that a killer was at large among them. Police now admit they had been looking into Mr. McArthur for some time. Did they really have no inkling there might be a link between the disappearances? Or were they simply trying to calm a fearful and frustrated community with soothing words? If so, they have a lot to answer for.
Chief Saunders said he was simply going on the evidence at hand when he dismissed concerns about a serial killer back in December. "In policing, what we do is we follow the evidence," he said. What he said at that time, he argued, "was accurate at that time."
That will not do. If it turns out that a serial killer has been abroad in Toronto, perhaps for years, the chief will need to be clear with the public, and especially the gay community, how the force decided despite a string of suspicious disappearances that there was not.
Arshy Mann was completely justified in
questioning, in
Daily Xtra just last month, if the police was taking the concerns of LGBTQ people about safety seriously. McArthur's Facebook account apparently listed Navaratman, disappeared in 2010, as a friend. Was data mining--for instance--completely impossible? If someone has more connections to disappeared people than Angela Fletcher does to murdered ones, and if that someone isn't a fictional character in a television show, surely they should appear to be a bit suspicious at least? Could last year's murders have been avoided?
(McArthur is reportedly a landscaper. That explains the absence of bodies so far.)
Herhalt's article for CTV features a passage I find telling.
Standing outside the court, Alphonso King and his husband John Allen told CP24 they went to the proceedings because they wanted to see the man accused in the killing of their acquaintance, Andrew Kinsman.
They criticized the police service’s priorities concerning the cases of five men who have gone missing in the Village — including Esen and Kinsman — since 2010.
“It took someone who was white to be the catalyst for them to get up and do their jobs,” King said, referring to Kinsman’s disappearance, the last of the five to be reported missing.
“One thing they could have done is instead of being so obsessed with marching in the Pride Parade, they could have taken more interest in this case,” Allen said.
Are they wrong? Kinsman was deeply connected to Toronto's LGBTQ communities, as I've said, and his friends and family have been prominent in trying to find him,
talking to the media and
maintaining a months-long search throughout the city and keeping the case prominent. They did good work; they should be proud. They even had me keeping an eye out when I was wandering around the periphery of the Necropolis in Cabbagetown or walking in the Don Valley. Of Selim Esen, all I can find is an
August interview with a close friend, talking about how the 44-year-old Turkish immigrant was a good person and a good friend who would not go missing. If not for Kinsman, would Esen have not been just another missing person?
All this makes me realize at a visceral level how Black Lives Matters was entirely right about Toronto Pride. Their
half-hour stall of the 2016 parade, including among other things a demand that the police stop maintaining floats in the parade, was certainly controversial. My own feeling, then up until now, was that Pride was probably right to agree, that in order to live up to Pride's radical traditions of freedom for queer people we need to be concerned with freedom for everyone, that we need to make and keep alliances with other groups struggling for what we seek. It was only really today that I realized a perhaps more important--perhaps more selfish--reason: We are threatened, too, by the same forces that threaten others. Most specifically, we are threatened by the neglect of our concerns that allows so much horror, the same neglect that seems to have allowed this particular horror to occur. We need to keep coalitions, not just to be kind, but for ourselves.
We need answers. We have to condemn silence. We need to make stronger coalitions. There is so much we need to do, and if we do not do it our very lives are at stake.
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