The remains of the eighth victim of suspected Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur have been positively identified, nearly six months to the day after the landscaper was first arrested.
Toronto police officials on Friday announced that remains found earlier this month in a ravine behind a home where McArthur, 66, once worked were positively identified as those of Majeed "Hamid" Kayhan. Kayhan, who is believed to be McArthur's third victim, was 58 years old when he was reported missing in October 2012.
McArthur made a brief court appearance Monday. The Toronto Star reported that he stood "stone-faced" and "muttered" his name when asked by the judge to identify himself. McArthur is next expected in court in September.
Kayhan's remains were recovered over the course of a nine-day search that began July 4, Inspector Hank Idsinga said Friday at a news conference. The identification was made by forensic experts at Ontario Forensic Pathology Services.
"Although the examination and identification of remains continues, we do not have any evidence to suggest that Mr. McArthur is responsible for anything more than the eight murders (for) which he currently stands charged," Idsinga said. "At this time, we have no evidence to suggest that there are any further remains to be located at any further locations."
Idsinga said the recovery of the victims’ remains was important for the victims’ families, as well as for the community as a whole.
"It's been a terrible set of circumstances," Idsinga said. "Hopefully some healing can go on and some closure can be brought to the families."
Investigators continue to review more than a dozen cold cases and outstanding missing persons cases to determine if McArthur may be linked to those victims, as well, Idsinga said.
“There (was) a rash of murders from the ‘70s and ‘80s that remain unsolved,” Idsinga said. “We’re making progress on those cases, but right now we have nothing to suggest that Mr. McArthur is linked to any of them.”
The first homicide that McArthur is accused of took place in 2010. Andrew Kinsman, the last of the known victims, vanished in June 2017.
Credit: Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press via AP
Credit: Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press via AP
McArthur, who was arrested Jan. 18 in the case, has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. Besides Kayhan and Kinsman, 49, he is accused of killing and dismembering Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam, 40, and Abdulbasir “Basir” Faizi, 42, in 2010; Soroush Mahmudi, 50, and Kirushnakumar “Kumar” Kanagaratnam, 37, in 2015; Dean Lisowick, 47, in 2016; and Selim Esen, 44, in 2017.
At the time of his arrest, McArthur was under police surveillance in the cases of the missing men, at least three of whom vanished from Toronto's Church-Wellesley Village area, a predominantly gay downtown neighborhood that is also known as Gay Village. Kayhan was one of those men, along with Navaratnam and Faizi.
Toronto police investigators in 2012 established Project Houston, a task force that sought to solve their disappearances, but it was disbanded after 18 months.
Navaratnam and Faizi were not initially listed as victims of the serial killer, though Navaratnam had been romantically linked to McArthur. Faizi’s abandoned car was found a short distance from McArthur’s apartment.
They were officially added to the list once their remains were identified.
Kinsman was also known to have dated McArthur prior to his disappearance. His remains would later be the first to be identified.
Listen to Toronto Police Inspector Hank Idsinga discuss the identification of the eighth victim attributed to suspected serial killer Bruce McArthur below.
McArthur’s Thorncliffe Park apartment, where investigators believe some of the victims were killed, was also considered a crime scene -- particularly after a man was found alive and tied to the bed when investigators arrested the suspect.
Officers who were watching McArthur saw the man go into his apartment with McArthur and, believing him to be in danger, forced their way inside, police officials said.
McArthur was initially charged with six murders after the remains of Essen, Kinsman, Mahmudi, Lisowick, Navaratnam and Kanagaratnam were found hidden inside large planters at a home on Mallory Crescent. The homeowners allowed the landscaper to keep equipment and other items for his business on their property in exchange for the upkeep of their lawn.
He was charged with Kayhan's slaying on Jan. 29, though Kayhan's body had not yet been found, police officials said.
An eighth first-degree murder charge was levied against McArthur in April after the remains of Faizi, also found inside the planters on Mallory Crescent, were positively identified.
Investigators in March released a graphic image of a victim in an effort to identify the man. The man in the photo was later identified as Kanagaratnam.
The ravine in which Kayhan’s remains were found is located behind the home where the other victims were found, police officials said.
Credit: Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press via AP
Credit: Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press via AP
Idsinga told the Star in an interview last week that human remains were found every day of the excavation in the ravine, though sometimes those remains were no bigger than a bone fragment or a tooth.
"We essentially recovered different parts every day that we were digging there," Idsinga said.
The search was aided by K-9s trained to detect the scent of human remains.
The ravine and the nearby home at 53 Mallory Crescent had become the focal point of the largest forensic investigation in Toronto history, the Star reported.
In the months since McArthur's arrest, investigators from multiple agencies searched more than 100 properties linked to McArthur through his landscaping work. The property on Mallory Crescent, including the ravine behind the house, was the only site where human remains were found, Idsinga said.
The serial slayings are not McArthur's first brush with the law, the Star reported last month. The suspected killer was convicted in 2003 of assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm for beating a man with a metal pipe on Halloween 2001.
Credit: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP
Credit: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP
McArthur, who was 50 at the time of the assault, claimed during a psychological evaluation prior to sentencing that he did not remember the beating and wondered if he had suffered an epileptic seizure, the Star reported. The psychologist evaluating him found no signs of psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, mood disorders, personality disorders or antisocial behavior, the report said.
McArthur was described as passive, indecisive and eager to be well-liked, the newspaper reported. His exterior could potentially hide “underlying resentments,” however.
"Mr. McArthur's overt cooperativeness may hide strong rebellious feelings that may occasionally break through his front of propriety and restraint," Dr. Marie-France Dionne wrote, according to the Star. "Fear of exposing these socially unacceptable feelings and a desire to maintain his surface control lead him to an over-organized life of somewhat tense and self-rigid restraint."
Probation officer Julia Palladino wrote in her presentencing report that McArthur hoped to learn how to be happy with himself and his decisions in life.
"The subject hopes to find romance and eventually settle down," Palladino wrote.
McArthur married in his early 20s and fathered two children, but ultimately ended up divorced 25 years later after coming out as gay to his wife, the presentencing report said.
Dionne noted in her evaluation that McArthur had no known instances of violence in his life before the 2001 assault.
"We are confident to conclude that the risk for violence is very minimal," Dionne wrote.
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