A financial analyst, tied to a bed, strangled, and stabbed to death. A disco manager, stabbed 100 times in his blood-soaked apartment. A part-time lecturer at the University of Toronto, found naked with stab wounds to the back and chest.

These gay men are counted among seven similar unsolved murders in Toronto between 1975 and 1978.

The recent arrest of Bruce McArthur on five murder charges may feel like a case of déjà vu for some in the Church and Wellesley Village who wrestled with the unanswered question of whether these men were being preyed upon by a serial killer four decades ago.

Fourteen gay men were murdered in that period, the Star reported then, but those seven cases are cold to this day.

There are close to 600 cold cases in Toronto. With active crime scenes taking precedence as police continue to comb through the properties of McArthur’s landscaping clients, revisiting cold cases is a secondary priority in the investigation, said Det.-Sgt. Stacy Gallant of Toronto Police’s Homicide Squad Cold Case unit.

“We have to look at each one and see … is it worthy of further attention to see whether or not there could be something there linking it to him,” he said.

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Gallant’s unit is equipped with information from databases including ViCLAS, the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, and national DNA banks. These tools flag similarities in crimes that can notify investigators to possible connections.

“We have many cases that are being brought to our attention, in addition to the review we were already doing of outstanding cases. It’s simply not possible for us to confirm or deny a connection to every single one at this point,” the Toronto Police Service’s spokesperson, Meaghan Gray, wrote in an email.

McArthur would have been between about 23 and 26 years old at the time of those deaths.

At the time, the cases bore eerie resemblances to each other.

“There have been a series of very similar murders in Toronto in which gay men have been tied up, brutally beaten and killed,” reads an October 1978 issue of the Body Politic, a now-defunct LGBT magazine.

For the solved murders, police found motives of robbery, fights over payment for sex and violent assault, according to TBP.

But in the cold cases, the community continued to wonder what happened to those men, with a February 1979 issue of TBP positing: “Could they have been committed by one man? The police aren’t saying. But the crimes do show a certain similarity.”

Robin Rowland, an author and former journalist now based in British Columbia, said it was the high-profile murder of bar owner Alexander “Sandy” Romeo LeBlanc in 1978 that tapped into this fear in the burgeoning Village community.

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“If you went to the bars, you very seldom saw the cops. After that one murder, you would see the uniforms from 52 Division doing walk-throughs through the bars,” he said.

Rowland, who was in his early 20s at the time, said he was just coming out in the gay community at the height of these murders. At that time, the suspected serial killer had been dubbed the “Mad Stabber.”

A homicide detective identified as Inspector Hobson told the Body Politic that several of the dead men had “a common denominator: the victim was last seen at the St. Charles Tavern, and met his murderer there. Beyond that we cannot say if there is a connection.”

To improve safety, gay men were encouraged to introduce their dates to friends and communication channels were slowly opening up with police to assist in the investigation.

However, sporadic bathhouse raids in the late 1970s, culminating in the 1981 raids and mass arrests, put a massive wedge between police and the community at a delicate time when investigators were searching for answers to murder cases.

“All the co-operation that the homicide cops were trying to get with the community, it just shut it down,” Rowland said.

Here is a summary of the murders, based on Toronto Police Cold Case files, Star archives and two TPB reports, one written by an unnamed author and the other by now-deceased journalist Robin Hardy.

What you need to know about the case against alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur. (The Canadian Press)

Feb. 18, 1975: Police attended the apartment of Arthur Harold Walkley, 52, in response to a 911 call at 3:50 a.m. that day. His roommate discovered his naked body, stabbed several times in the back and chest, though no knife was ever recovered by police. His wallets and credit cards were stolen during the attack on Borden St. near Bloor St. W. Walkley, a part-time University of Toronto lecturer, died shortly after arriving in hospital.

Dec. 20, 1975: Frederick John Fontaine was 32 when he died. Fontaine was found in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern, a former bar with a landmark clock tower, popular in the early days of Toronto’s Gay Village. Officers attended the scene about 9 p.m., and found the CBC technician suffering from blunt force trauma. He died several months later in hospital, on July 15, 1976.

Feb. 11, 1976: Forty-two-year-old painter and decorator James Douglas Taylor was found beaten with a baseball bat in his North York apartment near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave. He was also robbed. Neighbours told police at the time that a pickup truck was seen at the house, where he lived alone.

Sept. 20, 1976: Police discovered the body of James Stewart Kennedy, a federal income tax employee, at 8 a.m. on a Monday. The 59-year-old was strangled with a bath towel and suffering from blunt force trauma in his Jarvis St. apartment. He was dead by the time police arrived.

Jan. 25, 1977: Described in some media coverage as “shy and new on the gay scene,” 25-year-old Brian Dana Latocki, a financial bank analyst, was found tied to a bed in his apartment, strangled, and stabbed to death. Police responded to the scene on Erskine Ave., near Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Eglinton Ave. E., at 9:40 a.m. that day. The night before he was killed, he was last seen leaving the St. Charles Tavern.

Sept. 20, 1978: Perhaps one of the most high-profile deaths was of club owner Alexander “Sandy” Romeo LeBlanc, 29. He was found at 7:20 p.m., stabbed more than 100 times from head to foot. “As police walked around the body, the carpet squished from the sound of absorbed blood, and bloody footprints led to an open window,” Robin Hardy wrote in 1979. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, LeBlanc was pronounced dead in his apartment on St. Joseph St.

Nov. 28, 1978: Just after 2 p.m. that day, police responded to a “check address” call for a resident near Bathurst St. and St. Clair Ave. Inside an apartment, they found William Duncan Robinson, 25, dead from stab wounds. His sister made the call to police after he didn’t show up to work for two days. At the time, police believed he may have gone to a gay bar in the Yonge and College Sts. area, and returned home with the killer. A neighbour reported hearing a “strange hollow sound” coming from his apartment.