The mystery of missing persons cases is enough to keep most people up at night, but for Sasha Reid, reviewing unsolved disappearances is an escape.

The University of Toronto Ph.D. candidate created a missing persons database of 8,000 names Canada-wide as a side project, something to get her away from daily research into serial homicide, which she’s been studying for 11 years.

But no sooner was Reid revisiting her area of expertise — sexually motivated, psychopathic serial killers — when she identified a connection in her database between missing persons cases in the Village.

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The investigation into McArthur, a 66-year-old landscaper, has revealed that police found remains of at least six people from a home on Mallory Cres., where McArthur mowed the owners’ lawn in exchange for storing work equipment in the garage.

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Reid then contacted police in July 2017 with a basic profile of a man she suspected was stalking the Village.

“I just wanted to verify that there is something going on. You don’t see patterns like this (often), and these databases can be used to build a profile and narrow the search,” said Reid, referring to her database on missing persons, and a second one on serial homicides.

Reid spoke to a detective for about half an hour. Her profile indicated the potential suspect would be a male with a blue collar job, no post-secondary education, and a history of violence, with a criminal record.

Bruce McArthur, the alleged serial killer charged in the first-degree murders of six men so far, appears to match those attributes.

Based on looking specifically at information related to gay serial killers, Reid also profiled the possible suspect as someone who would bury victims outside or in a home, “somewhere where they have access to it.”

His landscaping clients have been subject to searches from police, who have combed through as many as 20 individual planters in the search for human remains.

Reid said serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen kept their male victims’ remains in their homes. Others hid bodies outside their bedroom windows, “just so they could look at the spot where they buried them to reflect on the crime,” she explained.

“There could be some kind of sexual thrill just from knowing that you’ve not only evaded the police but you’ve taken these lives, and now you have full power and control over them. Even just for the remains themselves,” Reid said.

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In her suspect profile, she theorized the killer was a person of colour like the missing people she identified, because serial killers tend to target familiar communities.

Two of the men McArthur is accused of killing — Majeed Kayhan and Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam — were the subjects of a specialized police project known as Project Houston, which examined the disappearances of three brown-skinned, middle-aged men from the Village between 2010 and 2012 (McArthur is not charged in relation to the disappearance of the third man, Abdulbasir Faizi). The project kicked off in November 2012.

But it ended 18 months later in April 2014, without any arrests because the probe returned no criminal evidence. McArthur was never singled out as a subject during Project Houston.

Police have since faced criticism for failing to identify McArthur during the Project Houston investigation — particularly since it’s alleged that McArthur went on to kill Selim Esen, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick and Andrew Kinsman between 2014 and 2017.

“Just looking at who the victims are, it’s not just South Asian men, or dark-skinned people. These are people that McArthur knows,” Reid said, basing her observation on police and media reports identifying connections between McArthur and certain victims.

Former homicide detective Mark Mendelson said all tips to police are catalogued in Major Case Management databases, but their investigative significance is weighed differently based on what detectives already know.

As for Reid’s call to police, she was not contacted again, likely because the tip had more “educational” value than evidence of a crime, Mendelson said.

“It can give an investigation direction, so it can assist in that way, but at the end of the day when all is said and done, you need evidence … that you can present in a court.”

McArthur is in jail awaiting his court case, under constant suicide watch in segregation. Reid said suicidal ideation is very common for serial killers in prison.

“My research has shown that the reason why they kill is to regain control. When you take that away from them, and you threaten that control, you put them in a place where they can no longer deal with life.”

Reid and her team of research assistants continue to update her missing persons database of 8,000 people across the country. She lauded the Village community for its hand in drawing attention to the possibility of a serial killer, which are exceptionally difficult cases to solve, Reid emphasized.

“The Church and Wellesley community should be a model for every other place. Honestly, if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have known that there was a serial killer,” she said.

With files from Wendy Gillis

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