Bruce McArthur was an outwardly jovial man with ample white hair and a beard - the perfect person to be Santa at Toronto’s Agincourt Mall until as recently as 2016.

The 68-year-old Canadian was a landscaper, popular with clients for turning their yards into lush gardens.

In the video above: Bruce McArthur sentenced for Toronto murders

But the parents watching their gleeful children on his knee, and the clients admiring their domain, didn’t know McArthur was a necrophile – sexually attracted to the dead – and a serial killer.

He was turning their gardens into graveyards.

Between September 2010 and June 2017, McArthur murdered eight men.

His targets were usually vulnerable - poor, lonely, or new immigrants.

All were taking their first steps to explore their sexuality in a new, accepting and what they thought was a safe country.

McArthur’s victims

Andrew Kinsman, 49

Selim Esen, 44

Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40

Abdulbasir Faizi, 44

Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, 37

Dean Lisowick, 47

Soroush Mahmudi, 50

Majeed Kayhan, 58

They thought he was a friend. They trusted him.

Then he killed them.

Unlikely killer

McArthur’s first career was in retail, selling men’s socks and underwear.

In the late 1970s, he became a sales representative for the makers, travelling around the province of Ontario.

“He was a guy born with a smile on his face. Everyone liked Bruce,” one colleague said.

For 30 years, he was seemingly happily married to wife Janice.

Bruce McArthur was an active user of social media and dating apps. Credit: Facebook

The couple had two children and a house in Oshawa, a middle-class commuter city on the shore of Lake Ontario, around 60km from downtown Toronto.

In the late ‘90s, McArthur came out of the closet, left his family and moved to Toronto.

He remained on good terms with his family.

In 2003, when in his late 50s, McArthur received his first criminal conviction - for the assault of a man with an iron pipe two years prior.

Bruce McArthur as Santa at a Toronto shopping mall. Credit: Facebook

He started a small landscaping business, busy enough to occasionally hire casuals - until one disappeared.

McArthur also played Santa Claus at Toronto’s Agincourt Mall for at least two years, but likely longer, documenting his holiday job on social media.

Mechanics of murder

McArthur’s approach to murder was methodical and consistent – a grim and deadly ritual.

Ligature strangulation, using rope and metal bar to tighten the ligature, was his preferred technique.

When his victims were dead, he’d his pose and photograph them, sometimes in his 19th-floor apartment on Thorncliffe Park Drive or his red Dodge Caravan.

Toronto police seen in the hallway outside Bruce McArthur’s apartment at 95 Thorncliffe Park Drive in Toronto. Credit: Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star via Getty Images

One victim was posed wearing a fur coat and with a cigar in his mouth.

Some had their beards and heads shaved, others had their eyes closed - the ligature still in place around their necks.

Then he took close-up photos of their genitalia.

Investigators sift through compost looking for human remains in the back area of 53 Mallory Crescent in Toronto in July 2018. Credit: Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star via Getty Images

McArthur stored his photoshoots with his cast of the dead in digital files, so he could relive the moments at his whim.

He then dismembered his victims, distributing their body parts in a client’s garden.

McArthur relished his secret knowledge, even more so when complimented on his green thumb.

Investigating a serial killer

Andrew Kinsman disappeared on June 26, 2017, and became McArthur’s downfall.

The 49 year old was different from the other victims.

Kinsman well known and liked among Toronto’s Church and Wellesley gay community and was the caretaker of his apartment building in Cabbagetown.

Missing posters for Andrew Kinsman posted in Toronto in 2017. Credit: Richard Lautens / Toronto Star via Getty Images

His disappearance following Toronto’s gay pride parade was quickly noted.

Within days, posters of Kinsman’s face adorned lampposts and his absence became the first topic of discussion in the local area.

Was Kinsman another of the growing number of missing gay men, in disappearances that had been disturbing the community for almost a decade?

Fascination for crime

Andrew Kinsman’s friends and colleagues knew he was interested in true crime and serial killers.

A colleague at the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation said he had an occasional hook-up with a man “very into the psychology of serial killers and how they functioned”.

Andrew Kinsman was reportedly fascinated by serial killers, before becoming the victim of one. Credit: Facebook

When police searched Kinsman’s apartment, they found computer files on UK serial killer and noted necrophile Dennis ‘The Kindly Killer’ Nilsen.

Nilsen’s methods were eerily similar to those of McArthur.

They also found a documentary on US serial killer John Wayne Gacy and 10 pictures of Bruce McArthur taken on September 11, 2010, using Kinsman’s camera.

CCTV showed Andrew Kinsman getting into McArthur’s red 2014 Dodge Caravan on 26 June 2017. Credit: Supplied

The name ‘Bruce’ was scrawled on Kinsman’s calendar for the day he disappeared.

We’ll never know if Kinsman suspected McArthur was a killer and was doing his own investigation.

Police caught a solid break when they discovered CCTV showing Kinsman getting into McArthur’s red 2004 Dodge caravan.

They finally had a suspect.

Surveillance

In September 2017, McArthur was under physical surveillance.

Police snatched a coffee cup he discarded, getting a sample of his DNA.

When he dumped the caravan at a scrapyard in November that year, it was seized by police and forensically examined.

They found blood and semen connecting victims Kinsman and another victim, Selim Esen, to the van.

McArthur’s 2004 Dodge Caravan was seized by police after he tried to dump it. Credit: Supplied

The evidence earned them a warrant to covertly enter McArthur’s home.

On January 17, 2017, forensic experts discovered photographs of Kinsman and Esen on his computer – taken after both men were dead.

It was just in time. McArthur was poised to kill again.

Last victim

The next day, police witnessed a younger man arrive at McArthur’s apartment building at 95 Thorncliffe Park Drive, Leaside, in Toronto’s northeast.

With the man likely to be in grave danger, they raided McArthur’s 19th-floor apartment, finding the visitor naked and handcuffed to the bed with a black bag over his head.

Police raided McArthur’s apartment and found a man handcuffed to the bed. Credit: Ontario Superior Court Exhibit

He wasn’t consenting. He was terrified.

McArthur was arrested and charged with the murders of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen.

A deeper search of his apartment revealed files on each victim and souvenirs of his crimes.

Selim Esen’s notebook was discovered in McArthur’s apartment. Credit: Ontario Superior Court Exhibit

They included ropes and a metal bar used in the ligature, necklaces from Skandaraj Navaratnam and Dean Lisowick, and a notebook from Esen.

They also found a file he’d prepared for the man they’d saved.

Hunt for victims

McArthur didn’t disclose the fate of his victims, but the surveillance operation did.

Police checked 75 properties they associated with him.

Forensic investigators remove evidence from the home at 53 Mallory Crescent, Toronto, where planters containing body parts linked to serial killer Bruce McArthur were previously removed. Credit: Bernard Weil / Toronto Star via Getty Images

At a client’s property in Leaside, they found body parts from the eight victims, in large planter boxes and an adjacent ravine.

Karen Fraser, the homeowner, told a press conference McArthur was a talented gardener and “he was very fond of his children”.

“He was a great grandfather. He was the best friend, neighbour, relative, anyone could want,” she said.

On the anniversary of the arrest of Bruce McArthur, a bagpiper plays a lament for the victims at the house where many of his victims were found. Credit: Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images

Fraser had no intention of moving from the house despite the grisly discoveries.

One question remained in everyone’s mind – were there only eight victims?

Sentencing McArthur

McArthur entered a guilty plea early in court proceedings but showed no sign of remorse.

“Mr McArthur no doubt would have continued killing innocent victims if not apprehended,” the sentencing judge noted.

Courtroom sketch of Bruce McArthur in court on January 29, 2019. Credit: Alexandra Newbould / AP

He was given a life sentence on each murder charge, with a non-parole period of 25 years.

McArthur will likely die in prison.

More victims?

Between 1975 and 1978, 14 men from Toronto’s gay community were murdered.

The method of the killings varied, including beating, strangulation and stabbing.

Police solved around half the cases but the rest remain cold cases.

The murders stopped around the time McArthur started travelling.

Bruce McArthur victims: top line - Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi. Bottom line: Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Majeed Kayhan. Credit: Supplied

“Would it surprise me if Mr McArthur was linked to some murders from his late 20s?” Detective Sergeant Hank Idsinga, the lead detective on the McArthur investigation, said on CBC TV’s Fifth Estate in 2018.

“It wouldn’t.”

The detective raised an interesting point.

Serial killers usually start in their late 20s and finish by their early 40s.

More from 7NEWS.com.au:

McArthur, at least on the evidence currently available, began his killing career in his late 50s.

A Toronto Police spokeswoman told 7NEWS.com.au they don’t have any evidence to suggest Bruce McArthur was responsible for “any murders other than the ones for which he was convicted”.

Whiff of bias

At the time of McArthur’s arrest, there was already an investigation into the police handling of missing persons cases related to the gay village, headed by former Court of Appeal judge Gloria Epstein.

Some of the missing persons were later found to be McArthur’s victims.

Under investigation is the allegation of police having an “implicit or explicit, specific and systemic bias” that may have impeded them.

The McArthur case was added to their terms of reference following his conviction.

Justice Gloria Epstein, who is heading the police inquiry into alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur. Credit: Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star via Getty Images

One question to be explored is why McArthur wasn’t a suspect earlier.

He had been questioned in 2013 and 2016 after a sex partner complained he had try to choke them.

In essence, could some of the murders have been prevented?

The final report is expected in March.

Read more of Duncan McNab’s investigations here

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