An Ontario judge has sentenced serial killer Bruce McArthur to serve life in prison and ordered that McArthur not be eligible for parole for 25 years.
McArthur, who pleaded guilty to eight murders that brought fear to Toronto’s gay community, was sentenced Friday.
“For years members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Toronto believed they were being targeted by a killer,” Michael Cantlon, a prosecutor, told the court. “They were right.”
McArthur last week pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder for the killings of men he targeted in Toronto’s gay village.
The Court heard gruesome details about Bruce McArthur’s strategy in targeting his victims, and what he did to the victims’ bodies.
McArthur was charged for the murders of Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick, Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Skandaraj (Skanda) Navaratnam, Kirushnakumar Kanagaratnam and Abdulbasir Faizi, whose names were read aloud by crown prosecutor Michael Cantlon.
The Guardian reported: “The court heard that McArthur staged photographs of his victims’ corpses, posing the bodies in a fur coat and black leather hat, and – in two cases – with a cigar between their lips. Cantlon described the extensive collection of photographs McArthur kept of his victims – many of them taken while they were alive. McArthur also shaved and stored the facial hair from his victims, Cantlon said.”
The New York Times reported: “The court heard that Mr. McArthur carefully planned his killings. On his computer, investigators found file folders for his eight victims containing photographs of each of them. Many of the photos were taken after their deaths, with the bodies of six of them posed with a fur coat and props.”
McArthur was in the middle of a ninth murder when police knocked on his door, The Independent reports: “Police, who had been monitoring the 67-year-old landscape gardener as a potential suspect, moved in for fears another murder was about to take place. When they arrived, they found McArthur had chained the man – identified in court only as John – to a four-poster bed and placed a black bag over his head. He was taping his victim’s mouth shut at the moment police knocked.”
“Due to the accused’s age, I am satisfied that when dealing with the protection of the public, concurrent periods of parole ineligibility can adequately address the protection of the public. It would not be until Mr. McArthur is 91 years of age that he could apply for consideration for parole,” Justice John McMahon told the court while delivering his sentence said to Global News Canada.
