Unnerving: The Bruce McArthur case as true-crime story

Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur unfolds like a true thriller.Courtesy of Super Chanel

“We paid Bruce McArthur $125 for his vehicle,” says an employee at Dom’s Auto Parts in Courtice, Ont. The man then explains that McArthur just accepted the first offer, took the money and left.

An uncannily mundane transaction is thus described. Watching the man from Dom’s Auto relive the encounter, you’re reminded that when we watch most true-crime sagas on TV we do so at a distance. These events happen, these killers appear, in some distant place where they do things differently. We’re curious but it can all seem exotic and unreal.

Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur (Friday, Super Channel 9 p.m., and on-demand there from Saturday) presents a significantly different experience for many readers. It all happened here, specifically in Toronto. McArthur killed eight men, dismembered their bodies and buried the body parts – seven in planters and one in a ravine behind a house where he did landscaping.

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The 90-minute special (commissioned by the Oxygen channel in the U.S. and produced in Canada by Diana Foley and Ryan Valentini) moves along at a steady, unfussy pace. It isn’t rushed or superficial; it’s not some gormless, low-grade true-crime story packed into an hour with commercial breaks. This is good because the story needs to be told in sombre detail, to give full context and be truly, appallingly hair-raising.

Several voices tell the main story. Wendy Gillis of the Toronto Star gives the reporter’s perspective and handily offers the precise sequence of events. There are several men from the LGBTQ community in Toronto filling out the details, plus the two main Toronto police officers on the case, Detective David Dickinson and Inspector Hank Idsinga.

Several voices tell the main story.Courtesy of Super Chanel

The program was made before the recently released independent review, which found “serious flaws” in how missing person cases were handled by Toronto police. But the flaws are flagged early here. In 2010, there were rumours and rumblings in Toronto’s Gay Village about several men who had disappeared. As writer James Dubro says here, “Not much pressure was put on the police.” That’s because the police and others saw victims Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi and Dean Lisowick as transient, insignificant figures who drifted in and out of the Gay Village. Some were leading secret lives and their families were unaware. Nobody cared enough to be thorough.

A police investigation did happen but was derailed when a tip from Switzerland suggested there was somebody killing people and indulging in cannibalism in Toronto. One suspect was the focus but he was found guilty on child-porn charges and determined not to be connected to the disappearances.

In June, 2013, the police made an appeal to the public. Three people had vanished, somebody must know something. At that time, the police did talk to McArthur, who admitted to knowing one of the missing men and having hired him for his landscaping business. But here’s the thing: McArthur was perceived as what he was on the surface – a grandfather, a mall Santa, an affable guy who just wanted to help the police. As Gillis says in the program, “Do you expect a grandfather who worked as Santa Claus to be killing and dismembering? You don’t.”

McArthur was perceived as what he was on the surface – a grandfather, a mall Santa, an affable guy who just wanted to help the police.Courtesy of Super Chanel

It was the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman, who was white and well-known in the community, that galvanized people and put pressure on police to act. From there, the story unfolds in a way that, if seen in a fictional crime drama, you might find implausible. McArthur’s car was located, although there were more than 6,000 similar vehicles in Ontario. The name “Bruce” was found in a calendar Kinsman had.

Amazingly McArthur should have already been on the police radar. A man – interviewed here but described only as John Doe – who sometimes had sex with McArthur had contacted police after McArthur tried to strangle him. McArthur went to the police and pleaded a “misunderstanding” had happened. Again, police fell for the story from someone who was described by many as “a kind, helpful guy.”

But once the police focused on McArthur, after finding his van, intact, at Dom’s Auto Parts, the narrative shifted and, as it is told here, unfolded like a true thriller. One example is police rushing to McArthur’s apartment after surveillance indicated he was bringing a man to his home. In the large apartment building only one elevator was working and police had an excruciatingly slow journey to their target.

There is plenty here to grip and disturb. At times it is ghoulish, the more so for the mundane quality of so many details of the story. From the initial incuriosity of the police, to the realization this serial killer had an alter-ego as an affable guy, to the macabre discovery of body parts in planters, the story is a challenge to comprehend. It’s real though. Nothing mundane about that.