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Suspected gay-village serial killer gets three more murder charges

Toronto Police have also found skeletal remains inside large planters where Bruce McArthur may have worked
Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, and Dean Lisowick. Photo via Toronto Police.

An alleged serial killer in Toronto is now facing five first-degree murder charges, Toronto Police announced on Monday.

Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old landscaper was charged earlier this month with two other counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen who vanished from the city’s gay village last summer.

Homicide Detective Sergeant Hank Idsinga told reporters at a news conference that McArthur was brought back before the courts Monday morning to face the three additional murder charges in the deaths of Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, and Dean Lisowick. Kayhan was reported missing in October of 2012, and Mahmudi was reported missing in August of 2015.

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Lisowick had not been reported missing.

Idsinga added that McArthur is now officially being viewed as an alleged serial killer. The investigation “encompasses more than the gay community,” he explained. “It encompasses the city of Toronto.”

He added that the dismembered remains of at least three unidentified individuals have been recovered from a backyard in Leaside, a neighbourhood northeast of downtown Toronto, where McArthur may have previously landscaped. Idsinga urged anyone who had employed him for yard work to come forward to police.

Toronto Police investigators have been conducting searches at 30 properties where they believe they have recovered more skeletal remains, including from a dozen planters seized from all over the city.

Tips regarding the case have been pouring in from all over the world.

Idsinga said he could not say at this point how many more victims there could be.

McArthur will appear in court again in on the Kinsman and Esen murder charges on February 14th.