This Is How Serial Killer Bruce McArthur Was Finally Caught

One of Canada's most notorious serial killers is Bruce McArthur. Currently in prison and serving a life sentence for murdering eight men, McArthur terrorized Toronto's gay community by targeting and killing gay men who frequented the Gay Village neighborhood of the city (via BBC News). Most of his victims were of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, and they had not yet come out; their sexuality was not known by their relatives, says BBC News. But from 2010-2017, McArthur apparently knew, and hunted them down for it. The 69-year-old landscaper had also dated and been in sexual relationships with some of his victims.

He spent years stalking the men of the Village area before getting caught in 2018. And he actually could've been caught a decade earlier.

In 2001, nine years before he committed his first alleged murder, he viciously assaulted a man with a metal pipe in a random attack. The victim was sent to the hospital, but McArthur never did any time for the crime, according to CTV News. In 2003, a remorseful McArthur was convicted, but instead of prison, received the light penalty of completing his punishment at home for a year. He was also banned from the Village for two years as a result. But he'd turn up in the neighborhood again years later to wreak havoc.

Rumors flowed within the gay community of Toronto in the years after McArthur started his killing spree in 2010. Men were going missing, and the investigations into their disappearances went cold. But that all changed when a man named Andrew Kinsman went missing.

Unlike the previous victims, Kinsman's vanishing in 2017 led police directly to McArthur, because some of the victim's last steps were captured on camera. Video footage showed Kinsman in a car investigators tracked to McArthur. Despite the link, however, authorities did not immediately arrest McArthur; instead, they put him under surveillance, reported BBC News. When they finally closed in on him in January 2018, they saved another possible victim: McArthur had met up with a man he took back to his apartment that month, and he was likely in the process of killing him during a sex act. The man was found restrained to a bed, but lucky for him, authorities descended at the right time. McArthur was arrested and the victim was saved, reports CBC. Police found dozens of pieces of damning evidence against McArthur, including thousands of pictures, in his apartment.

He was first charged with the 2017 murders of two men, and later linked to six more from years earlier. He was indicted for the eight murders and is now serving time. Due to the large gap from his first conviction to the murders he committed in the 2010s, many believe that he may have had more victims, says the Toronto Sun.

The documentary Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur debuts April 11 on Oxygen and the NBC app.