Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur subject of new Netflix documentary

Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur is the subject of a new chilling Netflix documentary (TRAILER)

It’s a headline-grabbing case that started with a missing person case and would lead to the arrest of a notorious Toronto serial killer.

A new Netflix documentary covers the police investigation in the case of Bruce McArthur, who killed several men in the city’s gay village over his seven-year spree.

Season 2 of Catching Killers, released on February 9, has a two-part episode on the McArthur case. Lead investigator Debbie Harris spoke intimately about the ups and downs she experienced, and she uncovered the grisly details involved.

Harris was stunned when she realized that several men who had been reported as missing from Toronto’s gay village area were victims of McArthur and were buried in an East York property near her home.

“Missing Men: The Toronto Village Killer” begins with a tip-off from a Swiss detective in 2012 about an alleged Toronto-based cannibal suspected of murdering Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam, who had been reported missing.

The investigation would lead Harris and her team to Peterborough man, James Brunton. An intense pursuit would end with Brunton being arrested, not for murder, but for unrelated sexual offences.

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Harris retired from the police force in 2015, and Detective Dave Dickinson took over the investigation.

This time, the focus was on McArthur, who owned a landscaping business. As the show reveals, he mostly targeted men of colour and members of Toronto’s LGBTQ community.

He was arrested in his home in 2018.

Harris, who had been watching the story unfold on the news, realized that the Toronto serial killer had worked in the same area where she lived.

“[I felt] sick to my stomach because the person that may be responsible for the murder of all these men could have been right under my nose the entire time,” she said.

In 2019, McArthur pled guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder and was accused of killing Navaratnam, Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Abdulbasir “Basir” Faizi, and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam between 2010 and 2017.

Lisowick had been living in a shelter and was never reported missing, while Kanagaratnam was a refugee claimant from Sri Lanka. His friends assumed he had gone into hiding.

Detective Patrick Platt, who also worked on the case, said that McArthur’s victims had moved to Toronto to start a new life.

“They tried to live life to the fullest, and Bruce McArthur took that from them,” he said.

Catching Killers digs into the details of the investigation and the effect it had on those involved.

Aside from McArthur, the miniseries covers the BTK killer and the Phoenix serial shooter.