A member of Bruce McArthur's defence team, left, Justice John McMahon, Crown Attorney Michael Cantlon and McArthur, right, appear in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, Nov. 5, 2018.Alexandra Newbould/The Canadian Press
Just over a year after Bruce McArthur was arrested and eventually charged with murdering eight men with ties to Toronto’s Gay Village, police say they are expecting a major event at the alleged serial killer’s next court appearance on Tuesday morning.
Toronto police would not confirm whether a guilty plea is possible, saying in a statement only that “a significant development in this case is expected.”
The lead investigator in the case, Inspector Hank Idsinga, who is now the head of the homicide squad, and another key officer in the file, Detective David Dickinson, are to address the media afterward outside the courthouse.
Karen Coles, a sister of Andrew Kinsman, one of the men Mr. McArthur is accused of killing, said in a telephone interview that she will be in court Tuesday, hoping for a positive outcome.
While Ms. Coles had regularly attended the previous court dates in the case, Fareena Marzook, widow of another slain man, Soroush Mahmudi, had stayed away from the judicial proceedings and had never seen in person the man accused of killing her husband.
However, Ms. Marzook said in an interview that police contacted her during the weekend to make sure she would be present at the courthouse Tuesday morning.
Mr. McArthur was to go on trial in January, 2020.
At his last court appearance, two weeks ago, Superior Court Justice John McMahon told the accused that “obviously there’s a lot of complexities in your case. We’ll need further discussions on these complexities.”
Crown and defence lawyers have been in judicial pretrial meetings since Mr. McArthur agreed last October to speed up the process by waiving his right to a preliminary hearing.
A 67-year-old freelance landscaper, Mr. McArthur is charged with the first-degree murders of Mr. Kinsman, Mr. Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick and Selim Esen.
The minimal sentence for first-degree murder is a life term, with no chance for parole before 25 years, so if Mr. McArthur pleads guilty to even one count, he would be in his 90s before he can apply for a conditional release.
Mr. McArthur was married, with two children and living in Oshawa when he came out of the closet at age 45 and left his wife and moved to Toronto in the late 1990s.
His only previous brush with the law was an unprovoked assault on a male sex worker in 2001. He told police afterward that he had passed out and didn’t remember why he attacked the man.
The first of the eight murder victims, Mr. Navaratnam, went missing in September, 2010. Mr. McArthur became a suspect in 2017 following the disappearances of Mr. Esen and Mr. Kinsman.
The remains of seven of the eight victims were found hidden in gardening planters at a house on Mallory Crescent, a property in the Leaside neighbourhood where the owners allowed Mr. McArthur to store his tools in their garage. The remains of Mr. Kayhan were discovered in a ravine nearby.
The case was one the largest forensic examinations in the history of the Toronto police. Investigators executed more than 90 search warrants and production orders, collected 1,800 pieces of evidence during a four-month search of Mr. McArthur’s apartment, and also searched more than 100 locations linked to his landscaping business.