On Monday, January 29, 2018, Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga told reporters that Toronto police had laid three more counts of first-degree murder against Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old landscaper. The new charges named Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi and Dean Lisowick. McArthur was already charged in the deaths of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen. “What kind of case is this?” Idsinga asked at the news conference. Then he answered: “It’s a serial killer,” CBC News reported.
Police said Lisowick had no fixed address and had never been reported missing. The Toronto Star reported that police would not say what evidence tied McArthur to him.
Lisowick was born in Canada in 1973, the Star reported, citing staff at the Scott Mission. He did not talk openly about his family. The papers gave his age as 47. The Canadian Press reported police saying he was 43 or 44, and CBC News repeated that figure two weeks later.
He had called the Scott Mission, a shelter on Spadina Avenue, his home on and off since 2003, the Star reported. The mission’s computers showed entry after entry under his name over 13 years. He was also a familiar face at the Hope shelter a few blocks away, now closed. David Lynch of the Good Shepherd Ministry told CBC News that Lisowick stayed at that shelter for a week on two separate occasions, in 2015 and 2016.
Judith Vargas, a staffer at the Scott Mission, remembered a gentle, polite man who lost track of time and forgot his curfew but tried not to cause trouble. She recalled him asking her to pack two lunches for the day, and saying he could sleep in “any corner” rather than a bed. He was trying to work more, she said, as a cleaner or in backyards. Sometimes he asked permission to come in late because he was going to a job. The mission, she said, was “like home” for him.
Julian Picon, another staff member, met Lisowick around 2006. Picon said that although Lisowick “had a rough life, and faced a lot of struggles, he was very respectful.” Even if it was all he had, Picon said, Lisowick would share a coin with someone who needed it. “He’d stay here for three months, disappear for another three months,” Picon said, and sometimes that was normal.
Patricia Anderson of the city’s shelter, support and housing administration division told the Star that a shelter files a missing-person report only on rare occasions. Greg Cook, an outreach worker with Sanctuary Ministries of Toronto, told the Star that people in shelters are less likely to have anyone checking in on them. He said vulnerable people are also less likely to report an assault.
In the Village he was known as “Laser.” Monica Forrester, program co-ordinator at Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, told the National Post she met him in 1997 at Sneakers, a Yonge Street bar just outside the Village. She called the bar a hotspot for “hustlers.” The Globe and Mail reported that Lisowick worked for years from Sneakers. He was one of many young male sex workers on Maitland Street, between Church and Yonge, where older men came looking for a date. In the late 1990s the area was rough but popular. Gentrification and police pressure pushed the sex workers out, and many of them, Forrester said, moved to Church Street. Lisowick was among them.
The Star later reported that on Halloween night in 2001, McArthur hit a male sex worker repeatedly with a metal pipe. McArthur pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm. He was sentenced in April 2003. His conditional sentence barred him from an area that included the Gay Village. The Crown’s main concern, the Star reported, was keeping him away from male sex workers.
Friends described Lisowick as a nice, gentle person. Forrester and Terri Stevens, a former Village resident, told the Globe that he was addicted to crack cocaine and made money through sex work or panhandling. Mita Hans, who lives near the Village, said he was always looking for odd jobs and would offer to shovel a step. She remembered him coming on Sundays to a food program she helped start. Matthew Bohan, a hip-hop artist and music video director, knew him as “Laser” for two decades before losing touch when Bohan left Toronto about 13 years ago. Lisowick shared little about his life, Bohan told the Star, but was generous with what he had. “If he saw you were hungry, he’d say, ‘Here’s five bucks,'” Bohan said.
Jeff Tunney told the National Post that Lisowick lived for two and a half months in the common area of the apartment Tunney shared near Church and Alexander streets. He always paid his $400 rent on time. He found work cleaning at bars such as Statlers and stocking shelves in other establishments. The two men talked about his sex work, and Tunney tried to warn him of the danger. “It’s kind of like talking to a brick wall,” Tunney said. When Tunney tried to talk to him about his drug addiction, Lisowick took the few clothes he owned and left. Tunney saw him one more time.
Lisowick walked out the doors of the Scott Mission for the last time on April 21, 2016, the Star reported. Forrester told the Globe she saw him the previous summer, likely in July 2017, at one of his regular spots on Church Street. “He’s been around,” she said. The National Post later reported her as saying she last saw him in the summer of 2016.
Police and the court record gave different windows for his death. Police told the Star he was killed between May 2016 and July 2017. According to the charge information filed in court on January 29, the Globe reported, he may have died anywhere between April 2016 and March 2017. At their news conference, police said he may have been alive as late as July 2017. On March 16, the Star wrote that he was possibly killed in late 2016.
In the summer of 2017, the Globe reported, members of the Village community held a town hall about the men missing from the neighbourhood. They warned that marginalized people, such as sex workers and transgender individuals, might be overlooked by the investigation. On December 8, the Walrus reported, police chief Mark Saunders held a news conference dismissing community fears of a serial killer. When McArthur was arrested on January 18, 2018, Saunders said that what he had said in December “was accurate at that time,” CBC News reported. McArthur was charged then with killing Kinsman and Esen. Lisowick’s name had not come up in either police task force, W5 reported.
When Idsinga named the three new victims on January 29, he said only Kayhan was connected to Project Houston, the earlier investigation into three men missing from the Village between 2010 and 2012. The Globe reported that Idsinga told reporters Mahmudi and Lisowick “don’t quite fit the profile of the earlier victims,” and that the investigation now reached beyond the gay community to the whole city. The Globe also reported that it had established that all the alleged victims had ties to the gay community. Idsinga said investigators had found the remains of at least three people at the bottom of large planters on a property linked to McArthur on Mallory Crescent, in Leaside.
The papers sorted Lisowick into a few words. The New York Times called him “a homeless prostitute who was never reported missing.” The New York Post called him “a homeless crack addict and prostitute who lived in a downtown shelter.” The Toronto Sun wrote that he was believed to be originally from western Canada and had lived in the shelter system. The Globe called him “a common face in the Gay Village” and a long-time sex worker. Forrester told the Globe that efforts to criminalize the sex trade in recent years had made it more dangerous.
At the Scott Mission, news of his death rippled through the shelter office on Monday, the Star reported. Vargas said he had been trying hard, and that he deserved so much better.
On February 14, Tunney went to court to watch McArthur appear by video link. McArthur wore an orange jumpsuit and stood at attention with his arms at his sides. The hearing was brief. Tunney said he felt “numb.” “(McArthur) took something of mine,” he said. “He had no right.” The National Post reported that same day that, as of the previous week, Lisowick’s remains were not among those found in the planters.
On February 23, police charged McArthur with a sixth count of first-degree murder, in the death of Skandaraj Navaratnam. Earlier that month, police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray said McArthur had some sort of relationship with each of his alleged victims, some of them sexual, CNN reported. On March 5, Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist, Pollanen, told a news conference that causes of death had not yet been determined.
By March 16, the Star reported, police had recovered seven sets of remains from the Mallory Crescent planters. They had identified three, as Kinsman, Navaratnam and Mahmudi, and were working on the other four through DNA. McArthur was being held in segregation at the Toronto South Detention Centre. The Star also reported that sex worker advocates said McArthur was not on any of the three major lists that warn sex workers about dangerous clients. “There’s really nowhere for male sex workers to be supported around keeping safe,” Forrester said. None of the charges had been proven in court.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Dean “Laser” Lisowick |
| Born | 1973, Canada |
| Age | 43 or 44 per police (Canadian Press; CBC News, February 13, 2018); 47 in other early reports |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Sex work; occasional cleaning, shelf-stocking and yard work |
| Date of death | Between May 2016 and July 2017 per police; court charge information gave April 2016 to March 2017 |
| Accused | Bruce McArthur, 66, landscaper, Toronto |
| Charge | First-degree murder |
| Defence counsel | Edward (Ted) Royle |
Sources
- Toronto Star, January 29, 2018
- Toronto Star, January 30, 2018
- Toronto Star, March 16, 2018
- The Globe and Mail (Prairie edition), January 31, 2018
- CBC News, January 18, 2018
- CBC News, January 29, 2018
- CBC News, February 13, 2018
- National Post (online), February 14, 2018
- Canadian Press, January 29, 2018
- Toronto Sun (online), January 30, 2018
- The New York Times, February 12, 2018
- New York Post, February 4, 2018, p. 26
- Global News, March 6, 2018
- CNN, February 23, 2018
- The Walrus, February 9, 2018
- CTV W5, “The Missing,” February 17, 2018
February 2019 Update: Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty to 8 counts of murder, for:
- Andrew Kinsman
- Selim Esen
- Dean Lisowick
- Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam
- Soroush Mahmudi
- Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan
- Abdulbasir Faizi
- Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam
He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Please see our post on What is a “Life Sentence” in Canada for an explanation on the complexity of murder sentences in Canada.
Murder Village Map