A day after Toronto’s Pride festivities in June 2017, Andrew Kinsman, 49, dropped out of sight, the New York Times reported. He missed his volunteer shift at a food bank. His cat went unfed.
Police said he was last seen on Monday, June 26, near Parliament and Winchester streets in Cabbagetown, an area that borders Church and Wellesley, the neighbourhood known as the Gay Village. The Torontoist reported that a friend, whom police believed to be the last person to see him, ran into him at that corner and told police he seemed “happy and upbeat.” Kinsman was reported missing on June 29, InsideToronto reported.
He was the superintendent of his building on Winchester Street, where he lived with a 17-year-old cat. He worked as events and outreach coordinator for the Toronto HIV/AIDS Network and had volunteered for years at the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. A neighbour, Robin LeBlanc, told InsideToronto he liked to bake and would bring a slice of cake downstairs to anyone he sensed was having a bad day.
At a press conference in July, his friend Ted Healey said he had never known Kinsman to “just pick up and disappear like this.” Kinsman would have told his housemates and neighbours he was leaving, Healey said, and he loved his cat.
In late July, Global News reported, Toronto police announced a task force to investigate the disappearances of Kinsman and Selim Esen, 44, who had been last seen in April. Police said both men were active on dating apps. Some people in the community had suggested a link to three men reported missing from the same area between 2010 and 2012. Police said the evidence collected so far did not point to one. A Facebook meme linking 11 disappearances had spread through the Village. The Torontoist reported that five of the men in it had been found alive and another had died, which police said was almost certainly a suicide.
On August 1, a town hall with police was held at The 519 community centre on Church Street. Supt. Tony Riviere, commander of 51 Division, told reporters there was no evidence at that point of criminality and nothing to show the two men were no longer alive. Greg Downer, a friend of Kinsman who organized the meeting, asked people to look at the faces on the posters and try to remember whether they had seen either man.
Missing posters had covered the Village for more than a month, the Torontoist reported. Kinsman’s friends and sisters searched parks, trails and ravines. Patricia Kinsman told Xtra she began preparing for the worst when he did not come home over Pride weekend, because he would never have left his cat without food and water for three days.
By October, the eight-officer task force had followed up 150 leads and interviewed more than two dozen people, CBC reported. Police said the dating apps they had examined had not shown who, if anyone, Kinsman met around the time he vanished. They opened a tip line and extended the task force by 60 days. Patricia Kinsman told CBC she believed “someone must know something.”
In November, a police seal was still on Kinsman’s apartment door. Det. Sgt. Michael Richmond told InsideToronto that police did not regard the apartment as a crime scene but had removed articles from it. Searches by the mounted and canine units and a drone had found nothing. Richmond said the missing men in the area were “linked by lifestyle” as well as geography. He said police had no evidence that a serial killer was responsible and no evidence that ruled one out.
On December 8, Chief Mark Saunders held a press conference on three cases. Besides Kinsman and Esen, he updated the deaths of Tess Richey, 22, whose mother had found her body in a stairwell near Church and Wellesley on November 29 after police first treated the death as accidental, and Alloura Wells, a transgender woman whose remains, found in August, had been identified in November. Richmond said there was “no evidence that a serial killer is responsible” for any of the disappearances, Global News reported. Police also warned people about using dating apps. Saunders ordered a review of the police response in the Richey case and said there were “things we could have done better.”
Patricia Kinsman later told CBC that on December 9 she and her sister Karen Coles were still searching, and by then knew they were looking for a body.
On the morning of Thursday, January 18, 2018, police arrested Bruce McArthur, 66, a self-employed landscaper who lived in Thorncliffe Park. The Toronto Star reported that officers who had McArthur under surveillance went into his apartment after they saw a young man go in, and found the man bound to a bed, unharmed.
Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga told a news conference that McArthur was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Kinsman and Esen, and that police believed he had killed other men who had not been identified. McArthur and Kinsman had been in a sexual relationship “for some time,” Idsinga said. Police did not know whether McArthur had any relationship with Esen. The bodies had not been found, but Idsinga said police had a good idea how the men died. Police had come across new evidence the day before. Asked about the December statements, Saunders said he had followed the evidence and that what he said then was accurate at the time.
Patricia Kinsman told CBC that police phoned her a few hours before the news conference. She had never heard of McArthur. “Thank you, you’ve done your job,” she told them.
On January 19, Kinsman’s sisters spoke at The 519. Karen Coles said she wanted the details of what happened to him and hoped he had not suffered. Patricia Kinsman told CBC she had known he was not coming back, and asked, “Why would he turn his phone off?” The family wanted to bring his body home, she said.
In the Village, people said they had told police years earlier. Alphonso King, a friend of Kinsman, told CBC police had “egg on their face.” Nicki Ward, director of the Church-Wellesley Neighbourhood Association, asked why the community had not been listened to sooner.
Activists said the arrest came after years in which men of colour had vanished from the area. Haran Vijayanathan, executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, told the New York Times it took the disappearance of Kinsman, “a white man who was such a community pillar,” to reopen the investigation and make the links. Idsinga disputed claims of neglect and said Project Prism produced results partly because Kinsman’s disappearance had been reported right away. A police spokesperson, Meaghan Gray, told the Star that allegations of racial bias were “absolutely not true.”
On January 29, police laid three more first-degree murder charges, bringing the total to five. “It’s a serial killer,” Idsinga said. He said police had found dismembered remains in large planters at a property on Mallory Crescent in Leaside, where a couple had let McArthur store equipment in exchange for lawn care. McArthur had been identified as a suspect in Kinsman’s disappearance in September, Idsinga said.
On February 8, police said they had recovered remains of at least six people from the planters and that Kinsman’s had been identified, the Associated Press reported. The Star later reported that he was identified through fingerprint analysis. On February 23, police laid a sixth charge, in the death of Skandaraj Navaratnam, who had gone missing in 2010. On March 5, Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist said the causes of death had not yet been determined, Global News reported.
A police source told the Star that in 2016 a man had reported that McArthur tried to strangle him during a consensual sexual encounter, and that McArthur was questioned and let go. The Star reported that Mayor John Tory and Toronto police had confirmed a civilian board would review how police handled the case and missing persons cases generally.
McArthur appeared in court by video link from the Toronto South Detention Centre. His next date was April 11. He was later charged in the deaths of eight men.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Andrew Kinsman; full name given as Andrew Centennial Gordon Kinsman (Xtra) |
| Age | 49 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Building superintendent; events and outreach coordinator, Toronto HIV/AIDS Network; volunteer, Toronto People With AIDS Foundation |
| Location | Remains recovered from planters on a property on Mallory Crescent, Leaside, Toronto |
| Accused | Bruce McArthur (Thomas Donald Bruce McArthur, per the New York Post), 66, landscaper |
| Charge | First-degree murder |
| Defence counsel | Edward Royle |
Sources
- Torontoist, July 30, 2017 (“The Vanishing Men of Toronto’s Gay Village”)
- Global News, July 28, 2017
- Global News, August 1, 2017
- CBC News, October 18, 2017
- InsideToronto (City Centre Mirror), November 19, 2017
- CBC News, December 8, 2017
- Global News, December 8, 2017
- CBC News, January 18, 2018
- CP24, January 18, 2018
- Xtra, January 18, 2018, and January 19, 2018
- CBC News, January 19, 2018 (two pieces: family of Andrew Kinsman; what we know about the suspect)
- CBC News, January 20, 2018
- CBC News, January 29, 2018 (two pieces)
- Toronto Star, January 31, 2018
- New York Post, February 4, 2018, p. 26
- Time/Associated Press, February 8, 2018
- The New York Times, February 12, 2018
- CBC News, February 13, 2018
- CNN, February 23, 2018
- Global News, March 6, 2018
- Toronto Star, March 16, 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