But as his court case came to a close, the motivation of McArthur, a 67-year-old landscaper, remained unknown.

In Canada, a first-degree murder conviction brings an automatic sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. The only question before Justice John McMahon of the Ontario Superior of Court of Justice was whether to invoke a relatively recent law that extends the period for a parole hearing by allowing consecutive sentences.

McMahon said in court Friday that if McArthur had been younger the judge would have accepted prosecutors’ recommendation to extend the period before a parole hearing to 50 years. But he added that even if McArthur sought parole at 91, the chances of his receiving it would be “very remote at best.”

The decision Friday followed hearings earlier this week in which prosecutors laid out details about the crimes committed by McArthur, who dismembered his victims and buried their remains in a planter belonging to one of his clients, as well as in a ravine behind the client’s house.

Because many of the facts presented at the hearing were so lurid, prosecutors cautioned people against remaining in court to hear them.

At the outset, prosecutors took the unusual step of acknowledging that the authorities had brushed off concerns from gay Toronto residents that they were being stalked by a serial killer.

“For years members of the LGBTQ community in Toronto believed they were being targeted by a killer,” Michael Cantlon, a prosecutor, told the court. “They were right.”

McArthur’s string of murders has prompted an inquiry by a retired judge into how the Toronto police handle missing persons cases and whether their investigations are influenced by the sexuality or race of those who have vanished.

In November 2012, the Toronto police began an investigation into the disappearances of three men who, it eventually emerged, were murdered by McArthur. But the inquiry was shut down after 18 months.

McArthur, who was convicted of assaulting a man with a pipe in 2003, was arrested in 2016.

A man said that McArthur had tried to choke him in the back of his van but that he escaped. The police, at that time, accepted McArthur’s story that they were engaging in consensual sex.

A Toronto police officer is facing disciplinary charges over his involvement in that arrest and release.

Two pieces of evidence finally connected McArthur to the killings when police renewed their investigation in August 2017.

Andrew Kinsman, his final victim, had written “Bruce” in a calendar on the date of his disappearance. The police then found surveillance video of someone who appeared to be Kinsman getting into a red Dodge minivan that day.

The video did not capture the minivn’s license plate. But once police identified it as a 2004 model, a search of Ontario’s license records showed that there were only five such red vans registered to men named Bruce. McArthur was the only one who had been in contact with the force.

The court heard that McArthur carefully planned his killings. On his computer, investigators found file folders for his eight victims containing photographs of each of them. Many of the photos were taken after their deaths, with the bodies of six of them posed with a fur coat and props.

A ninth folder contained images of a man the police found when they came to arrest McArthur in January 2018. He was found bound to a bed with a bag over his head but otherwise unharmed.

But prosecutors offered no insights into what drove McArthur, a father of two who left his wife in 2000, to become a serial killer. Craig Harper, another prosecutor, said the term “serial killer” was “woefully inadequate to describe his moral blameworthiness.”

McArthur declined to speak during this week’s hearing.

Several of the men McArthur killed were of Middle Eastern descent. At least one was facing deportation after not being accepted as a refugee by Canada. Some were homeless or had drug problems.

Some of those who died were keeping their homosexual activities a secret from their wives or other family members, the court heard.

“He preyed on his friends; he preyed on the vulnerable,” Harper told the court.

Kinsman, a LGBT activist, former bartender and an apartment building superintendent who knew McArthur for about 15 years, was an exception. He had many friends in the gay community, who launched search parties after he disappeared and who immediately pressured the police to look into his disappearance the day after Toronto’s pride parade.

McArthur also pleaded guilty to the first-degree murders of Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick and Selim Esen.

Some of the victims’ friends and family members were too overwhelmed by emotion to read their sentencing statements to the judge, and prosecutors took over.

Faizi’s widow, Kareema, said that she now works 18 hours or more a day to support their daughters, who were 6 and 10 when he disappeared in 2010.

“They pretend to be strong in front of me,” she said of her daughters. “But when they are alone in their room, they take a picture of their father with them. I hear them crying constantly.”</s>Serial killer Bruce McArthur will be eligible to apply for parole after spending at least 25 years in prison for the murders of eight men in Toronto, a judge ordered on Friday.

McArthur, 67, will be 91 when his first chance at parole comes up.

In his sentencing decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon noted the gruesomeness of McArthur's crimes, but said there is a "fine line between retribution and vengeance."

He also told the packed University Avenue courtroom that there is very little chance the former landscaper will ever be granted parole.

Bruce McArthur is a sexual predator and killer who lured his victims and ended up killing them for his own warped and sick gratification. - Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon

Last week, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of eight men between 2010 and 2017. Most of the victims, as well as McArthur himself, had deep ties to Toronto's Gay Village neighbourhood.

First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no parole for 25 years, but until today, the question remained whether he would be sentenced to consecutive periods of parole ineligibility.

Crown lawyers had asked the judge to hand down a sentence that would ensure McArthur would have to serve at least 50 years in prison.

While McMahon said the murders were "pure evil" and the harsher sentence would have been "symbolic," he cited McArthur's guilty plea — which saved victim's families and the community at large from "enduring a graphic public trial" — and his age as reasons for his decision.

McMahon said that while McArthur took responsibility by pleading guilty, "there has been no evidence of remorse" from him during his interactions with police.

"Bruce McArthur is a sexual predator and killer who lured his victims and ended up killing them for his own warped and sick gratification," he said.

Furthermore, McMahon said, he believes McArthur "would have kept killing" had he not been apprehended by police in January 2018 after months of surveillance.

Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty to killing these eight men. Top row, from left to right: Skandaraj Navaratnam, Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen and Abdulbasir Faizi. Bottom row, from left to right: Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi and Majeed Kayhan. (John Fraser/CBC)

Family and friends of McArthur's victims addressed the court, giving impact statements, during the first two days of the sentencing hearing earlier this week. Some also spoke this afternoon to media outside the courthouse.

A 36-page agreed statement of facts read out in court on Monday disclosed that McArthur restrained and strangled at least some of his victims. He also kept images of his victims, both alive and dead, in eight digital files stored on a computer in his Thorncliffe Park apartment.

"These men, sadly, did not die a quick and painless death," McMahon said Friday.

When he was arrested, court heard that officers found a man tied to McArthur's bed. Police later found another folder on McArthur's computer labelled with the man's name that contained images of him.

In a number of instances, victims had been posthumously staged before the photographs were taken, which McMahon said was "no doubt for [McArthur's] perverted form of sexual gratification."

Remains of seven of the men were found in five garden planters at a mid-Toronto home where McArthur had worked and stored his landscaping tools. Remains of another man were found buried in a ravine at back of the property.

McMahon said McArthur's ability to repeatedly decapitate and dismember his victims was an aggravating factor. He also noted McArthur specifically targeted people living on the margins of society.

As part of his sentence, McArthur will be added to the sex offender's registry and is banned from contacting his victims' families. Throughout the week in court, McArthur appeared sullen, said little, and wore a plaid shirt and black sweater each day. When court adjourned, he was led out in handcuffs.

Santhanaladchumy Kanagaratnam, mother of Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, speaks to reporters following McArthur's sentencing. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)

'It's not enough'

In a statement, Crown lawyers thanked police investigators for their work on the case and said they hope McArthur's sentence "will assist our community in beginning a new chapter of healing."

"This is a crime of stark horror. The murder of eight of our citizens has impacted many: family, chosen family, the LGBT community, and the city in which we live and work," the statement read.

There is no closure. There is no grace. This community is broken and it's going to be broken for a long, long time. - Nicole Borthwick, friend of Andrew Kinsman

McMahon similarly addressed the profound effect McArthur's arrest and subsequent sentencing has had on Toronto's LGBT community.

"His crimes have instilled fear and distrust," McMahon told the court. "It will never be the same."

Outside the courthouse, family and friends of some of the victims expressed anger and frustration that the judge did not hand McArthur the harshest possible sentence.

"It's not enough for the families, it's not enough for the lives lost and it's not enough for the community," said Nicole Borthwick, a friend of Andrew Kinsman. Kinsman was the last man to be killed by McArthur, in the summer of 2017. He was 49 years old.

"There is no closure. There is no grace. This community is broken and it's going to be broken for a long, long time," Borthwick continued.

Watch a friend of the victims react to McArthur's sentence:

Nicole Borthwick, a friend of three of the serial killer's victims, said McArthur's sentence provides 'no closure' to families and the LGBT community. 0:51

​McArthur also pleaded guilty to the murders of Selim Esen, 44, Majeed Kayhan, 58, Dean Lisowick, 47, Soroush Mahmudi, 50, Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40, Abdulbasir Faizi, 44 and Kirushna Kanagaratnam, 37.

A memorial for the men will be held at Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto on Sunday evening. Reverend Deena Dudley said there is a "sense of relief" that the legal proceedings are over and hopes there may be some healing moving forward.

"It has traumatized a lot of people. I think the only redemptive thing that I can think of coming out of this, is that we use this as an experience to learn from," she said.

Police chief stands behind investigation

James Dubro, a writer and longtime LGBT activist, said "people are outraged" by the thought McArthur could, in theory, eventually apply for parole.

Dubro is among a group of advocates calling for a public inquiry into Toronto police's handling of the investigation into McArthur, something that has drawn sharp criticism from some corners of the LGBT community.

People who frequent the Gay Village say they suspected for years that a serial killer was preying on gay men in the area. Some have alleged their concerns were downplayed or outright ignored by police.

Watch a top detective on the case pinpoint what helped to crack the McArthur investigation:

Homicide Det. David Dickinson says the key piece of evidence that led Toronto police to the serial killer was found in Andrew Kinsman's calendar. 0:25

At a news conference at Toronto police headquarters, Chief Mark Saunders and two detectives who led the probe into McArthur said they were satisfied with the sentence.

"I do not see Bruce McArthur seeing daylight again. I do not see him in a public setting again," said Saunders. "Life will mean life."

Saunders drew considerable ire for his public comments in December 2017, when he said investigators had no evidence of a serial killer. McArthur was arrested just over a month later.

On Friday, Saunders defended the statement, saying once more that it was accurate given what was known by police at the time. Earlier this month, it was revealed an officer who arrested, questioned and released McArthur in connection with an assault in 2016 is now facing disciplinary charges.

Saunders said the force will work with the Toronto Police Services Board to explore any possible deficiencies in the investigation.</s>It’s not clear why police didn’t consider Bruce McArthur a suspect when they spoke to him, years before his arrest, around the same time they were investigating the disappearances of his first three victims. But experts in criminology say McArthur’s age may have played a role.

The grandfather, then in his early 60s, simply didn’t fit the profile of a serial killer.

“It’s statistically exceptional,” said Michael Arntfield, a criminologist at the University of Western Ontario, referring to McArthur’s age. “It’s unprecedented in Canada, and internationally it’s extremely, extremely rare.”

McArthur, now 67, pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder Tuesday morning, becoming the oldest confirmed serial killer in Canadian history.

Arntfield, who is also a former police officer, suggested McArthur may have used his age “tactically to his advantage” to avoid detection for so many years.

“He was hiding in plain sight as a lot of these guys effectively do.”

Read more:

Unlikely to ever be released from prison, Bruce McArthur ineligible for parole until he is 91

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Eight men, eight stories: What we know about serial killer Bruce McArthur’s victims

A timeline of the Bruce McArthur case and the police investigation into the Gay Village killings

Accused serial killer Bruce McArthur has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of eight men, admitting to killings that began in 2010 and continued until late 2017.

Police spoke to McArthur in 2013 or early 2014, sources have previously told the Star, around the same time they were investigating the disappearances of three men he has now pleaded guilty to killing. He was questioned again in 2016 when a man reported to police that McArthur tried to strangle him during an otherwise consensual sexual encounter. In both cases, McArthur was let go.

Mark Safarik, a retired FBI agent and criminal profiler, agreed McArthur’s age likely played a role in how he evaded suspicion. “It’s a very rare phenomenon for older offenders to engage in sexual homicide,” he said. You don’t often see serial killers past the age of 55, Safarik said, but the earliest murder police have linked to McArthur happened in his late 50s. “It’s very, very, very unusual — a real outlier.”

Arntfield is one of the directors of the Murder Accountability Project, which tracks all of the solved and unsolved murders in the U.S., with data going back 50 years. Murders committed by people 60 or older account for fewer than 2 per cent of the total, he said. None of those include serial, sexual offenders like McArthur.

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Other aspects of McArthur’s profile — the fact he ran his own business and worked as a mall Santa — likely “didn’t square” with who police thought they were looking for, Arntfield said. “The anecdotal evidence that police would rely on to form their hunches and instincts and the statistical data would both suggest he’s the least likely.”

Arntfield said the oldest known serial offender with a sexual motive is Albert Fish, who was nicknamed “The Gray Man” and committed his crimes in the 1920s and early 1930s in the U.S. until the age of 62.

Fish was considered such an outlier, Arntfield said, that he has become a case study in criminology and behavioural science.

Police believe McArthur’s first victim was Skandaraj Navaratnam, whom McArthur killed in September 2010 when he was 58. His last victim was Andrew Kinsman, whom he killed in June 2017 when he was 65. Police have said their investigation of McArthur will continue and they are currently reviewing cold cases for possible connections.

Arntfield said the fact McArthur posed and photographed his victims also suggests his criminal behaviour may have started much earlier.

(McArthur was convicted of assault in 2003 after inexplicably attacking a man with a metal pipe. McArthur, who turned himself into police on that occasion, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years’ probation. He later received a pardon.)

Posing victims has a number of preceding “gateway paraphilias,” or abnormal and often violent, sexual fixations, Arnfield said, adding that there are 20 known precursors to post-mortem posing. “This type of behaviour showing up in a man his age is extraordinarily rare.”

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Jooyoung Lee, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, agrees that McArthur’s age is unusual compared to the typical profile. Most serial killers start offending in their 20s, he said. But Lee, who teaches a course on serial killers, added that the available information is limited.

“Everything we know about serial killers is based on data collected from those who are caught, which, by definition, are case studies in failed serial killing careers,” he said. “These are people who are unsuccessful at getting away with repeat murdering over the course of their life. So, based on the data we have, Bruce McArthur is extremely unusual — but it is unusual compared to what we know.”

Lee said there are some similarities between McArthur and the case of Lonnie Franklin Jr., who is one year younger than McArthur. Franklin Jr., who was was convicted in 2016 of killing 10 people in Los Angeles from 1985 to 2007, was given the nickname “The Grim Sleeper” because of his killing spree’s apparent 14-year hiatus between 1988 and 2002.

As investigative methods evolve and improve, Lee said, more cold cases may be solved, connecting dots between previously unrelated deaths or revealing that serial killers believed to be “dormant” had just changed techniques or moved to a different place.

“I think there’s a lot we still don’t know about serial killing,” he said.</s>TORONTO — Serial killer Bruce McArthur murdered eight men from Toronto’s gay village for “his own warped and sick gratification,” an Ontario judge said Friday as he sentenced the 67-year-old to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The ruling means McArthur will be 91 before he can apply for any form of release, which the judge said he was highly unlikely to receive.

“Although Mr. McArthur has taken responsibility by pleading guilty, there has been no evidence I can see of remorse,” said Justice John McMahon. “Mr. McArthur would have no doubt continued to kill if he wasn’t caught.”

McArthur, a self-employed landscaper, pleaded guilty last week to eight counts of first-degree murder for men he killed between 2010 and 2017.

His victims were Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi and Kirushna Kanagaratnam.

The judge found McArthur strangled all of them and then took photographs of their bodies in various states of undress, keeping the images on his computer and viewing them long after his crimes.

McArthur then dismembered his victims and hid their remains in planters at a Toronto residential property where he stored his landscaping equipment, and in a ravine behind the home.

“Bruce McArthur is a sexual predator and killer who lured his victims on the pretext of consensual sex and he ended up killing them for his own warped and sick gratification,” McMahon said. “The ability to decapitate and dismember his victims and do it repeatedly is pure evil.”

Parole eligibility was the only question for McMahon to settle as first-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence. The judge said McArthur’s age and guilty plea were factors in his decision.

“The accused has saved the family, friends and community at large from enduring a graphic public trial that would have been a nightmare for everyone,” he said. “The law is clear: a guilty plea is a mitigating factor. The second factor is the age of accused when he could apply for parole.”

The sentence wasn’t harsh enough for Nicole Borthwick, who was friends with Kinsman, Lisowick and Esen.

She said the punishment failed to either fit the crime or soothe the wounds of the community impacted by the men’s deaths.

“I don’t think that’s enough comfort for the families or the community or the people that he’s killed,” Borthwick said outside court. “I think that if you’re going to do a maximum crime, you deserve the maximum sentence.”

Toronto’s police Chief Mark Saunders was satisfied with the sentence, saying McArthur will never see daylight again.

“I do not see him in a public setting ever again,” he said. “In this case life will mean life.”

Saunders also defended the work of his investigators, who have been criticized for not acting sooner on concerns from the LGBTQ community that a serial killer was responsible for the disappearances of several men from the gay village.

The chief said officers had launched an investigation into the disappearances of McArthur’s first three victims, but simply never had enough evidence to proceed further until 2017.

“This was not a case of police didn’t think anything was going on,” Saunders said. “We knew something stunk and we did everything we could to find it. We just didn’t.”

Court heard that many of McArthur’s victims were immigrants and of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent. Some lived parts of their life in secret because of their sexual orientation. All of them had ties to the city’s LGBTQ community.

“This is a crime of stark horror,” prosecutor Michael Cantlon said in a statement. “Although there can be no closure from a crime of this magnitude, we hope that these eight convictions for first-degree murder will assist our community in beginning a new chapter of healing.”</s>TORONTO — A Canadian judge handed down a sentence for serial killer Bruce McArthur on Friday, condemning him to life in prison with no chance for parole for 25 years.

McArthur pleaded guilty last week to eight counts of first-degree murder. The 67-year-old former landscaper sexually assaulted, killed and dismembered men he met in Toronto’s Gay Village district over seven years.

Convicted killer Bruce McArthur has been sentenced to life in prison.Facebook via Reuters

Justice John McMahon called McArthur a sexual predator who killed for his own “warped sick gratification” and said the victims suffered slow and painful deaths. He called their dismemberments pure evil, but said the guilty plea spared a jury four months of graphic and gruesome evidence that would have likely required counseling after.

McMahon said that even if McArthur lives to 91, the chances of him getting parole are remote at best. Prosecutor Craig Harper had asked for a parole ineligibility period of 50 years, when McArthur would have been 116. The judge said that would’ve only been symbolic.

“All or most of the victims were vulnerable individuals who were lured to their death,” McMahon said. “The accused exploited his victims’ vulnerabilities, whether they involved immigration concerns, mental health challenges, or people living a secretive double life.”

The victims fit a pattern: Most were of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent and lived on the margins of Canadian society. Their disappearances attracted little attention.

One victim hid the fact that he was gay from his Muslim family. Another was a recent immigrant with a drug problem. A third was a refugee who was ordered deported. And still another victim was homeless, smoked crack cocaine and worked as a prostitute.

Many of Toronto’s LGBQT community said for years a serial killer was at work.

McArthur has been in prison since January 2018 when investigators discovered dismembered remains in planters at home he used as storage for his business. He also staged photos of some of his victims after they died, posing corpses in fur coats and putting cigars in their mouths. McArthur would access some of the photos long after the killings.

The prosecution said that a frequent site of the killings was McArthur’s bedroom and that he repeatedly strangled his victims either with his hands or with rope and a metal bar.

The killings took place from 2010 to 2017.

Criminal experts say it is unusual for someone to become a serial killer later in life, but the prosecution said there is no evidence of earlier murders.</s>The Canadian serial killer responsible for the murders of eight men in the Toronto area was sentenced Friday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The punishment handed against 67-year-old Bruce McArthur comes just days after prosecutors told a court that he dressed his deceased victims in fur coats and placed cigars in their mouths for a series of morbid, staged photographs.

"This sentence must reflect society's revulsion for such depravity and violence," Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon wrote in his decision, according to the CBC.

McArthur will get his first chance of parole at the age of 91, but “the practical reality is that Mr. McArthur’s release on parole is highly unlikely," his attorney, James Miglin, was quoted by The Globe and Mail as saying.

McArthur pleaded guilty last week to eight counts of first-degree murder. The former landscaper sexually assaulted, killed and dismembered men he met in Toronto's Gay Village district over seven years until his arrest in early 2018. Their bodies, prosecutors say, were then hidden in large planters at a home that McArthur used for his landscaping business.

"Victims were posed naked, with cigars in their mouth, shaved, and/or made to wear a fur coat and hat," prosecutor Michael Cantlon told a court on Monday during the first day of the sentencing hearing.

CANADIAN SERIAL KILLER BRUCE MCARTHUR DRESSED CORPSES UP FOR SERIES OF MORBID PHOTOGRAPHS, PROSECUTORS REVEAL

Canadian prosecutors had asked a judge this week for McArthur to receive consecutive life sentences so he wouldn't be eligible for parole for 50 years, when he would be 116.

But the sentence McArthur ended up receiving Friday, the Associated Press says, was the most lenient option on the table. McMahon noted earlier this week that McArthur, by pleading guilty, saved the families of the victims from the potential of more graphic details emerging in what was expected to have been a long, brutal trial.

Families and friends of McArthur’s victims are expected to speak out about the sentencing later today.

“Mr. McArthur would no doubt have continued killing innocent victims if not apprehended,” McMahon told a courtroom Friday, according to The Globe and Mail.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.</s>TORONTO — Serial killer Bruce McArthur was sentenced on Friday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, the lightest penalty he could have received for the “murderous devastation” he wrought on Toronto’s gay community over most of this decade.

Crown prosecutors used those words to argue at McArthur’s sentencing hearing this week that he should be barred from seeking parole for 50 years — a recommendation Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon rejected in siding with the defence, which lobbied for the minimum punishment even as it acknowledged that McArthur’s crimes were “horrific.”

McArthur, 67, had to be sentenced to life for each of the eight first-degree murder counts to which he pleaded guilty last week. McMahon ordered him to serve those sentences concurrently, meaning McArthur could ask for parole at age 91 if he’s still alive.

McArthur, a former landscaper, admitted in court last week to murdering eight men — Selim Esen, Abdulbasir Faizi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Majeed Kayhan, Andrew Kinsman, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi and Skandaraj Navaratnam — in Toronto between 2010 and 2017. His victims were mostly immigrants of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent and members of the city’s gay community.

Police arrested McArthur in January 2018 after officers saw him lead another Middle Eastern man into his east Toronto apartment complex — a man they subsequently found naked and handcuffed to McArthur’s bed.

At various points over the next few months, they charged McArthur in all eight murders as each victim’s dismembered remains were discovered outside the home of one of his clients, either hidden in planters or buried in an adjoining ravine.

Court heard at McArthur’s sentencing hearing this week that he arranged most of the killings under the pretense of sex. He repeatedly strangled his victims and posed many of them naked after death, shaving their heads and placing unlit cigars in their mouths. He dressed some in a fur hat and coat. Police found on McArthur’s digital devices photos of several of the men in these positions.

McArthur’s arrest a year ago brought to an end an extensive police effort to find the killer in Toronto’s gay village, dating back to the creation in 2012 of a task force to probe the disappearances of Navaratnam, Faizi and Kayhan. Although the men are now known to be McArthur’s first three victims, the investigation, Project Houston, was shuttered without resolution after 18 months.

McArthur went on to murder Mahmudi in 2015, Kanagaratnam and Lisowick in 2016 and Esen and Kinsman in 2017. Police first identified him as a suspect when they obtained video footage of Kinsman entering a red 2004 Dodge Caravan — which they later determined to be McArthur’s — on June 26, 2017, the day he was last seen alive.

An entry in Kinsman’s calendar indicated who he had planned to meet that afternoon: “Bruce.”

By pleading guilty on Jan. 29 to all eight murders, McArthur stopped his case from progressing to a trial that had been scheduled to begin next January, at which the Crown would likely have been forced to present graphic evidence of his crimes.

James Miglin argued McArthur should receive the minimum parole ineligibility period of 25 years because he is already a senior citizen and he pleaded guilty.
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During the Crown’s sentencing submission, assistant attorney Craig Harper compared McArthur to Robert Pickton and said the term “serial killer” is a “woefully inadequate” description of the severity of McArthur’s crimes. He called 50 years without chance of parole a “measured” penalty that would sufficiently denounce the murders and ensure, in all likelihood, that the victims’ families would never have to face McArthur at a future parole hearing.

In total, court heard 27 impact statements this past Monday and Tuesday from family and friends of the victims, as well as from Toronto LGBTQ community members. The speakers conveyed the magnitude of ways in which McArthur’s murders continue to harm them mentally, physically, emotionally and financially.

The Crown says it doesn’t have evidence that suggests McArthur killed anyone else. However, Toronto Police Det. Dave Dickinson, who helped lead the investigation into McArthur, said last week that the force is still probing cold and missing persons cases in search of other possible victims.

More to come.</s>TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian serial killer Bruce McArthur was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday in a trial that gripped the country and shocked the gay community of Toronto.

McArthur, who pleaded guilty to eight charges of first-degree murder from 2010 to 2017, was arrested in January 2018 by Toronto police and was initially charged with the murders of five men. Most of his victims had ties to the “Gay Village” of Toronto.

Justice John McMahon in the Ontario Superior Court said he had “no doubt Bruce McArthur would have continued killing” and noted McArthur had shown no signs of remorse or turned himself in.

McArthur, 67, will be eligible for parole after 25 years, the judge said.

Some victims’ remains were found in the planters of homes where McArthur did landscaping contracting. Evidence revealed in a hearing showed McArthur kept items from his victims and had photographs of them on his computer.</s>Bruce McArthur, the Canadian serial killer who murdered eight men between 2010 and 2017, was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the crimes that haunted Toronto’s LGBTQ community.

McArthur, a mall Santa and landscaper who dismembered his victims and placed their remains in potted plants, will be eligible for parole for 25 years, when he is 92 years old. If McArthur reaches the age of 92, the judge noted even then his chance for parole would be “very remote at best,” the New York Times reports.

On January 29th, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, many of who were residents of Toronto’s Gay Village.

Life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years was the lightest possible sentence for McArthur, who avoided serving the eight life sentences consecutively by pleading guilty to the gruesome murders.

“The accused has saved the family, friends and community at large from enduring a graphic public trial that would have been a nightmare for everyone,” Justice John McMahon told the courthouse upon sentencing. The prosecution sought two consecutive life sentences to ensure parole was not even an option, the Globe and Mail reports.

However, McMahon also noted that he had “no doubt Bruce McArthur would have continued killing” if he wasn’t apprehended by police in January 2018, months after the disappearance of Andrew Kinsman. Upon searching McArthur’s residence, police discovered – in addition to victims’ remains – personal items belonging to the victims as well as photographs of them on McArthur’s computer.</s>Bruce McArthur, the serial killer in Toronto who pleaded guilty to the murders of eight men in the Church-Wellesley Village, has been sentenced to life in prison,with no chance for parole for 25 years.

The hearings took place over the past two weeks and included victim impact statements read by Justice John McMahon. Court also heard many harrowing and gruesome facts of the case.

It was found that McArthur kept digital folders for his victims, within which he kept photos of them before and after death. He also created a ninth folder for a man he had planned to kill, but who was rescued the day of McArthur's arrest.

The court did acknowledge the commonality of the eight victims, and how they came from vulnerable backgrounds. Their names are Skandaraj (Skanda) Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Kirushnakumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman.

After being convicted on eight counts of murder, McArthur immediately faced an automatic life-in-prison sentence without a chance for parole for 25 years.

Crown prosecution, however, fought for 50 years with no parole.
Bruce McArthur is sentenced to life imprisonment for eight murders in Toronto, making him the oldest known sexually motivated serial killer in Canadian history.