The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men-the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur-from Toronto's queer community.
In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men-Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan-from Toronto's gay village were, perhaps, linked. When the leads ran dry, the investigation was shut down, on paper classified as "open but suspended." By 2015, investigative journalist Justin Ling had begun to retrace investigators' steps, convinced there was evidence of a serial killer. Meanwhile, more men would go missing, and police would continue to deny that there was a threat to the community. On January 18, 2018, Bruce McArthur, a landscaper, would be arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder. In February 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of eight men.
This extraordinary book tells the complete story of the McArthur murders. Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, this is also a story of police failure, of how the queer community responded, and the story of the eight men who went missing and the lives they left behind. In telling that story, Justin Ling uncovers the latent homophobia and racism that kept this case unsolved and unseen. This gripping book reveals how police agencies across the country fail to treat missing persons cases seriously, and how policies and laws, written at every level of government, pushed McArthur's victims out of the light and into the shadows. JUSTIN LING is an investigative journalist whose reporting has focused on stories and issues undercovered and misunderstood. His writing has appeared in Vice News, BuzzFeed, Foreign Policy, Motherboard, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Guardian. In 2019, he hosted "The Village," the third season of the CBC podcast Uncover, which examined cold cases from the 1970s that were reopened as a result of the McArthur investigation.
Ottawa is quiet in the summer. Though it is normally a vibrating hive of journalists, politicians, and staffers, the city settles in the doldrums of summer. Legislators empty the nation's capital around June, migrating back to their home ridings, to see and be seen with constituents at barbecues and block parties. Staffers take long-awaited vacations or hole up in air-conditioned offices to prepare war plans. Reporters, who usually scramble about to chase down government ministers through the ornate stone hallways of Parliament, relish the tranquility and spend the summer trying to catch up on forgotten work and passion projects.
But this year-2015-there's an election underway, which many expect would set Ottawa alight. Not so. Unlike American races, Canadian elections don't generally last for more than a month and a half. Election day, now, is still five months away, meaning the pacing is absolutely glacial. There's also some conventional wisdom: the best place in the country to be if you want to avoid politics during an election is Ottawa. My title says I'm Parliamentary Reporter for VICE News, but there's not much politics to be reporting on.
So on a languid, humid Thursday in July, I swivel in my chair. I stare out at the grey cubicles that line my office space, on the third floor of the capital's Parliament buildings. My desk is the one closest to the window, on the aisle second from the left. The surrounding desks look more or less as mine does-piled high with papers, books, newspapers. The room is tucked off a long marble hallway. A few doors down, to the left, is the well-adorned Senate chamber. To the right, farther down the hall, is the House of Commons. The well-placed office space is set aside for reporters in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. It's commonly referred to as the Hot Room, a name inherited from a time when the building was so replete with journalists that you'd have to loosen your tie and dab the sweat off your brow. It w
