Bruce McArthur, Former Mall Santa Who Killed & Dismembered Eight Men, Sentenced To Life In Prison

Bruce McArthur, 67, a Canadian man and former mall Santa who pleaded guilty to killing and dismembering eight men between 2010 and 2017, has been sentenced to life in prison, CNN reports. He will not be eligible for parole for 25 years.

At a previous sentencing hearing, prosecutors revealed that after sexually assaulting his victims and strangling them, McArthur dressed some of the corpses up in fur coats with cigars in their mouths. Buzzfeed reports that he had photos of these corpses on a hard drive at his house and there’s a photo in which one of the victims has his eyes taped open. As we mentioned earlier, McArthur dismembered his victims, but he also collected hair from the bodies and stored it in a shed that was close to a cemetery.

At the hearing, the Crown Attorney Michael Cantlon also told the court that McArthur was arrested while he was with someone that he planned to kill. The victim was in handcuffs on the bed when the police found him. Prosecutors also informed the court that McArthur killed a man on the same day that he downloaded his pictures from social media.

“I do not see Bruce McArthur seeing daylight,” Toronto’s police chief Mark Saunders said after the sentencing was handed down, as reported by CNN. “I do not see him in a public setting ever again… I’ll take it at face value that, in this case, life will mean life at the end of the day.”

As the Guardian notes, McArthur’s victims were gay men from a community in Toronto with a thriving LGBT presence. Many of them were men of color who were in a vulnerable societal position for various reasons. His victims’ names are Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam. McArthur targeted and met them via dating apps.

“Some were forced to live parts of their life in secret because of their orientation,” Cantlon added. “Some lacked stable housing. There is evidence that Mr. McArthur sought out and exploited these vulnerabilities to continue his crimes undetected.”

McArthur had a criminal record before his arrest for these killings. In 2003, he was convicted for assaulting a former sexual partner in the head with a metal pipe, Buzzfeed notes. Police questioned him about the disappearances of three of his victims in 2013 as a witness, not knowing at the time that they were actually speaking to the murderer.

Should serial killer Bruce McArthur get the death penalty? https://t.co/4LngfEKchE pic.twitter.com/9VBSYkMHmo

— Toronto Sun (@TheTorontoSun) January 31, 2019