196. The Santa Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur

For years, men were disappearing from Toronto’s Gay Village. Some were immigrants. Some were refugees. Some were South Asian or Middle Eastern men living complicated, private lives in a city that was supposed to offer them freedom. They moved through bars, dating apps, friendships, and chosen families — until, one by one, they seemed to vanish. At first, there were rumours. Then there was fear. People in the community warned each other that something was wrong, that someone was targeting men who were already easy for the world to overlook. But the warnings were dismissed for far too long. This is the story of how a city’s most vulnerable men went missing in plain sight, and how the truth, when it finally came out, exposed a killer more ordinary than the men who walk beside you every day. This is the story of Bruce McArthur.