New Docuseries About Serial Killer Santa Who Targeted Gay Men

December 19, 2022
TOMMY

Yes. You read that title correctly. If ever someone really took The Grinch to the next level, it's decidedly Bruce McArthur from Toronto, Canada. If you lived in Toronto in the 2010s then you're all too familiar with his work, and now a new docuseries from Mobbed Azhar and the BBC is going to tell that chilling story.

From 2010 to 2017, at least eight men disappeared in Toronto. The men were predominantly Middle Eastern immigrants, most of whom were not out to their families, and their killer, Bruce McArthur, was ignored by the police to the dismay of the community. THIS is the story the new docuseries aims to tell. “The series is about the much-loved men we lost,” Azhar told Attitude. “It’s also about police conduct, vulnerability and how our communities can better take care of each other. I want the series to inspire conversations about compassion.”

McArthur had worked as a landscaper in the area and was previously married to a woman, had two kids, and was generally known as a friendly Santa at the Agincourt Mall in the Scarborough neighborhood of Toronto. Members of the local Queer community accused the Toronto Police Department of ignoring the disappearances—blind to the fact that McArthur had already been watched by the police previously, and they chose not to act on their suspicions.

But McArthur was ultimately filled with a suspicious past. In 2003, he was convicted of beating a male sex worker with a metal pipe, a crime for which the judge gave him a two-year conditional sentence, telling him to stay out of the Gay Village and away from sex workers. To make matters worse, McArthur was eventually pardoned for the crime, which removed the assault from his criminal record. Then again in 2016, a man reported McArthur to the Toronto Police, saying he had attacked him, and again the police let him go.

After his spree was over, McArthur had killed Skandaraj Navaratnam, Selim Esen, Andrew Kinsman, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Soroush Mahmudi. McArthur helped pass out flyers when Navaratnam disappeared. In January of 2018, the police finally entered McArthur’s apartment to arrest him, where they found a man bound in restraints, apparently about to be the 9th victim. Police later found "trophies" McArthur kept from each murder, and the bodies of the men were found in the yards of his landscaping clients.

On January 29, 2019, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight separate counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison (he'll be eligible for parole when he's 91).

You can catch Santa Claus: The Serial Killer on the BBC, and check out the trailer below: