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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Warburg Thun. Tonight, dear listener, you are about to experience a brand new feature here on the Serial Killer Podcast. All of the serial killers I have covered in the past...
have been regarding historical killers that have either never been caught, are dead, or are currently incarcerated. The freshest case I've covered was the expose on Elias Abu-El-Azam, but this is about to change as we tonight focus our gaze upon none other than Bruce MacArthur.
He allegedly killed as late as July of 2017 and is accused of murdering at least eight homosexual men.
As an added bonus, the latter half of this episode will be dedicated to an exclusive interview with Sasha Reid, a PhD candidate who is the author of the book Serial Killers, Monsters and Myths, and the person who first warned police about the serial killer that turned out to be MacArthur almost a year before his eventual arrest.
As an added bonus, the lovely introduction music you just listened to is available as a ringtone, both to Android and iPhone. Do not miss out on exciting news, such as the Kickstarter project we got going with the premium mug that changes color as it heats up. So sign up at theserialkillerpodcast.com slash tellme.
As always, you can personally contribute to the podcast directly via Patreon at theserialkillerpodcast.com slash donate. Any donation, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated. Imagine, if you will, dear listener, that we travel to the pleasant land of Canada.
Canada is a country dominated by vast swathes of wilderness and rugged nature. In Norway, we tend to view Canadians as more friendly, more calm and collected versions of Americans, and this stereotype is supported by Canada's vastly lower crime rates than America's. But looks can be deceiving, and far from all Canadians are pleasant.
Quite a lot of serial killers hail from the land of the maple leaf, and a sexual psychopath is just as dangerous, whether he is located in Colombia or in Canada. Toronto is Canada's largest city, with 2.7 million residents. It's a beautiful city by the northern shore of Lake Ontario and has a vibrant cultural life with a very multicultural populace.
Toronto also has a significant LGBT community, the largest being located at the enclave of Church and Wellesley. Church and Wellesley is roughly bounded by Gerrard Street to the south, Yonge Street to the west, Charles Street to the north, and Jarvis Street to the east. The last few years, it has been haunted.
by a string of murders that left authorities dumbfounded and the gay community living in literal fear for their lives. And these latest murders are not the first to haunt Church and Wellesley. Between 1975 and 1978, the golden age of serial murder,
Police were confronted with 14 murders of gay men that followed a similar pattern of overkill, in which the victims were in some cases tied up, beaten, and stabbed excessively. Half of those cases have gone cold.
Extracting DNA evidence from possible blood samples and other items that could have been collected from these very grisly crime scenes four decades ago may be challenging, but it is not impossible. Mike Ills, a lecture professor at Trent University and retired regional forensics program manager at the Ontario Provincial Police,
Claims humidity and temperature are the two main factors that can compromise biological evidence in storage. If there's an exhibit there, you don't really know the probative value of it, no matter how long it's been there, until you test it to see. So that's what police are likely doing, looking for some of the cold case evidence that's been stored, he said to the newspaper The Star.
In the 1970s, police relied on serology, the study of blood serum and bodily fluids, to test antibodies produced in reaction to certain antigens or other alien substances like bacteria. DNA evidence didn't come into the forensics landscape in Ontario until the early 1990s.
So the hope is that samples are swabbed, dried, stored, or frozen properly in order to maintain their integrity. If any of those 14 murders are tied to Bruce MacArthur, he will perhaps be the serial killer in history to have killed for the longest period of time ever, with over 40 years of killing.
on his record. During the time of those 14 murders, MacArthur was working in Toronto. He was in his 20s and more than capable of committing murder.
It was the mid-1970s, and John Foote remembers walking into the Eaton's Merchandise Office on the 10th floor of a building on Downey's Lane, a street that once existed under what is now the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto. On his first day there, he met a young Bruce MacArthur. He was like a guy that was born with a smile on his face, according to him.
Reports indicate MacArthur started working at Eaton's around 1973, when he was 22 years old. Foote worked just a few cubicles from him. According to him, everybody liked Bruce. He couldn't think of anybody who ever said anything against him. He was always jolly and always fresh. Very jovial, very nice, very respectful and well-mannered.
MacArthur was a buyer's assistant for Eaton's, a member of a department Foote describes as a pretty close working group. MacArthur did mostly clerical work. According to Foote, he was a gentle, quiet, affable, good sense of humor kind of guy. Foote claims he would never have thought Bruce capable of being a serial killer.
MacArthur never showed a single flash of anger, no temper, nothing of the sort to Foote or any of his friends. On the surface, Bruce MacArthur's early years are the picture of small-town normalcy. He grew up on a family farm in tiny Woodville, in Kawartha Lakes, about 60 kilometers north of Oshawa.
All the kids, and there were usually about 24 to 30 from grade 1 to grade 8, attended the same one-room schoolhouse, a short walk from the MacArthur farm. Robert McEhan was one grade ahead of MacArthur at a school, and still farms in the area. The MacArthur's were farmers too.
MacEhan remembers young Bruce as a kid without disciplinary issues, who progressed well in school and had a beautiful singing voice, at least good enough to enter and win competitions as a solo artist. It also did his fair share of labor on the family farm. The MacArthur's had two children, Bruce and his sister, Sandra.
and the parents also brought in foster children, often as many as six to ten. So it was a busy household. MacArthur moved on to Fenelon Falls Secondary for a four-year stint, notable mostly because it was there that he began dating Janice Campbell, who would become his wife. A handsome, dark-haired student, MacArthur was nicknamed Snoppy, according to the school yearbook.
His favorite pastime was, and I quote, a good argument. His ambition was to be successful. And his probable future, and again I quote, your guess is as good as mine, it said, beside his class of 1970 grad photo. MacArthur lost his parents when they were relatively young.
His mother, Islay Mary MacArthur, died in 1978 at the age of 49. His father, Malcolm, died three years later at 57. MacArthur and his then-wife, Janice, travelled to Europe in the late 70s. They stayed with Foote and his wife in London, England, for about two weeks on and off. Not long after returning from their trip to Europe,
MacArthur was on to a new job. He began working for Stanfields and McGregor Housery, where he was again in a merchandising role, but this time he worked more autonomously and often travelled. He would drive from town to town as a kind of sales rep, approaching department stores and getting them to stock his wares.
As the job expanded, MacArthur needed help. He was getting so busy he needed counters, people who would stock and prepare the hosiery he was selling to stores. The company wouldn't confirm where MacArthur's route was, but reports indicate he worked around the greater Toronto area. The territory was probably from Durham right over through to Toronto, says Pamela Bennett,
whose mother was one of MacArthur's counters. More than four decades ago, Toronto was a vibrant, thriving community, and young people from all over the country, Canada, were flocking to the big city. Slowly, over those years, a fear began to take hold in the gay community, as men began vanishing. At that time, in the late 70s,
The gay village was a small stretch of young street between College and Wellesley streets, anchored on either end by two bars, the St. Charles Tavern at the south end and the Parkside Tavern at the north. Reverend Brent Hawkes remembers the time well. With few places for gay people to feel safe, the community would flock to bars primarily in that area.
They were usually dark and dirty and dingy places, says Hawks. He moved to Toronto from a small town of Bath to find his people, that is, to move to the big city where there was a larger gay community. Hawks became a member of the Metropolitan Community Church, which was a place for members of the gay community to come together and practice their faith.
People need to remember, in the mid-70s, this was only a few years after the same-sex adult sexual behavior was decriminalized in Canada, he says, noting that that had happened in 1969. It was a mild Friday in downtown Toronto in mid-January 1977, and Brian Latoki left work a little early.
The 25-year-old financial planner from Winnipeg told co-workers at the Toronto Dominion Bank corporate headquarters that he felt ill.
He was last seen much later, in the evening of the 21st of January, leaving the St. Charles Tavern, one of Toronto's most popular gay bars, and a location that would become a commonality in at least four of the fourteen homicides of gay men in that very decade.
When he didn't show up to work the following Tuesday, Latoki's boss called the superintendent of his apartment building on Erskine Avenue near the Yonge and Eglinton neighborhood in Toronto. When police arrived that morning, they found Latoki. He was tied to a bed. He had been tortured, strangled, and stabbed to death. He was anally raped,
And there was blood spattered on the bedroom's floors and walls. His head had been badly beaten. Latoki's apartment had also been looted. The autopsy revealed that he had died three days before, sometime on the Saturday after he was last seen. At the time, police said robbery was the motive. They released a composite drawing of an East or West Indian man,
aged 25 to 27, with thin features and a medium brown complexion. He was spotted leaving the St. Charles Tavern with Latokhi that Friday night and allegedly offered to drive him home. A month earlier, Latokhi had been enjoying Christmas Eve in Winnipeg with his family. They made the point to get together on December 24th for Ukrainian food. His cousin, Nancy Latokhi,
Who was three years older remember teasing Brian at that get-together about his three-piece banker suit. His wardrobe had certainly changed after he went to Toronto, she says. He looked much more professional. Nancy further says Brian was more like a brother than a cousin. His mother had died at an early age, and they saw each other at least once a week when they were younger.
They celebrated birthdays, took trips together to visit family in California, and spent time during the summer swimming. Nancy says as a young boy and as a teenager, Brian was engaging, someone you wanted to spend time with. Everybody liked him, she says. He was funny. He was interested in everything. The cousins grew up in the era of British invasion.
and Nancy recalls being a Beatle crazy teenager. At the age of 14, she and her twin sister were at home recovering from spinal surgeries when an excited Brian called. He had found out that the Beatles' airplane was going to be landing in Winnipeg. For some reason, it got diverted and they were really dedicated Beatle fans.
He was very excited and he said, Can you phone for an ambulance? I'm sure that you could come out to the airport and they'd let the ambulance come out on the tarmac so that you could meet the Beatles, she says. She further says, and I quote, Now that's the funniest recollection that I have.
Latoki's death wasn't the only brutal killing of a gay man in the 70s that would leave unanswered questions. Two years before Latoki's death, on the 18th of February 1975, 52-year-old Arthur Harold Walkley was stabbed in a house on Borden Street, about two kilometers from the gay village where he was last seen.
It would be the beginning of a series of 14 homicides of gay men over the next four years. In the early morning hours that Tuesday, Walkley's roommate found him covered in blood, naked, and stabbed in the back and chest. Police arrived around 4 a.m. Walkley died shortly after arriving at hospital. His apartment was ransacked.
and credit cards were stolen. No knife was ever found. Now, dear listener, I would like you to get some insight into what this entails. Walkley was found bloody and stabbed in the back and chest, but he did not die until many hours later at a hospital. This means that while he was being raped and tortured by this unknown assailant,
And a very plausible suspect is MacArthur. He was wide awake and felt everything. He felt the knife wounds. He felt the blood leaving his body. A very painful feeling, causing severe headaches, dizziness, and, of course, a very stinging, searing, painful sensation.
And also, while you're in such a traumatized position, you will experience a great deal of fear. And adrenaline will rush to your body, making you feel those wounds even higher, even more severe than they might otherwise have been. So this was a very, very brutal death. And Walkley, he died in great pain. I'd like you to just remember that instead of
simply listening to this rather shallow newspaper report that this story is taking from. News reports say Walkley was last seen leaving a tavern on that stretch of Yonge Street with an unidentified man around 2 a.m., and that police were looking for the cab driver who may have driven him home. Police turned up no suspects in the case.
Walkley, a University of Toronto lecturer and community activist, was known to friends and students as Hal. In his earlier years, he taught history at a high school in Etobicoke, west of Toronto. That community was about to be shaken only ten months after Walkley's death, when another man was found brutally killed.
On a mid-December evening in 1975, Fred Fontaine was found after a vicious assault in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern. Officers found the 32-year-old CBC technician suffering from blunt force trauma. That is, he had been beaten severely by either a blunt object or by fists around his entire body, especially his face.
He was taken to hospital and was in a coma until his death seven months later. Nearly a year after Fontaine's assault in the fall of 1976, James Kennedy was found dead inside his Jarvis Street apartment, just blocks from the neighboring gay hangout. The 59-year-old worked in the Department of National Revenue on Adelaide Street in downtown Toronto.
He, like at least four of the others, was last seen leaving the St. Charles Tavern on Yonge Street, not long before his death. He was found dead on the 20th of September, naked and with his face badly beaten. He had been strangled with a towel. Two years later to the day, the 20th of September 1978, police were called to yet another grisly scene.
the killing of Alexander Sandy LeBlanc, the manager of the Studio 2 discotheque at Church and Charleston Street, and a well-known member of Toronto's gay community. David Penny, a former constable with Toronto Police's 52 Division, was one of the first officers to arrive. It was his first homicide case. "'I can picture the scene right now,' says Penny. "'That one was particularly brutal.'"
LeBlanc, 29, was stabbed more than 100 times, from head to foot. LeBlanc's friends hadn't heard from him, and worried for his safety, they kicked in the door at his St. Joseph Street apartment. There, they found LeBlanc's blood-spattered body on the floor. As police walked around the body, the carpet squished. From the sound of absorbed blood and bloody footprints led to an open window, journalists said.
Robin Hardy wrote in The Body Politic in 1979. It's a scene Penny will never forget. There was a heck of a lot of blood, he says. He must have fought for his life. Despite all the evidence, semen on the bed and blood everywhere, as Penny recalls, there were limitations to what the police could investigate, since they did not have the tool of DNA identification back then. But it did not stop.
In late November 1978, Duncan Robinson was found dead in his bedroom on Vaughan Street, near Bathurst Street and St. Clair Avenue. His sister made a call to police after Robinson didn't show up to work for two days. Robinson had multiple stab wounds to his chest and his body had been badly mutilated.
At a time, police said they believed the 25-year-old left the St. Charles Tavern with another man around 2 a.m. the night before. They believed that man to be the killer. The man was described as between 27 and 30 years old, 6 feet 5 inches to 6 feet 7 inches tall.
with a lanky build, greasy brown hair, a scruffy goatee, sloping shoulders and dirty hands. A neighbor reported hearing a peculiar loud hollow noise coming from Robinson's apartment that night around 9 p.m. Another neighbor reported loud music coming from his apartment a few hours later.
News reports in 1978 noted 14 of what were called homosexual killings in three and a half years, including cases of men who were left naked, tied to beds, stabbed or beaten to death, and with their apartments ransacked.
The cases presented some similarities. Many of the men were last seen leaving the St. Charles Tavern. Most were found in their homes, stabbed or killed by blunt force trauma in a manner police call overkill, and they were all members of the gay community. Bruce MacArthur was never a suspect in any of the 14 cases, but he was there.
And even though he was firmly in the homosexual closet, he was gay, and probably frequented many of the same places the fourteen victims did. To his friends and clients, Bruce MacArthur is today known as a gregarious white-haired landscaper who brought beauty to upscale Toronto neighborhoods. But that pleasant demeanor masked a smoldering malevolence.
He has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, accused of leering and murdering men, time and time again. It was on a dreary January day in 2018, this year, that MacArthur's alleged past was revealed. A light snow had fallen. Further shrouding the body parts, he's accused of concealing in leaside planters.
And not far away, two women fretted. They wondered why their close friend Bruce hadn't arrived as expected to pick them up for lunch. The women began unsuccessfully texting and phoning, concerned he'd suffered a heart attack or a medical episode from his diabetes. They contacted MacArthur's roommate, worried that something serious had happened. "'We were fearing he was in a terrible accident,' said one of his friends at the time."
It was my 65th birthday the previous day. He brought me four dozen roses and a gorgeous pair of earrings. He helps me around the house. He's the kindest person I've ever known. What had happened was that police had arrested the 66-year-old MacArthur that very 18th of January morning, bursting into his Thorncliffe Park apartment after they saw a young man enter the unit.
Police, who had MacArthur under surveillance, feared for the visitor's life. They found him in the apartment, bound, restrained to a bed, but unharmed. That afternoon, police revealed that MacArthur was facing two counts of first-degree murder. Investigators also said they anticipated laying more murder charges. Long-held fears within the gay village were confirmed.
Toronto had a serial killer, an idea police had previously dismissed. A murderer whose alleged male victims all had a connection to the community. Many of those who spent time with MacArthur, and he had a large social circle, would speak only on assurances of anonymity, as they did not want their names associated with the case.
All expressed an inability to reconcile the ghastly stories they were hearing with the amiable pal they remembered sharing a coffee with, at the second cup, or a drink at the Black Eagle. Murady-faced and portly, not unlike the Santa he portrayed at Agincourt Mall, there is a seemingly benign everyman quality to MacArthur that allowed him to socialize undetected in the village.
an area of the city MacArthur was temporarily barred from in 2003 by the courts after he pleaded guilty to attacking a male sex worker with a metal pipe. A police source told a Star, that's the newspaper, that in 2016 a man reported to police that MacArthur tried to strangle him during a consensual sexual encounter.
and that MacArthur went to police himself, and was questioned, but let go. Those closest to MacArthur saw no hints of malice, no telltale signs of roiling anger or aggression, no suggestion that a number of victims would edge upward with numbing regularity. Bruce MacArthur is charged with killing Selim Esen, 44, Abulbasir Faizi, 42,
Kirushna Kumar Kanagarantnam, 37, Majid Kaihan, 58, whose remains are not yet found, Andrew Kinsman, 49, Dean Lisowick, 47, Saroosh Mahmoodi, 50, and Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40.
Police uncovered the remains of seven of these eight men, hidden in large planters at a Leaside home where MacArthur worked. One was identified as Kinsman through fingerprint analysis, while the remains of Navaratnam and Mahmoodi were identified through dental records. Police are hoping to identify the other four through DNA, a more time-consuming process.
Those planters were on the Mallory Cress property of Karen Frazier and Ron Smith. The couple had an agreement with MacArthur. He would tend to their lawn and garden, and they would let him store equipment for his landscaping company, artistic design in their garage.
Police expanded the search to 30 properties connected to that business and reportedly plan on returning to those properties with a cadaver dog after the spring thaw. Why MacArthur allegedly buried severed human remains in such a visible place may be answered at trial, but that is likely years away.
For now, MacArthur's defense team will work its way through reams of evidence from the Crown, which turned over what is likely the first of many packages of disclosure documents at a 21st of March court date. One such packet could contain more than 10,000 pages, given how complex this case is, the Crown attorney said.
MacArthur appeared at the College Park court date again via video link from jail, shoulders slumped in a bright orange jumpsuit. As he stood before the camera, eyes glancing to the side, it's impossible to say how long the cycle of grisly police revelations, charges, victims, and an accused being summoned in front of a camera before returning to his cell.
could go on. A guard stood by the door of the brightly lit jail room as MacArthur made his brief appearance on camera, and then ushered him back to his cell. The man who once hid in plain sight, now under constant observation.
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Serial Killer today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Serial Killer. Sasha Reid, welcome so much to the show. It is very exciting to have such an authority on Serial Killers talk to me. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. My pleasure.
So before we get into the nitty gritty, can you tell me and my dear listeners a little bit about yourself and your background? Yes. So I am a third year PhD student at the University of Toronto. I study serial homicide and my field, my discipline at the moment is developmental psychology. I have a background in child study and education, applied psychology and human development, as well as criminology.
So you are currently doing your PhD, or can I now call you Dr. Reed? Not Dr. Reed just yet. I'm about a year away from that, but currently finishing up. Fantastic. Can I ask you, do you have a title for your thesis?
I currently do not. I'm playing with a few titles. I liked The Perfect Storm, unraveling the developmental trajectories of serial killers. That's the one I'm currently sticking with at the moment. I love it. And where are you located?
So I'm located currently in Hamilton. I have lived here now for about three years and I'm loving it, although I'm about to make a big move across Canada. So that's exciting. There's just been a lot of moving. I think I lived in Toronto for about 10 years and then Hamilton, Northern Ontario. I lived in Thunder Bay. So I'm a Canada bouncer.
Right, that's interesting. As a curiosity, I have just moved myself. I am now currently in my brand new home office here in Oslo. So, you say in your interview with the newspaper The Star that you have spent 11 years studying serial homicide. That is impressive. As listeners constantly ask me, what made you interested in serial killers?
That's a very good question. It's actually, it's one of my favorite to answer, except it's just so difficult to give a short answer. So I'll give you the cliff notes.
The reason I got interested in studying serial homicide, I think, is a combination of things. First, it's so innate to me. I have always been drawn toward the darker aspects of humanity. When I was a kid, my entire life kind of revolved around this idea that monsters were real. And I just, I loved scary stories. I was a child of the 90s. Horror was everywhere. And I think it just
entered my life in a very interesting way and kind of took and it just stayed there. There's definitely a personal story that kind of brings it all to fruition. And essentially, that kind of entails a personal encounter with somebody who I consider a psychopath. And that kind of just went from there. So I've always been fascinated in human development and deviance and abnormality of the human mind. Right. Yeah.
Now, you piqued my curiosity quite a bit with your comment about knowing a true psychopath. Care to elaborate? Well, I think
To a lot of people, it may sound interesting, but when you consider how frequent or how common psychopaths are, it's not that interesting. Psychopaths account for 1% of the general male population. So I think we all know a psychopath in our lives. I won't reveal the identity of this one, but I will say that it was a connection very close to the family. It wasn't just a passing interaction.
But it changed my entire life. It changed my whole world in the sense that it took me outside of the realm of fantasy and wanting to explore monsters and vampires and witches in the fantasy world. It grounded me in reality and helped me to realize that the monsters, monsters exist.
not just inside books, in reality. And I wanted to dedicate my entire life to studying the people who at that time I considered to be monsters.
So true. And as an academic, let me ask you, because I've recently had a small debate online with a scholar of psychology here in the University of Oslo regarding the definition of psychopaths and sociopaths.
And I've always been under the impression that a sociopath, very briefly explained, is someone who does not feel sympathy for others, while a psychopath is a sociopath who finds pleasure in causing suffering.
Oh, okay. It's funny. I was just having a conversation with a colleague of mine yesterday and we were discussing the same things. He's also kind of an expert, not an expert, but a student who studies psychology and understands psychopathy. And so he asked the exact same thing. And my answer was this, a psychopath and a sociopath behaviorally.
very similar. These are people who can both kind of engage in criminal violence. They can at times seem devoid of affect and empathy, guilt and remorse. However, the etiology, so the developmental origin of these two different disorders are very different. So current research suggests that psychopaths have a very strong genetic component, right? So this is something that's
genetic, whereas sociopaths are individuals who are made via abuse. So a sociopath might be somebody who, I think we all know the term antisocial personality disorder, ASPD. Somebody with ASPD and a sociopath are the same. They're one in the same. A psychopath is born this way
a sociopath is made. Now, beyond behavioral characteristics, which seem very similar, you kind of have to peel back the layers a little bit, and they're actually quite different. Neurobiologically, psychopaths are different than sociopaths, but then also the extent, the degree to which there is a lack of empathy, lack of guilt, lack of remorse is so much severer
so much more severe with a psychopath. So a sociopath or somebody with ASPD can feel guilt and empathy and remorse. They know what it is to love, right? Whereas a psychopath actually does not. So in another word, you can say that a psychopath is born evil. I always refrain from the use of the word evil. I don't believe it exists. But you can say that a psychopath is born evil
And that's it. Plus, just because you're a psychopath does not mean that you're going to engage in any kind of criminal violence. Psychopathy, first and foremost, is a disorder of affect as opposed to behavior. Psychopaths are more predisposed or more capable of violence because they view people as lacking internal worlds. They do lack guilt and remorse and affect. And so that makes it easier for them to offend. But by no means does it make them all bad guys.
Fascinating. Thank you so much for that clarification. I do think my dear listeners will appreciate that coming from a scholar. Now, moving on, and this is a question I ask all of my interviewees, which, if any, serial killer do you find most fascinating? Oh, I think the one that I find most fascinating, it's difficult because there's two.
I think Ed Kemper is one and Ted Kaczynski is the second. I find them both completely fascinating and they share a lot of similarities in regard to the way that they think and they approach other people.
Ed Kemper, I find to be an extraordinarily interesting person in the sense that he was so conflicted and so completely incapable of finding the type of help that he needed in order to, I guess, not be so violent.
His entire way of viewing the world is just, it's fascinating to me. And because of that, it's not due to his crimes. It's his way of thinking that I'm very drawn to, I think kind of distinguishes him from other serial killers.
So, and this has nothing to do with the fact that Netflix recently released two excellent fictionalized series discussing both Kazinsky with the Mindhunter series and Edmund Kemper with a very similar title.
I actually forgot about those completely. So I have, for the last year and a bit, I've been conducting what's called interpretive phenomenological analysis. And it's basically a research methodology that helps you to
peel back the layers of an individual and understand how they understand the world. And I guess just by chance happened to be that I came across both Kemper and Kaczynski for two different studies, actually. And that's how I connected. I think maybe that's why Netflix was kind of drawn to those characters in the first place, because they are so completely fascinating. I actually didn't watch that for Mindhunter and the Kaczynski one.
for a long time after I think I watched them maybe a month ago. I think the Kaczynski one is simply called Mindhunt and the Edmund Kemper is Mindhunter. Yes. And they're both very good. I recommend it to everyone. But yes, I agree. I mean, Edmund Kemper is one of those serial killer superstars that...
And he's very interested in talking to the public via interviews and such. So there's a wealth of information straight from him on YouTube and so forth. And he really stands out as a unique personality in the serial killer world.
Yeah, I think there's a lot who really do stand out. I mean, when you kind of look at all the serial killers, specifically the ones that I'm looking at, right, because I'm looking at sexually motivated male psychopathic serial killers, you know, they are all very similar. I think what distinguishes Ed is just the fact that there is so much more available for
from him. So with a lot of other serial killers, you read newspaper clips, you listen to stories from their friends, and they're talking about this individual. And that's great, because it does help you to get to understand these people a little bit. But my job is not understanding another person through, you know, other people's words. It's trying to understand the individual from their own words. And Edmund happened to be one individual who is
very talkative and who was, I guess, just happy to approach the press and speak. And so fortunately, I have a lot of, I guess, information, direct interview information from him, which has been very helpful. I can see that. And to pivot back to the case in hand, I came across you as
Because I was studying this very exciting ongoing serial killer case in Canada regarding Bruce MacArthur. And you were the person who alerted police a whole year before he was caught. So what caused you to see a pattern emerging in the Toronto gay village?
So for me, I mean, I was, the only reason why I was able to see a big pattern in the first place was because the people from the church in Wellesley community here in Toronto had known about this for quite a long time, much, much longer than me. So what alerted me first was when I was populating my missing persons database. So I'm currently working on creating a consolidated database of all of Canada's missing people and unsolved homicides and
You know, every single night I sit down and I try to add, well, it used to be 100 names, but now I'm busier. So I try to add a few names every night. And this particular night, I was on the Ontario Missing Persons Registry and just taking names from that database and putting them onto my own. And as I was doing that, I came across three names. There are Fawzi, Majid, and Skanda.
And as soon as I put their names on my database, I just couldn't help but to think, wow, there's so many similarities between these men. This is very curious. And so I kind of put everything aside and I said, OK, I'm going to I'm going to Google these names.
And I did. And as soon as I Googled these names, I started seeing stories from the village, our church in Wellesley area, and people from the community were concerned that there was a possible serial killer. There was this very old Vice article about the possibility of serial killer. And I thought, wow, okay, if somebody says serial killer, I think it's worthy of looking into.
And so basically what I did then is I got as much information about these people as I possibly could. I started to form a profile of victimology. I realized that these people were far too similar for there to be any kind of coincidence. I did believe it was a pattern that was emerging. And then from there, I went to my serial homicide database and tried to get a sense of who this potential offender might be. And that's when I called the police. Just like in a movie.
Now, you mentioned your database. How many serial killer cases do you have in your database? And how did you go about building it? So currently, I think, I believe I have 4,826 serial killers on the database. And I'm looking at 600 variables across each one of those individuals' life. So I'm looking at things like
childhood development. So when they were children, did they have friends? Were they bullied? What kind of childhood illnesses did they have? Did they have arrest histories? Any kind of histories of sexual violence, anything like that. It just goes on and on. These serial killers are historical and global. So I'm trying to catalog every single serial killer in existence, which is no small task. And the way I went about building this is the same way I went about building my missing persons database.
I woke up one morning with this grand idea. I didn't think it was going to be too difficult. I sat down at a computer and opened Excel, went to Google, and just started looking for names. And that's how I started. And since then, I've assembled this extraordinary team of research assistants. It's my...
quote unquote, brilliance and hard work is entirely due to them. What they do is, you know, I put the names up, but I give them the database and they input information from criminal records, psychiatric reports, and we can get access from them, interviews, police transcripts, anything that we can possibly get is, you know, the primary data sources that we use to populate the database.
Now, when you mentioned that you have over 4,000 serial killers on your database, that's an extraordinary number. And to me, it's a very, pardon the phrase, happy number because this podcast is dedicated to serial killers, who they were, what they did, and how. And my biggest fear is to run out of
So when you say you have over 4,000, well, then I will be in business for quite a while.
Yes, you will. And to be fair, I mean, the serial killers on this database, it's curious because what a serial killer is, how we define the parameters of serial homicide has changed very much throughout the decades. You know, just decades ago, it was three or more murders. And since 2005, it's been two.
And so I actually do have to go back and add more people because when you start narrowing that criteria to two or more, there's quite a lot of serial killers who are not actually, I guess, represented on this database. But they will be very soon. So you use two kills with a significant cooling off period in between. So I actually use a combination of two definitions.
One definition is from the FBI, which is the two or more murders committed by the same offender in separate events over a period of time, unspecified. So I use that one. But then I also use my definition of serial homicide, which I created in 2017. And this one, it's not so much a definition as it is a series of corollaries. This is a very academic definition. I think the
The FBI's definition of serial homicide is wonderful for law enforcement because it serves a very practical purpose. But when you're talking to an academic, myself included, I think two-hour murders over a period of time is just far too broad. And so in 2017, I created a new definition that falls under the category of compulsive criminal homicide. And I use that one as well to help
kind of distinguish the FBI's version of serial homicide and my version of compulsive criminal homicide. That's fascinating and very apt for my use as well. And how do you define compulsive homicide? It's very, very long. I actually have to do something about this because it doesn't get captured in one sentence. So the definition, are you ready for this, is a little bit long.
1. Total achieved murders, number 3 or more. The combination of total achieved and or attempted murders can be linked forensically and or upheld judicially. The primary goal of the perpetrator is intrinsic and based in psychological motivations of personal gratification. The murder is not carried out at the behest of another or in response to a personal attack to oneself or a loved one.
The offender exercises independent, conscious deliberation, purposeful control, planned forethought, and intentional action in the acquisition, constraint, handling, and elimination of the victim. Each event of murder occurs as a discrete event, which occurs at different intervals of time, and which are interrupted by a break or dormant period between homicides. And then subsequent killings meet corollaries A through G. Thank you so much. That is excellent.
I will make sure to introduce this in a separate episode so that my dear listeners will see that I too try to stay at least in part on academic sound footing. Now back to MacArthur. In your interview with The Star, you compare MacArthur to serial killer superstars Dennis Nielsen and Jeffrey Dahmer. Can you elaborate on this?
I think the comparisons were made just because these individuals were targeting LGBTQ plus communities. They were offending against men for the purposes of sexual gratification. And, you know, at the time when the star, I guess even now, we still don't know what Bruce MacArthur's motivation was. For me, it was a hunch. It was just a hunch that he was a sexually motivated person.
And personally, I'm not too sure if he's a psychopath at all. I know that Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't, so that wouldn't be too far outside the scope. Dennis Nielsen, I believe he was a psychopath, but there are similarities in who these people targeted. So that's why. You don't think Jeffrey Dahmer was a psychopath? No.
No. And I mean, when you look at how psychopathy is diagnosed, right, you have to remember that psychopathy does not mean murder. Psychopathy does not mean crime. Psychopathy means lack of guilt, lack of remorse, lack of personal affect, lack of responsibility, right? So in order to be diagnosed as a psychopath, you should be diagnosed with Hare's checklist, right? So the psychopathy checklist revised was created by Dr. Robert Hare, also from Canada.
And in order to satisfy these criteria, you need to be able to score above 30. That's the cutoff. And with regard to Jeffrey Dahmer, he just doesn't satisfy these criteria. I think there's been a lot of discussion about him as a necrophiliac. There was a huge diagnostic. What was it? There was some discussion about him having Asperger's, but there was, oh, and schizotype personality or schizopathy. No, not schizopathy, schizotype.
In any case, the psychiatrist who diagnosed him could not diagnose psychopathy because he doesn't satisfy those criteria. I genuinely did not know that. That's interesting. For my listeners who have listened to my very first episode of this podcast called Jeffrey Dahmer, please disregard my comment about him being a psychopath. Sorry. Wonderful. So to ask a very, very tough question,
In your profile that has been featured in the newspaper, you stated that the killer would be just over 30. It turns out he is 66 years old. What did you base your age profile on? So my age profile was based on the average age of the male sexually motivated serial killers that I'd pulled from my database. Now, at the time that I had made this,
I was unaware of the fact that sexual homicide offenders tend to kill people their own age within a year or two difference, right? And so when I originally came up with this profile, I just pulled from the averages off this database and realized the majority of them were 30 years old.
And so that's where that average came from. But what I should have been doing was looking at the average age of the victims. These were all middle-aged men, and it should have been clear to me that MacArthur would have also been a middle-aged man. Now, that being said, had I still gone the victim route, I would have put him at around 45 years old, not 60. And so I think...
It's very curious, and I think it shocked a lot of serial homicide scholars that Bruce is so old. And I think that's caused a lot of debate and discussion about when he actually started and whatnot. But, yep, I was wrong about that. Excellent. I understand that your profile thought it likely that the killer would be a colored person since the killer's victims were mostly of Indian and Southeast Asian descent.
But it turns out he's white. It is very uncommon for serial killers to kill outside of their own ethnic group. Can you speculate as to MacArthur's motivations for choosing the victims he did? I mean, I can speculate, yes. Of course, it's only speculation. So, you know, everybody has their own sexual preferences. Some people like tall people, other people like short people, other people like
I don't know, dark people. Other people like super, super white people. And so I think it's just a sexual preference of his. But then again, you have to remember that not all of his victims were South Asian or East Asian. You also had Dean Lysowick and Andrew Kinsman, who are both, so far as I know, Caucasian. And so I think...
I think there is a sexual preference for darker men, and I think that was something that he actually put into his silver box profile or a dating profile. He was interested in people who are of poor color. I'm not too sure. I'm just assuming it was his own sexual preference. That sounds very plausible. Thank you.
You contacted police very early on, almost a year prior to MacArthur's arrest. Do you think they could have acted sooner in apprehending him, or do you think they simply needed more evidence?
So I think it's very difficult to speculate just because we don't know the full scope of the investigation or what occurred. I think there's been quite a lot of speculation about where the police went wrong. And I think that's probably the wrong approach at the moment. I think we need to be looking at, you know, what they did right. But of course, we'll never know because we're not in that circle. We can only know what's revealed to us. Now, I do know that serial homicide investigations are notoriously difficult to solve.
And so it might not be that they should have caught him earlier, but it's just extremely difficult to solve these cases. Now, think about this.
They might not have known who the suspect was because they did not have access to any kind of physical evidence. Police rely on evidence. They don't rely on profiles at all. Those are just ancillary tools that are sometimes helpful when trying to focus an investigation. No physical evidence makes for an exceptionally difficult case.
But then again, listening to the concerns of the LGBTQ plus community here in Toronto, and there's another group, I think it's a South Asian Alliance. I forget exactly the name, but there's been a lot of discussion about what the police should have done. And, you know, there's such strained relationships between racialized communities and the police and the LGBTQ plus community and the police. And so again,
As an academic, I'm going to remain neutral on the topic until such time as we have an inquiry. But at the same time, I do understand both sides and understand the frustration on both. So it's tough. That's a great answer. And I tend to agree. Let's stay neutral until more information is available. Now, on a more cheery topic, have you listened to my podcast?
I listened to one episode a month or two ago, yes. Which episode? I don't remember. I'm so sorry. It's been a very busy couple of months. I think I'm juggling 16 hours of work every day. I thought today was Saturday and it's Wednesday. Wow, that sounds like you're under quite a lot of work indeed.
So I'll not keep you for much longer, but before we finish, can you tell us about your book? Oh, The Serial Killers, Myths and Monsters. So this was a book that I wrote last year. It was for a course at the University of Toronto, The Sociology of Serial Homicide.
Now, this book is a good starter. It's a nice introduction for anybody who's, you know, who just has never studied serial homicide before but is interested in it. But let me tell you that my baby's
is not my book. It's my research essay on compulsive criminal homicide. It's the article that's soon to come out about the history of serial homicide. So I think anyone who's interested in reading more about serial homicide or even just starting a foundational base and diving into this field
The places you want to start are maybe read my article on compulsive criminal homicide, but also read anything from Anne Burgess, Robert Ressler, John Douglas. These are the people who laid the foundation for this whole entire field. And my work is just I stand on the shoulder of giants. Start with them and then go to me.
I hope my listeners got the names of those excellent academics and will do as you recommend and have a read both at their work and, of course, yours, because I think you are giving yourself far too little credit. Do you have any questions or comments? In terms of questions or comments, well, do you have a section on podcasts where people ask questions?
I did have an AMA session a bit over a month ago, and it went quite well. I had 40 questions from listeners that I answered. Interesting. Do you know what kind of questions? Was there any question that was left unsolved that I could address, potentially?
I don't think so. Most of the questions were directed at me. There was one question that is in regard to how America treats mental illness and what we can do to improve the services. Oh, I like that question. Whenever people talk about serial homicide or any kind of violence where homicide is kind of just the central point, mental illness always seems to filter in.
Do I think that there's a connection between mental illness and homicide? I think I really don't even know how to answer that question, I think just because it's so broad. But with regard to serial homicide, it's very interesting to know that when I'm studying these individuals and when I'm looking at their mental health histories, there is actually quite a lot that's very telling of disrupted, disturbed childhoods.
outside of physical abuse, which I think is very interesting. And so I definitely think there is a component of disturbed mental health with serial killers, at least. I tend to agree. Thank you so much for talking with me, Sasha Reid. I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much for having me. It was great. And I hope your listeners enjoyed this.
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