Front Burner - The story behind unsolved murders in Toronto's gay village

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

In this season of Uncover: The Village, reporter Justin Ling reveals the history of unsolved murder and missing persons cases in Toronto's gay village.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. For years, men were disappearing from Toronto's gay village. I feel terrorized. I'm Justin Ling, this season on Uncover. If we see this is happening, how can you not see this? They suspected a serial killer.

And they were right. Police arrested 66-year-old Bruce MacArthur. But this wasn't the first time the village was targeted. You don't start killing at 66. You start killing when you're in your late teens or early 20s. Uncover. The Village. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. When men started disappearing from Toronto's gay village,

people in the community there worried a serial killer could be responsible. Sadly, they were right. Approximately 10.25 a.m., police arrested 66-year-old Bruce MacArthur of the city of Toronto. Bruce MacArthur eventually pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of eight men between 2010 and 2017. Andrew Kinsman, Abdul Basar Faizi, Majid Kayhan, Tzarush Mahmood out, people started to wonder, could MacArthur have been responsible for a series of killings in Toronto's gay village that took place decades earlier? Police took those worries seriously.

They opened up dozens of cold cases to try and find out. And that question, of whether MacArthur might have committed a series of murders starting in the 1970s. It prompted journalist Justin Ling to investigate. The result is a new CBC investigative podcast called Uncover the Village. Today on FrontBurner, was MacArthur responsible? If not, who was? And why have these cases never been solved? Justin, thanks for being here today.

Thanks for having me. I have to say, I got an advanced copy of your series, and it's like a real perk of the job that I got to listen to it ahead of time, and it's a really tremendous piece of journalism. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks. So the killings that MacArthur committed, they sent shockwaves through Toronto's gay community and the city, really. And people started coming forward talking about other killings.

And what happened there? Well, basically, people started, you know, coming forward, people whose relatives, loved ones, friends had died quite recently or decades earlier. And I started saying, you know, we see the similarities there. So, you know, I spoke to multiple families of men who were murdered in the mid-1970s who said as soon as they saw MacArthur's face on TV, as soon as they saw that he'd been responsible for eight killings, their mind went immediately to their family member who had been killed decades earlier. When this MacArthur came up in January, it brought it all back to me about Sandy, of course.

And then when it had it on the TV that they're going back to cases in the 70s of unsolved gay murders. What is he, 70 years old, this MacArthur guy? Which means he's about our age. So the first thing I thought, oh my gosh, he could have murdered Sandy. They took the proactive step of calling the police tip lines. Family members who have not gotten answers in many years have also come forward and said, you know, you should really be looking into whether or not there's a connection here. And police, for their credit, actually said, you know what, it's a good point. That's going to be on our list.

Right. So they've opened up 25 cold cases in total. And I know that you've spent quite a bit of time investigating one of these cases. So can you tell me about Sandy LeBlanc? Yeah. So Sandy LeBlanc was a club owner. He was from small town New Brunswick. He made it to Toronto in the early 70s. And he very quickly kind of went from a job

managing a Kmart in Northern Ontario to being in Toronto running a gay bar, this flashy discotheque called David's. And by all accounts, it was very kind of over the top. There was a portable stage that was pulled out on usually Saturday nights for a drag show at two o'clock in the morning. There was a platform for a couple of go-go dancers to dance on as well. There was a working fountain that was a statue of Michelangelo's David in the middle of the dance floor. It was quite the spot. That's so fun.

And he was openly gay. He was one of the first people in Toronto to be openly gay and run a gay bar, a dedicated gay bar that did not apologize for what it was. And he was a pretty public figure. You know, he held fundraisers for, you know, queer causes at the disco. He even held an all candidates debate in the 1970, sorry, the 1977 Ontario provincial election. So he was out there. He was murdered incredibly violently in 1978. He was stabbed almost 100 times, head to toe virtually.

Police say that LeBlanc died of multiple stab wounds. His friends kicked in the door of his apartment after failing to reach him by phone. They discovered bloody footprints in the hallway of the apartment, leading to a window facing on an alley. There was a great many leads. There were persons of interest. There were suspects back then. There was bloody footprints leading away from his apartment. There was a piece of the killer's clothing that were found, but it was never

solved. 40 years later, it's still unsolved. So I was in the homicide squad from 78 to 83. The reason I remember Alexander LeBlanc was killed on St. Joseph Street because it was my first homicide. So that's why I remember Alexander LeBlanc was killed on St. Joseph Street because it was my first homicide, so that's why I remember him. Unfortunately, with the homicides that I did in that community,

never solved any of them. What did the police do at the time to investigate or to try and solve this murder? Well, luckily, we got a hold of several cops, one homicide cop, one beat cop, who worked this case and who were really, really familiar with it. And they told us they worked their butt off trying to solve this case. They genuinely cared. One of the cops was a friend of Sandy LeBlanc, the victim.

We worked most exclusively in the gay area. We got along with everybody. Actually, I considered Sandy a friend. When we found out about his murder, we went. We just got on that case. We turned in every lead, checked out every lead. So they really did genuinely

try. Here's the problem is that at the exact same time, police were trying to solve this murder and a number of other murders that happened at the exact same time. Other members of the Toronto Police were raiding bathhouses and busting up bars and arresting gay men for doing, you know, perfectly consensual acts. They were ignoring reports of assault and threats and sexual assault.

They were not doing their job. They were terrorizing the community that had been most marginalized in the city or one of the most marginalized in the city. And, you know, for every one cop that was trying their best to solve this case, it seemed like there was three more trying to put the whole of the gay community behind bars. And I have to say, listening to your podcast again and again, I remember thinking to myself, well, I can't believe that this was just the 1970s, 1980s in Toronto. For example, you found the police were surveilling men in a bathroom. Yeah, this was one of the wildest stories. It's one that was documented to some degree, but not to the extent that it really should be. It is a glaring example of police malfeasance and discrimination against the community.

of police malfeasance and discrimination against the community. In this case, it turns out that there was a secret surveillance room in the bathroom of the Parkside Tavern, which was kind of a known gay bar on Yonge Street, what was then the gay strip. Police had had access to this storage closet. A cubbyhole, a closet with a vent that overlooked the bathroom. And the police were given a key to that closet so that they could observe the washroom. They were peeping on every single guy who went into the bathroom, which is disgusting.

If you were seen doing anything that constituted indecent exposure, which is a tough charge to file considering there was no actual victims. They were all consenting parties. Police would burst through the door and place you under arrest. It took a concerted effort from the community to put a stop to that. There are astounding details like this throughout the podcast, but tell me how the relationship between the police and the gay community at the time, this negative relationship, affected the ability to solve these murders.

Every single cop we spoke to who worked any of these homicides back then, who spoke to us or who spoke to the media at the time, they all said, listen, people aren't coming forward. People are afraid. Most of them would not disclose to anybody that they were homosexual and they didn't trust the police and thought, well, we're going to, he probably told my boss or phoned my wife or my mother. And so they so we weren't trusted. People are afraid of getting outed. They're afraid of not being taken seriously.

They're afraid of being arrested in some cases. We literally had reports of people reporting a robbery to police, police showing up, looking around, concluding that they had invented the story, or worse yet, concluding that they were actually running, you know, a bathhouse in their apartment and arresting them on common body house charges, which is basically arresting someone that's a prostitution charge. So, you know, people were not comfortable coming forward and it absolutely hindered these investigations. It only got worse as police were going, busting bathhouses, arresting men, discriminating against the community. What do we know about how Toronto police are investigating these unsolved murders today?

So I was very curious to know what work they were doing. You know, the first time I went in to speak to Detective Stacey Gallant, who runs the cold case team, I was very curious to know what sort of footwork they were doing. I was kind of surprised to learn that they're not reinvestigating any of these cases. They're not calling up friends and family. Contacting friends and relatives at this point really don't come into play for these cases unless it was to advance to the point where we have a usable DNA profile, then we have to start trying to track people down. They're not making new appeals for witnesses.

They're not really running down some of the leads that they had back then. Because this is interesting, because there have been many press conferences where Toronto police have said that they've reopened these cases. You would think that that would include re-interviewing

witnesses and friends and family. And what Detective Gallant told me was they believe that the investigations were done to the best of the police ability at the time, that there's nothing left to do on them, that there's nothing to be gained from going back to the community or friends or family. The original investigations in all of these were done as any homicide would be done today. It's a fulsome investigation. Every lead was examined at the time.

There was really nothing left to do with the case back then. And then ultimately what they're doing, and admittedly, this is probably the most effective thing they can do, is to run DNA analysis on any evidence that is still preserved. Part of this work is to see if there's a common DNA profile amongst all of these killings. Part of the idea is to see if they can figure out who's responsible, whether they're dead or alive, to see if they're still around, if they can make an arrest, or to see if there's potentially another serial killer who is working.

And some of this work has already resulted in one resolution of a case. There's one murder from 1995 where DNA analysis has pointed to the probable culprit. Unfortunately, he died a couple years ago, but police were at the very least able to call that family back and say, you know, we believe we know what happened to your loved one. And give them some answers. From the work that you've done investigating these cold cases, is there any evidence that points to another serial killer? Or is there any evidence that points to Bruce MacArthur? Yeah. So we did our best to try to link up Bruce MacArthur's kind of known whereabouts,

his known MO, his history, and nothing pops out. And the Toronto Police Cold Case team has said the exact same thing. We've had nothing jumping out at us in any of these cases right now that would suggest any involvement by him at this point. They've done, obviously, much more work than we're capable of doing. But they basically said there's nothing there. Nothing pops out. The MO of some of the killings look a little bit similar,

but that's kind of where it ends. And we know that Bruce MacArthur was working downtown Toronto, not far from several gay bars in the 1970s, the late 1970s. But that's about as close a connection as we can come to. There's not much beyond that. Now, in terms of whether or not there was another serial killer, I can tell you that people in the community at the time absolutely believed there was. You know, we spoke to one person who basically said that, you know, in 1978,

especially after the murder of Sandy LeBlanc, they started calling this, you know, this mysterious believed serial killer the Mad Stabber. And there was a bunch of us who were young journalists hanging out together. And, you know, people were beginning to think there was a serial killer, the Mad Stabber. And there was a bunch of us who were young journalists hanging out together. And, you know, people were beginning to think there was a serial killer or maybe serial killers. It was after Sandy LeBlanc that people, at least in my circle of friends, started calling him the Mad Stabber. You know, that was his name because so many of the victims were stabbed to death and were stabbed to death in a very over-the-top fashion.

They called it overkill. Incredibly violent. So Bruce MacArthur was 58 years old when he started killing people. How old would he have been in the 70s? So in the mid-70s, he would have just graduated college, business college in Barrie, north of Toronto. So he would have been, you know, late teens, early 20s. You know, we know he was working downtown Toronto in his early 20s. And we know that he got married and bought a house in Oshawa.

So that puts him in Toronto at the time of many of these killings. And it would have made him quite young. of many of these killings. And it would have made him quite young. Again, nothing we've seen points to him having any involvement or any ties or any connection to any of these killings. Do you think any of them are actually going to be solved?

I think they will be. Police have already resolved one. They can't make an arrest because the guy is dead. Police are waiting for the DNA to come back and many others. And they're confident. They actually seem optimistic. They told me point blank they have new persons of interest in the Sandy LeBlanc case.

And if they can match that DNA profile to somebody else who they may have arrested in the past, that is a victory for them, even if the guy's living or dead. I think there will be other cases that they can resolve. I mean, DNA alone can do a lot of that work. I think it's going to be very unfortunate how many don't get solved. How many that probably could get solved too if they were to put the resources into it, into, you know, going and actually doing some of that legwork all over again. I can tell you that of the work they've done thus far, they have managed to rule out Bruce

MacArthur in a number of the cases. So of that 23 that we've been talking about, they have ruled Bruce MacArthur out for eight of them. And there's several others that are kind of in the process of being analyzed. And it sounds like there's going to be kind of a finish line somewhere in the next six months to a year period where we might actually be able to say who killed many of these men or whether or not there was, in fact, a second serial killer operating. We'll be back in a second. At Franklin Templeton, we help you invest in companies that believe good enough is never far enough. Reach for better. Franklin Templeton Investments.

What do you think it would take for any of these families, for Sandy LeBlanc's family, for the families of any of these men that have been murdered to actually get some justice here, to get some answers? It's funny. I've heard just about every answer to that question that you could think of from the people I've spoken to. You know, there are people who tell me, yeah, all I want is to know the name of the person who killed my brother or my ex-lover or you name it. There's people who have been wondering for decades and who go back and forth and who live with it every single day. And that's hard. And, you know, I always have this immense sympathy for the missing men that MacArthur killed because they, you know, in some cases spent eight years just having to relive this again and again and again. just having to relive this again and again and again.

Some of these people who had a loved one, a brother, a partner die in 1978 and have wondered for 40 years, I can only imagine how tough that is. Incredibly difficult. And to think that your loved one's case wasn't prioritized or has been forgotten about. And can tell you that there are definitely people who feel that way. So in some cases, all people want is just a simple name, just the answer as to what had happened. In other cases, you know, people aren't so tied to that. I mean, of course, they want to know what happened.

But, you know, we spoke to one woman whose brother was murdered, and she told us, you know, listen, I would love to have an answer, but really what I want is for practices to change. You know, if, she said, basically, if my brother's death can instigate some of that change, then, you know, that is what I will really take away from this. You know, if his murder leads to greater, you know, greater outreach from the police to the community, greater understanding or cultural competence, then that's a victory. So let's talk about that, because it feels like we've come a long way since the 1970s, since these murders and,

you know, how people in Toronto's gay village were treated. But at the same time, it feels like we haven't come very far at all. And I know that you see real parallels here between what happened then and what happened now with the Bruce MacArthur investigation. And tell me about those parallels. Yeah. I mean, you know, the one fear I had in producing this podcast is that people would see it as a history lesson. Because if it's not, like in 1978 was not that long ago. And, you know, I think we like to believe that in looking into all those murders in the community

and then the bathhouse raids, and, you know, subsequent conversations around gay marriage and the AIDS crisis. And, you know, we like to think that we learned all the right lessons from that and everything was fixed, but it's just not the case. I mean, the same sort of ignorance and dismissiveness that we kind of have in terms of the trans community is so similar to how we dealt with the community back then. You know, some of the indifference we're showing towards, you know, refugee communities, immigrant communities, so similar to, you know, the attitude that was back then. I mean, some of MacArthur's victims are refugees. fearful about coming forward with information in 1978, you could almost put those comments right next to the comments

made by the family of Krishna Kumar Kanagaratnam, who was one of MacArthur's victims, who was a Sri Lankan refugee. His family didn't report him missing because they were afraid he was going to get deported. They were fearful of what the state would do to him. We'd been looking for him for two years. Because he was rejected, he went into hiding. So that's why we didn't file a missing persons report, because it was a struggle to send him to Canada. If he was sent back home, he'd struggle even more.

And, you know, this is not their fault. But, you know, because we didn't know he was missing, we never connected to him. We never understood what was at risk here. And, you know, that's really frustrating. And, you know, again, it's not just these cases in the 70s. You know, it is, you know, Montreal dealt with this in the 90s. There was a slew of killings of gay men in the 1990s in Montreal. And Montreal, you know, learned a lot from them, but I think there's still a long ways to go. We claim to learn a lot from the Picton inquiry in British Columbia. A scathing report was released examining how Picton was able to elude authorities for so many years.

It lays most of the blame on police, accusing them of blatant failure and much worse. We evidently didn't because Toronto Police didn't adopt any of those recommendations. Montreal learned... Particularly recommendations around missing persons, I understand. Yeah, exactly. But also dealing with marginalized communities and dealing with sex workers. You know, one of Bruce MacArthur's victims was a sex worker. Many of the victims in 1978, several victims in 1978 were sex workers.

You know, what we learn again and again is that you can't stop violence against sex workers unless you deal with them on a human to human basis and stop trying to police them while they're trying to report a crime to you. We haven't learned that lesson in many parts of this country. And that's really frustrating to see. It's really frustrating to see the same bad things happen again and again and again. And the solutions laid out very clearly in front of you only to have, you know, the structures in place, ignore them entirely. And that's part of why I wanted to do this podcast because I wanted to show people

just how long we've been saying the same thing and how long it's been since those answers have been ignored. Justin, thank you so much. You know, when I say that this was a tremendous piece of journalism, you know, it is what I think is so commendable about this podcast that it is not just like a whodunit, that you do a lot more here. And I would recommend people to listen to it.

It's Uncover the Village. You can download it wherever you get your podcasts. It's out April 2nd. Justin, thanks so much. Thank you. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging.

A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.