Uncover - S3 "The Village" E1: How Can You Not See This?

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

The Village, Episode 1 - In 2010, men with similar characteristics start mysteriously disappearing from Toronto's gay village. They are all linked to one man. Investigative journalist Justin Ling follows the case as friends search for loved ones and police provide few answers. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-3-the-villiage-transcripts-listen-1.5128216

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, host of Wiretap. You're invited to listen in on my telephone conversations. Whether funny, sad, wistful, or even slightly strange, you never know just what you might hear on Wiretap. I mean, I knew you had a show. I just didn't think that people actually listened to it. That's the breadth of your genius, Jonathan. It's not just that you're funny,

but you can be cripplingly, poignantly depressing. The Wiretap Archives. Wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Maybe you've seen the headlines. In February 2019, Bruce MacArthur appeared in a Toronto courtroom. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing eight men. MacArthur's conviction answered some questions.

Painful questions, ones that had hung over Toronto's queer community for years. But it also reopened old mysteries. Mysteries that go back decades. To a time when being gay meant being a target. To when the community had to defend itself because police wouldn't. When the closet was, for many, just a safer choice than coming out. To a time when queer people were winding up dead, and their killers were getting away with it. or getting away with it.

Our story starts in 2018. This was a green yard with flower beds. This is the section in the middle that they tore up last winter and dug down a few feet. It took weeks. They don't call this Pottery Road area for nothing. The ground is rock hard. It's a sweltering day in August. I'm in the backyard of a tucked away house on a quiet street in Toronto.

Back here was all green until they came two weeks ago. You can imagine the mess that it made. Karen Fraser lives here. She is an unlikely central figure in this whole story. She's showing me her garden, or at least what's left of it. I've known Karen for the better part of a year. She's slight. She has a head of swept back red hair, big brown eyes,

and an oddly endearing sense of humor. That is what kept her sane, I think, throughout this whole horrifying ordeal. We have deer who come. I don't know if they'll come now because it was safe. Her secluded backyard slopes down to a pair of railroad tracks. Beyond that is a deep ravine. Oh, wow.

Around here we can smile. It's more limiting. Well, that was a neighbor's last word. It's a leafy hideaway in the city. It's also the perfect place to avoid being noticed. So that was our compost pile in the corner for leaves in the fall, and apparently it had things. And then over around here, we'll have to look over this edge, it's where the major...

Just a month before, investigators were here, combing through her yard, her garden, and the wooded ravine below. They sifted through the dirt and the soil one bucket at a time, painstakingly looking for clues. It would become the largest forensic investigation in Toronto police history. They scoured it, basically. Scoured it all the way down. Oh yeah. But they didn't find anything back here in the end. They did.

Basically all over the yard. Oh, jeez. We had a lot of lilies and tulips. That's what's left of the lilies. Karen is trying to help me picture her yard as it used to be. There were flower beds and big, colorful stone planters. And tulips and daffodils along there, lots of periwinkle. I like it because it starts very early in the spring.

You get something. All of this was designed and maintained by her faithful gardener, Bruce. There are lots of periwinkle. I like it because it starts very early in the spring. You get something. All of this was designed and maintained by her faithful gardener, Bruce. And he took good care of it. It was quite lush. Bruce had his run of Karen's backyard. He was conscientious, very professional, very talented, very kind. Their families had known each other for years. We got a call from Bruce's sister saying that her brother had just purchased a gardening business.

And she said, I understand you have a double garage and you're not using it. So, simple arrangement. Sure, he could store his things in our garage if he would cut our lawn when we went away on the weekends in the summer. And over the years, he expanded. He decorated all the pots on the property. He gave us things at Christmas. You know, it just, it grew. It was never social. It was just a nice working relationship. Simple, not complicated. But it wasn't a one-man job. What do you remember about the people who would lend a hand

when he was landscaping your place? Many of them were obviously newcomers. Some were quite shy. Most we saw once, sometimes just a head of hair going by the window holding up two hanging baskets. We didn't actually meet them at all. I think of all the men who met the horrible fate, I know I met one. I think I met a second man one time.

Very shy, stared at the ground, and Bruce and I were bantering back and forth, and I could see that the man he had with him was staring at the ground and laughing because he found it funny. The second man, I really felt sorry for him he was off to the side and Bruce was annoyed with him he said he's just not going to work out and since all of them appeared to be amateurs or very new I didn't know what this poor man had done his clothing was not as nice as many of the other men. And I felt badly because he seemed to be really trying, had no idea what he was doing. And about a month later, I sent Bruce an email and said, so how did your new man work out? He didn't respond and it was never mentioned again.

Memories of these men stick with Karen. She tells me she had forgotten their names and their faces for years, but now she can't stop thinking about them. All because of what happened on a cold day in January 2018. It was about 10.30 in the morning. There was a severe pounding on the door so I came down expecting a delivery and looked to the street and I turned and there were two men in navy blue and one of them said are you Karen Fraser? Are you Karen Fraser? You've got five minutes to get out. There's been a serious crime. Bruce MacArthur has been arrested.

My name is Justin Ling. This is Uncover the Village. I'm an investigative journalist and I've always been on the lookout for stories that have been passed over or forgotten. And four years ago, I started working on a story that was both. Didn't look good. People just don't disappear. The car was located, but he was nowhere to be found. It's kind of like I feel terrorized. A string of queer men of color had gone missing from Toronto's gay village. For a time, fears of a serial killer stalked the village.

But that fear, it faded away. The police closed their investigation. The media moved on. But still, those disappearances nagged at me. This was personal. This was my community. It started to become clear that their sexuality and their skin color made them easier to forget. Easier to write off. But I never imagined where the investigation would go

and just how awful it would get. This is a story about missing men, yes, but it's about so much more than that. It's a story about homophobia and violence against marginalized people. It's about a community that demanded answers and which didn't get them until it was too late. violence against marginalized people. It's about a community that demanded answers and which didn't get them until it was too late. Gay rights now! Gay rights now! Gay rights now!

Toronto's Gay Village is only about three city blocks. The main focal point is the intersection of Church Street and Wellesley Street. It's not hard to notice that you're in the heart of gay Toronto. There are pride flags hanging from shop windows and telephone poles. And as you walk up Church Street, there's a bronze statue of a dapper man with a flowing coat and a walking cane. And then there are the 20-foot tall poles. They're decked out with giant rainbow spirals. And on the top is a shimmering disco ball. They're supposed to welcome everyone

to the church in Wellesley Village. They are incredibly gaudy. The Gay Village has been around in one way or the other since the 1960s. Early on, there was just a few discreet bars. And then there was the Gay Friendly Travel Agency, and then the clothing stores. Queer as Folk, a TV show that ran in the early 2000s, was set in Pittsburgh, but filmed almost entirely in the Church and Wellesley Village. For lots of people, the village is a sort of refuge.

There's plenty of village residents who were born outside of Canada, but who have adopted it as their second home. Others are expats from small-town Canada, like me and like Joel. I started seeing him around the local pubs on Church Street. He was kind of a loud character in So Am I, I guess, so that's kind of why. Joel Walker came here in 2008 from Manitoba. He was a very vibrant person. He was constantly laughing.

He's talking about his friend, Skandaraj Navaratnam. Everything was hilarious in life. I loved it before. If I was in a bad mood, he would draw it out of me, and immediately I'd be fine. To his friends, he was just Skanda. He had come to Toronto from Sri Lanka, where he had fled a decades-long civil war. He lived just outside the village and had a wide circle of friends.

Skanda is the same man Karen Fraser remembers standing in her garden years ago. standing in her garden years ago. Like so many people in the village, Joel and Skanda were transplants. We started playing pool avidly together. It was something we did as a hobby, and I wish he was here to hear this, giving him lessons, because he sucked at first. And I'm an alright shot, but he came a very long way very fast, and then he started beating me, and it was like the teacher getting beat by the student. It was a really good feeling, and so we bonded majorly over the game.

It's kind of funny. Is it possible he was a shark, that he just tricked you into thinking he was no good? I wish I could say so for his family to hear but no he was not that good and i handed it to him every time so where would you go at you said you found kind of the same couple of pubs you know what zippers definitely was our main spot zippers was a community institution some nights it was a piano bar others it was a dance institution. Some nights, it was a piano bar. Others, it was a dance club. But on Sunday, it was Retro Night.

Retro Night was a sort of Sunday service. It was a mix of those who came of age in the 70s and 80s, dancing alongside 19- and 20-year-olds who had just come out. If you didn't get there early, you'd be stuck waiting in a line that would sometimes wrap around the block. But Zippers was also a place to just shoot pool with friends. There's another pool hall right on Church Street. I can't remember for life what it's called. Is it the one upstairs?

Yes. Pegasus? Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Horses, horses. Yeah. Pegasus, though, is still open, with four large pool tables in the back and cheap pitchers of beer every night.

As they spent more time together, usually playing pool, Joel and Skanda became increasingly close, but they never dated. They weren't each other's type. Me and him had no interest in each other. He was into something completely different than I was. And I was too. I mean, sure, I found him attractive, but I loved him like a brother. I never ever looked at him a different way. Skanda was tall, dark, and lanky. You couldn't miss him. So he was pretty unique. He was a unique style.

Absolutely. Like, he was very fashion forward. He had a lot of jewelry. He wore jewelry on every, rings on every finger. Multiple rings, like two to three sometimes on each finger. It normally sounds way over top gaudy, but for him it worked. With his nationality, I didn't see anyone that dressed like him. He dressed like a part of our culture, but the part of his culture with a part of his own mix. I love fashion a great deal.

And so it inspired, it always inspired me to like one up him. But I didn't have enough fingers or rings to do it. So he was definitely into an older gentleman type. He had a name for them. It was called Silver Daddies. That was his thing. He was very intrigued and attracted to them. And every one of them I ever met was fine, except for one. And that person was very, very jealous and very, very obsessive and controlling.

And who was that? And that was Bruce MacArthur. So how often did you see Bruce MacArthur. So, how often did you see Bruce MacArthur around? He started coming around when Scanda was out later at night. He was there every time. But he never went to the normal bars when he was with Bruce. He mostly stayed

with him, I guess, at his home or at the Eagle, which was a leather bar. It was very dark. It's very nice people in there and everything like that. But it is a very good place to hide and be anonymous. And so what was Scandal like when Bruce was around? He was constantly attentive to him.

He was constantly trying to console and reassure him that things were fine and that he was not looking at someone else and that he was just with him. At first first i didn't realize what they're arguing about but after a while it was happening so often that i i could see in his face that he was almost frantic to make sure that he was okay and bruce was always looking like he was ready to leave and always like in a sort of a scolding type of way, talking down to him. He always wanted to make him chase him all the time. So do you think that was jealousy?

I think it was his way of control. I kind of faded from him at that point for a little while, of hanging out with him. We still played pool, not every day though, honestly. It actually stopped being every day for a while of hanging out with him we still play pool not every day though honestly it actually stopped being every day for a while he was with him predominantly and then all of a sudden i didn't see him but he was talking about him at the time like i was with bruce yeah like what do you see in that guy seriously i kind of like when he wasn't around i'd try and give him the gears about him a little bit and he'd be always like oh well bruce is this and he's that

but you know he's got a good heart and he always saw the good in people joel was nearing his wits end despite skanda's insistence joel knew that bruce was bad news as the weeks went on that summer skanda was around less and less he was with bruce joel made another effort see his friend, and he showed up for a game of pool, but he quickly had to leave. And then I think he got called by Bruce, and he just left really fast. And I remember thinking like, this is getting worse, how he's just not even giving a crap. I remember being a little upset with him actually in the week or two before because he was just neglecting everything that he normally does and thinking he could just come back to me

because I'm sick of phoning him and trying to set things up and he's never showing, he's never doing what he said he's going to do. He just changed. He completely changed overnight. Skanda didn't show up for work on Tuesday. His friends couldn't reach him. And when they checked his apartment, they found no sign of him.

He'd gotten a puppy recently. It was a husky. And that thing would go everywhere with him. It was like, all of a sudden, his new best friend. It was a beautiful dog. And the next day when it came about that he wasn't where he was supposed to be all over the place for the entire day, it was brought to our attention that his wallet, ID, and that dog were still sitting at the house. Skanda's friends didn't know what happened, but they knew something was off.

They covered the village in missing persons posters. They even searched nearby ravines. Our conversations went from fluff to, so have you heard anything about Skanda? It would go off like that. And when that started, everyone's mood would change. I remember I came down into the play bar. It's like a bingo drag queen bar.

And there's a corkboard downstairs of missing people and concerts and events and everything like that on there. And I saw somebody ripping his picture down because they didn't know him. And I took their papers and ripped them in half, all of them, and put his ripped page back up there. And I yelled at them really, really loud. And I said, this is the only thing that matters on here.

It was becoming an anger of not knowing. There was just nothing to go on. It was just like he was just picked up off this planet and taken by something like an alien abduction or something like that because that's how it just happened. The guy was in everybody's life and he was a major part of this scene. He came from a bunch of different worlds all at once and he somehow fit into all of them.

And I should have just watched him more closer. Skandaraj Navaratnam was seen leaving Zippers on Sunday night, Labor Day weekend, 2010, after one of those iconic retro nights. I was told he was last seen in a bank, actually, on some bank camera, taking money out with someone else, and they couldn't tell who it was. Oh. Yeah, that's what I was told.

Joel says police found security footage of Skanda withdrawing money a few blocks away, shortly after he left the bar. That was the last time he was seen in public. And who told you that? I think it was just friends, like really, really close friends, that were hearing excerpts from what the police were telling them. So do you remember anything about what they would have said about the other guy that was on the security footage?

They couldn't see his face. Even like height, build? It had to have been him, I'm guessing. I mean, there wouldn't be no reason for it to be someone else. If he went missing that day, that was the day he went missing for a reason. Joel says that crumb of information is all police shared. When you're dealing with the police and the gay community, there is some hard feelings from once upon a time.

We won't forget that. I remember thinking, like, you just don't care because of his sexuality and whatnot. But I really, I know that they had nothing for the longest time. Joel didn't have any answers as to what had happened, so he had to come up with his own explanation. I had to come to some sort of answer. It was that he had to relocate, and that's where I left Toronto,

thinking that's where I'm going to stay with, that he just is out there someday. I'm going to get a message on my Facebook, and it's going to say, hey, I'm okay. A 40-year-old man from Sri Lanka vanishes from Toronto's gay village. He leaves behind his wallet and his newly adopted puppy is left without food. He was in a controlling relationship with an older man.

It was mysterious, but it was only one case. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is.

I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. So Kyle's property sits on a dirt road at the very end, just on the water. It's pretty secluded. It's a pretty quiet little neighborhood. Kyle Andrews was a transplant in Toronto's gay village as well. He's originally from a small town in Nova Scotia. And that's where I find him. In 200 metres, you will arrive at your destination.

When he was in Toronto, he was an activist and a familiar face on Church Street. Now he's living a quieter life in rural Canada. You have arrived. I used to go to Zippers on Sundays to dance in the back and sort of hang out the other side because I was shy and nervous about dancing. Until, you know, a good East Coast boy, a couple of rum and cokes and a few beers or shots of something. Coolers probably then. And it just felt like when being gay wasn't cool, it was like a camaraderie. It was like the secret club.

Shh, don't tell anyone. I'm here because I want to know about Majid Kayhan, known to everyone as Hamid. Kyle and Hamid were close. Very close. I met Hamid at either the Black Eagle or Timothy's because we'd known each other so long. And he seemed to be alone, and I thought he was attractive,

so I went up and said hi to him. And over maybe a year and a half, we traded phone numbers and started to hang out. And whenever we'd see each other at the bar, we'd buy each other a drink. Him and I had connected because we were both kind of in the corner by ourselves. Hamid had come to Toronto from Afghanistan. And even though you think Afghanistan, you don't think there was a disco scene, but there was. We would be listening to the radio,

like Chum FM would have a lot of 80s hits. And he'd be like, oh, I know this song. And he'd know all the words, but he would know the artist. And he could sing. He could belt out a song quite well. And he would play for me some records that he would scrounge up through friends at the kebab house. Hamid fled Kabul amid war but found refuge in Canada. When he came to

Toronto, he came with his wife and kids. But within a few years, Hamid realized something about himself. He was gay. Well, he had said to me that when he first started to explore who he thought he was as a gay man, he would go to Oak Leaf Spa. And that was kind of a mishmash of different cultures and gay and straight. Eventually, Hamid left his family home and moved into the village. He began living his life as a gay man.

But still, Hamid struggled to find peace. Because he came all this way to be happy, and he still wasn't happy. He couldn't come out to his family. He couldn't really be himself to everybody that he cared about. And that affected him. Did he ever talk about his wife and kids? I actually met his daughter once,

and his son. And he was very proud of them. And I think it was just hard for him because he knew quite possibly they wouldn't accept him back if he was true with them. You don't think he ever told them that he was gay? I know that they had suspected because his daughter would ask questions and he would ask me, well, how would I respond? And I told him, well, that's for you to decide. If it was me, I'd say this, but I've been pounding my little gay drum since I was 19. And you were 40 some years old coming on to 50 and you're from a strict religious background, and I

just know that he would feel that was impossible. Hamid spent a lot of time at the Black Eagle. That's probably where he met Bruce MacArthur. Did you see Bruce and Hamid together often? A few times. The second last time I saw Hamid was with Bruce MacArthur in his apartment. And it kind of freaked me out because we were hanging out and some booze and marijuana. And we're having a little bit of a good time listening to the radio and being intimate.

And Bruce MacArthur comes to the door. And Hamid had a couple drinks with him. So I think he didn't expect me to pop in. And Bruce was supposed to meet him later. So Bruce came in and was all upset. And he left. And I would have been upset too. You show up at a date's house and there's another date there.

You know, what's going on? At the time, the interaction didn't mean that much. Kyle just went back to Nova Scotia that summer, as he often did. But when he tried to reach Hamid, he couldn't. And then I'd left him a shitty voicemail shortly after that, or in the middle of the summer, about how I was pissed off that he wasn't calling me back. I was kind of worried he got into the drugs. Kyle kept trying. When he came back to Toronto that fall, he kept calling. And he had never answered.

The calls went straight to voicemail. So you'd been trying to call him. Yeah, and I thought, you know, how it happens in the gay community before Facebook. It used to be a friend would die and you'd never know. Until you'd run into friends at the bar and they'd be like, oh yeah, so-and-so drowned or they died of HIV or cancer or they moved away or whatever. Toronto's queer community has dealt with a lot of loss. LGBTQ people see higher rates of murder and assault. The AIDS epidemic wiped out thousands from the community over decades. And sometimes people just pick up and leave.

Kyle has experienced all of those realities. But when he came back to Toronto a few months later, he was still looking for Hamid. And eventually, he found him, just not where he expected. I was walking down the street, and there was this picture on a telephone pole. It was a Toronto police poster. In the picture, Hamid is wearing a crisp navy suit with a maroon pocket square and a matching tie.

His smile is crooked and his left eyebrow is cocked upwards. His full beard is almost entirely grey. But it wasn't just Hamid's picture on the telephone pole. Next to him is another Afghan national who had emigrated to Canada, Abdel Basr Faizi. He was known to his friends as just Basir. He was also a regular in the church street bars, which was a shock to his wife and children.

That's who reported him missing when he didn't come home from work one day. He went missing in December of 2010, just three months after Skanda disappeared. In the picture, Basir is wearing traditional Afghan dress. His salt-and-pepper goatee matches his black and white tunic. He has a big grin on his face. The third photo was Skanda. Skanda is smirking from underneath a tightly trimmed goatee. He has a gold earring in one ear, and his shirt is open at the top button.

The similarities are impossible to ignore. Three middle-aged men, all with brown skin, all with facial hair. Above each of their faces, in red block letters, is the word, missing. Well, I saw the poster and I called my good friend Christian. And I'm like, what the fuck, man? Why wouldn't you tell me this? He goes, well, it's everywhere. It's all over TV and the news.

And I was living in a tent in Nova Scotia when I was there. So I was like, yeah, and some other guys. And I go, serial killer? And he's like, yeah, he's in some other guys. And I go, serial killer? And he's like, probably. Police from 51 Division were canvassing today, hoping these posters will jog someone's memory in a strange case of three missing men whose only connection seems to be this neighborhood.

All three men did not know each other, but they have similar appearances, and they were known to frequent the area around them. News vans lined Church Street, and reporters set up on the sidewalks, interviewing anyone who walked by about the disappearances. It's hard to think that they're not connected somehow, by something. Plenty of people saw the connection. Mita Hands is one of them. She's a long-time activist and is well-connected in the queer community.

Mita invited me to her home just south of the village. She's got a wide smile, and she's impossibly friendly. Hey, buddy. What's up? Hi. How are you? What's up? Hey. How are you? Most excellent.

Come on out back. All right. We're on Mita's back patio. It is so hot, I have to keep away being swept from my forehead. Can I have some tamarind juice? Sure. Thank you. Indian drink?

It cools you down like nothing else in summertime. Mita has this wonderful habit. She'll go out of her way to introduce herself to other queer people of colour she sees on the street. That's how she met Skanda. And a friend of mine who's also Tamil, we were outside exchanging dog stories, shopping at the market, and Sk gonna happen to be by and when you see another brown queer person as a brown queer person you get really excited going oh my god look look there's one more because we all know

each other and recognize each other and watch out for each other there's that that level of connection that's instantaneous of knowing each other's struggles and he was lovely and he really liked dogs and and we started talking I had a German shepherd at the time and she really liked him he was very good with her he had connections to the community he had roots here that that's not somebody who would leave he had given up a lot to become a part of this community. So there's obviously kind of a red flag when he didn't show up. Huge red flags everywhere. I mean, you know, I know people I was checking

in on when the third person, the second person had gone missing going, there's a similarity. And you kind of look like that. You're a brown person with a goatee and be careful be careful and people don't just leave they don't get up and leave their apartments they don't get up and leave their their friends they don't get up and leave their friends. They don't get up and leave their community that they worked so hard and lost so much to form. That when people go into the village

it's to seek out something that is not available to them anywhere else. People don't get up and leave all of that without saying goodbyes. Mita, Kyle, so many others, they all came around to the same conclusion,

that something was very wrong here. I think everybody who saw the posters brought up specifically the word serial killer. I remember hearing it, poster, serial killer, poster, serial killer, that this is not chance, this is not a, serial killer. This is not chance. This is not a lover's quarrel, gone awry. This is a pattern.

This is a definitive pattern. But as the community came around to the idea that someone was targeting brown, gay men, police were still reticent. Initially, I think the tones were very civil, asking for help, asking for acknowledgement, asking for a spotlight to be shone on this because obviously there's something going on. And when that didn't happen, I think the tone became more urgent and more animated.

And finally, the tone became very angry of, why are you not listening? If we see this is happening, if everybody we know sees that this is happening, how can you not see this? And why are you not seeing this? How can you not see this is exactly how most of the community felt. It's exactly how I felt. But the police weren't seeing it. Or if they were, they weren't saying so publicly. This is officer Tony Vela speaking to Queer Newspaper Extra in 2013. Those are just the similarities between all three men. Does it mean anything?

It's still unclear at this point. It could mean something, but at this point it's still unclear. The theory that seemed to be driving the police investigation and the media coverage is that these men just took off. Maybe Hameed and Basir went back to Afghanistan, even without their passports. Maybe Skanda just skipped town. Maybe nothing bad happened at all. What we're looking at right now is a missing person investigation.

That's what we have. As foul play is suspected, it's still unclear. So right now, a task force of officers have been assigned to the investigation. That's what we have. It's foul play, suspect. It's still unclear. So right now, a task force of officers have been assigned to the investigation. They're following on all different leads, trying to determine exactly what's happened to the three men. And they don't even know each other. There's no evidence to suggest they even

knew each other. So that's what's concerning here. But the key thing is we're urging anyone that may know who the three men are, if you haven't contacted the police, please give us a call. Regardless of if you think the information is relevant or not, but call us. Kyle did call.

He sat down with police to try to help solve his friend's disappearance. The first investigators did an amazing job. They didn't make me feel intimidated. Like I talked about sex and marijuana and booze in the gay village and they didn't bat an eye or anything. You want a coffee? You know, they were very professional about it. And so, you know, how'd you know Hamid? How well did you know Hamid? Do you know any of his family? Where did you see him last? What was he wearing? What did he do for work? Where did he come from? Where did he go? Where did you meet? Where did you spend time? Like a lot of questions. It was about four and a half to five hours I spent with them.

Did you mention Bruce's name or did you say, you know, I remember seeing with him? I knew, I said that the last time I talked with him and I gave gave a physical description, and I tried to look him up on the internet, and that his name was Bruce, and I didn't know his surname. I gave him not really enough details to track him down, but they had said that they had other people mention, and they even tried to lead me on, like, well, do you know what kind of work do you do, like, outside with flowers, or did you mow lawns, was he an arborist so they somebody else had talked about bruce but they didn't have enough

juice to go so one of the first interviews you did they had said oh yeah we know that this guy named bruce is a landscaper another friend of one of the other guys had mentioned bruce and they didn't give me enough details but i mean uh one of the other men had mentioned Bruce, and they didn't give me enough details, but, I mean, one of the other men had dated Bruce. You know, the last time I saw him, that's what happened, was Bruce was there. Kyle sat in that interrogation room and gave police the name Bruce. That piece of information, that name, was a huge tip. Bruce, the landscaper who had dated Skanda. The one who had been seen with Hamid before his disappearance. That could have been the tip that cracked the case. But it didn't. The police task force set up to investigate the three men had a name, Project Houston.

As in, Houston, we have a problem. A year and a half after it was started, just months after Kyle sat in that interrogation room, Project Houston was shut down. And in the village, men would continue to go missing. Coming up on The Village. Hello. Yeah, so why don't we just dive right in. During the investigation, it was discovered that there was two more missing gay men

that had the same characteristics as Skanda. So they had MacArthur on all three of them. The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler, and Aaron Burns. Cecil Fernandez is our audio producer. Sarah Clayton is our digital producer. Additional production on this episode by David McDougall. Tanya Springer is the senior producer of CBC Podcasts. And our executive producer is Arif Noorani.

To read more about the series or see photos of people in this episode, Thank you.