Uncover - S3 "The Village" E8: A Confession

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

The Village, Episode 8 - Toronto's queer community comes to grips with the truth about Bruce McArthur's crimes and pushes for changes in how violence against marginalized people is handled by police. The Toronto police cold case team has some answers in the 23 re-opened cases. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-3-the-villiage-transcripts-listen-1.5128216

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He was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. Eight men who were visiting the Toronto village. So, eight men who were visiting the Toronto villager. The trial had been set for about one year from now, in January of 2020. I'm Justin Lay. This is Uncover the Village. Check 123, 12, 123, check 12. 123, check 12. You getting it there? One, two, three. Check one, two.

It's a freezing day in January 2019. Almost a year to the day that Bruce MacArthur was arrested. There's a horde of reporters and camera crews gathered outside a downtown Toronto courtroom. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for attending. Detective David Dickinson comes to the microphone. I just want to recap today by saying at approximately 10 a.m. this morning, Bruce MacArthur attended the Superior Court of Justice here in Toronto,

at which time he pled guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder. time he pled guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder. That morning, in one of the biggest courtrooms in the city, it is packed. With journalists, cops, community members, and friends and family of the victims. MacArthur is led into the massive courtroom, wearing a black sweater and a plaid shirt underneath. He looks paler and thinner than the last time I saw him. The judge reads out each of the first-degree murder charges and asks how he pleads. That was for the murders of Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdul-Bazir Faizi, Majid Kayan, Saroosh Mahmoodi, Krishna Kenanaratnam. You can feel the whole room holding its breath.

MacArthur replies, eight times in a row, in a low voice, guilty. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and acknowledge the family and friends of the victims in this case. It has been a long and traumatic process and many made the difficult decision to attend in person today. We, myself and the investigative team, are pleased that Mr. MacArthur has pled guilty today, sparing the community and those who knew the victims a lengthy trial. I believe that this is the best possible outcome for the families and the community. We unfortunately can never bring these men back, but I'm hoping we can start bringing some closure to the families and the communities. Okay, thank you everybody.

There would be no trial, but there is an agreed statement of facts. Through that, we learn the horrific truth about what Bruce MacArthur did. Outside the courthouse, I'm going through the details with my producer Jennifer. He's pled to first degree, so that means it was premeditated. Yeah, it was planned and deliberate, I think was the language they used. There's references in some of the accounts to staging the bodies.

But he took pictures. And they have them, so. And they have them, so. There were indignities done to these men that I'm not going to describe. Had there been a trial, it would have released photographs that no one needs to see. So he kept basically souvenirs of all, some were all of his victims. One of his scandalous bracelets of Scandit's bracelets. A chain that Dean Lissowick had.

He kept Selim Esen's notebook. MacArthur kept a lot of things. Police found copies of the missing persons posters in his apartment. There were newspaper stories about the murders on his computer. MacArthur even saved a story I had written about how the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman and Salim Essin had revived fears of a serial killer. Back at a time when police said there wasn't one. The police located Mr. Kinsman's calendar,

which had an entry for Bruce, on June 26, 2017. That was the day he was murdered. on June 26, 2017. That was the day he was murdered. A big piece of that evidence was a note left by Andrew Kinsman himself. In hindsight, he left the name of his killer on his calendar. That note in Andrew's calendar simply said, Bruce.

That afternoon, June 26, 2017, neighborhood surveillance footage caught Andrew getting into a red Dodge van with an unknown driver. So police got a list of all of the people in the province who owned that model of van. 6,000 owners in total, but only five were named Bruce. And only one of those men had had previous contact with police, Bruce MacArthur. One of those men had had previous contact with police, Bruce MacArthur. Remember, he had been interviewed in 2013 during Project Houston. But that wasn't the only time MacArthur had been questioned by police.

He goes, get in the van, get in the van, lie down. He wanted to have sex right then and there. In the summer of 2016, Bruce MacArthur met a man for sex. They had been seeing each other on and off for years. So he says, put your arm over your head and turns from a smile to a scowl. He had a scowl on his face, a look of anger, hatred. And with his full force, his hand, open hand, he grabs my neck. I'm mad that hurt. That man has never been identified publicly, but he has spoken to some other reporters. He escaped the back of MacArthur's van. He called 911 and he reported the assault.

I know he was going to kill me. MacArthur raced to the police station as well. He told his version of what happened, that it was all consensual. Police chalked it up to a he said, he said situation. MacArthur was never charged and he was let go. The officer who interviewed him that day is facing disciplinary charges. He says he followed all

the right procedures and didn't even know about the investigation into the men missing from the village. And that he's being scapegoated by his own police service. His disciplinary case is ongoing. So the family are planning on reading impact statements next week, and they're planning on being there for a lot of the hearings.

For two days, friends and family of the victims have the chance to read statements to the court. As do members of the community who reread them for us. We loved and cared for Salim. He was part of our community, and along with the pain and loss of Salim is the pain in wishing we could have protected him and prevented this horror and the sadness. They are heartbreaking. Many people experience nightmares, PTSD, depression. It's impossible to overstate the impact these murders have had on Toronto's LGBTQ community.

It's hard to know where to begin and how to find words to describe the profound and far-reaching emotional impacts of this heinous crime. There's a concept within the LGBTQ community called chosen family. The men who were killed were our brothers. People's lives are put on hold. They can't sleep or eat. They can't work. They can't go to school or take care of their families.

My name is Reverend Dina Dudley and I'm the assistant pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. To people who were friends, co-workers and acquaintances of the victims, that grief is immediate and deeply painful. My name is Gab Lawrence and I'm the manager of community initiatives at St. Stephen's Community House. Nothing can reconcile what happened. There is nothing more heinous than deliberately seeking out the most vulnerable of individuals. Even with the defendant in custody, it feels less safe.

It feels less trustworthy. It feels less like home and family. Friends and family say the city has become a dark and scary place. A few who had close encounters with the defendant are virtually unable to leave their homes to this day because of their quite legitimate fears. We should be angry when we and our friends are subjected to hate and violence. We should be angry when we're stalked and our community becomes a hunting ground. There will always be the dreadful memories,

the horrendous grief, the fears, the anger. But Toronto's LGBTQ community is also strong and resilient, and we too will survive, but have been changed forever. I've been in touch with most of the families, especially the Sri Lanka Tamil and with Suresh's family as well as Salim Hassan's family. Haran Vijayanathan was also in court that day. He runs an HIV-AIDS service organization

for South Asian and Middle Eastern men in Toronto. So when men from that community started disappearing, he became deeply involved in their cause. And those three men who went missing looked like me. And one of them was a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee. And when Skanda went missing, I saw myself in him. When Skanda and all of the men were found, Haran became a lifeline for many of their families.

What was really hard is explaining to the families why the police can't say certain things to them, because they don't know it themselves, right? It's like, why did Bruce do what he did? You know, were they alive while all of this was happening to them? Especially talking to Krishna Kumar's mom, you know, this elderly woman who doesn't speak a lick of English. And you're looking at her face and trying to explain that there's not a lot of answers that she's going to get, right? All of the other stuff that a mother wants to know

when her child passes, she won't get. And I think that family was the hardest one to work with and helped organize their funeral as well. And understanding some of the cultural and religious practices where we actually have to see the body of the individual and we have to perform rites of putting rice in their mouth and water. And there's a whole prayer and puja that's done around this whole thing that they'll never ever get to do that and you know sometimes I wonder because I can hear my mother asking this question is if she's wondering did I do everything that I could do to ensure that he has a good afterlife. Bruce MacArthur will serve life in prison, but he will be eligible for parole in 25 years, when he is more than 90 years old. 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. What happened during Project Houston? Why didn't we catch him sooner? You know, knowing what we know now,

that Bruce's name did come up in Faizi's diary of some sort, that he was investigated, why did we have to lose eight people? The biggest question for me is, in 2013, where did the police mess up royally? I put specialized people when we started Project Houston to look at, to work with the community, to interview as many people as possible. This was not taken lightly, and it's still not taken lightly. That's Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders. After MacArthur's conviction, Toronto Police hold a press conference.

There's barely room to move the media gallery is so full. This was not a case of the police didn't think anything was going on. We knew something stunk. There was no ifs, ands, or buts, which is why we put millions of dollars into it. We knew something stunk, and we did everything we could to find it, and we just didn't. You reflect on what it means that you had a serial killer in the police station, and you let him go. I feel very strong about the hard work that was done by the Toronto Police Service and all agencies that assisted us. A lot of people are satisfied with the investigation when they sit down and listen to what happened and how it broke down.

Some need answers to questions, as you are asking right now, and others are not satisfied. It was accurate and right when I said, at this time, there is no evidence to say that we had a serial killer. I can tell you the moment that we knew what we had, the moment we had evidence to tell us that, we acted immediately. And that's why we have this conclusion right now. Detective David Dickinson comes to the microphone. I ask him, what more did you need? Justin, the evidence was there on January 17th of 2018. And at any point when he was elevated to a person of interest, to a suspect,

the people and the resources changed to mitigate any risk to the public. And at the end of the day, the people did what they had to do on January 18th, and we arrested him. Detective Dickinson and his team had MacArthur's apartment under surveillance. They already suspected him of killing Andrew and Slim when they saw him go inside with another man. Fearing that man's life was in danger, they made the decision to knock on MacArthur's door and make the arrest. They found the man handcuffed to the bed, against his will. In his sentencing, the judge made it clear, MacArthur investigation,

the city has created an independent review of how the police handle missing persons cases, especially cases involving queer and racialized people. Horan is part of that. We need to hold the system accountable to find out what happened and why did it take so long. The review is headed up by a former judge. She will look at whether systemic bias tainted the investigation.

And I know the police actually turn around and say there were millions of dollars of resources put into Project Houston and nothing came of it and no one, the chief has gone on record that the community didn't step up, etc. Well, that's not the community's job, right? We can report things and the fact that you had the report and still didn't pay attention, there was a problem there. When you look at the individuals that went missing

and the communities that they belonged to, you know, some of them were precariously housed. Some of them didn't have status. All of them were poor or working poor. I think this review and our intention of working with the system is to create change so that it doesn't happen again. We can't lose more people like this, especially in vulnerable communities.

One thing that has hit home for me, working on this story, is how vulnerability can shift with time. The victims in the 1970s were gay men. Many of MacArthur's victims were queer men of colour, refugees and immigrants. We look at human rights and gay rights from a very privileged perspective.

There's conversation around gay rights being so great that we can all live our lives and be who we are and that's great. But I think if you are someone who is out of the closet, who happens to be white or cisgendered and is looking to get married, I think that's when gay rights matter. We don't recognize that racialized people still experience racism within the queer community or the LGBT community. Trans folks don't have the same amount of rights and securities as everyone else in the community,

although it states in the law. Members of the trans community face disproportionate levels of violence. Canada has not published statistics on hate crimes targeting trans people. Until 2017, the federal government did not even officially recognize gender identity and gender expression as protected classes. But independent studies show a huge number of trans people have experienced violence because of their identity.

Many have said that they would not report those assaults to police. One study found nearly one in four trans people reported being harassed by the police. This external review will be investigating a lot of police practices around the entire LGBTQ community, but that review is largely limited to Toronto police. There is something that could address bigger societal issues. A full-blown public inquiry. And it's not the first serial killer situation that we've had, right? We've had Pickton. Robert Pickton was convicted of the murders of six women, but was a suspect in the deaths of many more. Robert Pickton is Canada's most prolific serial killer.

In 2010, the government of British Columbia ordered a public inquiry into the investigation of his murders. It lays most of the blame on police, accusing them of blatant failure and much worse. You know, after the RCMP did an inquiry, they found that they could have found Picton earlier if they had paid attention to certain things, but because it was Indigenous women,

it was women who were addicted to substances or sex workers or any combination of that. There was systemic bias by the police. That's why no one paid really a whole lot of attention. Again, in this situation, it was very much the same. That inquiry led to sweeping recommendations on how police should deal with marginalized communities and how they should handle missing persons cases.

Most notably, that police departments across the country set up dedicated missing persons units and make information about missing people available online. Most notably, that police departments across the country set up dedicated missing persons units, and make information about missing people available online. Police forces across the country adopted those recommendations. Toronto Police ignored many of them. It wouldn't be until after the arrest of MacArthur, more than five years after the Pickton report came out, that Toronto Police finally started a dedicated missing persons team. It's being headed up by Stacey Gallant, who's also the head of the Cold Case Homicide team.

We want to look at all the missing person investigations and make sure that they're all getting their due attention. Make sure they're being worked on on a regular basis. We know we had some issues and that we have to bring things up and that we have to make some changes. So we're doing that actively. The review is going to be looking at historical things that we've done. So hopefully we're going to be in a position that we can say we've looked internally at ourselves and said we've got to do things better and we've made some changes and the review will see that and that will come out at that point in time. It's frustrating to watch tragedies repeat themselves. The failures in the MacArthur investigation were some of the same failures identified in the Pickton

investigation. And these unsolved murders from the 70s? The demands for change and reform still ring so true. Over the course of reporting the story, I came across another example, one that looks so similar. One where police acknowledged their mistakes. Well, I wasn't a gay activist, and then along came HIV infection, and we started dying off here in Montreal around 85. This is Michael Hendricks. He's a longtime activist from Montreal. In the early 90s, a wave of murders hit the city's queer community. We had all these people dying.

Over the period of four years, we had 17 murders. And the resolution rate was about 59%. The majority were found in their own bedroom. The reason that we got such support in our own community was not out of sympathy, really. It was because of everything else the cops were doing. While they were neglecting the murders, they were busy raiding both lesbian and gay bars. If you're struck by how similar that sounds to Toronto in the late 1970s, it struck me too. But the similarities go beyond just the

numbers. What we found most common was the murder itself. There was this phenomenon every single time we found it, there was overkilling of the cadavers. The number of stab wounds in the bodies was remarkable. Also, sometimes they'd been strangled and also stabbed. There was a lot of brutality to the bodies, which would indicate to us either homophobia or probably internalized homophobia, but we couldn't tell. But by the 1990s, Montreal's queer community was organized. The HIV-AIDS crisis forced them to be.

And we had the coffins already because we used them in our parades all the time. And we would deposit the coffin at a police station or whatever and then come pick it up later. Our leader, who was named Roger Leclerc, called a press conference and we were asking for a parliamentary committee to look into the discrimination and violence against gays and lesbians in Quebec.

Journalists were folding up their cameras and leaving, and somebody popped the question, Mr. Leclerc, if they refuse to have public hearings, what are you going to do? Leclerc looked at him and laughed and said, if they refuse, then there's nothing wrong. So therefore, we should celebrate our freedom. So we will rent the stadium, and we're going to invite all the homosexuals in Quebec to a big party to celebrate our liberation. And we're going to start with the judges and the members of parliament. So, I mean, just to get the subtext, what you were saying was, if you don't call this inquiry, we're going to out all the people in government, all the judges, all the senior officials who are

standing by and ignoring their plight. All the homosexuals in government, right. We felt that the threat of outing, not the actual outing, was worth the effort. The government announced that they would never speak to us again. Two days later, they called me and said, would you be interested in meeting with the Human Rights Commission? Maybe. The Human Rights Commission announced public hearings into discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people in Quebec. Even before the report came out, there was change. Three weeks after the hearings, we got a call from the cops and they said, would you like to come down? There's been a gay murder. Come down to the homicide squad, and we want to talk to you. And they presented us immediately with the photos,

crime scene photos, and they started asking us questions. What's that mean? What's that thing? What is this here? What do you read in this picture? The final report offered 14 recommendations on how to improve policing in the community. Everything from holding regular meetings with queer people

to adopting clear, province-wide definitions on hate crimes. Michael says that, overall, they were implemented. Even still, eight of those murders remain unsolved. One thing that puzzled us the most, why did they start in 1989 and why did they stop in 1993? I mean, the volume went way down after we started investigating. We chose to think that it was our intervention that stopped it, that we notified the world that you can't murder gay people and get away with it the way you used to be able to.

But I'm not so sure that's the reason. What could the other reason be? I don't know. I've thought about it for 20-some years, and I've never, 25 years, I've never been able to figure it out. There have been very few gay murders since then in Montreal. Back in Toronto, it's been a year since Stacey Gallant and the Toronto Police Cold Case Team have reopened cases going back to the 1970s.

I think there's a few cases that look promising at this point, and we're working towards identifying the person responsible, and if we get enough information, it might put us over the edge to lead towards an arrest. Gallant says they even managed to resolve one of the 23 cases. It was Dennis Joseph Colby. He was 47 years old at the time. Happened in 1995. Dennis Joseph Colby was an openly gay former school board trustee who was beaten to death in his own home. We sent in for analysis some of the evidence that we had at the time, put that in for fingerprints, DNA, that sort of thing.

The DNA then came back to identifying the person that we believed is responsible for the murder of Mr. Colby. It's not Bruce MacArthur. That person died in 2015. Had that person been alive today, he would have been arrested and charged with the murder of Mr. Colby and put before the courts. Police aren't releasing the man's name because he's dead. So that leaves 22 outstanding cases. We actually engaged specialists to look at all these cases,

also doing the analysis on MacArthur's and trying to see if there was any correlation between the old cases and what we know about MacArthur today. And, you know, those analyses were all done and there's been no... There's been nothing jumping out from that perspective either. Has there been any cases like that where you're kind of saying, you know, they were neighbors, or they did, you know, work together? Nothing.

I can say there's at least eight of the cases he's been significantly ruled out. There's nothing within the case file itself or within the evidence that has any direct or circumstantial connection to Bruce MacArthur to say that he was involved or knew the victim of those murders. We've been speaking to one former investigator

who says that he always had a person in mind for one of these cases, the murder of Sandy LeBlanc specifically, saying that there was a guy by the name of Edward Holness who he had a hunch that this was the guy. I bring up his name because he was arrested fully three years later for another homicide against a gay man. We're still awaiting testing at Center Forensic Sciences on that one, but I do recall that they did have

persons of interest in that case. Gallant won't say if one of those persons of interest is Fast Eddie. I tell him that Fast Eddie was also murdered. So in that case, what we would do is look for living relatives of the person, and if we could determine that and identify that person and get a consent sample from them that would be fantastic and we would

have that process and analyze that center of forensic sciences or in some cases if the consent sample doesn't work and the person doesn't want to participate and assist with us then we have to deploy other means to try and obtain a sample to see whether or not it does make a connection. So if Fast Eddie did kill Sandy LeBlanc, even if they don't have his DNA on file, there's still a chance they could put it together. And what about the murders of Hal Walkley, Brian Latake, Duncan Robinson? Those three cases you mentioned have not yet been ruled out entirely. We still haven't got to the point where we have all the evidence back in terms of forensics, if any exist or not, so we don't know that yet.

There may be some that ultimately remain potentially related because we have no way to say either way that they're not. So some cases may sit in limbo, possibly forever. Maybe related to MacArthur, maybe not. Until police get firm answers as to what happened to these men, families will be left wondering. That is, if police ever get answers. We hope that you again find the comfort you seek and recognize that there is no right or wrong way to grieve,

but that if you find your emotions being stirred up tonight, this is again to be a safe place to shed our tears. Because eight men have died. Days after MacArthur's sentencing, the Metropolitan Community Church holds a vigil. Senseless violence has been perpetrated on us and on them. People we know and care about are gone and our safety too has been shattered. Violence has been perpetrated in our world and microaggressions happen even in our

diversity of Toronto every day. And nothing we do can change the past. And so we mourn. I spot Karen Fraser. There's Police Chief Mark Saunders, Inspector Nsinga, Detective Dickinson. The mayor is here too. There's a member of parliament, a city councillor, and a host of others from the community. Every pew is full.

Before the serial killer was discovered in our midst, people of racialized LGBTQ communities in our city of Toronto had been saying for a long time there was something up. Many of us weren't sure, until the true horrors of this tragedy were uncovered. I am deeply, deeply thankful for the hard work of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, for Hran Vijayanathan, who is the executive director, that we might empower and embolden our South Asian and Middle Eastern family and friends and ensure that all, and I mean all, are truly included in this loving

community of ours. And so at this time, I invite forward Haran to offer a few words. I look at Skandaraj. I hear his story. I saw myself. Especially when I first moved here and knew no one else but my friends and had little to no connection to community organizations. Now, if I went missing today, with all of the privilege that I have,

I'm sure I would be found pretty quickly. Okay. have, I'm sure I would be found pretty quickly. If I didn't have those connections, if I went missing, would my friends filing a complaint to the police be heard as they too are people of color or have little social status? Would my mother filing a complaint be heard as they too are people of color or have little social status? Would my mother filing a complaint be heard because her English is poor? Would they assume it was an honor killing or I was sent back because I was a refugee or deported? Or would they just assume that it is the gay lifestyle that caused my disappearance and no attention is needed? that caused my disappearance and no attention is needed.

The ill treatment of sex workers, those struggling with addictions, the homeless, refugees, newcomers, racialized folks, the working poor, has devastating impacts on all of us. We will never get these men back, but I hope that all of the families and friends can take some comfort in knowing that their loved ones have initiated change to better the city, province, and this country. The traditions of many of the lost men are represented in the service. Good evening and I greet you with the greeting of Islam.

Peace be with you. In the rising of the sun and its going down, we remember them. In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember them. In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember them. In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer, we remember them. In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of summer, we remember them. In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn, we remember them. Hearts began to break when the first of the eight men we honor here tonight went missing. Reverend Dina Dudley speaks. And our hearts may be broken, but we as individuals individuals and a community we are not broken hear me people we are not broken we are afflicted in every way but not crushed perplexed but not driven to

despair persecuted but not forsaken struck down but not destroyed Toronto and Toronto's LGBTQ community have suffered some utterly unfathomable blows in the past year, but we are strong. We have fought for a long time just to be who we are, and we're not giving up. We have fought for our rights here in Canada, and we continue to fight for the rights of LGBTQ people around the world. Canada, and we continue to fight for the rights of LGBTQ people around the world. And we still have work to do, but we are strong because no one loved is ever lost forever. Love is stronger than This ordeal has gone on for eight impossibly long years. But in a lot of ways, it's been going on for decades. And it's still going on. As long as the murders of Sandy LeBlanc, Duncan Robinson, Brian Latake, Hal Walkley,

all of the men whose cold cases sit in a box in Toronto Police Headquarters, as long as they go unsolved, there isn't going to be a conclusion. As long as the murder of trans people continues, there isn't going to be a conclusion. So if not a conclusion, it is at least the end of a long, sad chapter. at least the end of a long, sad chapter. I'm thankful for each and every one of you for being with us tonight. The final speaker is Reverend Jeff Rock.

He became the senior pastor here after Brent Hawks retired. I'm thankful for these lives. For Skandaraj Navaratnam, who is known as a fun-loving man who loves to dance with wild abandon, especially to retro music. He worked as a hotel animator here in Canada at a nursing home, and he has a great sense of humour. I'm thankful for Andrew Kinsman. He's a community activist who works to fight homelessness and HIV AIDS. He's a gentle soul, and he volunteers with the PWA Foundation. He has a cat, whom he loves, and is missed by many in Toronto's LGBTQ2 plus community. I'm thankful for Selim Essin. He's known to us here at MCC Toronto.

He's attended worship a few times. Known to us here at MCC Toronto, he's attended worship a few times. His brothers said he thought, believed, and felt and lived free as a bird, beyond any borders and boundaries. He wants to be a peer counsellor and help others. I'm thankful for Abdul Basir Faiz, who was born and raised in Afghanistan. He has two daughters. He works hard and is preparing for a vacation when he went missing. I'm thankful for Karushna Kumar Kagnaratnam, who came to Canada as an asylum seeker with

hundreds of other Tamils from Sri Lanka on a cargo ship that took three months to travel from Thailand to British Columbia. His refugee claim was denied, and his family thought he is in hiding. I'm thankful for Dean Lissowick, who was in Toronto's shelter system from time to time after a life in the province's foster care system. No missing persons report was written for him. Police believe he died sometime between May 2016 and July 2017, a 14-month period.

I'm thankful for Soroush Mamoudi. He likes camping and playing pool. For him, life in Canada wasn't easy, but he did his best. I'm thankful for Majid Kayhan. He loved to sing Bollywood songs, and he was known to dress in traditional Afghani garb and walk up and down Church Street with pride at his multiple identities. It is no secret that there is evil and darkness and shadows in our world, but the only way to overcome those shadows will be for us to share the light, to commit to stand in solidarity with one another,

to share the love and the light beyond the sanctuary into our world and make sure this never happens again. sanctuary into our world and make sure this never happens again. Friends, as you go forth from this place, go knowing that love is better than anger, that hope is better than fear, that optimism is better than despair. And I would add that love is stronger than violence, that this community is stronger than the forces that would tear us apart. We are resilient. We are strong. We are full of love. And we will remember those we have lost. We will heal this hurt together. We will end misogyny and racism and homophobia and transphobia

and biphobia and seriophobia and violence in our community and our world. And we will do it together. Amen. In your darkest hour, in your suffering, when nobody sees you and no one's listening, when your heart is broken and hope has turned to fear. The aching and the longing are more than you can bear. In your tears and sorrow.

The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler, and Aaron Burns. written and produced by me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler, and Aaron Burns. Cecil Fernandez and Mitch Stewart are our audio producers, and Sarah Clayton is our digital producer. Thanks to Global TV for their audio in this episode. Transcriptions by Shaman Booyan, Evan Agard is our video producer,

Ben Shannon designed our artwork, and Leslie Merklinger is the Senior Director of Audio Innovation. Special thanks to Chris Oak, Mika Anderson, Fabiola Carletti, Eunice Kim, to Kate Zeman and the researchers at the CBC Reference Library, to David McDougall for his production work, and to the Globe and Mail, and to Tan Ha for their support and work on the story. Thanks to Canada's LGBTQ2 Plus archives, and everyone who spoke to us and helped with the research. Tanya Springer is the Senior Producer of CBC Podcasts and our Executive Producer is Arif Noorani. To hear past seasons of Uncover or other CBC Podcasts,

visit cbc.ca slash podcasts. I love you more than words could ever say podcasts. Stay tuned for a special episode of Uncover the Village. We travel back to Michigan and learn about a unique project that's getting justice for victims of violence in the LGBTQ communities.