2010–2017 Toronto serial homicides

Between 2010 and 2017, eight men disappeared from or were connected to the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, Toronto's LGBTQ village. Two successive Toronto Police Service (TPS) task forces — Project Houston (from 2012) and Project Prism (from 2017) — investigated the disappearances, eventually leading to the arrest of Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old self-employed Toronto landscaper, on January 18, 2018. On January 29, 2019, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in Ontario Superior Court and was sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for twenty-five years.

The victims were Skandaraj "Skanda" Navaratnam, Abdulbasir "Basir" Faizi, Majeed "Hamid" Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Dean Lisowick, and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam. Investigators noted that most victims were middle-aged, bearded, connected to Church and Wellesley and to a bar called The Black Eagle, with several disappearing over holiday weekends. McArthur had known or had relationships with several of the victims through the gay community and his landscaping business, Artistic Designs.

Project Houston, launched in November 2012, investigated the 2010 disappearance of Navaratnam and later linked it to the disappearances of Faizi and Kayhan, but closed without identifying a suspect or evidence of a crime. Project Prism was created in July 2017 after the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen. A lead from Kinsman's calendar entry referencing "Bruce," combined with surveillance footage of a distinctive van, led investigators to McArthur. Production orders for data from telecommunications and financial companies, tracking warrants, and forensic analysis of a van McArthur had sold eventually linked him to Kinsman's blood and, later, to post-mortem photographs recovered from his computer.

McArthur was arrested on January 18, 2018, after police intervened during an encounter with another man in his apartment, believing the man's life was at risk. Searches of McArthur's Thorncliffe Park apartment and a Leaside property where he stored landscaping equipment led to the discovery of dismembered human remains in planter boxes, ultimately identified as belonging to seven of the victims; an eighth victim's remains were found in a ravine behind the Leaside property. Additional charges of first-degree murder were laid through 2018 as remains were identified. The investigation became the largest ever conducted by the TPS, involving the Ontario Provincial Police, RCMP, and other forensic services, and was expanded to review hundreds of cold cases and missing-persons files.

A prior case was also documented: in 2001, McArthur assaulted a man named Mark Henderson with an iron pipe; McArthur pleaded guilty to assault charges in 2003 and received a conditional sentence, with the conviction later expunged from his record in 2014.

In April 2021, an external Independent Civilian Review into Missing Person Investigations, commissioned by the Toronto Police Services Board, found systemic discrimination by the TPS in its handling of the missing-persons investigations and issued 151 recommendations. Interim TPS Chief James Ramer apologized for what he called "inexcusable" investigative shortcomings and committed to implementing the recommendations.