Missing from the Village

The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men -- the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur -- from Toronto's queer community, and the failures of the social and political systems which allowed the cases to go unsolved for so long. In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three missing men -- Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan -- from Toronto's gay village were, perhaps, linked. On paper, an investigation continued for a year, but remained "open but suspended." By 2015, investigative journalist Justin Ling had begun to put in multiple requests to speak to the investigators on the case. Meanwhile, more men would go missing, and police would continue to deny that there might be a serial killer. On January 18, 2018, Bruce McArthur, a landscaper, would be charged with three counts of first-degree murder. In February 2019, he was convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder. This extraordinary book tells the complete story of the McArthur murders. Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, this is also a story of police failure, of how the gay community failed its own, and the story of the eight men who went missing and the lives they left behind. In telling that story, Justin Ling uncovers the latent homophobia and racism that kept this case unsolved and unseen. This gripping book reveals how police agencies across the country fail to treat missing persons cases seriously, and how policies and laws, written at every level of government, pushed McArthur's victims out of the light and into the shadows.