A criminal profiler said she tried to warn Toronto cops about a serial killer terrorizing the city’s “Gay Village” almost a year before they nabbed a landscaper accused of slaying at least six men and hiding their remains in potted planters.
Sasha Reid, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto — who has studied serial killers for over a decade — was building a missing persons database as a project when she noticed a connection between three cases in the Village, CTV News reported.
Reid used her specialty in sexually motivated, psychopathic serial killers to determine that someone was routinely preying on Toronto’s gay men.
“At a certain point, you know that there is a serial killer operating,” she said. “Studying serial homicide for over 10 years now, you learn not to ignore patterns.”
Using victim data, she created a criminal profile of the potential perp and called the cops in July 2017.
She spoke to a “very receptive” detective for about half an hour telling him about her profile, databases and what she could do to help, but ultimately “that was it,” she said.
The profile she created mostly matches Bruce McArthur, the alleged serial killer arrested on Jan. 18 and charged with the murders of six men so far.
She even predicted the perp would be burying the bodies outside or somewhere in their home or close by.
Police found the remains of at least six people on the property of a home where McArthur, 66, stored his work equipment.
Reid’s profile said the killer would be a man with a blue-collar job, a history of violence and no college degree, the Toronto Star reported.
McArthur, a landscaper who was convicted of assaulting a man with a metal pipe in 2003, has no education beyond high school.
Reid wrongly predicted that he’d be around 30 years old and a person of color — like the missing people she identified — because serial killers tend to stick to familiar communities.
A Toronto Police spokesperson said they wouldn’t confirm the name of anyone who had come forward with information.
Cops launched an investigation, called Project Prism, into the disappearance of two of McArthur’s alleged victims in July 2017.
Project Prism received hundreds of pieces of information, a police spokesperson said.
“One of the issues raised was the possibility of a serial killer,” spokesperson Meaghan Grey said in an email. “However, investigators can only work with what the evidence supports at any given time.”
Police have been under fire for not doing enough to investigate concerns from members of the LGBT community about a string of disappearances.
On Tuesday, police Chief Mark Saunders told the Globe and Mail that the killer would have been arrested sooner if the public had been more cooperative.
He said “nobody” came to officers with information in 2012 when police launched Project Houston to investigate the disappearance of three of McArthur’s suspected victims.
“We knew that people were missing and we knew we didn’t have the right answers. But nobody was coming to us with anything,” he said.
Toronto city councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam, whose district includes the Gay Village, said she was shocked by the comments and called them inaccurate.
“I know for a fact the community rallied around asking for additional resources and attention to the missing men,” she said.
For Reid, the day of McArthur’s arrest was an emotional one.
“There was shock and anger and frustration and irritation and a deep, deep sadness that I couldn’t shake,” she said.