Santa Claus killer’s sick rituals he would make corpses carry out after brutal murders

EXCLUSIVE: A BBC Three true crime series explored how a professional landscaper who also worked as a mall Santa Claus became one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers

Bruce McArthur, a seemingly jovial man and familiar face in Toronto, Canada, where he worked as a mall Santa Claus, hid a dark secret. Behind closed doors, the 70-year-old professional landscaper was responsible for the murders of eight men over a decade, making him Toronto’s most notorious serial killer.

BAFTA-winning journalist Mobeen Azhur revealed the disturbing rituals McArthur obsessed over after his killings. In his six-part series Santa Claus: The Serial Killer – which launched on BBC iPlayer in 2022 – Azhur discussed the profound impact the chilling documentary series had on him.

In the BBC Three series, Azhur interviews McArthur’s neighbours Karen Fraser and Ron Smith, who were close friends with the convict and remained oblivious to the horrors unfolding just metres away. McArthur regularly disposed of his victims’ bodies in their back garden until his arrest.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Star, Azhur admitted that when he first began delving into the chilling investigation, he found Toronto “arrestingly beautiful”. He said: “It’s beautiful suburbia, it’s Toronto in the winter which can be arrestingly beautiful with red leaves and orange leaves but then when you know what happened there it is chilling and terrifying.”

Journalist Azhar was left haunted by the diabolical details of the case surrounding ‘the planter pot murderer’, whose sickening deeds shocked a nation. In a chilling account, he said: “When you think that there was a man that they trusted, that was their friend, who was not only disposing of bodies in their garden but he had rituals as you hear in the series.”

Azhar felt the weight of tragedy, articulating the macabre reality: “He would rearrange their body parts and move them around in plant pots, he would store his equipment in their house.”

Spellbound by the gruesome evidence from thousands of pages of legal documents that cost him sleepless nights, Azhar divulged: “We took a great deal of care to be sensitive around the fact that eight men lost their lives and the scars of that will continue to affect entire communities, entire families, forever – that stuff is never going to go away.”

He disclosed to listeners the grim details that emerged during the inquiry: “And so there was particular detail in the court documents, for example, about the rituals that McArthur would carry out.”

The series didn’t shy away from the horror, hinting at McArthur’s post-mortem manipulations: “We referenced some of that in the series, so there were pictures on his hard drive of these men before death and once he’d kill them.”

Azhar added with unease: “And those involved things like, he’d make them smoke cigars, dress them up in a fur coat, he’d get them to pose in particular ways.”

The tormenting discoveries were just the tip of the iceberg: “I think there was stuff in the police files that went beyond that even, there was a lot in those police files.”

This experience struck deep chords within Azhar’s psyche: “It’s not the kind of stuff that you can move on from and as a journalist I’m used to dealing with and speaking to lots of people in traumatic situations.”

The emotional toll was profound, as he admitted: “But a lot of that stuff has stayed with me and will stay with me for the rest of my life.

“When you think that there was a man that they trusted, that was their friend, who was not only disposing of bodies in their garden but he had rituals as you hear in the series.

“He would rearrange their body parts and move them around in plant pots, he would store his equipment in their house.

“We took a great deal of care to be sensitive around the fact that eight men lost their lives and the scars of that will continue to affect entire communities, entire families, forever – that stuff is never going to go away.

“And so there was particular detail in the court documents, for example, about the rituals that McArthur would carry out.

“We referenced some of that in the series, so there were pictures on his hard drive of these men before death and once he’d kill them.

“And those involved things like, he’d make them smoke cigars, dress them up in a fur coat, he’d get them to pose in particular ways.

“I think there was stuff in the police files that went beyond that even, there was a lot in those police files.

“It’s not the kind of stuff that you can move on from and as a journalist I’m used to dealing with and speaking to lots of people in traumatic situations.

“But a lot of that stuff has stayed with me and will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

It took a staggering two years to film and produce the investigation looking into some of Bruce’s heinous crimes. The broadcaster delved deep into the archives, as he explained: “I would spend hours and hours going through a thousand pages of police evidence.”

He elaborated on the challenges faced during the production, noting: “What you’ve got to remember of course is when McArthur went to trial he pled guilty, so this evidence was never poured over in court.”

The harrowing task led to many sleepless nights: “So spending all those hours going over that stuff, I had many, many nights where I would lay awake thinking about what had happened.”

Among the unsettling discoveries Azhar encountered was the twisted act where Santa Claus impersonator and murderer helped distribute missing persons leaflets for his own victims. He said: “There’s just little details that I can’t get away from, like when Andrew Kinsman and Skanda Navarantham went missing, Bruce McArthur was with Skanda’s friends handing out missing persons flyers.”

He added chillingly: “You’ve got to consider that his friends were scared and desperate to find Skanda and yet he stayed with them and handed out flyers and spoke to people on the street when he knew he had murdered him.”

Azhar conveyed the shock at such deceit: “That level of manipulation I think is just so beyond the pale of what we think of as normal human behaviour that it was so shocking that it will genuinely stay with me forever.”