One man was just moments away from being butchered by the Santa Claus serial killer and becoming yet another one of his victims.
Josh Cleaver was tied up and blindfolded by Bruce McArthur who had a knife in his hand, but believes a few crucial words meant he survived.
McArthur had already killed eight victims in his apartment in Toronto, and Josh was lucky not to be added to the list.
The murderer targeted mostly gay men on his seven-year killing spree and carved up the bodies and hid them in a friend’s garden where he worked as a landscaper.
He also kept sick 'souvenirs’ on a USB stick including photos of the men before he murdered them, and was sentenced to life in jail in 2018.
Josh, reflecting on the harrowing encounter back in 2012, believes it was only because of one sentence that he wasn’t killed too.
He told the Sun : “He asked if anyone knew I was there. I told him my boyfriend and I kept track of where each other were all of the time and that’s when he had a flip out.
“Looking back, I definitely think it was because he didn’t want anyone to notice I’d gone missing. I actually think that might be a big reason why I’m still alive today.”
Josh earned money as a sex worker in 2012, and went to McArthur’s flat after he had responded to his Craigslist ad.
He struggled with drug addiction at the time and was tied up and blindfolded, like McArthur’s other victims, as part of a sex game.
Josh was able to pull down his blindfold just as McArthur came from the kitchen, knife in hand, it was then they spoke. But things took a strange turn after Josh seemingly talked his out of being murdered.
McArthur instead offered to take him for breakfast, something Josh thought was a ploy.
One thing that stuck with him from the harrowing encounter was the ‘very cold dead look’ in McArthur’s eyes.
“I don't think I'll ever fully get over what happened,” Josh said.
Whilst Josh was lucky to escape, but a number of others were not
McArthur killed: Andrew Kinsman, 49; Selim Esen, 44; Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40; Abdulbasir Faizi, 44; Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, 37; Dean Lisowick, 47; Soroush Mahmudi, 50; and Majeed Kayhan, 58.
His reason for killing remains unknown but Judge John McMahon said it could have been “for his own warped and sick gratification”.
But others said it was because of what happened in his past. McArthur got divorced and ended up moving out of his family home in the late 90s, where his children had lived, after allegedly being outed by a gay lover.
Speaking to BBC Three’s new documentary series ‘Santa Clause: The Serial Killer’ a former friend who didn’t want to be named said: "It was probably quite traumatic... He enjoys [men] sexually but other than that I’m sure he blames them for the way his life turned out."
When McArthur was arrested officers found nine folders on his computer with his victims’ names.
These included snaps of them from social media and of their genitals. He even arranged some corpses in a fur coat and with the rope and metal bar used to murder them.
