Toronto police investigators continued to comb through a Leaside home Monday that is reportedly connected to accused killer Bruce McArthur.
For the third consecutive day, officers arrived at 53 Mallory Crescent, near Moore and Bayview avenues, where they confiscated a number of items.
Most notably, a large wrapped planter box was carted away on Monday morning.
Over the weekend, cadaver dogs scoured the property alongside members of the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team.
The home on Mallory Crescent is reportedly one of five properties investigators are searching in connection with the case against McArthur. A property previously being investigated in Madoc, Ont. is the only one located outside of the Toronto area.
McArthur, a 66-year-old a self-employed landscaper, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the presumed deaths of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen.
Both men were reported missing from the downtown area last year, within weeks of each other.
Their bodies have not been located.
Previously, a source told CP24 that police found evidence of four homicides while searching McArthur’s Thorncliffe Park apartment last week. Police have also said they believe there are more victims.
Investigators were able to obtain McArthur’s vehicle from a Courtice, Ont. auto parts shop several months ago.
According to Dominic Vetere, the owner of Dom’s Auto Parts, investigators showed up on Oct. 3 while canvassing other auto businesses in hopes of finding McArthur’s vehicle.
The two plainclothes police officers asked Vetere’s employees to check and see if they purchased a vehicle and provided a VIN number.
“They said they were canvassing other places that buy vehicles in the GTA and they were just randomly trying to find the car,” Vetere said. “So of course when we ran the VIN here and it showed up, they were happy, happy people.”
Vetere said his shop purchased McArthur’s Dodge Caravan for $125 about a month prior. He said McArthur was “calm and cool” like any other “average customer.”
He said police then sifted through the shop’s surveillance footage and “found the person they were looking for.”
“They took copies of that too,” Vetere said.
Later, officers returned to the shop and told Vetere that they had found “trace blood” amounts in the vehicle and asked who had worked on the Dodge Caravan before it was towed away by police.
“They had a meeting with our dismantler, who works on our cars,” Vetere said, adding that the employee saw nothing unusual with the vehicle when it was brought in.
“I believe they took some kind of DNA sample to see if he was connected to what was inside the van.”
Vetere said police are “lucky” that McArthur’s van ended up in his shop, since a scrap shop would’ve demolished it almost immediately. He said the vehicle was almost completely intact when officers took hold of it.
Staff at the wreck yard told CTV News Toronto that they had seen both McArthur and one of his alleged victims, Andrew Kinsman, at the shop before.
“No one remembers them coming in together, mind you, but they must be from the area because they’ve been here before,” Vetere said.
Toronto police’s handling of the case has come under scrutiny in the days following McArthur’s arrest.
On Sunday, Toronto Mayor john Tory called the murders a “very traumatic experience for the LGBTQ2S community” and that there are “very big questions” that remain unanswered on the side of the police.
Back in December, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters that were was no evidence to suggest that a serial killer was on the loose or that the cases of missing men Kinsman and Esen were connected or that they were deceased.
