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Rod Kackley

Wishing You A Deadly, Deadly Christmas: Shocking True Crime Stories





I know, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. But is it ever to early to read about Santa’s that kill?


No! Of course not.


First, did “naughty or nice" make any difference to a serial-killing Santa Claus in Canada? The answer is “nope!”


Whatever the motive, Bruce McArthur, a landscaper in Toronto, Canada — who also worked as a shopping mall Santa during the Christmas season — left a grisly trail of evidence turning the stomachs of the most grizzled cops.

Toronto Police investigators, helped by specially trained dogs, discovered body parts planted in garden planters and a ravine; all, allegedly, left behind by this serial killing shopping mall Santa Claus.

The Toronto Star reported two weeks of digging in a ravine during early July 2017 resulted in the discovery of a body part a day, some as small as teeth and bone fragments.


In all, they found eight bodies — each of them dismembered, mutilated, and stuffed into large potted plants.

Detectives believe the body parts and pieces are the work of Bruce McArthur, a landscaper, who also worked as a shopping mall Santa during the Christmas season.

McArthur was arrested in January 2018. One year later, he pled guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Twenty-five years will pass before McArthur has a chance of being paroled.

All eight killings which occurred between 2010 and 2017 are all connected to Toronto's Gay Village neighborhood.


One of the men who lived in their neighborhood at the time, Paul Ciantar, told CNN that Bruce was a very popular member of the community, and of course, no one could believe that he was a serial killer at heart.


“They all said that they never would have suspected him,” Ciantar said.

“He looks like Santa Claus. He looks harmless.”


Is Bruce the only deadly Santa the world has ever seen?


Of course not.


There’s Aziz Yazdanpanah who is believed to have, while dressed as Santa, killed seven members of his family after they opened their Christmas presents.


Yazdanpanah executed the women and children inside the family’s apartment in Dallas, Texas, then turned the gun open himself and took his own life.


And then there’s the case of Bruce Pardo. The 45-year-old killed nine people including his ex-wife while dressed as Santa.


Pardo went wild, emptying four handguns and a flame-thrower, at a Christmas Eve party.


The former aerospace engineer later shot himself to death.


How about one more?


This is the story of a woman, Melissa Young. She wasn’t dressed as Santa, okay. But Young showed up at her next-door neighbor’s house and killed Alan Williamson on Christmas Day 2013.


Motive? Alan had rejected a gift Melissa had given him, a pair of unisex trainers.



(Eva Dugan: Her fellow inmates called her "Cheerful Eva.")


Eva Dugan needs to get out of Arizona as fast as the Dodge Coupe she’s riding in can take her across the state line.


It’s January 1927. Flappers are everywhere, young women wearing short skirts, knee height, no less, and bobbed hair. At the same time, they listen to jazz music, smoke cigarettes and drink booze in public, have sex at petting parties whenever they want, and even drive automobiles.


These young Gibson Girl wannabes are having the time of their lives.


Eva Dugan thinks about that with a smirk on her face. She did all of that before these girls were born when Eva was a saloon singer during the Klondike gold rush.

Those were the days.


But now, she’s old, fat, and her voice is gone.


And Eva is on the run with a boy named Jack, an unlikely pair drawn together not by love but by need.


Why?


Cuz A.J. Mathis is dead and buried, that’s why. Other men in Eva’s life have disappeared. Maybe everyone will forget about A.J. Mathis too.


Maybe not.


Here’s one guy who won’t — the last of the Cowboy Sheriffs in Arizona — Jim McDonald.

He’s certain Eva killed A.J. and vows to “prove it on her” if it’s the last thing he does.





Kill. Bury. Forget., A Shocking True Crime Story: the death of a chicken rancher, the woman accused of the crime, and the ‘last of the cowboy sheriffs’ who tracked her down.


And, what happened the day Eva Dugan died.





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