RESTRAINED and with a blindfold over his eyes, Josh Cleaver was moments away from becoming the third victim of an infamous serial killer.
Less than a metre away, monster Bruce McArthur stood with a “cold, dead look” in his eyes and a knife in his hand, deciding whether the terrified Canadian would live or die.
Josh was lucky to survive. McArthur, now 71, whose crimes were discovered five years later in 2017, had already suffocated eight victims in his 19th-floor Toronto apartment.
The murderer – who chillingly worked at Christmas as a shopping mall Santa Claus – predominantly targeted gay men, and his atrocities have been compared to those of serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Brit Dennis Nilsen.
To avoid detection during his seven-year killing spree, McArthur dismembered the bodies of his victims and buried them in his friend’s garden where he worked as a landscaper.