As Ron Smith watched the detective announce on live TV that investigators had found human bones buried in his backyard flower planters, he clutched his partner Karen Fraser’s hand.“This is what we were afraid of,” Smith said.For years, Bruce McArthur mowed their lawn and tended to their gardens, filling enormous planters with begonias and flowering vines. Now, McArthur is an accused serial killer and Fraser and Smith’s Leaside home has become a crime scene.Read more:Bruce McArthur charged with three additional counts of first-degree murder, police saySearch intensifies at Leaside property linked with accused killer Bruce McArthurBruce McArthur barred from Gay Village as part of sentence for 2001 assaultPolice say they have found the remains of at least three different people at the bottom of large planters at their Mallory Cres. home. The police search is expanding to 30 properties McArthur had access to, and investigators anticipate they will uncover more remains. McArthur has now been charged with the murders of five men.Investigators said they have seized 12 planters from properties where McArthur did landscaping and that they plan to excavate two areas, but did not say where.Smith and Fraser were first introduced to McArthur, a landscaper, by his sister. He needed a space to store some equipment and they made an arrangement: he could use their garage if he’d mow their lawn when they were away. Over the years he did much more than cut the grass.“He took this simple arrangement and did more and more and more for us,” Fraser told the Star earlier this month. “All of our pots around the house were suddenly filled with beautiful flowers.”McArthur had brought three or four enormous planters, roughly a metre high and as wide as the inside of tractor tire, to the house two or three years ago, Fraser said.“We just hope the remains are just in the planters so they go away and not in the ground,” Fraser ...
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