It’s a daunting task now being undertaken by a team of officers, brought together to transform missing persons investigations in a city that has become all too familiar with tragic disappearances.At work on the sixth floor of Toronto Police headquarters are four detective constables, together reviewing thousands of missing persons files — the bulk dating back to the 1990s, the oldest to 1953. They are digitizing the cases and looking for ways to advance them through modern techniques. The goal is to update each one by locating the person, or confirming they’re still missing.“It’s a mountainous challenge,” said Det. Mary Vruna, a veteran homicide and sex crimes investigator now overseeing the daily operations of the Toronto police missing persons unit, which officially launched in July. “But we have to do this,” said her fellow unit leader Det. Sgt. Stacy Gallant, “in order to ensure that we’ve accounted for all the missing people.”That detailed accounting was promised by Toronto police chief Mark Saunders in March when he announced the unit amid urgent criticism over the force’s handling of high-profile disappearances, many centred in the city’s Gay Village.The arrest of alleged killer Bruce McArthur — accused in the deaths of eight men, all with ties to the Village — has amplified concerns about previous probes of the men’s disappearances, and whether an alleged killer could have been stopped sooner. Three of the men now alleged to be among McArthur’s victims were the subjects of a special police probe into their disappearances between 2012 and 2014 — but the project ended with no arrests. It’s alleged McArthur went on to kill five more men after it did.Other recent cases — including the handling of homicide victim Tess Richey’s disappearance — have also raised “serious questions ... that concern the community and me,” ...
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