Accused Toronto Serial Killer Mirrors Stephen King's Infamous Murderer - Details

He was one of Stephen King's most memorable killers.

'The Lawnmower Man' was a sex-crazed gardener who dismembers the suburban homeowner who hires him to cut his lawn.

And now a real life version seems to be playing out in Toronto, Canada. With police digging for human remains after the arrest of a landscape contractor last month.

Bruce McArthur, 66, was charged in Toronto with the murder of five men, but detectives believe there could be more victims.

They think he hid their remains in planters or buried them scattered in lawns.

The horror case is currently shrouded under a court-ordered publication ban.

"He's taken some steps to cover his tracks, and we have to uncover these victims," lead homicide detective Hank Idsingarevealed.

Police have identified more than 30 properties where McArthur worked and are conducting an "extensive" investigation at one residence, where McArthur used a garage to store tools and flower pots.

Police have already found skeletal remains of three people in the backyard planters but they have yet to identify them.

Their gruesome investigation began on January 18 when they searched a home owned by Karen Fraser and her husband, Ron Smith, on the fringes of the city's Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

The elderly couple had to vacate the property as the search began and within a few days the investigators had erected a large tent in the back yard and began using a generator to thaw the frozen ground to excavate.

McArthur was known around the bars and restaurants of Toronto's Gay Village district and even played Santa Claus at a suburban mall last Christmas.

Before gardening he worked as a traveling salesman and got married, aged 35, to his wife, Janice. The couple bought a home in Oshawa, east of Toronto and had a son and daughter, and McArthur is also a grandfather.

However, he led a double-life going to Toronto's gay leather bars and nightclubs with him and his wife declaring bankruptcy and selling their home in 2000 before eventually separating.

On Halloween 2001 his life took a dark turn after he was arrested for beating a man with a metal pipe in the Gay Village.

Apart from his sentence he was barred from the district for two years and ordered not to acquire amyl nitrates, or "poppers," court documents reveal.

The drug, often used as a muscle relaxant, is popular among gay men and is sometimes taken before sex.

The same day police forensic investigators began searching the Mallory Crescent home, McArthur was charged with the deaths of two gay men — Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman — who had gone missing last year.