Murder at McDonald's (31 page)

The pressure of the week-long investigation, and the long night and day with Muise, had reached a peak. For a moment, Brian Stoyek the man took the place of Brian Stoyek the police officer. Stoyek knew from personal experience to what extent violent crime leaves permanent scars on those left behind. Years earlier, when he was stationed in Newfoundland, his wife had been staying with a friend in Halifax when a masked man broke into the apartment and beat her viciously. She had been left permanently disabled, and he had been left feeling helpless. Now, Stoyek felt helpless again, and that it shouldn't be that way. He had enough of this emotionless kid and he wanted Muise to know it. As emotion and adrenaline surged through him, Stoyek suddenly blew: “You're a cold-blooded fuckin' killer.” Muise was unmoved by the outburst; he slouched in his chair and ignored the officer. Stoyek was finished with Muise, and he knew it. He left the room for the last time.

At seven-thirty that evening, a new team began questioning Darren Muise: Sergeant Tony Penny and Constable David Hadubiak. Muise told Hadubiak he remembered him from the brief meeting in the parking lot in North Sydney a few days earlier. At first, it was the same old story; Muise would not comment. Then, Hadubiak tried to make casual conversation while at the same time exploring one of the theories police were considering. He asked Muise about the game “Dungeons and Dragons.” The officer said he had played it, and was wondering if Muise had. The teenager was willing to discuss the game, but rejected the notion that any kind of fantasy had been involved in the McDonald's murders, that it was a case of people losing touch with reality. Muise liked Hadubiak, and when Sergeant Penny was called from the room, the young man asked if the constable would like to go over his suicide note with him. Police had found the note during a search of Muise's home and presented it to him during questioning. Hadubiak moved closer, and Darren read him the note, saying that most of it was true, except the references to guys from Halifax—that part, he said, was made up. At times Muise cried as he read the note, then asked if he and Hadubiak could talk privately. Well, they could talk, Hadubiak said, but as a police officer, he would have to testify about what was said.

When finally Muise agreed to tell Hadubiak his side of the story, it seemed so easy—no pressure from the young constable; Muise just decided to give him what he wanted. And then, the last of the three partners to implicate himself in the murders, Muise began his confession. This time he gave a very detailed statement, filling in some of the blanks left by Wood and MacNeil. Like MacNeil, Muise also said he heard two gunshots from upstairs when Wood ran up there, but he had an altogether different version of what happened to Neil Burroughs. According to Muise, he and MacNeil went upstairs together and found Burroughs struggling to get up. The look in Neil Burroughs's eyes was very disturbing, Muise told the officer. “I felt for him,” the young man said. “I guess I didn't know what to do. There was lots of blood. I knew he was dying. Freeman hit him in the head with a bat. That wasn't stopping him. I knew where the jugular vein was, so I went over and cut him. He stopped moving, so I thought he was dead and felt no more pain.”

Muise was then called to the safe by Wood and told to help pack up the kitbag, he said. MacNeil yelled for the gun, so he took it from Wood and brought it to MacNeil before returning to the safe, where he heard another shot. Then they left and MacNeil shot another guy at the door. Now, police were unsure who had shot Neil Burroughs the third and final time: in fact, it was not even clear whether Derek Wood had shot him twice or only once. The only thing they now knew for certain was that Burroughs had been shot three times, and only one person had admitted to shooting him. The other two killers had fingered each other as the source of the final shot.

In concluding his statement, Muise reiterated this point: “I am glad that people will know I wasn't a shooter. In my mind I feel that I am not responsible for the shootings of these people. I couldn't stop Derek or Freeman, I was in such shock at the time.” It was a bizarre comment. Muise was trying to lessen his own guilt by putting it off on the others. He did not understand how appalling it was that he had deliberately tried to cut the jugular vein of an innocent man—ostensibly to put him out of pain. That he saw such a horrible action as somehow better than what MacNeil and Wood had done just made it all the more shocking.

Muise cried several times while telling his story. He signed his confession at 10:24 p.m.

At the precise moment that Darren Muise was signing his confession, his name and picture were being broadcast around Atlantic Canada. Saturday May 16, had been a frustrating day for those of us covering the story. We knew the suspects were in custody, and we at ATV even knew who they were—by 8:00 p.m., I had verified through a police source that Mike Campbell was the fourth man, who had been questioned and released. But we still could not identify those in custody. Dave Roper was holding the media at bay, awaiting confirmation from Sylvan Arsenault, the investigation's coordinator, that the identities of the accused men could be made public. Charges had to be laid, and Roper also needed to keep the victims' relatives up to date.

Officers were sent out in the early evening, after Darren Muise made the statement admitting his involvement but claiming he had blacked out. The families were told that charges were being laid, and court appearances would follow shortly. As the evening continued, I pressed Roper to release their identities in time for our 10:00 p.m. newscast. The decision to lay charges had been made, but the officers sent out to talk with the victims' families had not completed their task. Only a couple of officers had been assigned to explain matters to a great many relatives, who had a great many questions. The biggest question—and the one police laboured to explain—was why the men were only being charged with conspiracy to commit robbery. The decision was a legal one: the Mounties had to lay charges of some kind so that Muise, MacNeil, and Wood could be remanded in custody; but investigators wanted time to confer with the Crown after reviewing the statements, and then decide exactly what additional charges each suspect would face.

As newscast after newscast informed the public that the suspects had been arrested and that their identities would soon be revealed, media pressure on Roper grew more and more intense. Finally, he arranged a 10:00 p.m. news conference at the Cambridge Suites—he would release all the information then. It was close, but I knew that if we kept an open phone line to Halifax and sent the video tape of the suspects' pictures ahead, we could still get the names and pictures on the show. Although it had been a relief to find out that Mike Campbell was not involved in the crime, I still felt the awful apprehension that came from knowing I would have to broadcast the identity of the son of a woman I'd known most of my life. Facing Gail Muise would be difficult, not because what I was doing was wrong, but because I knew it would hurt her.

Roper had not arrived at the hotel by 9:55 p.m., so I phoned the detachment from one of the basement pay phones. Roper said he would make the announcement in a matter of seconds, so I asked if he would stay on the line while I waited. He wanted to tell all the reporters at one time, but reluctantly agreed to release the information that way. I grabbed a second pay phone, dialled the newsroom in Halifax, and asked to be patched through to the anchor—but she was already on the air. The identities would be confirmed in a matter of moments, I told the director, and we could break into the newscast live. It seemed an eternity that I waited with a phone pressed to each ear, but finally, just after 10:20 p.m., Roper was told that the last of the victims' families had been notified. He read a brief prepared statement into the first pay phone, and I placed the other receiver down to take notes.

“This information is a supplement to the news release given earlier this morning,” Roper said. “The three persons presently in custody are: Derek Anthony Wood of Sydney, date of birth 73-05-14; Darren Frederick Muise of Sydney, date of birth 73-09-18; Freeman Daniel MacNeil of Cape Breton County, date of birth 68-08-24. All three persons have been charged with conspiracy to commit robbery contrary to section 465.(1)(C) of the Criminal Code of Canada. All three have appeared before a justice of the peace and have been remanded in custody. This is the initial charge only; other charges will be laid to coincide with the suspects' court appearance on May 21, 1992. That's it. I'll see you down there in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Dave.” The identities I had were confirmed. I hung up the first pay phone and shouted into the second, as Dave Roper left the RCMP detachment and headed to the hotel to reread the release to the other reporters and camera operators. While he was getting into his car, the school yearbook photos of all three suspects were being displayed, one after the other, on regional television; and I was being heard from a hotel pay phone, as I gave a brief audio sketch of each young man and explained that friends, neighbours, and teachers were shocked to hear their names associated with this crime. With the broadcast complete, I headed upstairs in time to see Roper being interviewed by the other reporters. I went over and asked my own questions; the ATV cameraman, Gary Mansfield, was already recording the “scrum,” as we call that tangle of reporters and microphones around a person being interviewed after a major news break.

After the briefing, Roper and I walked outside. I was surprised to see him excited; his standard briefings were always given in a direct, unemotional tone, but now he was beaming with the pride of a job well done. But he became more sombre when he made reference to the reality of what had happened at McDonald's in the early hours of May 7. Roper had read Derek Wood's confession; he would not give any details, but told me the people of Sydney would be shocked when this case came to trial.

Gary and I loaded our vehicle and returned to the station to feed the taped RCMP briefing to the Halifax newsroom; it would be used on the late-night and Sunday newscasts. While Gary cued the tape, I sat back and enjoyed a coffee at my desk. The May 21 court date meant there would be a few days to relax after the late nights and early mornings of chasing the RCMP. I'd be able to do a community reaction item for Monday and then get away from the story for a couple of days. Sipping the coffee, I looked through the pictures of the accused men and stopped at the yearbook photo bearing the name Darren R. Muise. There were some humorous remarks from classmates, and one of those “Goals for the Future” type of entries—Muise wanted to be a social worker. How had this young man's plans gone so far off track? He had been interested in a career helping others; how could he have turned into a killer? This was not someone whose childhood differed so dramatically from mine. We had grown up in the same general area, and our mothers had worked together. I looked at the picture and wondered how Gail Muise was feeling, now that word of her son's involvement had been made public.

Suddenly, my stomach turned as the name Darren R. Muise seemed to jump off the page. I grabbed the RCMP release from the desk: Darren Frederick Muise.
Oh, no. It's the wrong Darren Muise, and we've just shown his picture on TV as a suspect in this case.
I screamed, grabbing for the phone to call the teenagers who had identified the person in photo. They did not understand why I was upset; they had just watched my report, and they were absolutely positive that was the Darren Muise who had been arrested. Yes, they knew him and had talked with his friends. He was in jail, and they were sure he was the right Muise. It was some relief, but not enough; how could I have believed teenagers on such an important matter? I phoned Greg Boone, who had also confirmed the Muise I.D. through separate sources. He wasn't sure about the middle name. Finally I contacted Roper, who said it was possible the “Frederick” was a mistake. He checked it out for me—yep, the name is Darren Richard Muise. I hung up the phone exhausted. In less than an hour I had gone from the agonized clock-watching of impending deadline, to the triumphant feeling of getting the identities and pictures in time for the newscast, to believing I'd made a career-ending mistake, to realizing that everything was all right. I sat back and stared at the oversized clock that dominated the rear wall of the newsroom. That large white face could be most intimidating as its hands marched along towards the next newscast—whether you were ready or not.

Gary walked back into the newsroom after feeding the tape from the control room. Reports assembled in the Sydney bureau of ATV are transmitted via a designated phone line to the ATV edit suites in Halifax, where they are recorded and rushed to the playback room before a newscast begins. Feeding tape this way is considerably cheaper than the satellite technology we used earlier in the week for our live reports from the RCMP news conference and the disturbance at the courthouse.

“Someday, that thing's going to kill me,” I said, without looking away from the wall clock.

“
That's
what's going to kill you,” Gary said, pointing to the coffee.

“Everything in-house?”

“Yep.”

“Let's get out of here.”

By midnight, Darren Muise, Derek Wood, and Freeman MacNeil were in custody at the Cape Breton County Correctional Centre, where they were locked in the special isolation wing to await their first court appearances on Thursday. Shortly after the suspects were safely behind bars, the members of the investigating team began heading home for some much-needed rest. For the first time in ten days, the pressure was off. They had the killers behind bars, and a search of the East Broadway trailer where MacNeil had stayed with his girlfriend had produced the gun. The weapon looked surprisingly harmless—a tiny chromed .22 with brown plastic handles. It didn't even look like a real gun. A starter pistol, maybe, but not a weapon capable of delivering the fatal shots that had been fired in Sydney River.