Murder at McDonald's (32 page)

Twelve

Back at the Sydney RCMP detachment, a few members of the investigative team were discussing the case and feeling pretty good about their success. But as they started looking through the confessions, the officers became quiet. They couldn't believe the horror the victims had gone through, how detailed the descriptions were, how Muise and MacNeil had excused their brutal acts as being humane gestures designed to relieve Neil Burroughs from his suffering. Like many of the investigating officers, Pat Murphy was exhausted as he arrived home, but he could not sleep. Constable Murphy sat on the edge of his bed and kept thinking about taking Freeman MacNeil's hand and holding it tightly as MacNeil confessed. He could see himself reaching out, consoling and forgiving a man who had clubbed an innocent man and shot another. Murphy felt very bad about befriending the killer; he knew it was part of the job, but in the loneliness of the moment he could not rationalize what he had done. Pat Murphy sat in bed in the dark and cried.

Murphy was not the only officer to react that way. Later in the week, two members of the team were discussing the confessions and wondering which version was closest to the truth, when one of the men began to cry, right there in the office. No one felt that was unusual; everyone understood that the team had worked under unyielding pressure, and now, with the pressure off, the strain was beginning to show. An RCMP psychologist was sent to Sydney to offer group sessions and private counselling to officers who wanted to express their feelings to a professional. During one group session, both junior and senior officers filled the room, listening to the counsellor and discussing what they felt inside. At the end of the session, there was not a dry eye in the room. For many, that cathartic release was enough—they had dealt with the anxiety, and the pain—but others took longer to get over the experience. More than a year later, Pat Murphy was returning from a vacation with his family and some friends when they stopped in the town of Antigonish to take the kids to McDonald's. As the group approached the restaurant, Murphy stopped. He looked at his wife and said he had changed his mind and was going to an adjacent Tim Hortons. He'd meet her back in the car. A travelling companion was about to question him, but Murphy's wife insisted they all go in and allow Pat to go have a coffee. She understood that her husband just didn't want to be reminded of the case by going to McDonald's, in Sydney River or elsewhere. Some members of the team took their families back to the Sydney River restaurant as soon as it reopened; others still avoid it. John Trickett remains haunted by the image of the bent knife-blade and the bloodied Neil Burroughs. A year after the case, he joined a snowmobile club, only to learn that meetings were in the basement of the restaurant—in the training room behind the black steel door used by the killers to get inside. When a friend who had joined the club with him phoned to ask if he was coming to the meeting, he declined, making excuses. He just couldn't bring himself to go back in there.

For other officers, the effect of the experience has been entirely different. Kevin Cleary, for example, has developed a renewed respect for the little things in life. Always a deeply religious family man, Cleary now constantly finds himself reminded of the value of time with those he loves. Crawling around a deserted restaurant, finding one innocent victim after another, has made him truly appreciate what he had in life.

The community of Sydney was also shaken by the murders and the intense investigation that followed. The Monday after the arrests, I began to interview people, asking them how they felt now that the suspects were in custody and life was returning to normal. Many said that things would never return to normal, that what happened in Sydney River had entirely changed the community. It wasn't so much the violence of the crime itself, although that certainly was being discussed. But what seemed to disturb people most was that three apparently average young men from the area had been involved in such a crime.

The increasing numbers of people filling the ranks of the unemployed in Cape Breton, and the grim economic forecasts for the future, had hardened some people; yet those same conditions had drawn others close together. It was difficult to understand the hows and whys of it. Reverend Mel Findlay, a local community activist who worked providing food and other essentials to those who could no longer support themselves, shed some light on the issue when he said the McDonald's murders were a symptom of something gone very wrong in the community. In an interview, he pointed to the harsh economic realities facing Cape Breton, and said they naturally led to an increase in crime; people in need were sometimes forced to take what they could not get any other way. Findlay felt programs like the “Loaves and Fishes” soup kitchens and a newly opened shelter for the homeless could address part of the problem by providing help to the most desperate, but those programs could not deal with whatever drove people to such extreme violence. The McDonald's murders did not mark the start or the end of a rash of violent crime in Cape Breton, he said; they just focused attention on what had been a steadily growing problem. Indeed, within weeks of the murders, there were two more killings in the area. In Sydney Mines, two brothers got into a fight after a card game and ended up outside, rolling around in the driveway and stabbing each other. One brother died, the other was hospitalized. Later, a young mother was brutally murdered in her apartment in Sydney. And in the months before the McDonald's murders, there was the savage stabbing death of convenience-store clerk Lorraine Dupe in Sydney—a crime that many felt was connected to the McDonald's case. That the two tragedies were unrelated only served as a nagging reminder that the end of the Sydney River investigation did not mean the problem would go away.

The escalation of violence had been gradual, but journalists could see its course just by the way we handled violent crimes over the years. When I first started working as a reporter at a Sydney radio station, more than ten years before the McDonald's murders, a routine phone check with police that revealed a stabbing had occurred the night before would become a lead item in our newscast. We would want all the particulars from the police—whether anybody had been charged; where the stabbing had occurred; how police had been notified; what the victim's condition was. By 1992, a question usually had to do with whether the victim was going to survive. If the injury was not life-threatening, the story might not even get reported—unless, of course, it was an otherwise slow news day. Emergency-room workers at local hospitals had also observed a rise in violence, and were becoming more accustomed to seeing ambulances arrive late at night, carrying someone injured in a violent confrontation. The situation was still far from what hospital workers in large cities faced, but it was also far from the image of “downhome” Cape Breton.

Police noted that most of the violence was linked to alcohol abuse; however, social workers from the local addiction-treatment centre found that alcohol abuse was often linked to the desperate state of the economy. People were hiding from the circumstances in which they found themselves, and while alcoholism is certainly not limited to those who have fallen on hard times, neither is violence. The pressures of an uncertain economy were felt by the employed as well as the unemployed. There were very few people in Cape Breton who felt secure in their jobs. All in all, the explanations—the economy, its hardships, problems like alcoholism or drug abuse—had relevance, but were not answers to the overwhelming question: Why?

What is certain is that the arrests of Derek Wood, Darren Muise, and Freeman MacNeil shook the foundation that had always helped Cape Bretoners work through the tough times. People's inner strength had always been a source of fierce pride; islanders had been through extreme hardship in the past and had always pulled closer together. The mining communities had proved they were stronger than the powerful mining companies during the bitter disputes over workers' rights in the 1920s. They could “stand the gaf,” as the expression went—a rallying cry in times of apparently insurmountable difficulty. The term had its origin in a remark made by a mine owner when company stores were refusing to provide food to the miners and their families; the owner had commented that the people did not have the strength to “stand the gaf”—to endure in the face of hardship. But Cape Bretoners proved they had what it took; as long as they stuck together, they could conquer anything. And they won their rights. Working conditions in the mines would improve, as would the meagre salaries paid to men who worked from before dawn until after dark. The companies running the mines began to show more respect to the men who worked underground. The songs and stories of Cape Breton artists have always celebrated the dignity of people such as coal miners, who risked their lives underground to support their families; fishermen, who headed into unpredictable waters to do the same thing; and steelworkers, who stood proud in the extreme heat and dirt of an ageing plant to produce one the highest-quality steel rails in the world.

That people shared an experience of struggle against forces beyond their control became a unifying force for the communities of Cape Breton, and in the early days after the McDonald's murders, people once again began to unite to help the family of Arlene MacNeil. A foundation and trust fund were set up by caring members of her community, on the north side of Industrial Cape Breton, who staged door-to-door canvassing campaigns, dances, and other community events to raise money to help the MacNeil family cope with the financial strain brought on by the hospitalization of their daughter. The North Sydney-based committee and the hundreds of volunteers who helped in the fund-raising efforts managed to collect more than $100,000 in an area hard hit by job losses and economic uncertainty. It was the kind of thing Cape Bretoners did without question. They were experiencing hard times, but someone in the community needed their help, so they gave.

The economic hardships of the 1980s and '90s were not the most severe the island had ever seen, and people who had lived through tougher times were outraged at what had happened in Sydney River. Cape Bretoners were supposed to pull together, to help their neighbours. It had always been that way. How could islanders stand tall if three of the young men who should have represented the future could have decided that a lack of pocket change was reason enough to kill? The fear and sadness that had prevailed in the community since the murders began to give way to a powerful anger.

For some of the investigators, the McDonald's case ended with the confession of Darren Muise, while others, including Kevin Cleary, conducted follow-up interviews as the Crown prepared its case. One of their first priorities was to visit the correctional centre to clear up some loose ends with Freeman MacNeil and Derek Wood. During that visit, Wood told police he had been given the gun by Freeman MacNeil before he went to work that night, that he was not sure how many times he had shot Donna Warren, and that the three men had indeed discussed the possibility of using the gun during the robbery, although he didn't think they knew what they were talking about when they discussed it. Freeman MacNeil revealed where he had left the ropes that were to have been used to tie up employees in the original plan, and where and how he had burned the evidence.

On Monday, May 18, prosecutor Frank Edwards reviewed the statements made by the accused men and decided what charges would be laid during the first court appearances, which had been put ahead to May 20. Wood faced first-degree murder charges in the deaths of Donna Warren and Neil Burroughs and attempted murder in the shooting of Arlene MacNeil. Muise would be charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Neil Burroughs and Jimmy Fagan, the second charge arising from Freeman MacNeil's contention that Muise had put the gun in his hand and instructed him to shoot Fagan as they were leaving the restaurant. By enabling MacNeil to commit the murder—handing him the weapon—Muise had committed an act the courts consider to be as culpable as murder itself. MacNeil would also be charged with the first-degree murders of Burroughs and Fagan. All three would also face robbery and conspiracy charges, and a count for the unlawful confinement of Donna Warren.

Derek Wood, left, is escorted from the courtroom by Karl Mahoney after the trio's first court appearance. Freeman MacNeil is just behind them. [Print from ATV video tape.]

On May 20, the Cape Breton County Courthouse once again drew hundreds of curious and angry residents wanting a look at the three men charged with the island's most grisly crime. Police barricades were placed in a large arc twenty metres from the door where the suspects would be taken in and out of the building. Sydney police officers walked through the parking lot, making a highly visible show of force; they did not want any trouble. Security inside the courthouse was coordinated by Sydney police and sheriff's deputies, who would use metal detectors to check anyone entering the small provincial courtroom where Wood, Muise, and MacNeil would be arraigned. Courtroom Four was usually filled with petty criminals who had fallen on bad luck or broken some law out of frustration or drunkenness; it was a room where, every Monday, an array of minor charges were handed out to a new line-up of residents in conflict with the police. But on this day, Courtroom Four was to be used to lay the most serious charges in the Criminal Code of Canada. Because the room is small, court officers decided to restrict access to relatives of the four victims, relatives of the accused men, and reporters.