Donna and Arlene were not thinking about why they were working at McDonald’s, or what they planned for the future, as they walked out of the rear office that morning. They were just thinking about driving home. Both girls lived on the north side of Sydney harbour, Donna in the town of North Sydney and Arlene a little farther away, in the community of Bras d’Or. When they worked night shifts, the two young women liked to set out for home together. They did not share a car, but instead drove one behind the other until they reached the North Sydney turn-off, at which point Arlene would travel the rest of the way alone. They felt safer driving the dark highway that way, and their parents liked knowing that car trouble would not leave either of them stranded. Although Cape Breton was still considered a safe place, where people helped each other, this concern was natural for attractive young women like Donna and Arlene.
As the two friends were getting ready to go home, Derek Wood was still at McDonald’s, making a call to the pay phone in front of the Tim Hortons in the shopping plaza across the street, the same plaza where his dad worked during the day. But nobody was answering. He knew his friends Darren Muise and Freeman MacNeil would be there, waiting in front of the phone booth, so he figured the problem had to be with the phone itself. Wood decided to head down to Tim Hortons to see what was going on.
Two
Nothing about Darren Muise or Freeman MacNeil suggested to their friends or family that they were capable of extreme violence. At eighteen, Muise had just dropped out of high school, in February. His thick, curly black hair, good looks, and athletic prowess made him popular with the young people he knew in Sydney. The problem was, he either didn’t know he was well liked, or didn’t feel it was enough. He craved attention and went out of his way to get it. The youngest of four boys, Muise always seemed to be trying to prove that he was as good as everyone else. He felt he came from a tough background, but while there was not a lot of money to go around at home, he had had a very fortunate upbringing; he was loved and supported by his parents and other relatives, who hoped he might return to school someday, or perhaps go into business with his dad, who had wanted for some time to work for himself and possibly with his sons.
Like Muise, and like many young adults with no special skills or education, MacNeil was still hanging around Sydney with no real direction in his life. It hadn’t always been that way. MacNeil had finished high school, and even spent a year at the Nova Scotia Teachers College; he worked briefly at Malcolm Munroe Junior High as a student teacher, and the students and faculty liked him a great deal. But MacNeil had given up on that ambition, and worked for a while as a private security officer in Halifax and Sydney. The work was not steady enough to keep him from drifting into a new, dangerous friendship—with Muise and with Derek Wood. The youngest in his family, Freeman had been raised by his mother and sisters after his father committed suicide while Freeman was a child. Now, at twenty-three, instead of spending his time making the kinds of decisions that could guide him towards a secure future, he was living an aimless existence, hanging out late at night in coffee shops, talking with other young adults who, like him, were unsure of what they were going to do with their lives. Darren Muise was one of these young people; he and MacNeil had acquaintances in common, and they soon met. As for Derek Wood, he and Muise had known each other ever since Wood moved away from the Pier and ended up attending the same school as Muise, in the Hardwood Hill area of Sydney. Restless energy and late-night conversation brought the three together.
In part perhaps out of a sense that there was nothing to lose, and in part perhaps out of the gnawing knowledge that they were headed nowhere at a time in their lives when they should have been embarking on careers or at least working towards something, the three decided to shun convention and take what they could get without earning it. If the economy of Cape Breton stood in the way of getting what they wanted, then a life of crime might deliver it.
The idea of robbing the McDonald’s restaurant had evolved over the winter and early spring. In early March, shortly after he started his job at McDonald’s, Derek Wood was working the day shift when he made a discovery that would form an integral part of the plan to rob the restaurant. Deliveries to the restaurant are usually made at the employees’ entrance, at the back of the building; the trucks are unloaded and cartons carried to a conveyor belt that runs from the kitchen to the basement, where the stock is stored until needed. One day, the conveyor system broke down, and Wood and a co-worker were asked to go down to the basement and open the black steel door outside the crew training room. It would be easier to carry the stock through that room and into the storage area than to lug it down the basement stairs. As Wood walked out that basement door for the first time, and found himself standing at the bottom of the driveway, the beginnings of a plan came to life.
Wood floated the idea of robbing McDonald’s to MacNeil and Muise, and they seemed game. The three convinced themselves that as much as $200,000 could be sitting in the old black safe in the upstairs office. All they had to do was get inside the building, and Wood’s discovery was the answer to that dilemma—he would just leave the basement door open, and they could slip inside, unnoticed by anyone in the kitchen. Nobody ever used that door unless the conveyor belt broke down. The door also presented a problem, however. If they could get in that way, then employees could run out the same way during the robbery. The trio decided they needed a fourth person in order to make the job foolproof. Freeman MacNeil would drive the car and be ready for a quick escape; Derek Wood was to be responsible for opening the basement door and letting Darren Muise inside. The fourth robber would remain at the door, and if people tried to escape, he could club them into unconsciousness.
It was strange that clubbing innocent people was seen as part of the initial plan. Wood, MacNeil, and Muise had not been particularly violent young adults, but now they were clearly willing to use force. Both Muise and MacNeil had considerable martial-arts skills; but only MacNeil had any history of physical confrontation. He had been convicted and given a discharge after charges were brought against him when he pushed another youth outside Riverview Rural High School. MacNeil had a reputation among some students as a bit of a bully. He was big and strong—over six feet tall and about two hundred pounds—and he liked to show it. But even the smaller students whom he would hang upside down by their ankles did not think he was anything more than a schoolyard bully with a stupid sense of humour.
As they drove around Sydney in late April 1992, the three hoped violence wouldn’t be necessary but felt they’d better take precautions. MacNeil decided he would take a gun from his girlfriend Michelle’s father—a .22-calibre pistol, kept in a top dresser drawer in his room. It wouldn’t be missed. MacNeil had even practised with the gun one time, on a secluded beach. He and two friends were out on a Sunday afternoon, and Freeman took the gun from the trunk of the car and fired seven shots at some bottles he had placed a few metres away. He missed with all seven shots. But the gun wasn’t going to be necessary, anyway. If the robbery went according to plan, the real weapons would be Darren Muise’s fists and feet. Muise had a black belt in tae kwon do and had achieved notable success in tournaments; he even taught the sport to children. Freeman MacNeil also had more than modest skills as a martial artist—he claimed to have broken an opponent’s arm during a judo tournament—but in the early planning he was going to be the wheel man. MacNeil’s size probably made him a better choice as the “enforcer,” but he was the only one with access to a car. Muise would wear a Hallowe’en mask, and once inside the basement he would subdue any employees up in the kitchen. Once they were out of the way, Derek Wood could run upstairs and open the safe. He thought he knew most of the combination, and if he didn’t, well, Muise could always force the shift manager to open the safe.
The trio had set out to commit the robbery on April 30, but the fourth participant, whom they’d asked to guard the basement door, did not show up. They quickly retreated to the coffee shop where they’d done much of t
heir planning, and MacNeil tried to recruit a potential replacement. But their candidate wasn’t interested, so the job was postponed for a week. And they would go ahead with or without a guard at the outside entrance.
At about seven-thirty on the evening of May 6, Freeman MacNeil drove Derek Wood to work. Before he entered the restaurant, Wood took the tiny silver .22-calibre pistol from MacNeil and grabbed a handful of ammunition. He stuffed the bullets and the weapon into the black-leather pouch he wore around his waist, and went inside. Down in the crew changing-room in the basement, Wood took off his street clothes and pulled on his McDonald’s uniform. Then he put his clothes and the leather pouch into his brown canvas knapsack and headed up to work.
A few hours later, MacNeil picked up Muise at a local pool hall. The two parked on a side street near Sydney harbour, where they put on a second set of clothing over their street clothes. These outer layers would later be discarded; that way, any fibres left behind at the scene—or anything their clothing picked up while they were in the restaurant—could not be traced back to them. The would-be robbers expected to find between $80,000 and $200,000 in the safe, and they knew there would be an intense investigation when the job was done. After changing, they drove to the Tim Hortons in the Sydney River shopping plaza. As they parked in front of the coffee shop, the two could see McDonald’s, just up the hill.
In the basement of the restaurant, Derek Wood took his knapsack and jammed it against the frame of the door that led to the black steel door on the outside wall; if the inner door closed, it would lock. After helping Arlene MacNeil with the inventory, Wood had gone to the crew room and changed out of his McDonald’s uniform, which he stuffed into the knapsack, retrieving his leather pouch. With the inner entrance safely propped open, Wood closed the outside door almost all the way, leaving just enough space to allow him to grab an edge and pull it open when he returned.
Then he headed over to Tim Hortons. He jumped into the brown-and beige Chevy Impala and confronted Muise and MacNeil; he had tried calling them—why hadn’t they answered? Apparently they hadn’t heard the pay phone ringing. Well, they would go ahead anyway; after all, Wood had left the door open, so they could still get inside. Freeman MacNeil would play a more active role; he would go inside and guard the basement door while Muise went up to the kitchen and Wood waited for the all-clear to try the safe. The young men drove away from Tim Hortons and onto Kings Road, past the front of McDonald’s and underneath the Sydney bypass. On the other side of the bypass, they entered a residential area and turned onto a dirt road, following it almost to the end, where it intersected with a secluded gravel road. There, the robbers stepped out into the night; they were at the corner of Britannia Street and Sheridan Drive. In front of them, across the bypass, was their target. The three walked across the field beside the highway, aglow in deep yellow light, then hustled across the brightly illuminated four lanes to the field on the other side—the one bordering the McDonald’s property. They moved quietly towards the building, approaching the side away from the driveway, then made their way down to the front corner, where the basement door, still slightly ajar, awaited them. They stepped into the building and pulled the door shut behind them.
Derek Wood, Darren Muise, and Freeman MacNeil made their way to this basement door, stepped inside, and closed it behind them. [RCMP crime scene photo.]
Meanwhile, Arlene MacNeil and Donna Warren were getting ready to leave the basement office where Arlene had been sorting the children’s party favours.
Once the robbers had closed the basement door, they found themselves in a dark, windowless little porch outside the crew training room. The cement floor was covered with dirt and leaves that had blown in beneath the door. They groped their way to the inner door, still propped open by Wood’s knapsack. Before entering the training room with his accomplices, Wood took the small silver handgun out of the pouch around his waist. Muise pulled a rubber Hallowe’en mask over his head and took two knives from a sheath on his ankle. The mask was in the likeness of a ghoulish, white-haired old man with horribly distorted features. Freeman MacNeil held a shovel handle, in case he had to knock anyone out, and there were ropes in his pockets to tie them up afterwards. All three wore dark clothing. They crept into the crew room, allowing the door to swing shut behind them but failing to notice that the door did not close fully. Instead, it came to rest again on the beige knapsack Wood had placed in the threshold. The pack had a label sewn into its seam: ESCAPE.
Donna and Arlene were on their way out when they stopped suddenly at the sight of the three men creeping towards them. The men, too, came to a standstill as they realized they were not alone. Donna’s heart pounded when she saw the Hallowe’en mask; she was prepared to open and empty the safe if they asked. Long ago, she had promised her mother that if anyone tried to rob the restaurant while she was on shift, she would gladly cooperate in order to avoid any trouble. She used to joke that she’d even carry the safe out to the car for them. Donna knew that resisting a robber could cause problems, not only for her, but also for Arlene and Neil, and as the manager, she felt responsible. But her fear turned to confusion when she recognized the small, sullen-faced blond man. Derek Wood was making no attempt to hide himself; he just stood there, looking first at her and then at the two men he was with.
Arlene, like Donna, quickly ruled out robbery when she realized the man was Derek Wood. As for the idiot in the Hallowe’en mask, he was obviously someone who thought scaring people was a funny thing to do. Arlene was angry at having been frightened, but she didn’t want to show these three jerks that they’d succeeded in making her heart pop out of her chest. Donna would have to do something, she thought; the restaurant was closed, and Derek had no right bringing people inside, joke or no joke. She decided to lighten the moment.
“Is this a joke or What?” And she laughed.
It was the last time Arlene MacNeil’s agile young mind would so quickly assess a situation and draw a reasonable conclusion—a conclusion that in this case could not have been further from the terrifying reality of what was about to happen. This was no joke.
“What’s going on?” Donna demanded.
Derek Wood exchanged a long look with his partners. During the countless hours of discussing their options, a certain amount of macho bravado had emerged: Darren Muise claimed he would use his share of the haul to fly to Vancouver, where he had lined up a job running drugs for the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang; Freeman MacNeil showed his seriousness about the plan by obtaining the gun. Although their talk may have been nothing more than bravado—three young men trying to outdo each other as they dug themselves deeper and deeper into a plot they were, in fact, ill-equipped to carry out—at the moment when Derek Wood looked at his partners, he decided he was involved in a big-time score with big-time criminals. And he would not be the weak link.
Donna and Arlene came through the open door to face the killers. The colourful sticks Arlene had been counting were still in her hand when she fell, face forward. [RCMP crime scene photo.]
As his partners looked down, Wood turned to the young women and raised his arm. Arlene saw the arm come up and saw the bright flash, but she did not feel or hear anything. She knew Donna was still beside her; she could see her friend’s shoes as the floor came rushing up in a crazy, tilting dream. Arlene had fallen face down, her hand still clasped around the sticks she had been counting for the child’s birthday party that was supposed to be held later that day. Donna crouched on the floor beside her friend, confusion filling her mind. “My God, Arlene, we’re going to die!” she screamed, putting her face close to her friend’s ear. “They’re going to kill us!” She could see blood beginning to pool on the floor near Arlene’s face, but her friend was breathing; she was still alive. Donna looked up to see the masked man standing over her, gesturing with a knife and screaming at her to stay there. She wanted to help Arlene, but all she could do was cry. Donna wanted her mother, she wanted her bed, she wanted her cat; she did not want to
be lying on the floor watching blood pour from a tiny hole beside her friend’s nose. Donna Warren’s mind went wild with panic, but she could not move.
The stairs up to the kitchen: the conveyor belt to the right is the one that broke down shortly after Derek Wood started his job, prompting the plan to rob McDonald’s. [RCMP crime scene photo.]
“Hurry up!” Freeman MacNeil yelled at Wood.
Derek Wood ran upstairs.
Up in the kitchen, Neil Burroughs was scrubbing the sinks. Because the steel door at the bottom of the basement stairs was closed, and because there was a lot of noise from the equipment in the restaurant, he couldn’t have heard the shot, or the screams from the basement. Burroughs was down on one knee, wiping the stainless-steel skirt below the sinks, when he suddenly felt weak and fell to the floor. Something was wrong, but he could not figure out what had happened. Blood was coming from his ear, and there was a terrible taste in his mouth. He could see the blood beginning to pool on the floor, and knew he needed help.
As he began to push himself up from the floor, Neil realized someone was standing beside him: shocked and confused, he did not see the mask the man was wearing as a threat. Neil Burroughs wanted help—he needed help—and he hoped this stranger would deliver it. He looked into Darren Muise’s eyes, and Muise stared back at the helpless man in front of him. Burroughs sought sympathy, and help, but instead he saw, in those eyes, a frightening expression heightened by the ghoulish rubber mask that framed them. Muise took a brown-handled hunting knife and plunged it five centimetres into the soft tissue on the left side of Burroughs’ neck, then pulled it back in a clumsy, failed attempt to severe the jugular vein.
Murder at McDonald's Page 3
