Most of the information coming out had to be confirmed by the Mounties, but the incident at McDonald’s had already been discussed by taxi drivers and their fares throughout the area. It was the subject of intense talk in all-night coffee shops in and around Sydney, and people were phoning newsrooms with tidbits of information, hoping to get more from journalists. Even at the side of the road, people stopped us to ask questions and offer what they’d gathered from the firestorm of speculation sweeping the city. But that kind of information is problematic. A taxi driver may tell his fare that there were people shot at McDonald’s, and that his buddy was there; by the time the story reaches a reporter, it may have been passed on by three or four people, each adding a bit in the telling, until the story has seven or eight people killed at McDonald’s, including a taxi driver, or even by a taxi driver.
Because Sydney is a relatively small community, there is none of the bitter competition between reporters that is common in larger urban centres. Some information is kept under wraps, but journalists with the two TV stations, three radio stations, and one daily newspaper run into each other frequently, and often exchange favours. In fact, there is an informal agreement between the CJCB Radio and ATV newsrooms that dates back to a time when both stations were owned by the same family. On the night of the McDonald’s murders, it was veteran CJCB reporter Russ White who called me at home to say something big had happened in Sydney River.
A benefit of the positive working relationship among local reporters is a tendency to question some of the wilder rumours that get started. While an anxious young reporter may want to go with information picked up in a coffee shop, to the effect that seven or eight people are dead, a seasoned journalist will advise caution. On this occasion, for example, a few of us noted that only two ambulances were parked behind McDonald’s, and only two gurneys were sitting behind the drive-through window. Flashes from inside indicated an Indent team was at work photographing bodies before they were taken to the morgue. The evidence suggested two fatalities, not the numbers being circulated in the rumour mill. A call to Sydney City Hospital might determine the number of people killed or injured; the exact condition of the victims might not be available, but a harried nursing supervisor would probably tell a persistent reporter how many people had been hospitalized.
Our real challenge was to get good pictures. The RCMP had decided that television cameras were creating a hazard by attracting the attention of passing motorists—not that there were that many people driving the Sydney bypass in the middle of the night, but as usual our presence had stimulated curiosity. Fortunately, the cameras had already captured images that would be replayed many times in the weeks and months ahead: the open back door of the restaurant, police crowding in and out of the door, and the waiting ambulances. There was even a telling shot of Corporal Leadbetter standing outside the door with his video camera, turning on his light, and slowly walking inside.
As long as the ambulances were there, it was unlikely that the cameras would leave. We had a job to do, and there was a way around the dilemma the RCMP had presented. Bruce Hennessey and I decided to get closer to the restaurant, but away from the motorists who were still out that morning. CBC cameraman Frank King decided he’d come with us around the other side of the building. What we ended up doing, without knowing it, was to retrace the steps of Darren Muise and Freeman MacNeil. We drove out the Sydney bypass and doubled back onto the old North Sydney highway, only a few kilometres from the bridge where the killers had disposed of their soiled clothing. While Muise and MacNeil had turned onto the bypass to avoid coming too close to McDonald’s, we wanted to do the opposite. We took Keltic Drive to the shopping plaza, skirting the police roadblock at Keltic and Kings Road by cutting across the plaza parking lot, our trucks luckily unnoticed by the officer at the roadblock. We parked at the Tim Hortons where, a few hours earlier, Muise and MacNeil had waited for Wood. It was more than a bit disappointing to discover that the two young women inside had locked the shop. A coffee would have been nice; it was nearly 4:00 a.m. and it was very cold. We walked away from Tim Hortons and went back up the hill towards McDonald’s, where the cameramen began recording without lights. Kings Road was well lit, and red-and-blue police lights were streaking the building with waves of colour.
A Sydney police constable was standing guard outside the black steel door at the front corner of the building. He’d been there since Kevin Cleary had determined that the knapsack inside was holding open a door located just behind the big black door. Two other Sydney policemen were talking to the guard when one noticed the cameras. Hoping to delay the order for us to leave, I walked out to meet the officer as he came across the street towards us.
Another good thing about a small community is that reporters and police officers generally get to know each other fairly well and can develop a good working relationship. This officer and I had known each other ever since I had covered a police strike, years before. “How the hell did you guys end up over here?” he asked. Apparently he didn’t want to order us away just yet. “We circled around the Sydport road. What’s going on in there?” The officer did not want questions; this was an RCMP case, and he was there simply to provide any assistance he could. “You’ll have to talk to them; I don’t know anything. Listen, you guys can’t stay here. This is all a secured area.”
Time to negotiate. “Look, they asked us to leave the bypass because we were drawing a crowd. Let us stay here, and we won’t move around. We just want to get a few shots of the cars coming and going, and the ambulances when they leave.” The officer wanted to agree, but wasn’t sure. “They want the area kept clear for the dog,” he said.
“Well, if we walk back to the cars now, we’ll be leaving more tracks than if we just stay. Who’s in charge over there, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Staff Davies was around—probably him.” (That would be Staff Sergeant Herb Davies.)
“Could you go tell him we’re here, then, and we won’t move, and maybe ask him when they’ll be making a statement?”
“O.K., don’t move any further than you are, and I’ll see where he is.” I went back to the roadside opposite the restaurant to tell the cameramen they had to work from that spot. That was fine by them. They could see officers using flashlights to search the restaurant lawn; there were several squad cars in the lot; and by panning left they could also get the roadblock at Keltic Drive. I knew we were doing all right when I saw the Sydney policeman drive away in his squad car.
While Bruce and Frank essentially mimicked each other’s actions, pointing their cameras at anything that moved, I began to wonder how bad the situation inside really was. I had waited outside crime scenes many times while police completed their work before releasing a body to the coroner. While the area around the murder scene is always cordoned off, police do not usually broaden the barricades to include roadblocks, and then close businesses in such a large area. I hoped Dave Roper was over there but figured that wasn’t likely. He had come to a few crime scenes in the past, but normally he met with us later, back at the detachment. I had a feeling we might have to wait a while.
Five
When Derek Wood was turned away by the clerk inside the locked convenience store, he decided to walk towards the flashing police lights at Kenwood Drive, about a half a block away. If he told them who he was, they would at least drive him home. As he approached the roadblock, an RCMP cruiser pulled into the lot behind him; Wood did not notice it, nor did Corporal Brian Stoyek notice him. Stoyek was following Kevin Cleary’s instructions, interviewing people working in the area. He knocked on the window at Kings so he could question the two young men inside, when one of them ran to the door. “He was just here. The guy you’re looking for—he was just here. I wouldn’t let him in; he looked too spooky.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“The Wood guy, the guy who phoned to report the shooting.” The clerk knew the surname because he knew Wood’s elder brother. Stoyek had been told that
officers were out looking for a Derek Wood, who had been working at McDonald’s overnight but had disappeared after phoning Stan Jesty.
“Where is he now? Which way did he go?” The clerk pointed towards the roadblock, and Stoyek jumped back in his car.
Derek Wood approached the officer guarding the roadblock; it was Constable John MacLeod of the Sydney police. The officer had noticed Wood a few minutes earlier, when he appeared out of nowhere inside the cordoned-off area. He watched the young man walk over to the convenience store, where he stood in apparent confusion for a few minutes before making his way to the roadblock. Wood began talking when he was still about two metres away. “I was at McDonald’s when the shooting happened. I ran.”
The officer was taken aback and looked again at Wood, this time more closely, noting that the young man was pale and shaken and appeared to be reacting slowly. Before MacLeod could decide what to do, Brian Stoyek pulled up. The husky, imposing-looking corporal introduced himself to Wood, then started asking questions.
“Are you the guy who phoned to report the shooting at McDonald’s?”
“Yeah, the guy told me to go home.”
“Would you mind coming with me now?”
“No.” The two got in Stoyek’s car, and the corporal asked Wood to spell his full name. He then asked what had happened. Wood appeared calm at first, but Stoyek watched the young man closely for any signs that might suggest a problem. The first thing he noticed was a cut on the knuckle of Wood’s right hand. “How’d you hurt that hand?”
“Oh, I cut it a couple of days ago, opening a can.” The answer didn’t satisfy the officer; there was fresh blood on that hand. Something else caused Stoyek to become concerned: when he asked Wood where he had gone after running away from the restaurant, Wood blurted out the answer very quickly—too quickly. Stoyek got the impression that Wood had been drinking, although he could not smell alcohol. He did not understand why the young man had suddenly become excited and then settled down. He was quite calm when they met and then relaxed again after blurting out his version of the route he’d taken. The response didn’t feel right to the experienced officer. And there was another problem. The route itself made no sense. “I don’t know where I went first,” Wood tried to explain. “I just ran, but I ended up by the Sydney River bridge. Then I ran along the harbour and came out over there and ran across the road to Kings, where I called you guys.”
“What did you do after that call?”
“I went for a walk. I’m not sure where I was going. I went down by Keltic Drive and then over by Riverview and up the road by the Lands and Forests office, and I came back and the store was locked.” That route made no more sense to Brian Stoyek than the other one. He decided to take Wood to McDonald’s, but saw that the young man was reluctant to go anywhere near the restaurant. “You don’t have to get out of the car, Derek. I just have to let them know I found you, and then we can retrace your route. O.K.?”
Back at the restaurant, Stoyek pulled up the ramp to the parking lot and got out of the car to have a word with Kevin Cleary and Staff Sergeant Herb Davies, now the senior officer on the scene. While Stoyek told Davies about his concerns, Cleary approached the patrol car—not to talk to Wood but to observe him and make a note of his condition. Wood was pale and seemed very nervous, his head twitching occasionally. Cleary found this suspicious, but he realized Wood’s behaviour could have been caused by the shock of hearing what had happened inside the restaurant.
The three officers regrouped and agreed that Wood should be taken out and asked to retrace his steps; then Corporal Trickett and Storm could go over the route and check for evidence. After Wood finished showing Stoyek where he had gone, he should be taken to the detachment for questioning; Cleary would meet Stoyek there later. Corporal Stoyek got back in his car, started down the ramp, then came to a stop and asked Wood to concentrate on how he had gotten from the restaurant to the bridge. “Well, if I was doin’ it now, I’d run back and forth to keep anyone from followin’ me,” the young man replied. “I learned that in my military training.” This puzzled Stoyek and added to his growing sense of unease, because his experience told him that a person fleeing the scene of a shooting tends to run in a straight line, not back and forth in a manner designed to throw off tracking dogs. The corporal pulled ahead a few more metres, then stopped again, this time beside the big black basement door.
As the two discussed the best route to the bridge, Bruce, still filming the crime scene, decided to take a shot of the car leaving the restaurant—just another in a growing collection of similar images that would be broadcasted and rebroadcasted in the coming days. Many months later, after Stoyek testified in court that he and Wood had begun their drive at 4:15 a.m., I realized we must have been there, so I reviewed the tape and found the shot—there was the husky Stoyek behind the wheel, and a small, sandy-haired figure beside him: Wood.
It took Stoyek and Wood a half-hour to retrace the route and then drive to the Sydney RCMP detachment, where, at 4:45 a.m., Derek Wood was taken to an interrogation room and left alone.
Wood found himself in a cramped space about three metres square. The walls, bare except for a light switch, were covered in perforated white acoustic tile, which extended up the door to a square area near the top where a mirrored glass window allowed observers to look in but prevented those inside from seeing out. The floor was carpeted, and the only furnishings were a rectangular table and three uncomfortable chairs. Wood sat down in one of them and tried to get his bearings. He did not know that he would be in this room for a very long time.
By 5:00 a.m., an eerie calm had settled over the crime scene. Kevin Cleary and the other investigators had either returned to the Sydney detachment building or headed out to conduct the tasks that had been assigned to them. Inside the restaurant, Henry Jantzen stood guard in the basement as James Leadbetter continued his documentation of the scene. Leadbetter marked, photographed, and catalogued the footprints in the training room, and began a search of the upstairs floors, looking for matching prints. He found only one full print, just outside the manager’s office; there was a partial print beside the safe, but it was so faint that it could not be photographed. The sticky wax surface on the training-room floor, which had fortuitously stripped debris from the sneaker bottoms to clearly show the tread patterns leading into the restaurant, had also stripped the footwear clean. It was impossible to determine where the killers had walked after leaving the room. Leadbetter began the painstaking job of dusting surfaces throughout the building in the hopes of finding fingerprints that might later help convict those responsible. Trouble was, the killers had worn gloves, and none of the many fingerprints in the restaurant would link them to the scene.
Outside, the officers left guarding the doors stood in silence as ambulance attendants removed the bodies of Neil Burroughs and Donna Warren. For the three of us still waiting in front of the building, there was a haunting calm as the cameras recorded the silent procession. Two ambulances rolled slowly down the driveway and turned onto Kings Road; the normally busy street was empty of traffic. The police roadblocks remained in place as the ambulances drove past Kings Convenience and headed to the Sydney City Hospital, where doctors were frantically working to save Arlene MacNeil. They had already determined that Jimmy Fagan would not survive.
The parents of Jimmy and Arlene had gathered at the hospital hours before, summoned just after the two young people were wheeled into the emergency room. The families of Donna Warren and Neil Burroughs were still fast asleep; the job of notifying the families of the slain victims fell to police, who had been busy at the crime scene and would shortly be making the painful journey to the Warren and Burroughs homes.
The doctor who called the Fagans and the MacNeils had told them only that their children had been shot, and that they were needed to consent to surgical procedures. Theresa and Al Fagan were the first to arrive; they lived only a few blocks from the hospital. Al attempted to calm his wife by suggesting that there
must have been some kind of an accident and that Jimmy had probably just been hit in the arm or leg. It was nothing serious, he kept telling his wife—and himself. But that hope faded quickly as the couple rushed into the emergency room to find an ambulance gurney abandoned in the hallway. Theresa Fagan put her hand over her mouth as tears welled in her eyes. The pillow on the gurney was covered in blood, and there was no staining anywhere else.
“Oh my God, Al, he’s been shot in the head.” Al Fagan grabbed his wife to comfort her as he looked for someone—anyone—who could tell them about Jimmy. As they ventured farther into the emergency ward they were pushed aside by an emergency medical team rushing past with a body on a stretcher. They saw Arlene MacNeil, her face caked in blood. “My God! What’s going on here?” Al Fagan’s deep, booming voice filled the narrow hallway as a doctor rushed up.
“Who are you? You shouldn’t be here now.”
“Our son Jimmy … He was shot! Where is he?” Theresa Fagan pleaded for an answer; she just wanted to be with her son. Realizing who the couple were, the doctor took them to a “quiet room,” saying he’d be back when he had information for them. There, the Fagans sat agonizing over what they had just seen in the hall. They decided they should phone Jimmy’s brothers and sisters in Halifax. But what could they tell them? Al knew his boys would be filled with questions, and he had no answers. Within an hour, a big car left Halifax, bound for Cape Breton: Jimmy’s family was coming home.
As Al and Theresa Fagan sat alone in the hospital, at the beginning of what would be a long and harrowing vigil, Germaine MacNeil was speeding towards Sydney. Arlene’s mother was trying to understand the call she’d received a few moments earlier. Arlene had been shot … How could that be? Germaine glanced at the speedometer and realized she had to slow down; Arlene needed her, and she could not afford to have an accident. The fastest route to City Hospital was via Kings Road, but as Germaine pointed the car down the exit ramp, she saw the flashing lights of a Louisbourg police car: the entrance to Kings Road was blocked. Germaine shifted back into the lane that continued along the bypass and to the next exit into Sydney, her heart pounding at the sight of more flashing lights around McDonald’s. The rest of the drive to the hospital was a blur of intersections and anxiety—a blur that would hang over Germaine MacNeil’s life for months to come, as she and her family struggled to understand how their lives could have been changed irrevocably while they slept at home.
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