At five that morning, Olive Warren was awakened by her husband. She generally rose early to get ready for work at a nearby motel, but this morning Olive would not go to work. “There was a report on the radio about a shooting at McDonald’s,” said Donald Warren. “It says people were killed.”
Olive looked at her husband. “What? Where’s Donna; is she home?”
“No.”
She ran to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and quickly dialled the restaurant. Donna was the manager; if something had happened, she would have to stay, but surely she’d answer the phone. It seemed an eternity before the frantic mother accepted that no-one was going to answer. She quickly looked up the number for the RCMP in Sydney, but instead of calling the emergency number, she dialled information—and the Mounties had stopped answering that line as they began the initial coordination of the biggest investigation the detachment had ever handled.
Olive Warren’s son was just coming into the kitchen as she slammed the phone down, then looked for the number of the Sydney police and debated going to the restaurant to see what was happening. No. She would call the Sydney police first. The night duty sergeant at Sydney police headquarters told Olive he was not sure what had happened at the restaurant, and that the RCMP were handling it. Olive explained why she was calling. “My daughter was working there last night, and she’s not home. Who can tell me if she’s all right?”
“If you hang up, I’ll call back in one minute, ma’am. I’ll find out for you.” She must be O.K., the family agreed, sitting in the dark kitchen and waiting anxiously for the sergeant in Sydney to phone again. When he did, the officer gave Olive Warren a new number to dial and told her someone was waiting for her call. That someone was Dave Roper; the information officer had been told that Mrs. Warren was trying to find out about her daughter. Roper did not want to take the call; there was no way he wanted to break news like this to someone over the phone, and he had no idea what to expect as he picked up the phone. Olive quickly identified herself and explained that she was trying to find out what was happening at McDonald’s.
Roper stalled. “Has your daughter arrived home yet, Mrs. Warren?”
“No, that’s why I’m calling.”
“Do you still live at the same address in North Sydney?”
“Yes, yes, I do—now can you tell me anything about what happened at McDonald’s?”
“Mrs. Warren, an officer has been sent to your home to explain the entire situation to you. He should be there any moment now.”
“Someone’s coming here?”
“Yes, ma’am, and he can answer all your questions if you could just wait a few more moments.”
“Thank you, thank you very much.” Olive Warren hung up, and as she turned from the phone, her son noticed two cars pulling into the driveway. It was the RCMP and a North Sydney police car. Olive Warren knew at that moment that Donna was not coming home. Outside, Constable David Trickett braced himself for the job every policeman hates.
While Dave Trickett was steeling himself to knock on the door of the Warren home, Constable Darryl Aucoine was standing in front of the home of Neil and Carmel Burroughs, in the small community of Dominion, just outside Glace Bay. Aucoine had enlisted the help of the town police department; a constable from the Dominion force stood uncomfortably beside the Mountie as he knocked hard on the front door.
Upstairs, Carmel Burroughs awoke with a start. “Neil! Neil, wake up, there’s someone at the door.” Neil Burroughs, Sr., rolled over and said to his wife: “It’s probably Neil. Go let him in.” Their son often stopped on his way home from the back shift, to see if there was anything he could do to help his parents before going home to see Justin and Julia. Carmel Burroughs jumped out of bed and grabbed her robe. Surely that couldn’t be Neil, she thought. It was too early. When she got downstairs, she realized the knock was at the front door; now that was not Neil. Carmel was confused as Darryl Aucoine identified himself; she vaguely recognized the other officer.
“Ma’am, is there anyone else at home?”
“Yes. My husband.”
“Could you wake him please, Mrs. Burroughs?” Carmel was too confused to wonder about the request; she went to get her husband. The Burroughs had raised seven children, and they knew a visit from the police in the middle of the night meant something was wrong.
“Is it Neil?” Carmel asked when they came back downstairs; her son was still on her mind. There was no easy way to say what had to be said. Darryl Aucoine had a reputation at work as an officer with a keen sense of humour, who loved to make people laugh. But now, it was as if his cheerfulness had been drained right out of him, and all he felt was sick at heart.
“I’m afraid your son Neil has been brutally murdered.” The words came out almost on their own. They hit Carmel Burroughs hard and fast. Panic and blackness engulfed her as she dropped to the kitchen floor. Her husband and Corporal Aucoine quickly picked her up and eased her into a chair as the other officer grabbed a glass of water. Carmel slowly came around, but she never fully recovered from the words she had just heard. Her little boy, her helper, her friend—my God, Neil was gone.
Once he had helped to comfort Carmel Burroughs as best he could, Darryl Aucoine faced yet another painful duty—informing Neil Burroughs’s young wife that she was now a widow. He could see Julia Burroughs fighting for control as he spoke with her, but the shock in her eyes told another story. Please, Lord, this can’t be happening. Justin loves his daddy. Don’t take his daddy away.
In North Sydney, Dave Trickett tried to console Olive Warren as she reached for the telephone. There were people to call, things to arrange. Olive was acting out of reflex, trying to busy herself, and the young officer knew her state of mind could change at any second. He offered to wait with the family until the calls were made and relatives came to the house. Olive declined, and Dave Trickett headed back to his car, leaving a tearful and shocked family behind him. He was not sure what role he would play in this investigation, but the young constable wanted to help find those responsible for making him the bearer of such emotionally shattering news. Olive Warren’s life had been changed forever when a bombshell was dropped by a policeman she did not know and whose name she quickly forgot as he drove away in silence.
With the painful job of notifying the families completed, it was time to tell the public what had happened at McDonald’s. Dave Roper had been busy writing a statement for reporters, who stood huddled in the cold outside the Sydney detachment, but he could not read it until he got clearance from Kevin Cleary and Herb Davies, the two officers in charge of the case. They were both busy debriefing officers who had been at the scene and formulating a plan for the next few hours. The first twenty-four hours are the most critical in any major investigation, and the RCMP were determined not to let this trail grow cold. Roadblocks had been set up in several key areas on the island; John Trickett was preparing to take his dog Storm on a daytime search of the area around McDonald’s; and the restaurant owner and managers were being questioned about any possible motive for the shooting, other than robbery. Police wondered, for example, whether only one of the four victims was the target of the attack, and whether the others had just gotten in the way. There was also the question of the possible eyewitness, Derek Wood, still squirming in his uncomfortable chair in the interrogation room, elsewhere in the building.
Finally, Dave Roper came outside and invited the reporters into the building. The briefing was held in the reception area of the detachment, with Constable Roper standing behind the counter and reporters on the other side, reaching towards him with their outstretched microphones.
“Shortly after 1:00 a.m., RCMP received a report of gunshots fired at the McDonald’s restaurant in Sydney River.… Investigation at the scene revealed that as a result of an apparent armed robbery, two persons were killed and two other persons were shot and are in critical condition.… All four victims are employees of the restaurant. Sydney detachment of the RCMP is requesting the assistance of t
he general public. Anyone who may have been in the area … is asked to call.” The call for public assistance became Roper’s signature in the days ahead, and it paid off; the phones began to ring steadily and continued to do so for days. At the end of the prepared statement, the questions began.
“Was the restaurant open at the time of the shootings?”
“No, and we want to make it very clear that all of the victims were employees of McDonald’s. This is not a case of someone walking into an open restaurant and shooting people.”
“Can you tell us the type of weapon or weapons used?”
“We believe at this time it was not a rifle.”
“So it was a handgun?”
“We believe so, yes.”
“Do you have any suspects at this time?”
“No, at this time we are pursuing a number of avenues.” Roper knew that Derek Wood was being questioned, but the young man was still being considered a witness, despite the growing belief within the detachment that he was in some way involved in the tragedy. Besides, even if he was involved in the crime, two other people had been seen running away, and there was no point letting them know that Wood was already in custody. Roper cut off the questioning by inviting the reporters to come back at 3:00 p.m. for another briefing. At that time, Roper would face tougher questions and a group of unfamiliar faces; the reporters attending the first briefing knew Roper, and he knew them. In the months since he had become the media officer, he had met with all of them on stories ranging from crime-prevention initiatives to safe-driving campaigns. The reporters from the Cape Breton Post, CBC Radio and TV, CJCB Radio, and ATV had enough for now, but we’d be back.
With the information from Roper and the crime scene description from the motorist who had seen where Jimmy Fagan’s body had fallen outside McDonald’s, I headed to the ATV newsroom to file the first in a series of reports on the crime. The most powerful image we had was the tape that showed the ambulances leaving the restaurant, and it figured prominently in the first reports. Within hours, the procession that had been witnessed by only the three of us was seen by millions, as stations across Canada and the U.S. picked up the video. Local Crown prosecutor Ken Haley saw the report at home, on an American network; at first he thought the incident had occurred in some crime-ridden city in the States. When the news anchor reported that the shootings had occurred in the small Nova Scotia community of Sydney, Haley’s heart skipped a beat. He dressed quickly and left for work, knowing he could get more information at the Crown office. Little did he realize how involved he would become in this case in the months ahead.
Just before 6:00 a.m., Corporal Brian Stoyek returned to the interrogation room at the Sydney RCMP detachment, where he found Derek Wood using the phone that was sitting in the middle of the table. “Who are you talking to?” Stoyek asked. “My cousin Mike,” the young man replied. Wood had no idea that by making this second call to his cousin, he was also making Mike Campbell a potential suspect. He also had no idea what a complex chain of events was unfolding outside the small room. But he would soon discover that he was by no means home free.
“You’ll have to hang it up,” Stoyek said. “You can’t talk to him until we finish asking you a few questions, Derek.” Wood hung up, and Stoyek unplugged the phone and took it out of the interview room. When he came back, he was carrying a note pad; he told Wood he wanted to get a detailed written statement. In that statement, the young man told the officer he had finished his shift at McDonald’s but stayed behind when Arlene MacNeil asked him to help with the inventory; they did that work in the lobby, and then he went downstairs to change. After that, he decided to have a cigarette, so he went out through the basement door, propping the inner door open with his knapsack and standing outside the big outer door to smoke. The outer door could only be closed and latched from the inside, so he didn’t have to worry about holding it open while he enjoyed his cigarette. Wood said he was smoking at about one o’clock in the morning when he heard two shots that sounded like a C-7 or an American M-16; he recognized the sound of these high-powered rifles because of his training with the Cape Breton Militia District. The two shots came real fast, he said—real close together—and they were followed by a single scream, which sounded like Donna’s voice. After hearing that scream, Wood said, he took off along the route he had shown Stoyek.
A short time later, Kevin Cleary joined Stoyek in the interview room; the corporal had convinced the investigating officer that something was not right with Derek Wood. The young man was unaware that he was becoming a focus of the just-developing case, but he was beginning to realize that his first impression—that it would be easy to fool the police—was far from accurate. At least, this big Stoyek guy and the Cleary fellow were obviously not ready to accept what he had to say at face value. But he wasn’t particularly worried when officers came in to check his sneakers; if his footprints were by the basement door, it only supported his story.
The two officers kept pressing for details and pointing out things they said didn’t make sense. Wood tried to buy time, filling in blanks with facts he was sure of, things that had happened before and after the shootings. He told them that he made two calls from Kings Convenience, but that he was pretty sure the first call was to an ambulance company. He told them that he phoned Mike from the same store; he told them that he went for a walk. He talked about helping Arlene with the inventory and then having a cigarette with another cash worker before she left. But then they would do something like ask him how it was he could smoke inside after working with her, and then have to light up outside the back door later.
Wood was relieved when Kevin Cleary left, at about 8:00 a.m. Maybe he would get a break. Cleary had decided to check on a few points in Wood’s story; he was not comfortable with what Wood was telling him, and he wanted to see how the evidence at the scene fit into the picture. Back at McDonald’s, the corporal talked with Ident officer James Leadbetter, who was still working inside. Leadbetter showed Cleary where he had marked the footprints on the blue tile floor in the crew training room—the faint set of prints leading to the basement door, and the more clearly defined ones, extending from the back door into the restaurant; one of the stronger prints lay directly across one of the prints headed out of the basement. Clearly, the people coming in were the last ones to walk in that room, which did not fit with Derek Wood’s story about having a smoke, then running away after hearing shots. Wood must have let them in, at least.
Then, Cleary and Leadbetter tested the big black steel door, which had been locked when officers arrived on the scene. Wood’s explanation was that he slammed it when he ran away. Corporal Leadbetter slammed the door; it did not lock. Again and again it did not lock. Leadbetter must have slammed that door twenty times, and only twice did the steel lever fall into the bolt. It was highly unlikely that anyone running away could get that door to lock by slamming it. Finally, the two officers searched around the door and the driveway for fresh cigarette butts; Derek Wood said he had smoked two. There were none.
The evidence at the scene; the cut hand; the phone call to his cousin from Kings, looking for a drive home; his decision to walk away from the store and not wait for the lift. This was all very disturbing—and Cleary had a new concern about Wood. He learned that Wood had phoned Freeman MacNeil’s house from Kings—and that the young man had neglected to tell police about this. Wood had told Stoyek that Freeman drove him to work that night, but he hadn’t mentioned the phone call he made later. Police found out about that call early in the morning, after Corporal Trickett visited the MacNeil home to ask Freeman a few questions. The young man wasn’t there when Trickett arrived at the MacNeil home on Beaton Road, so Trickett spoke to his mother.
The corporal really liked Edith MacNeil; the slight, friendly woman reminded him of his own mother, and he repeatedly assured her she had nothing to worry about—he just wanted to ask Freeman about a friend he had driven to McDonald’s. Edith asked if that friend was Derek and told Trickett he had
called there looking for Freeman at around one in the morning. Derek had missed Freeman by only a few minutes, she said; her son and a friend had left after picking up an asthma inhaler that Freeman’s girlfriend needed. That was probably where Freeman would be now, she said. As the officer was about to leave, she wished him luck, saying: “We’ll be thinking of you. I hope you catch the people who are responsible.” Trickett would have liked to stay and chat with her a while longer, but he couldn’t afford the time; there was too much to do. He told her he appreciated her good wishes, and turned to go, noting, as he drove down the long driveway, that the old white house needed a paint job.
In the small interview room, Cleary began to confront Derek Wood with some of the inconsistencies in his story. Wood had no explanation, and as Cleary talked, he began to fold himself into a fetal position in the chair—a posture that suggests to police that a person has something to hide, something to protect. By noon, it became clear to the officers that they were not making a lot of progress; they left the room to plan a new approach.
It had been a very frustrating morning for Brian Stoyek, who occasionally left Wood alone so he could clear his head and try to figure out how to get through to the small blond teenager who sat in the room, fidgeting but showing no signs of panic, or any other emotion, for that matter. Stoyek was certain Derek Wood, knew something—at least who he had kept that basement door open for—and he could not understand how this apparently normal young man could sit in the interrogation room and protect killers, instead of helping police avenge the deaths of his co-workers.
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