Murder at McDonald's (24 page)

MacNeil did not want to take the test, but he was equally unwilling to convey to the RCMP that he had anything to hide. “Well, I'm going to look into a taxi permit tonight. Can we do it some other time?”

“How about tomorrow morning?”

“Well, I guess so. Where do I have to go?”

“I can pick you up. We'll be going to North Sydney for the test. It should only take two or three hours, and then you can leave. Will you be here tomorrow at around eight o'clock?”

“No, I'll be at my place on Beaton Road. Do you know where it is?”

“Yeah, no problem. I'll meet you there at about eight, then.”

“O.K.” Freeman left the officer and went into the trailer. Rod Gillis waited in the car until Wayne MacDonald finished taking a statement from MacNeil's girlfriend. Then the officers headed back to the detachment.

“MacNeil's a nice kid. Can't see him involved in this.” Gillis was as impressed by Freeman MacNeil as Lambe and Eagan had been a week earlier.

“Yeah, his girlfriend backs his story about the asthma inhaler. What did he have to say about the way he drove home that night?”

“Same story he told last week.”

Ten

True to his word, Rod Gillis arrived at Freeman MacNeil's house shortly after eight o'clock Friday morning, May 15. It was the beginning of the most successful day the RCMP investigators would have since the murders occurred, a little over a week before. The road to that success would be marked with a string of conflicting and misleading statements from Freeman MacNeil, who would be working with a handicap as he tried to fool the police.

What MacNeil did not know was that as he was getting ready to go to the North Sydney detachment to take the lie-detector test, his friend Greg Lawrence was making arrangements to meet Sergeant Gary Grant. Lawrence did not want to go to the police station to make his statement; instead, he insisted on going to the Sydney Holiday Inn. As an added precaution, he drove his car to the Sydney Shopping Centre and parked there, taking a taxi to the hotel. Grant and Lawrence met, and the heavy-set young man with the dark eyes and dark hair told his story. In his version of what led to the McDonald's robbery, Greg Lawrence implicated Freeman MacNeil as the primary player, the man who controlled the conversations and took the lead in asking Lawrence to participate. Lawrence also told Grant that he had seen a small silver handgun in the trunk of the car Freeman was driving. Grant was surprised to learn that the robbery was to have happened a week earlier, but that it was cancelled when a fourth robber failed to show up and Lawrence refused to take that person's place. Lawrence didn't phone the police at the time because he said he simply did not believe they were going to go through with the plan.

At the MacNeil home, Rod Gillis told Freeman's mother not to worry; her son would be home in a few hours. They travelled in the police car, stopping at Tim Hortons for a coffee, and then went to the detachment, where Freeman MacNeil was introduced to Sergeant Phil Scharf and agreed to take the test; Darren Muise's failure had apparently made no impression on him—if in fact he had heard about it at all. MacNeil too failed the polygraph, and Phil Scharf expressed his surprise and disappointment. Then he read MacNeil his rights, telling him he did not have to answer any questions. But Scharf wanted an explanation, and he made that clear. When he suggested that MacNeil failed the test because he was afraid rather than involved, MacNeil took what he saw as a lifeline out of the pit into which the polygraph had plunged him. In reality, MacNeil was about to begin a descent into an even deeper pit. He began by agreeing to give the officer a statement; he had been afraid for the safety of his mother and his girlfriend, but now he was prepared to tell the truth.

MacNeil's story implicated Darren Muise and Derek Wood in the robbery and killings. He stuck to his original claim that he drove home to pick up his girlfriend's asthma inhaler, that he didn't leave her place until after 1:00 a.m., and that on the way, he saw Muise at the side of the road and picked him up. The new part was that Muise allegedly said and did certain things after Freeman picked him up—things that made it clear that Muise and Wood had just robbed the restaurant.

By early afternoon, MacNeil and Scharf had discussed his new statement and his reasons for not talking to police earlier. Sergeant Scharf asked MacNeil if he would meet with Constable Gillis and his partner, Constable Wayne MacDonald, and go over the details in a formal written statement. MacNeil said he would be happy to do so; he believed that once he gave the statement, he would be able to leave. Then he could help prosecute the other two, or maybe get in touch with them and make a run for it as soon as he got out. But whatever he was planning as he prepared to make a formal statement implicating his partners, the RCMP had something else in mind.

MacNeil left the polygraph suite and entered a nearby interview room. At 1:42 p.m., MacDonald read Freeman MacNeil his Charter rights and asked if he understood them. MacNeil said he did, and MacDonald and Gillis began the questioning. MacNeil claimed that it was the Monday after the murders when he began to suspect Derek Wood of being involved; he and Wood were in a car, and Wood said he'd kill himself if the girl didn't pull through. Wood, he said, was all shaky and nervous at the time. That same day, MacNeil also picked up Darren Muise, who gave him ten dollars for gas—and that was unusual, because the guy never had money. Oh, and Muise also told him to say the two of them had spent Wednesday night together if he was asked. MacNeil said he felt threatened when Muise mentioned twins from Halifax who were checking on him daily to make sure he was O.K. Those twin bikers, he said, were only fourteen when one of them killed their father. That was why he lied; he felt forced to protect Darren Muise. Then there was the matter of Darren Muise getting enough money together to move to British Columbia, where he had a job lined up with the Hell's Angels. It sounded like bullshit when Muise said it, but now he wasn't so sure.

MacNeil added more incriminating evidence to his tale: on the drive to get the asthma puffer, Muise asked him not to drive out Kings Road, the route he usually took.
Then
Muise borrowed a pair of his sneakers at the house, because his were muddy, and
then
he asked Freeman to stop by the Grantmire Brook, where he got out to urinate. MacNeil told police Muise left the car with muddy shoes in his hand but returned without them, and that before he got in the car he threw something on the other side of the road. Maybe it was a gun, but MacNeil said he never would have picked Muise up if he thought the guy was carrying a weapon. When the officers hinted that they had information implicating him in the planning of the robbery, MacNeil claimed he had been there when the other two discussed it, but told them he wanted no part of it—their plan included putting people in the freezer if they were found in the restaurant. He didn't think anyone was supposed to be killed, but he knew that Derek had a gun, because he had left it in Freeman's car a few weeks earlier. MacNeil also suggested a possible suspect if police felt three robbers had been involved. He gave them Mike Campbell as an accomplice, saying Muise told him that Campbell had driven him back into Sydney after the robbery.

The officers wrote out this statement but let MacNeil know they felt he knew more. Then he began connecting Muise and Wood to other crimes; they'd been involved in break-and-enters before, he said. As the questioning continued, MacNeil began to wonder just what it would take to get him released. He painted a grimmer and grimmer picture of his colleagues. One time they borrowed his car to go buy a submarine sandwich—Darren even borrowed money to buy the food—and when they returned, two hours later, they had filled his car with gas. He wondered how they suddenly came into money that night. At the conclusion of this statement, the officers left the interview room and MacNeil relaxed, certain that he would be able to leave soon.

This information certainly gave police reason to pick up and question Darren Muise, Derek Wood, and Mike Campbell. But MacNeil hadn't offered an account of the discussions with Greg Lawrence, and something just didn't feel right. Phil Scharf decided he would have another chat with the young man, and while the new statement was being faxed to Kevin Cleary and Sylvan Arsenault, Scharf took over the questioning of MacNeil.

The new statement, coupled with the one from Greg Lawrence, gave police enough reason to prepare for arrests, and extra officers were brought in from other RCMP detachments. It would not be a repeat of the high-profile ERT raids in Glace Bay a week earlier, but the Mounties would take no chances; the gun was still out there somewhere. Pat Murphy had been listening to the wiretaps and learned Wood was planning a night of club-hopping to celebrate his nineteenth birthday. Afternoon briefings were held, take-downs were planned, and officers were assigned to conduct interrogations once the suspects were in custody. Dave Trickett would get another chance with Darren Muise, and his partner would be Corporal Brian Stoyek, the man who had questioned Wood on the morning of the murders. Jim Wilson and Karl Mahoney were assigned to interview Wood. They were fresh faces: Cleary didn't want Wood to think he was dealing with officers he felt he had already bested. And unfortunately, officers were also assigned to arrest and question an innocent man—Mike Campbell. Rod Gillis and Wayne MacDonald were instructed to push for more from Freeman MacNeil; questioning him further was critically important. So far police had enough time to hold the suspects on conspiracy to commit robbery, but not enough to tie them to the crime itself. They needed more.

It had become a habit for me to touch base with Dave Roper every morning at eight and every afternoon about three, just to see if anything new had developed. When I called that afternoon, Roper's voice sounded excited, but he was guarded about the reason for his exuberance. Roper almost always said the investigation was going well, but this time he said things were going
very
well. I said I wanted to head out to the detachment to get an on-camera interview with him saying just that, and told him I had heard there was an unusual amount of activity at the detachment. Roper confirmed that there were several new officers in the building, but asked me not to take a camera up there right away and said he would call back in a few minutes to explain. I asked George Reeves to get the gear ready; we might have something more compelling than the community-concern item we had prepared for that evening's broadcast.

Roper did call back, saying he had switched to a telephone that was not being recorded, as most of the lines at the detachment were. This was an arrangement we had made a few times in the past week, when the officer wanted to ask a favour and knew he might have to trade information for it. I pushed for confirmation that arrests were pending, but he could not give it, and asked that I make no reference to the reinforcements arriving at the detachment—something that our camera would reveal simply by panning across the packed parking lot. His tone of concern told me that police were about to make a move, and I knew reporting it could sound an alarm for the suspects. There was no way I'd do that, but I wanted something in return for assuring Roper that I would stay away from his back door. The best he could do was to say that if I didn't have anything important to do that evening, it might be worthwhile to hang around the station for a few hours; he would call me there with something new to report. I hung up the phone and asked George if he could cancel his plans for the night. He grumbled a little, reminding me—as he had several times in the past week—that he did have a life outside the workplace; maybe I should consider getting one myself, he remarked, heading into the equipment room to sort through the gear. I knew he was joking, and that like everyone else, he was looking forward to seeing this case resolved, but it reminded me to call home. I was going to be late again.

By the time plans for the arrests were readied, it was too late in the evening to make the move before Muise, Wood, and Campbell left their homes. Officers debated whether to make the arrests in public places and risk a violent confrontation, or wait until the suspects had returned home. While those issues were being worked out, Phil Scharf persuaded Freeman MacNeil to give yet another statement. Once again, he insisted that he had held back information earlier in the day because he was afraid that his mother and girlfriend were in danger. Scharf told him that if he was not completely truthful, Wood and Muise would remain at large, and his loved ones might indeed be put at risk. Then, Gillis and MacDonald took over again.

This time, MacNeil's statement was much more specific, and MacNeil hoped the details would convince police he was finally telling all, and should be allowed to go home. The new statement would run eleven pages in length; Gillis and MacDonald wanted every bit of information MacNeil was willing to give. “Freeman, you spoke to the other police officer, Phil Scharf. Do you wish to say anything further at this time?”

MacNeil was relaxed and his tone was casual as he began his newest tale. The officers had no inkling of the bombshell he was about to unleash. “Yep. Darren Muise didn't have anything with him … when I picked him up, but he got me to stop along the bypass and he picked up a steel can. I don't know what the contents were. I assume it was the contents from McDonald's. I asked Darren where Derek was; he said he went to call the police. He said that they robbed McDonald's, and when Derek got inside, that he went nuts and started shooting everybody.”

That was it. Just before 5:00 p.m. on May 15, police heard for the first time who had pulled the trigger. It was a shock to the officers who had dealt with Derek Wood. They suspected him of being involved, all right, but was he really capable of that kind of cold-blooded murder? Was Derek Wood the gunman, and did he still have the gun? MacDonald and Gillis continued to question MacNeil, while Phil Scharf contacted Sydney to report that they had a statement implicating Muise and Wood in more than the planning of the robbery.