Murder at McDonald's (26 page)

We decided not to take a station vehicle—not much point in drawing the attention of the police while we tried to find out where the arrests would be made. We drove through Sydney, passing all three clubs. No sign of unusual activity at Smooth Herman's or Daniel's, but as soon as we rounded the corner and headed for the Irish Club, I saw what we were looking for. I had contacted a former member of an RCMP emergency response unit, who told me team members would try to blend into the area where they would be attempting to make the arrests. And there they were, six plainclothes police officers, mingling on the sidewalk outside the club, trying to look like other late-night revellers deciding where to head next. They would not have stood out in any way, but I knew half of them and recognized the unmarked police four-wheel-drive parked at the curb. The car we were driving was too cramped for George to work from, so we borrowed a half-ton truck from the duty engineer at the station. As George prepared the gear in the back, I started out of the lot. He had his camera pointed out the side window of the cab; suddenly, he pounded on the window separating the two of us. “Hold on, hold on. I don't believe it,” he shouted. “This recorder is not working.” George jumped out and ran for a new recorder; he was back in less than a minute, and we raced down the road, reaching the corner near the Irish Club just as the unmarked cars pulled away. We had missed the arrest by seconds. I swung the truck around and raced towards the RCMP detachment; maybe we'd be lucky enough to get a suspect being taken into the building.

There was no sign of activity there, so we headed back downtown to look for witnesses to the arrests. The coffee shop where Freeman MacNeil, Derek Wood, and Darren Muise had planned much of the robbery was on the same block as the Irish Club, and there we found the two men who had been with Wood and Campbell at the club. They were shocked, and they were telling everybody about what they'd witnessed. It didn't take too much persuasion to get them to repeat the story on camera. They said they were walking out of the club when suddenly a couple of big guys grabbed Wood and Campbell, leaned them up against the car, and told them they were under arrest for murder. The two were quickly placed in the back of separate cars and taken away.

The name Derek Wood was not much of a surprise; I had heard he was the employee who ran away to call police after the killings, and I had confirmed that he had been kept at the RCMP detachment for twenty-six hours after the shootings. But Mike Campbell? I had met Campbell years earlier, and in the past year he had received media attention when he acted as a key player in resolving a conflict among teens in the community. Some kids in Campbell's neighbourhood of Hardwood Hill had been tossing around white supremacist slogans, and Campbell and a few others responded by meeting with Black community leaders and teens from the Pier, making it clear that the troublemakers were not representative of young people in the area. It made no sense that a bright young man, compassionate enough to help out in such a situation, would turn around and start murdering people. (Incidentally, this was exactly what Campbell would try to convince the RCMP, when he gladly agreed to take a lie-detector test and clear his name.)

Although the interviews were great, we were furious about the bad luck that kept us from getting video of the arrests. We returned to the station and called Dave Roper, who told us he would call as soon as he had a statement prepared. In fact, he was delaying us so that officers could inform the victims' families about the arrests. It was almost three in the morning before the Mountie was finally ready to stand in front of the camera and release the good news: three men had been arrested, two in Sydney and one in North Sydney. The Mounties were not ready to include Mike Campbell as an arrested suspect; they were questioning him, but by that time it was becoming clear that he was not a suspect. Roper didn't release any names, nor did he say what charges these suspects might face or when they would appear in court. We returned to the station to edit a report that highlighted the arrests at the bar and the 3:00 a.m. press briefing with Roper. At five-thirty in the morning, I went home for a few hours' sleep before returning to find out everything I could about the suspects now in custody.

Derek Wood was not surprised when he was handcuffed and placed in the squad car, but he demanded to know why Mike was being taken away in another police cruiser. Wood insisted that Mike had nothing to do with the crime, adding that it was lame to try to use his friend to get at him. The officers said they would talk with Wood when they arrived in North Sydney, where he was being taken for questioning; Mike was going to the Sydney detachment. As the police cars left the club, the backup teams prepared for another arrest. Just after 1:00 a.m., Dave Trickett knocked firmly on the door of Darren Muise's house. He informed Darren's startled parents that he was there to see their son again. But this time he was not asking Darren to come along to help the investigation; he was placing the eighteen-year-old under arrest. Muise was cuffed and lead to the waiting police car, just as Trickett had promised he would be. Muise was taken to the Reserve Mines detachment of the RCMP to face questioning.

Kevin Cleary felt more relaxed after the final arrest was made, but the real work was yet to come. There was no strong physical evidence linking the suspects to the crime; the police needed confessions, and they would have to be properly obtained. Those selected to conduct the interrogations knew the case depended on it.

When Derek Wood arrived in North Sydney, he was taken to the polygraph suite where both Muise and MacNeil had tried to lie their way out of the mess they were now in. Wood was not going to be asked to take a lie-detector test, though; he was simply going to be asked to confess. Wood did not realize that he just about passed Freeman MacNeil in the hallway, coming back from a meeting with his lawyer, Art Mollon, in another area of the North Sydney detachment. Mollon had told MacNeil that he should continue to remain silent when questioned; he had already told police enough. MacNeil took the advice, and when Rod Gillis and Wayne MacDonald realized further questioning was pointless, MacNeil was placed back in the cell to spend the night.

The first of the three to see the inside of a jail cell, Freeman MacNeil found himself in a large, sterile room with marbled floors that curved up to form rock-hard benches on three of the four sides of the room; the cell could sleep three or four drunks on a busy night. A lidless stainless-steel toilet, with a moulded seat that could not be lifted, was located at the end of one of the benches. On top of the rear wall were small, thick, opaque glass windows that offered no view but allowed a bit of natural light into the gloomy cell. The huge brown steel door had a slot cut in it to allow officers to hand food to prisoners; it also had a window, to allow guards to check on the inmates, but a sliding steel plate could be placed over the opening to prevent prisoners from seeing out. Constable Wayne MacDonald checked behind the brown door every fifteen minutes, all through the night, to make sure his prisoner was all right. At one point, MacNeil asked MacDonald for a blanket, then made himself as comfortable as he could on the marble bench. A little after two in the morning, MacDonald opened the cell and allowed Freeman MacNeil's mother and sister to visit with him. It was an ordeal for the two women: Freeman was the baby of the family, much-loved by his mother and sister, who were helpless to get him out of the trouble he was in.

Meanwhile, Qerek Wood was in the polygraph suite, where he was being advised on his legal rights. Dressed in a black T-shirt and loose-fitting pants, Wood did not look like the killer the RCMP now believed he was. The outfit, along with his sandy hair, pouting lips, and sullen eyes, made him look a little like the late Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones.

After he was informed of his rights, Wood told the two constables with him that he wanted to speak with his lawyer. One of them, Jim Wilson, left the interrogation room to look for the phone numbers for Legal Aid counsel and was surprised to learn that Art Mollon was already in the building; he came back and told Wood, who said he wanted time with the lawyer. The two met in a separate interview room, and Mollon again told his client to remain silent. But Wood said he wanted to talk; he was ready to get it over with. Mollon told him to wait until he had a chance to speak with his partner, Allan Nicholson; the two of them would decide what was in Wood's best interest. Wood gave his word, even signing a piece of paper stating that he would not discuss the matter with police. But the tall, stocky Jim Wilson and the slight, fair-haired Karl Mahoney had other ideas.

The police interrogation is probably the most complex task an officer ever faces. The sole aim of the interview is to persuade suspects to abandon their instinct for self-preservation in favour of a soul-cleansing confession. The most-effective interrogators are able to bring suspects around to their line of thinking, actually making them feel good about telling all. While the moment of confession can be a wonderful unburdening, however, suspects usually come in contact with attorneys, whose job it is to explain that such a moment of catharsis will almost certainly rob them of their freedom. Such was the challenge facing Jim Wilson and Karl Mahoney. They had talked over their options and approaches before entering the polygraph suite. Wood was involved, they knew; Freeman MacNeil had given that much to police. But they also knew he would not be convicted of murder based on the testimony of MacNeil, who still maintained he had not had direct involvement in the crime. The dedicated policemen felt the burden as they approached the interrogation: this vital case could depend on what happened in that little room. The kid waiting for them would be no easy sell—Brian Stoyek had tried for more than twenty hours to convince Wood to tell his story, and Stoyek had failed. Wilson and Mahoney vowed they would not.

In the room, Wood informed the officers that he had been advised by his lawyer not to comment, and that he planned to follow that advice. Wilson and Mahoney tried to shake the pressure and focus on their work as they considered Wood. Although all the officers involved in the arrests were feeling this pressure, Karl Mahoney felt something the others did not. His colleagues knew what he was going through and felt for him, but they could not share the strain. When it became clear that Darren Muise was not a witness but a suspect, word quickly spread through the investigating team. Muise had dated Mahoney's daughter for about nine months. Both Mahoney and his wife disapproved of Darren Muise and were relieved when their daughter ended the relationship. Neither parent had any inkling that Muise was capable of a crime like this; it was just that he had failed high school and was drifting into an aimless life that the cop in Mahoney knew would lead to no good. He was not looking forward to telling his little girl what he hoped to learn from Derek Wood. He was angry; this crime had hurt a lot of people, and now it was going to hurt his daughter. Mahoney tried to put those thoughts out of his head, but as the questioning began, it would quickly become apparent that his anger was going to make him the aggressor in this interrogation. Jim Wilson was much bigger than his partner, but he would be the one to befriend the suspect. Putting a killer at ease and making a personal connection with him was something most interrogators tried to do, despite what it made them feel like afterward. If the job was better done because you showed compassion and understanding to someone whose actions made you sick inside, then it was what you did; you could always deal with your own emotional baggage later.

Mahoney began the process of questioning Derek Wood. “There's a few things I want to talk to you about—just to tell you what has to be done here.” Wood did not want to hear anything; he just wanted to clear something up: “The only thing I gotta say is that Mike, I know for a fact, 'cause when I called him he was asleep.” Mahoney ignored the interruption and showed Wood a list of the charges he faced, among them three counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder. The list was placed on the table in front of him.

As the officers began to question Wood about the murders, he insisted he would not be making any comments, at least not tonight. Seeing Jim Wilson place a notepad on the table and begin to take notes, Wood told him not to bother wasting his time. “You might as well save your hand,” he said. “If there's anything I know, it's gonna be said to my lawyer. There's nothing I'd say tonight.”

“Why's that?”

“If I know anything, it will come out in time. But as of right now, I have nothin' to say.”

“Why don't ya just get it off your chest now?” More than six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, Jim Wilson was careful to take a soft, friendly approach with Wood; he did not want his size to intimidate the teenager. Wood did not want to be questioned, either in a gentle or a harsh tone, so he hinted that if the officers would wait, they'd get their statement: “I have nothing to say. If—if there's anything that I know that you want to find out from me, probably find out tomorrow morning. I have nothing to say until my lawyer's here. We're just going to sit here all night saying the same thing, and I'm not saying anything. You guys are going to be asking me, ‘Why not?' I know this already. I have nothing to say.”

Mahoney realized they would have to convince Wood that he had not fooled police a week earlier, that this was different. The officer told Wood that the only reason he had been released the first time was that police were sent on a wild-goose chase by someone who decided to call and give them false information. But Wood stuck to his position. The only topic Mahoney was able to get him to open up on was Mike Campbell. Wood was clearly upset that his cousin was being detained. “All you're gonna do, you gonna arrest him, maybe charge him. I mean, he won't even be held here—probably until tomorrow.”

“Do you think anybody that's charged for murder is gonna go anywheres?” Mahoney wanted Wood to know his friend was facing the same serious charges. The police, operating on the information from Freeman MacNeil, considered Mike Campbell at the least an accessory, and possibly a participant in the killings.