Murder at McDonald's (35 page)

As he sorted through the work Williston had already done on the file, Chisholm decided it was time to talk with Brian Stoyek. After the meeting, the prosecutor knew he had a problem: Stoyek had told him about letting Darren Muise know how he felt about him. A judge might see it as intimidation for a man the size of Stoyek to call an average-sized eighteen-year-old a “cold-blooded killer”—unless the judge saw and heard how Muise had reacted to the officer. And there was another problem. Dave Trickett, in his effort to persuade Muise to confess, had told the young man it would be better for him to tell his story before he went to court, if he expected a judge to believe him. Chisholm wondered whether a judge would consider that an inducement. The arguments over the circumstances of Muise's confession would be crucial to the case against him; the confession might not be ruled admissible as evidence if a judge ruled that either officer's comments were improper.

Ken Haley, who had worked briefly as a Legal Aid lawyer before joining the Crown office, decided to approach the Wood file from a defence lawyer's perspective. Williston tackled the MacNeil file with his usual penchant for detail, and the change of focus gave him a renewed energy. And the new guy in the office shared his colleagues' enviable work ethic. For a while, the prosecutors' family lives were put on hold; they had agreed from the start that they would give the file the same dedication the members of the investigating team had. But that didn't mean there was no room for the lighter moments, which often developed around Brian Williston's keen critical faculties. It seemed that every time his colleagues developed a theory or an approach, Williston would uncover an obscure item in the file, or some fine point of law, that put the new theory in question—a tendency that earned him the nickname “Black Hole.”

Williston's intense concentration on the file also produced a running joke among the lawyers. It all started late one Wednesday night. The three prosecutors had been working on the file all day and into the evening, debating the strengths and weaknesses of the legal arguments ahead. They reviewed typed transcripts of the Derek Wood interrogation; watched hours of video tape, recorded the night he confessed; and searched the legal library for precedents for and against the admissibility of a confession. When they realized they were too tired to continue, Haley suggested they resume that particular review the following evening, but Williston rejected the idea. “I can't do it tomorrow—I've got a commitment,” he explained. “Can we do it Thursday instead?” Haley and Chisholm looked at each other and laughed. Expressing their hope that the commitment wasn't too important, they informed Brian Williston that tomorrow
was
Thursday, and whatever he had planned for Wednesday night had already gone by the boards. As the weeks of late-night work continued, Haley and Chisholm got into the habit of ending the sessions with: “Well, we can't get back at this tomorrow. Let's do it Thursday.” The remark worked best when one or all three of the hard-working lawyers had reached the point of being too tired to concentrate any longer. They could laugh a little, and relieve stress at the expense of Brian Williston's need for a social secretary.

The prosecutors were not alone in their work. Police were giving them all the assistance they could, and the Crown attorneys were especially impressed by the diligence of Henry Jantzen, who was responsible for all the exhibits to be used during the trials. If the attorneys needed a particular item or had a question about one of the interviews with the accused men, Jantzen came through quickly. He also helped prepare a detailed document that showed the similarities and differences in the confessions made by the three men; the big, burly officer had a bit of the paper-shuffler in him, and this surprised the prosecutors.

Once the prosecutors had clawed their way through the mounds of paper Kevin Cleary had provided, they began interviewing prospective witnesses as they prepared to work out the least-confusing way to present the cases to jurors. The prosecutors knew it was going to be a tough fight, but they would try to keep Frank Edwards's promise to the victims' families and go after first-degree convictions against all three accused men. Because of this decision, they rejected a feeler sent out from the office of Joel Pink, who wrote asking if lesser charges might be considered by the Crown. The prosecutors were not sure what Pink was implying by that request; they believed they might be able to work out a deal that would see Darren Muise take the stand in the trials of Derek Wood and Freeman MacNeil, but that offer was not made in the letter. However, the prosecutors felt it was a safe bet that Pink would at least discuss the matter with Muise if the Crown agreed to move down from the first-degree murder charge against his client. Muise, after all, had broached the subject of a plea bargain with Dave Trickett before he took his lie-detector test. Whatever the letter meant, though, they had no intention of making any deals.

In the early winter months of 1993, while the three prosecutors were immersed in the McDonald's file, many residents of the community had put the tragedy behind them. A normal routine had settled in at the Sydney River McDonald's, where some of the workers organized a walkathon to raise money for the victim's families, and others had written a song in tribute to their fallen friends. “Whispers in the Wind” was a touching acknowledgment of the loss, but it was also a promise. The four employees who had so violently been removed from the workplace would not be forgotten by their colleagues at McDonald's.

I met the workers who had written the song, and interviewed them for an ATV feature. They rehearsed the song and played it through a few times for the camera; what was lacking in polished professionalism was more than adequately compensated by the genuine emotion expressed by the two young women and three young men from McDonald's. They had worked the same shifts and carried out the same duties as their fallen co-workers; they were well aware that it could have been them. For the TV interview, the group wore part of their McDonald's uniforms—not the formal pinstriped shirts, but bright pastel T-shirts emblazoned with the corporate logo. The name McDonald's was not neatly printed across the front of the shirts; instead, it was stylishly scrawled in an arc that had a flavour of fun and vibrancy. The contrast was striking—five young adults, who would ordinarily be enjoying the carefree energy of youth, were singing of death, loss, and eternity. Although the lyrics did not say it explicitly, the song spoke of what the murders had done to them. They had lost some of their innocence—they no longer could take life for granted—but they refused to accept that life could simply end for no good reason, that all the dreams and plans of youth could be wiped out by a single senseless act. “Whispers In The Wind” dealt with the anxiety the young people felt in their sudden awareness of mortality. In the song, the young people vowed always to remember the names and smiles of the fallen victims; the McDonald's workers wanted to be sure the lives of their friends meant something, that they would live on in the hearts of the people whose lives they touched.

After hearing their song, I called a friend who owned a recording studio in Glace Bay. Tom O'Keefe of Overtom Productions had told me that he, like many people in the community, wanted to do something to help the families of the McDonald's victims. When he heard that some workers from the restaurant had written a song, he immediately agreed to donate some studio time and production guidance to the group. He would help them make a cassette tape of their song, and they could sell it to raise money for the trust funds now in place for Arlene MacNeil and the families of Neil Burroughs, Donna Warren, and Jimmy Fagan. The hopes of the young McDonald's workers were realized: “Whispers in The Wind” was now a permanent tribute to the victims. The tape gave more meaning to their message. They could hold it in their hands—it was not as fleeting as they now knew life could be.

While I was interviewing them for the ATV feature, I was surprised at how many questions these young people had for me. The psychologist who had arranged to have workers taken through the crime scene before the restaurant reopened had hoped that the visit, and the explanations offered by Dave Roper, would eliminate some of the speculation and fear among the workers. That was not the case with this group. They asked me how much I knew about what had happened inside; they wanted to know if a knife had been used. Mostly, they wanted to know if their questions would ever really be answered. When I covered the murder trials, would I be allowed to reveal what had happened at McDonald's? I explained that it all would become public knowledge, maybe not during the first trial but certainly after the last one. Then I asked them if they could tell me anything about the suspects. There wasn't much to say about Derek Wood; they had only worked with him briefly, and while he was friendly enough, he hadn't really made much of an impression. But it was different now, they admitted. Derek Wood had made a powerful impression on a great many people. The young men had a clearer picture of Darren Muise, whom they also knew. They said he was a nice guy, but had a very annoying habit. No matter what you told him, he had a story to top it—if you broke your arm, Muise would say he broke both. No-one really took him too seriously when he told his stories, but he was generally liked, despite this tendency to exaggerate.

The question I had been asked by the McDonald's workers was one I faced almost on a daily basis. Because of the severity of the crime, television coverage had been closely scrutinized, and many people in the community had come to identify me with the McDonald's case. I would be at a coffee shop, or out interviewing someone on a completely unrelated story, and someone would stop and ask: “Will you be able to tell us everything that happened?” I was asked this question by politicians who I thought would have an understanding of the court system, and by union leaders, housewives, and scores of other people I had never seen before. When the crowds at the courthouse later dwindled, during the preliminary hearings for Derek Wood and Freeman MacNeil, there was a feeling that interest in the case was dying off. That wasn't really true. The anger and shock had subsided, but people still had a strong desire to know what had happened at McDonald's. They were willing to wait, but they wanted to be reassured that the truth would finally come out.

Thirteen

As the winter of 1993 melted into spring, the first of the three McDonald's murder trials was set to begin. Derek Wood was taken first to the Bicentennial Gymnasium in Sydney, where he would enter his plea on the charges against him, and where jury selection for his trial would be made. The courthouse was not big enough to to accommodate the crowd of prospective jurors. Jury notices had been sent to 500 registered voters in the Sydney area, of whom 350 were asked to come to the gymnasium on April 21; the others would be summoned only if 12 impartial citizens could not be chosen from the first group. Of the 350 people expected, however, only 179 Cape Breton County residents gathered on the first day of jury selection. Because of the outdated voters list used for jury selection, notices had been sent to people who no longer lived in the area—and even to a few who had died.

The gravel parking lot outside the gym was enclosed by wooden barricades, watched over by security guards and Sydney police officers. Death threats against the accused men had been a part of this case for some time, and they were being taken seriously. The police and sheriff's departments had received anonymous calls saying that Wood, MacNeil, and Muise would pay for what they did, and while such calls often figured in high-profile murder cases, they were still a matter of concern. Along with the phone threats, there were persistent rumours in the community that the suspects were going to be killed for what they did—rumours fuelled by gossip and speculation, as people remembered the anger the three men had generated, and pointedly hypothesized about whether the trials would in fact be needed. As officers of the court, the deputy sheriffs were responsible for Derek Wood's safety, and they wanted to be sure that he would not be hurt on their turf. Sydney police were assisting the deputies by securing the perimeter of the gym, while private security officers, hired to supplement the sheriff's department workforce, stopped cars at the parking-lot entrance to ensure that the occupants were arriving for jury duty and to direct them towards the cordoned-off parking areas. A Sydney police barricade, preventing motorists from driving behind the building, was quickly opened as the blue van carrying the suspect rolled into the parking lot, flanked by RCMP and city police vehicles. As the van continued around the rear of the gym—and away from TV cameras and curious spectators—a huge loading-bay door swung open, and the vehicle ducked inside. Only when the door had closed was Derek Wood taken out of the van.

For prospective jurors, the process of getting inside the gym was a tedious one. Each person entering the building was searched with the aid of small portable metal-detectors, a procedure so slow that jury selection was delayed by an hour before everyone got in their place. Finally, a steel door at the front of the room opened, and a phalanx of burly law-enforcement officers entered. In their midst, unnoticed by many of the potential jurors, walked Derek Wood, clad in a light-grey blazer and pants, dark shoes, and a white shirt and black tie. As Wood took his seat, I watched from my vantage point off to the side and looked for signs that the strain of the year in jail and the prospect of a murder trial were wearing on him. On the contrary, Wood's bearing was relaxed and his expression nonchalant as he watched the goings-on around him. An image suddenly came to me, as Wood took his seat at the front of the gym—Derek Wood as a kid about to start a game of pick-up basketball. His chair was located in the “key,” the area where free throws are taken, and above the young murder suspect's seat hung one of the basketball nets that had been pulled up to the ceiling as the gym was transformed into a makeshift courtoom.