Murder at McDonald's (4 page)

“The Pier,” as Derek's childhood community is known in Sydney, grew quickly at the turn of the century, as immigrant workers flocked there, drawn to jobs at the huge steel mill that dominated the neighbourhood's landscape. Most of the steel plant jobs are long gone; at one time, thousand workers at the plant, but by 1992 only about seven hundred people could call themselves steelworkers. Many of the descendants of those immigrant steelworkers still live in the Pier, which is also home to Atlantic Canada's largest Ukrainian community as well as large Polish and Black neighbourhoods.

The Pier is separated from the rest of Sydney by a small overpass that rises above the railway tracks linking the steel mill to the rich Cape Breton coalfields, once a ready supply of the raw material needed in the steel-making process. The tracks are usually empty now; modernization has moved the steel plant away from the old process, and scrap metal has replaced raw iron as the key ingredient, eliminating the need for coal. But the overpass remains—once a means to allow traffic to flow, uninterrupted by the flow of coal cars, it continues to provide a clear physical break between the Pier and the rest of Sydney. Kids growing up in the Pier often find themselves on the defensive when they head “over town” to high school, perhaps because of the perception of the area as the “wrong side of the tracks.” For many Pier teens, the attitude that they are worth less than their counterparts from the “finer” neighbourhoods is a daunting, if ill-founded, reality. As an extension of this insecurity, many teens cling to the other Pier myth; that kids from there are tougher than kids from across the overpass.

The Whitney Pier stamp appeared to be part of Derek Wood's personality, even after he moved away, while he was still in elementary school. Classmates remember Wood as being quiet, sullen, and awkward in his new surroundings. They say he was quickly singled out by bullies looking for an easy target. This shy, self-deprecating awkwardness remained the prominent feature of Derek Wood's personality, even at the age of eighteen, when the high-school dropout began working at the Sydney River McDonald's. His co-workers there described him as nice enough, but too strange to fit in with the rest of the crowd. One time, when a fellow employee had his apartment robbed, Wood piped up, claiming to have friends that could “take care” of those responsible. The other man laughed off the offer, dismissing it as an attempt to gain points for himself in his new environment.

His fellow workers couldn't have guessed that Wood, unlike the other McDonald's employees, might have felt his life was out of control. About a year before, while training with the Cape Breton Militia District, Wood became highly intoxicated on a weekend outing, and began talking about ending his life—there were lots of weapons around, and it would be easy. He was reported, and senior officers investigated. Wood dismissed the episode, saying he was just drunk and talking stupid; it didn't mean anything. Still, the militia commanders decided to send him home before his training was complete. On other occasions, in telephone conversations with girls from his school, the teenager often complained about his life and his general unhappiness. Like his co-worker at McDonald's, and like Wood himself, one of these friends dismissed his talk; it sounded to her like typical teenage angst. Another kid not happy with his lot.

Not that he seemed to have much reason for this attitude. Wood had strong family ties in Industrial Cape Breton. His father, who later remarried, lived near Sydney with his wife and daughter; Derek's brother had an apartment outside the city; and Mike Campbell, his cousin and close friend, lived with his parents on a small lane in the Hardwood Hill area. Derek often stayed at Mike's house, although he occasionally went to his brother's, or even his father's. He didn't particularly like his stepmother, but he adored his baby sister and welcomed any opportunity to spend time with her. Still, Derek Wood had not yet earned enough to provide his own private space—not an apartment, not even a small room he could call his own. Almost nineteen, he did have a job, but no real future. Perhaps if he worked a little longer, a little harder, he could make that happen.

Donna and Arlene were not thinking about why they were working at McDonald's, or what they planned for the future, as they walked out of the rear office that morning. They were just thinking about driving home. Both girls lived on the north side of Sydney harbour, Donna in the town of North Sydney and Arlene a little farther away, in the community of Bras d'Or. When they worked night shifts, the two young women liked to set out for home together. They did not share a car, but instead drove one behind the other until they reached the North Sydney turn-off, at which point Arlene would travel the rest of the way alone. They felt safer driving the dark highway that way, and their parents liked knowing that car trouble would not leave either of them stranded. Although Cape Breton was still considered a safe place, where people helped each other, this concern was natural for attractive young women like Donna and Arlene.

As the two friends were getting ready to go home, Derek Wood was still at McDonald's, making a call to the pay phone in front of the Tim Hortons in the shopping plaza across the street, the same plaza where his dad worked during the day. But nobody was answering. He knew his friends Darren Muise and Freeman MacNeil would be there, waiting in front of the phone booth, so he figured the problem had to be with the phone itself. Wood decided to head down to Tim Hortons to see what was going on.

Two

Nothing about Darren Muise or Freeman MacNeil suggested to their friends or family that they were capable of extreme violence. At eighteen, Muise had just dropped out of high school, in February. His thick, curly black hair, good looks, and athletic prowess made him popular with the young people he knew in Sydney. The problem was, he either didn't know he was well liked, or didn't feel it was enough. He craved attention and went out of his way to get it. The youngest of four boys, Muise always seemed to be trying to prove that he was as good as everyone else. He felt he came from a tough background, but while there was not a lot of money to go around at home, he had had a very fortunate upbringing; he was loved and supported by his parents and other relatives, who hoped he might return to school someday, or perhaps go into business with his dad, who had wanted for some time to work for himself and possibly with his sons.

Like Muise, and like many young adults with no special skills or education, MacNeil was still hanging around Sydney with no real direction in his life. It hadn't always been that way. MacNeil had finished high school, and even spent a year at the Nova Scotia Teachers College; he worked briefly at Malcolm Munroe Junior High as a student teacher, and the students and faculty liked him a great deal. But MacNeil had given up on that ambition, and worked for a while as a private security officer in Halifax and Sydney. The work was not steady enough to keep him from drifting into a new, dangerous friendship—with Muise and with Derek Wood. The youngest in his family, Freeman had been raised by his mother and sisters after his father committed suicide while Freeman was a child. Now, at twenty-three, instead of spending his time making the kinds of decisions that could guide him towards a secure future, he was living an aimless existence, hanging out late at night in coffee shops, talking with other young adults who, like him, were unsure of what they were going to do with their lives. Darren Muise was one of these young people; he and MacNeil had acquaintances in common, and they soon met. As for Derek Wood, he and Muise had known each other ever since Wood moved away from the Pier and ended up attending the same school as Muise, in the Hardwood Hill area of Sydney. Restless energy and late-night conversation brought the three together.

In part perhaps out of a sense that there was nothing to lose, and in part perhaps out of the gnawing knowledge that they were headed nowhere at a time in their lives when they should have been embarking on careers or at least working towards something, the three decided to shun convention and take what they could get without earning it. If the economy of Cape Breton stood in the way of getting what they wanted, then a life of crime might deliver it.

The idea of robbing the McDonald's restaurant had evolved over the winter and early spring. In early March, shortly after he started his job at McDonald's, Derek Wood was working the day shift when he made a discovery that would form an integral part of the plan to rob the restaurant. Deliveries to the restaurant are usually made at the employees' entrance, at the back of the building; the trucks are unloaded and cartons carried to a conveyor belt that runs from the kitchen to the basement, where the stock is stored until needed. One day, the conveyor system broke down, and Wood and a co-worker were asked to go down to the basement and open the black steel door outside the crew training room. It would be easier to carry the stock through that room and into the storage area than to lug it down the basement stairs. As Wood walked out that basement door for the first time, and found himself standing at the bottom of the driveway, the beginnings of a plan came to life.

Wood floated the idea of robbing McDonald's to MacNeil and Muise, and they seemed game. The three convinced themselves that as much as $200,000 could be sitting in the old black safe in the upstairs office. All they had to do was get inside the building, and Wood's discovery was the answer to that dilemma—he would just leave the basement door open, and they could slip inside, unnoticed by anyone in the kitchen. Nobody ever used that door unless the conveyor belt broke down. The door also presented a problem, however. If they could get in that way, then employees could run out the same way during the robbery. The trio decided they needed a fourth person in order to make the job foolproof. Freeman MacNeil would drive the car and be ready for a quick escape; Derek Wood was to be responsible for opening the basement door and letting Darren Muise inside. The fourth robber would remain at the door, and if people tried to escape, he could club them into unconsciousness.

It was strange that clubbing innocent people was seen as part of the initial plan. Wood, MacNeil, and Muise had not been particularly violent young adults, but now they were clearly willing to use force. Both Muise and MacNeil had considerable martial-arts skills; but only MacNeil had any history of physical confrontation. He had been convicted and given a discharge after charges were brought against him when he pushed another youth outside Riverview Rural High School. MacNeil had a reputation among some students as a bit of a bully. He was big and strong—over six feet tall and about two hundred pounds—and he liked to show it. But even the smaller students whom he would hang upside down by their ankles did not think he was anything more than a schoolyard bully with a stupid sense of humour.

As they drove around Sydney in late April 1992, the three hoped violence wouldn't be necessary but felt they'd better take precautions. MacNeil decided he would take a gun from his girlfriend Michelle's father—a .22-calibre pistol, kept in a top dresser drawer in his room. It wouldn't be missed. MacNeil had even practised with the gun one time, on a secluded beach. He and two friends were out on a Sunday afternoon, and Freeman took the gun from the trunk of the car and fired seven shots at some bottles he had placed a few metres away. He missed with all seven shots. But the gun wasn't going to be necessary, anyway. If the robbery went according to plan, the real weapons would be Darren Muise's fists and feet. Muise had a black belt in tae kwon do and had achieved notable success in tournaments; he even taught the sport to children. Freeman MacNeil also had more than modest skills as a martial artist—he claimed to have broken an opponent's arm during a judo tournament—but in the early planning he was going to be the wheel man. MacNeil's size probably made him a better choice as the “enforcer,” but he was the only one with access to a car. Muise would wear a Hallowe'en mask, and once inside the basement he would subdue any employees up in the kitchen. Once they were out of the way, Derek Wood could run upstairs and open the safe. He thought he knew most of the combination, and if he didn't, well, Muise could always force the shift manager to open the safe.

The trio had set out to commit the robbery on April 30, but the fourth participant, whom they'd asked to guard the basement door, did not show up. They quickly retreated to the coffee shop where they'd done much of their planning, and MacNeil tried to recruit a potential replacement. But their candidate wasn't interested, so the job was postponed for a week. And they would go ahead with or without a guard at the outside entrance.

At about seven-thirty on the evening of May 6, Freeman MacNeil drove Derek Wood to work. Before he entered the restaurant, Wood took the tiny silver .22-calibre pistol from MacNeil and grabbed a handful of ammunition. He stuffed the bullets and the weapon into the black-leather pouch he wore around his waist, and went inside. Down in the crew changing-room in the basement, Wood took off his street clothes and pulled on his McDonald's uniform. Then he put his clothes and the leather pouch into his brown canvas knapsack and headed up to work.

A few hours later, MacNeil picked up Muise at a local pool hall. The two parked on a side street near Sydney harbour, where they put on a second set of clothing over their street clothes. These outer layers would later be discarded; that way, any fibres left behind at the scene—or anything their clothing picked up while they were in the restaurant—could not be traced back to them. The would-be robbers expected to find between $80,000 and $200,000 in the safe, and they knew there would be an intense investigation when the job was done. After changing, they drove to the Tim Hortons in the Sydney River shopping plaza. As they parked in front of the coffee shop, the two could see McDonald's, just up the hill.

In the basement of the restaurant, Derek Wood took his knapsack and jammed it against the frame of the door that led to the black steel door on the outside wall; if the inner door closed, it would lock. After helping Arlene MacNeil with the inventory, Wood had gone to the crew room and changed out of his McDonald's uniform, which he stuffed into the knapsack, retrieving his leather pouch. With the inner entrance safely propped open, Wood closed the outside door almost all the way, leaving just enough space to allow him to grab an edge and pull it open when he returned.