OK, boys…Pack it up…Back to what you were doing…We’re
done here…
Tom Martin had known it was coming. Call it his experience
or—perhaps, more to the point—his boss’s lack of experience.
Whatever, Martin had guessed this morning’s outcome even before Bill
Hollis, the staff sergeant in charge of major crimes, descended from
the department’s executive offices to personally deliver the
message.
The Halifax Regional Police task force set up to re-examine the
August 28, 1999, murder of Jason MacCullough was being
disbanded.
Pack it up…Back to what you were doing…
It was the summer of 2005. The re-investigation had begun the year
before after an informant had come forward with new information about
what happened in the park off Pinecrest Drive the night Jason
MacCullough was murdered, information the investigators had since
“qualified” independently. Was this the break they needed to finally
close the five-year-old murder investigation?
They desperately wanted to. Jason was what cops like to call a “pure
victim:” a straight-arrow 19-year-old kid. He shovelled snow for the
elderly, volunteered with the local Boys’ and Girls’ Club. He’d just
ended up in the wrong park at the wrong, late hour on a hot, wet summer
night.
Investigators believed they knew who’d murdered Jason. The problem
was they hadn’t been able to prove it, not to the
beyond-a-reasonable-doubt certainty the courts rightly required. Maybe
this witness carried the key to unlock a conviction. Days after the
witness came forward, chief of police Frank Beazley authorized setting
up a task force to take another look at the case.
The group included Martin, other members of the department’s cold
case unit and officers seconded from regular duties. They were a
“fantastic team. Everyone had a key role. And everyone did their job,”
says Martin. Operating out of a cavernous room in the department’s
Gottingen Street headquarters, the group gathered around a
shoved-together collection of tables in the middle of the room each
morning, and sometimes again in the afternoons. They discussed and
dissected what they’d learned that day, then figured out what to do
next.
During its re-investigation, the task force progressed beyond the
thin gruel the informant had to offer, putting together new pieces of
the puzzle of who killed Jason, independent of what the witness told
them. Martin says they were “close, very close, extremely close” to
being able to lay charges.
But then, two days before it was disbanded, investigators caught
their informant toying with truth, “remembering big.” The investigators
had to cut him loose. Liars don’t make good courtroom witnesses.
It was a blow, but not lethal. Martin says every experienced
investigator knows informants are notoriously unreliable. They’re
usually criminals, with deals to make or axes to grind. So you never
depend on an informant alone to make your case. The task force hadn’t.
Which was why catching their informant in a lie, Martin believed, was
just another “bump in the road” of their ongoing investigation.
But he wasn’t sure their bosses were experienced enough to know
that.
Tom Martin looked around the room. There was disbelief, anger. The
other cops knew this was bullshit. Still, there was no point in
confronting their staff sergeant. The message had come from two floors
above, from deputy chief Chris McNeil, a man who’d never run a murder
investigation.
We’re done here…
“You’re making a mistake.” Martin tried to keep his voice neutral.
He knew he had a reputation for being one of management’s “biggest
pains in the ass.” He preferred to see himself as a guy “who wasn’t
afraid to piss off the bosses” in the interests of solving his case.
Now, he stood just inside the door of McNeil’s office and tried to
explain why the deputy chief shouldn’t do what he’d already done.
McNeil wasn’t listening. He just stared at his computer screen while
Martin made the case for continuing the task force. McNeil didn’t look
up. All he said was, “It’s done.”
The task force was disbanded. Two weeks later, Martin suffered his
first heart attack. He was never able to return to work. In 2008, he
officially retired from the force.
It is a crisp fall morning in 2009. Tom Martin and I are
having breakfast in a booth in a corner of the Athens Restaurant. Two
years before, while he was still on disability, I’d interviewed Martin
for a Coast feature (“The last best hope,” August 24, 2006) about his
obsession—even after his heart attack—with solving the city’s many
unsolved murder cases.
But he was still a cop then, which meant there were things he
couldn’t say. I’ve come back today to ask about those things, including
his views on why there seem to be so many unsolved murders in
Halifax.
The Halifax Regional Police website currently lists 48 unsolved
homicides, dating from the December 9, 1955, execution-style murder of
Michael Leo Resk to the May 11, 2009, killing of Tanya Jean Brooks, an
aboriginal mother of five.
Forty-eight unsolved homicides? What’s that number really mean?
Well, the most recent figures I could find—from the Canadian
Centre for Justice Statistics—compared homicide clearance rates from
1976 to 2005 for Canadian jurisdictions with populations of 150,000 or
more. Halifax ranked 32nd out of 38 police forces with a clearance rate
of just 80.3 percent of 157 homicides. By contrast, the city with the
best clearance rate was London, Ontario, a similar-sized city. London’s
clearance rate for 139 murders was 97.8 percent. Even the RCMP, which
investigated 4,713 murders during the same period, solved 91.2 percent
of them.
Although those statistics are dated and include years that were
kinder and gentler for violent crime, more recent numbers make Halifax
look even worse. According to its own figures, HRP’s clearance rate for
the 31 murders committed between 2005 and 2008 is just 64.5 per
cent.
Martin pins much of the blame for that on his former department’s
senior managers who, he says, lack the training and experience to
effectively manage major criminal investigations.
The department’s own website, in fact, touts Frank Beazley’s most
significant career accomplishment prior to becoming chief in 2003 as
serving for six years as officer in charge of human resources and
training. His deputy, McNeil—the man who shut down the MacCullough
investigation—is a law school graduate with what the website
describes as “a broad range of policing experience in operations,
communication and automation, and administration.”
“Chris McNeil is a smart man,” Martin says, “but he’s book smart.
He’s not investigative smart. There’s a difference.” He pauses,
considers, points. “Talking to him that day was like talking to that
plant over there.”
Tom Martin isn’t just any disgruntled ex-cop. By the time he
retired last year, he was the force’s most experienced criminal
investigator with more than 500 major case investigations under his
belt, including as lead investigator in 25 murders. In 2001—a year in
which he helped make arrests in two murders, an attempted murder and a
kidnapping, not to mention nailing serial abuser William Shrubsall for
assault and robbery and three sexual assaults, which helped convince a
judge to officially label Shrubsall a dangerous offender—his fellow
cops voted him officer of the year. In 1993, he was investigator of the
year.
In 1999, he helped create a four-level criminal investigator’s
course, which he then taught not only to fellow officers but also to
the RCMP and military police.
In addition to training other cops in the art and craft of criminal
investigation, Martin took specialized courses himself, including in
death and crime scene analysis, and cold case investigations—both of
which were jointly offered by the Jacksonville, Florida, Medical
Examiner’s Office, the US military and the FBI. (Martin is one of only
two Halifax officers to have taken the cold case course; both are now
retired.)
Experience counts, Martin says, because repetition is how
investigators learn “to fine-tune, to tweak, to attain that magic point
of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ It’s why young cops get partnered up
with experienced ones.” And why you need cops with investigative
experience making decisions about investigations.
None of that is to suggest it’s easy to solve any crime, let alone
murder. Consider the force’s best known 20-years-and-counting missing
person’s investigation. Though almost no one expects to find Kimberly
McAndrew alive or doubts she met with foul play, her case is,
ironically, still officially listed as a missing person. That means it
isn’t even counted among Halifax’s 48 unsolved homicides.
McAndrew’s case has involved false leads, informants, fortune
tellers, psychic tipsters, dog bones, well bottoms, too many bodies
that weren’t hers, weird suspects who turned out to be just weird,
eyewitnesses who probably weren’t, turf wars, a task force, missing
evidence, egos, twists, turns…and there’s still no end in sight.
The long version could fill a book; this short version should give
you the flavour of why experience matters.
At 4:20pm on Saturday, August 12, 1989, Kimberly McAndrew, a
19-year-old cashier at the Quinpool Canadian Tire store, punched off
work, walked into the parking lot and…disappeared.
Tom Martin was a young undercover drug squad officer at the time,
but he—like virtually everyone else on the force—pitched in during
the investigation’s early stages, in part because McAndrew, like
MacCullough, was a pure victim and, in part, because her father, Cyril,
was a Mountie, a fellow cop.
It was an RCMP informant who first convinced investigators Kimberly
had been abducted by pimps. While the tip had to be pursued, Martin
says, with the benefit of hindsight and experience, it’s clear
investigators fixed on it to the exclusion of other possibilities.
“Investigation 101. Don’t believe your informant too much.”
Or well-meaning, supposed eyewitnesses. One woman insisted she’d
seen Kim in a Penhorn Mall flower shop the day she disappeared. That
tip became so embedded in the investigation it’s still on the
department’s website as her last sighting.
Martin says that doesn’t make sense but believing it again kept
early investigators from considering other possibilities.
In 2004, when Martin finally officially got the McAndrew cold case
file— “I’d been working it anyway; it was the case everyone wanted to
solve”—his first step was to sit down with Kim’s family. “Let’s go
back to square one,” he told them.
He wanted to know everything about Kim, from her favourite singer
(Bryan Adams) to the fact she was still a small-town girl so nervous of
the big city she would rather go home to her parents in Parrsboro than
stay overnight alone in the Halifax apartment she shared with her
sister.
“This was not a girl who was going to go on a safari to Dartmouth,”
Martin says. Besides, if she wanted to buy flowers—it was her
boyfriend’s birthday—there was a flower shop along the most logical
route from work to her apartment. “My instincts and experience tell me
Kim never got out of that parking lot,” Martin says today.
But that raises a question. Given Kim’s skittishness, wouldn’t she
have screamed if someone had tried to abduct her in a parking lot
filled with Saturday afternoon shoppers?
She would have. Unless…
In October 1997, police in Nanaimo, BC—following up on complaints
that a man driving a Pontiac Grand Am with Nova Scotia licence plates
had been posing as a police officer to lure young girls into his
car—arrested former Halifax resident Andrew Paul Johnson. They found
a developmentally challenged 20-year-old woman locked in his car, along
with what police described as a rape kit: pornographic magazines, a
Halloween mask, handcuffs, a meat cleaver, lubricating gel and packing
tape.
Halifax police had been looking for Johnson, too. In 1992, he had
pleaded guilty to confining and sexually assaulting his Halifax
girlfriend. In 1997, he’d been caught masturbating in his car while
watching girls at play in Hammonds Plains. There was a warrant for his
arrest for harassing a 12-year-old Whites Lake girl while posing as a
teen fashion representative. And, shortly before turning up in BC, he
had disappeared from a Dartmouth sexual offender treatment
program—but not before turning in a chilling assignment. Psychiatrist
Joseph Gabriel asked participants in the program to write an essay
about a sexual assault from the point of view of its victim.
Johnson had written his about the rape and murder of Kimberly
McAndrew.
Gabriel notified the Halifax police, who quickly set up a task force
to investigate. Although Martin—busy with several other
investigations—wasn’t directly involved with that investigation, he
says its members did a “phenomenal job” putting together the puzzle
pieces of Johnson’s life.
Intriguingly, at the time of Kimberly’s disappearance, the telephone
directory lists Johnson’s girlfriend as living in an apartment in a
complex across from the Canadian Tire parking lot. “If someone had
identified himself to Kim as a police officer,” Martin suggests today,
“she—being the daughter of a police officer—might have gone with
him.”
The task force uncovered other evidence in its investigation,
too—including some which linked Johnson to other unsolved murders in
Halifax.
On January 1, 1992, a 22-year-old Vancouver woman named Andrea King
had arrived at the Halifax International Airport with dreams of
enrolling at Dalhousie Law School…and disappeared. Her body was found
nearly a year later. During their investigation of Johnson, police
found Andrea’s eye shadow compact.
Police sent several pieces of evidence for DNA testing, but the
science wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to give them what they needed
to charge Johnson.
Confronted with what they knew, however, investigators hoped Johnson
might confess. By that point, Johnson, who’d pleaded guilty to
abduction charges in the Nanaimo case, was facing a dangerous offender
hearing that could—and did—put him behind bars indefinitely.
Johnson refused to talk to the Halifax investigators.
In May 2001, days after a court in BC declared Johnson a dangerous
offender, HRP disbanded its task force, without explanation—and
without laying any charges. Why?
Three years later, when Martin—now officially a member of the cold
case unit—began his back-to-square-one re-examination of the McAndrew
file, he went looking for a piece of DNA evidence he knew the task
force had collected. Martin hoped advances in testing procedures might
produce a breakthrough. But the evidence was missing. He shakes his
head. “No one could find it.”
He also asked the RCMP for a copy of the file from the “unusual”
parallel investigation it had run into McAndrew’s disappearance. “I
asked for it, but I never got it.” He doesn’t know why—“I didn’t just
ask once”—but believes there were turf wars left over from when the
local major crimes units merged with the Mounties’ squad after
municipal amalgamation in 1996. “Whatever,” Martin says. “I never did
get the file.”
“From where I sit, in charge of operational policing,”
Chris McNeil begins, “one unsolved murder is too many for me.” Though
he says he isn’t familiar with the clearance rate statistics I’d asked
him about, the city’s deputy police chief says his force’s clearance
rate for the past two years—10 of 14 homicides in 2007-08—is a
“very respectable” 70 percent.
“There’s always going to be some ex-somebody telling me how I should
do my job better,” he says of Martin’s criticisms. “But some of the
very cases you’re talking about happened at the heyday of when Tommy
and other very experienced investigators were here. They didn’t solve
those cases.”
And to Martin’s point that the department has lost a lot of
experienced investigators in recent years, McNeil sees it as a
positive. “We’re a younger force today. There’s a whole new energy, and
people are getting opportunities that weren’t available to me as a
young officer. And now we’ve lived through that period of transition. I
have a lot of young but very experienced investigators.
He says he’s “not one to look back with rose-coloured glasses. We
will always have unsolved homicides.” Many involve bad guys killing bad
guys, and investigators can’t break that subculture’s code of silence.
Or investigators may be hobbled by “procedural protections” built into
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “Things that were done 20 years ago
couldn’t be done today.” While McNeil doesn’t dispute the legitimacy of
some of those new protections, the result is that solving cases has
become “10-fold” more complex than before.
McNeil says financial incentives—the province is offering up to
$50,000 for useful information in a number of cases, including
MacCullough and McAndrew—provide investigators with “another tool”
but, he adds, “the reward system has not led us to solve a single
serious crime so far.”
Neither, in truth, has the force’s cold case unit. Unveiled amid
much fanfare in 2000, the five-member squad was initially going to
focus on 15 homicides and eight missing persons cases, including
McAndrew. Today, its murder caseload has more than doubled to 34—now
including MacCullough—but no one will say how many officers are
assigned to it. “We don’t give information on our deployment numbers,”
HRP spokesperson Brian Palmeter told me. Neither will the department
indicate the unit’s budget.
Tom Martin suspects that may be because there’s no one besides
sergeant Jeff Clark, the officer nominally in charge, minding the
store. “You need to go out and pound the pavement,” he says.
“Re-interview. Re-think. That’s how you solve cases. It’s about
results. To my knowledge, the cold case unit has not laid one single
criminal charge in nine years. To me, that’s unacceptable.”
For his part, McNeil says the public may simply expect too much from
cold case units. “I call it the CSI factor. People think you
find a piece of forensic evidence and, 40 minutes later, case solved.
There’s no panacea like that.” Even if a cold case investigator finds
new evidence worth pursuing, he adds, the department then has to put
together a “resource-intense” task force like those in the MacCullough
and McAndrew cases.
“There’s always a challenge deciding which ones you work on and
which ones…there’s no point in pulling off the shelf,” McNeil
acknowledges. “It’s not like you’re ever guaranteed results but I have
to believe there’s something here that can be pursued and that there’s
a likelihood that this is going to produce results.” Or else?
OK,
boys…Pack it up…Back to what you were doing…We’re done
here…
When I ask Tom Martin about McNeil’s argument that some of
what are today’s unsolved murders occurred on his watch, Martin is
quick to fire back. “Investigators,” he says, “can only do what their
bosses let them do. Investigators didn’t shut down the MacCullough
investigation. The deputy chief did.”
As for being an ex-somebody, Martin says, “I’m an ex-somebody with
experience.”
He says McNeil is a “micro-manager” who makes critical decisions
about cases “even though he has never been involved in a major
investigation himself.” Martin adds that other key players in the chain
of command—superintendent Mike Burns and staff sergeant Frank
Chambers—have “little or no” investigative experience either. He
shakes his head. “These are the bosses makings the decisions on these
cases.”
One more example. On January 6, 2003, 61-year-old businessman Larry
Rhynold died during a mysterious fire in what news accounts at the time
described as his “expensive, plantation-style home” in the city’s south
end. Rhynold, who had been through a messy divorce, faced myriad
“financial, legal and personal troubles.” Days before the fire, friends
say, he’d been beaten up by two men outside his own home. Within days,
fire investigators concluded the blaze had been deliberately set.
After weeks of on-scene investigation, witness interviews and
forensic analysis, police investigators ruled the incident a homicide.
The brass disagreed.
“I argued with staff sergeant Frank Chambers for weeks trying to
prove to him that this was a homicide,” Martin says. “The department’s
policy is that every death is to be treated as a homicide until proven
otherwise. I was just trying to convince my boss to follow the
department’s own policy. In my career, I don’t recall Chambers ever
being the lead investigator in a homicide case or even being assigned a
homicide case. But he was my boss.”
Eventually, Martin says, he did win his point and Rhynold’s death
was designated as a homicide. Shortly after he left the department,
however, the case disappeared from the list of murders. Not listing it
as a murder, of course, makes the department’s clearance numbers look
better.
Why is Tom Martin saying all this now? He says he has nothing
to gain by going public, but “I have spent too many years sitting with
the families of murder victims promising them we would do all we could
to solve their case, and that’s not happening. The numbers of unsolved
just keep getting higher.”
Map of Halifax’s Unsolved Murders
Forty-eight. Plus Kimberly McAndrew… Plus Larry Rhynold… And
getting higher.
View Unsolved Murders in Halifax in a larger map
Map data culled from the Department of Justice’s Major Unsolved Crimes page and Halifax Regional Police Force’s Major Unsolved Crime page. Have a tip on any of these cases? Send it to The Coast or contact Integrated HRP/RCMP Major Crime Unit at
(902) 490-5333.
Related Stories
Frank Beazley: Setting the Record Straight
Kimber: police chief’s explanation fails
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Tom Martin for mayor? [updated]
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2009.
“Many involve bad guys killing bad guys, and investigators can’t break that subculture’s code of silence.”
Really? Well, when something like that happens generally people can’t shut up about it. Maybe the police aren’t listening fully. After all, the victims are drug dealers and prostitutes. Why would anyone offer pertinent information, even for $150,000, if the police aren’t too enthusiastic about truly nailing the murderer.
In the other cases, often it appears that the police know who did it, they have had people say they know who did it, and still, the murderer walked away because they did not have the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence (the smoking gun, a confession or, basically, film footage of the act). And they wonder why people rarely assist them? They have no faith in the judicial system.
You want to look good in numbers? Then even the murderers of drug dealers and prostitutes should be actively pursued. Incarcerating them will bring your numbers up. Although, it will also bring up the numbers in expenses. Perhaps it is the expenses numbers that most inhibits the cases from being solved ultimately.
Promotion in the police service is based on seniority except at the few top positions.
Mr Kimber should read the union contract and then ask Chief Beazley why promotion is not based on ability.
Which senior officers are not in the union ?
Great article. I didn’t used to read The Coast and still get annoyed with its leftist bias, like the socialist economic panel they proposed in the spring. But especially since the Herald tanked and spent their money on a seaside office, The Coast has been amazing in terms of story ideas and writing quality. Compare the recent holiday-timed Herald stories with vague titles like “Hearts on fire”–about the Olympic torch– to this one. The Herald reporters only write up news they can get at with an hour’s stroll there and back from the office.
Chris McNeil is the lookalike brother of Lib leader Stephen McNeil, and is very much the same type of politician. It is far more important to look like you are doing something than to actually get anything done. Between him and Chief Uncle Frank, is it any wonder the detectives get frustrated?
HPD has become an “old boys” club where the higher ups look after each other and the ones that listen to them….obey. Let’s start by taking the name off the building that they erected as some sort of dedication to a chief who deserved no recognition at all. Having his name on the side of the building is continuing a poor managed “boys club”. Put someone’s name on the building who was someone that was a true leader, who made positive change, that was FAIR. Put a vote to the public with no names, just accomplishments of that person and see what a true model is. Then perhaps a positive energy willl enter the building and inspire some change. We need an outsider to come in an clean up the “clicks” at HPD.
We need an impartial police force in order to accomplish anything, we don’t have that.
Perhaps Mayor Bumble should form an in camera committee of blowhards to consider recruiting some “real” senior investigators from other forces, or go cap in hand to the Feds and ask for outside assistance by competent officers.
After reading this article, I sit here shocked and dismayed, and my heart goes out to the families that have never been given the relative comfort of closure. Questions come to mind, first, I wonder how quickly the adminstrators would act to get a task force together and solve a murder if it was a member of their own family taken in this manner? Second, who is ultimately responsible for putting underqualified people in these positions and do they not feel any compassion for these families,or responsibility in any way? Perhaps they should be made to sit with the victims families who even years later still feel the pain.
Tom Martin is a hero for having the courage to speak out and as admirable as this is, I am guessing that nothing will be done about ever solving these crimes and well as others that were not counted in these statistics.
Those adminstrators should be ashamed.
Great story and kudos to the COAST.
If only we really knew who to believe or who not to believe…….. Alas, I feel this will never be the case in our today’s world or ever for that matter.
As a retired HPD officer I know it is very brave for Tom Martin to speak up. Deputy McNeil can be very vindictive and Tom’s wife still works for HPD. I wish her luck…she’ll need it.
When you lack real skills and qualities, one usually has no choice but to draw from the raw emotions that everyone has, that being vindiction.
Awesome article. I’ve been wondering for years what has been the matter with our local HPD and why so many murders remain unsolved.
One point struck a nerve while reading. “There’s always a challenge deciding which ones you work on and which ones there’s no point in pulling off the shelf”. I found that to be lacking respect for the victims families. Is there a 20year unsolved murder time limit or something?.
For a city the size of this, the number is deplorable.
Setting the Record Straight
It is rare that I write a Letter to the Editor, however, based on the content of the November 19 unsolved homicide article, I feel the need to clarify several points.
It is disappointing that the article brought into question the experience and professionalism of our officers, particularly those in the Major Crime Unit. Our officers are highly trained, and I have the utmost confidence in their abilities. Further, our officers are extremely dedicated, and the investigators in the Major Crime Unit are no exception. They eat, breathe and sleep the homicide and missing person files they are assigned. In fact, they take these cases personally and do everything possible to solve them.
As an organization, we strive to solve every homicide but some are not easily solved. The reality is that some – but certainly not all – homicide victims were involved in the criminal element. Police are dealing with the criminals’ code of silence, which is frustrating for the officers who are putting their hearts and souls into solving these crimes. We need the public’s help. Witness information is the key ingredient required to help solve our unsolved homicides.
What is most disconcerting is the specific information about individual files that was contained in the article. This could very well jeopardize the integrity of those files and open up old wounds for the families involved. We have reached out to the families in question to assure them that work continues on their loved ones’ cases.
Mr. Martin’s contribution to Halifax Regional Police was valuable, however, it is important to note that he has not worked within our organization for four years and since his departure, significant work has been put into those files and numerous leads followed up on, none of which he is privy to as a retired police officer. As a result, some of the information presented in the story is incorrect. Had Mr. Kimber asked us to clarify certain points, we would have set the record straight, which no doubt would have resulted in a more balanced and accurate account of our unsolved homicide files. The simple truth is that all exhibits are accounted for and the RCMP file referenced in the story has been in our possession for many years.
With respect to statistics, they rarely tell the whole story. The nature of crime is such that some years our clearance rates are not where we want them. However, it must be noted that the average clearance rate for murder files in Canada was 70% in 2007 and 69% in 2008; HRM’s clearance rate for the same period was 71% in both years.
Decisions surrounding the scaling back of aspects of major files are neither made lightly nor without consultation with a number of people within the organization and, in some cases, outside the organization. It is easy to criticize management, but it is the role of senior officers to ask the right questions and make difficult decisions. Mr. Kimber relied heavily on one person’s perspective. Mr. Martin obviously did not like the decisions that were made but that does not translate into a given that they were wrong.
Mr. Kimber claims that no one in senior management has any investigative experience. On the contrary, I was assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division for 14 years and have investigated many murders and served as the lead investigator on many major criminal investigations locally, nationally and internationally. I take great pride in our organizational experience and assure the public that Halifax Regional Police will continue to pursue every avenue to help solve these crimes.
I would ask that this Letter to the Editor be printed in its entirety so our citizens are privy to a full and balanced picture of the unsolved homicide situation in HRM.
Yours truly,
Frank A Beazley
Chief of Police
Halifax Regional Police
First i just wanna say im totally sympathetic to those who have lost a lovedone to such a vicious crime. Im very upset by the fact that this has been the third newpaper article i have seen in the past ten years about unsolved murders in Halifax and never once have i seen my fathers name his name is Alexander Campbell he was 51 at the time of his death and was murdered on April 1st 1999in Dartmouth N.S. with the killer still unknown, im not looking for sympathy i just dont want my Fathers story to go untold he was a great man and did not deserve to die this way I dont want him to ever be forgotten.
RIP Daddy forever in my heart.
Your daughter Heather.
My Cusin Rachelle was killed by a truck driver one year today Dec 3, 2008 The person who took My dear cusin from us has still not come forward!! I ask the public or anyone who has any info plz contact the local Police A.S.A.P R.I.P Rachelle, we all Love and miss you very much…. xox
Nice work Tom Martin.
What Frank doesn’t want us to know is that there has recently been an independant investigation into corruption among the local Halifax police force. Sexual harrassment, and outright theft are just two of the many behaviors being uncovered. Instead of posting to the Coast blog in order to protect the reputation of his boys club, why isn’t Frank out conducting important police business? Because positive PR is what matters to him and his career. Maybe it’s time we take a critical look at the system and decide why we are getting these poor results. Listening to people like Tom Martin, and being critical of people in positions like Frank Beazley is Our Job as Citizens. Frank is tough, he can handle it.
I know the MacCullough family. Not far from them on the same short street there is another family suffering from two unsolved murders and a missing persons case. In my personal view, the solve rate for murders in halifax is zero.
My friend David Hannan was murdered in Dartmouth on Dec. 11, 2006 and the police don’t have the decency to include his name on the list or even treat it as a homicide for that matter. He was found beaten, bloody and unconscious clinging to life with defensive wounds on his arms by John Martin School, how is that not a clear indication of a homicide? Actually when I google his name and “Halifax Nova Scotia”, I only find one article about him.
The Police are as criminal as anyone in the whole HRM, they are a government funded gang of hoodlums that harass people for fun. They make me sick they can’t even figure out how many actual unsolved murders they are dealing with let alone solve any of them. If you wanna look at figures and numbers look at how many fines and tickets they give out a year, that is the main concern, paying the rent to keep their gang hq open.
(typo)To clarify, my previous post should have read: ” Nice work Tom Martin. What Frank doesn’t want us to know is that there has recently been rumors of an independant investigation into corruption among the local Halifax police force. Sexual harrassment, and outright theft are just two of the many rumored behaviors being uncovered.”
To be fair, I’m not sure if anything has even been proven, however my point was intended to be that it is important for the community to allow people like Tom Martin to make his case. If we consider both sides of the issue critically before we make decisions or take sides it will produce better results. Aside from the solve rate for murders, I have found the Halifax police to be friendly. Some people feel differently. In general, if government or it’s agencies are creating a concern for their people, the people should voice their concerns. They must first become aware of any real problem. I suppose the solve rate for murders in halifax could be an indication that it is an area that deserves some more attention from the general public. I hope some day these families have closure.
“During their investigation of Johnson, police found Andrea’s eye shadow compact.Police sent several pieces of evidence for DNA testing, but the science wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to give them what they needed to charge Johnson.”
– now that DNA is more sophisticated, why not do the DNA testing? Maybe someone has forgotten about the eye shadow compact?
If I’m not mistaken, MomaSita, the compact involved in the Johnson case has somehow fallen into the abyss of misplaced evidence.
To another point and in speaking to this article in general, don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that the rate of unsolved murders is unknown by the authorities; they know. (If Joe Q. Public has the stats, you know the HRMP had them long before us). So, why is this the case? Let’s look at it this way; if you were called into your boss’ office and told you were not doing your job, it would likely be for one of two reasons; either you don’ know how to fully perform the scope of the job or you have too much work on your platter. So let’s parallel that with the HRMP. If they don’t have the know-how to properly perform in their roles as investigators of murder, then bring in trained people who do, i.e. Tom Miller. Put the old schoolyard rivalries, grudges and egos back in the toybox, pull out your big boy undies and focus on what is important. If there is too much work and not enough manpower, then find the manpower. It’s not rocket science. And don’t insult our intelligence by saying they can’t afford to hire more manpower – theycan’t afford not to.
The clearance rate would be FAR worse if all of the dead, naked hookers were included on the “Murdered” lists. But “Foul play is not suspected” in Halifax, when the victim is a hooker.
my friend jamie was murdered and they automatically ruled it a suicide so the police would have to investigate it. but it definitly wasnt a suicide, he was murdered and they ignored it posted pictures of him dead on the internet ! and disrespected him after he was gone.
(typo) so the police WOULDNT have to investigate it
Hats off to “The Coast” for getting this article out. As a member of http://www.unsolvedcanada.com forum, I watch all the cases of missing and murdered. I could never decide which province had more injustice and police corruption – BC or Alberta (Edmonton area). After reading this article, I’m seeing NS (Halifax area) – especially for a small province – ranks way up there on the scales of “injustice and corruption”. …as does NFLD. What a disgrace!
….and in my opinion, the most serious cover-up I’ve seen in this end of the country is the Clayton Miller case in Cape Breton.
it still sadens me to this day knowing that my friend S CONNERS murder is still unsolved even thoe most people know who is responsable…My thoughts are with her family to this day…
Plus there has been a woman missing in Eastern Passage for over a decade –
Arlene McLean
– she may have been murdered by that Colonel that worked at Shearwater. But I doubt if the police care.
http://halifax.ca/police/MissingPersons/In…
I had an incident happen when our vehicle was stolen from our yard and I had the unfortunate event of having to deal with Halifax Police rather than RCMP. Halifax police found our truck with the culprit still in it sleeping, and he had used to truck to go on a crime spree breaking into houses. We got the truck back and found items he had stolen from peoples homes..nothing left of value of course, Im sure the police took anything worth taking, but to our suprise, we found crack pipes in the front of the truck and the culprits little “crack case” that he used to store his drug and parphanelia in. In this crack case, hidden under a secret compartment, was a head of narcotics police business card, which we thought was strange. Why would a crack head have that in his possession? We soon found out…when my husband called the daily news to let them know how shoddy the police work had been (finding the stolen goods still in our truck, crack pipes and even the crow bar the culprit was using to break into homes) we got a phone call from halifax police letting us know if we went to the newspapers again, the police would actually print “they’re own story” which included the fact that my husband admitted to them that he did crack himself and the crack pipes were my husbands! I was shocked as my husband never did crack in his life, but that was how they protected theirselves…the culprit had been able to rat on someone to avoid charges of stealing our vehicle. He had told the police (susposedly) that we let him use the truck and with that, all charges were dropped and he didnt even do 1 day in jail! The police were not concerned with getting the victims stolen goods back to them and finding those crack pipes and this guy was let free becuase he Im sure, ratted on someone more important than him. I wanted to complain to the highest court about what they had done and said but was honeslty too afraid that they would harrass my family like they did the poor man who saw a police officer shoot a deer at night in burnside a few years before. They followed him, sat outside his house and harrassed his family until he decided he wouldnt testifiy. If I was stuck somewhere on a dark road at night, the halfifax police are the LAST people I’d want to drive by, only God knows what would happen to me after that!
have no doubt Countrynova there are some of us who know exactly who our police are and the RCMP here are no different…the Police Commission and justice ministers (2 Tory) are all in the know too and did whatever they must to shut down people reporting how dangerous our police force really is….I trust the crack smokers before I trust our police
I remember when I worked as a security guard in Dartmouth (High field park1997-99) . A drunk immigrant tennant’s roomates kicked him out of 1st floor patio . the tennant kicked in the main glass door to get back in his apartment. I called HRM police who went into the apartment and started ransacking the apartment and taking anything small and valuble (CD’s ,cash zippo lighters video games ) ETC. When the drunk tennant contested the search the police threatened to immediatly take him to the Airport and have him deported . Afterward police called me to there van where they asked me about how much I made at this job and gave me a share of the loot. I was afraid to not take it because there body language was threatening. I have been living in Alberta for past 11 years and when I tell my friends they just can’t believe this sort of stuff happened.
One of the murder victims you see here is my sister.Helen Knickle.I am looking for more information about where she lived ,if she has children etc,Helen and I were seperated at an early age.If anyone knows more about here please let me know.I would like to know the truth about my sisters murder.Is there anyone who knows more about her.Please ? She was very important to me.
set up facebookpage and website for kimberly mcandrew
keystone cops at the helm and you want solved murders, look at the police first they gain the most financially for each and every one . the over time – the mentioning of never really wanting to solve these crimes , when you have that many unsolved cases it guarantees tomorrows paycheck, real people with vested interests could solve these cases , and right some wrongs. same as the police hide all evidence’s gathered . they say to protect the integrity of the case, its really to prolong it. put out there what you know and let the people respond to it
One reason there’s to many dirty cops in the city there a bunch of kids and I will prove it here soon enough if there lie cheat and steal from the little guys imagine what else they do justin Shepard for one…
Thank you Tom Martin, thank you!
wonderful article but I wonder why you have Sergei Kostin listed here………Chaze Lamar Thompson has been convicted of this crime
I Don’t see my son here Donald Jermaine Stevenson,murdered in my home in Mulgrave park october 16 2010.
To: mrbillmac
Please contact me at: catherinejosey@hotmail.com regarding your sister’s murder.
also kennely matheson disappeared from acadia university in wolfville,,,he had just started college with his sister that fall i believe in the early 90s …maybe theres a connection to his disappearance too.
COPS DON’T CARE ABOUT PEOPLE!
POMPOUS ARROGANT CRIMINALS THEMSELVES!
NEVER EVER TRUST A COP!
Tanya Brookes was either stabbed by a creep they called Petie the Pimp or one of his sleezy female friends. Almost all the crack hookers in the Adsum House in 2009, were his property. He was constantly hanging around on the street outside and hated Tanya. I don’t believe he owned her. They were arguing intensely outside the place about two weeks or so before her death. It almost came to blows. A year later. I ran into the ‘one eyed’ hooker in a Tim Hortons. She started blabbing about how tragic Tanya’s murder was, stating that she was playing two sides and ratting information to police on drug dealers. She insisted that’s what caused her demise. This hooker was also a top drug dealer and had a history of violence with knives, but the police always let her go. Everyone feared crossing her because she carried a sticker knife on her person at all times.
A couple of years later, I ran into another former Adsum resident who mentioned Tanya’s death. She asked If I knew who killed her, I said I didn’t, then she joked that Petie had something to do with it. I said nothing and she walked away. The story floating around was that a bunch of girls staying at Adsum were there at that school across the street and witnessed the stabbing, but shut up because they were all Petie’s girls. Now I believe that both hookers stories put together pretty much rat him out as being involved. I also believe the Adsum staff knew who killed her and said nothing to protect the girls. The one joking may have been trying to get that event off her conscience. I don’t know this Petie’s last name. The workers at Adsum know exactly who he is. They were always chasing him off the front step. He had a girlfriend who died on the couch inside Adsum a few years before. She had a deaf daughter who was in Adsum in 2009. I’m safe now and they can’t get to me, so it’s time to tell my story. Tanya was a roommate for a while in Adsum and was sent to another shelter for a penalty. I found her address book and her diary. Another resident got hold of it and it conveniently disappeared, but I still have her address book. I never gave it to the HRM Police because they would have thrown it in the trash anyway. I don’t have an address to send it to her family. Tanya told me one day how they degraded her after an arrest, calling her a dirty slut. I know they won’t use the information I put here to solve her murder. I have a feeling they know who did it but could care less. At least now the rest of you know what I know. Find Petie the Pimp and the ‘one eyed’ hooker.