Free Murder at McDonald's by Phonse; Jessome Page B

had discovered a trail of prints, leading from the door where he’d found the kitbag, to the inside of the building. The leaves and dirt in the small porch between the outer and inner steel doors had covered two sets of footprints, only to be pulled off by the tacky, freshly waxed tile floor in the crew training room. For some reason, Muise’s deck shoes did not pick up grit or leave prints.
    Cleary knew the footprints were a start, but he also knew a crime scene could hold a variety of more-telling clues, some as minute as a hair or fibre. This was a large scene, and one that had to be examined carefully by experts trained in evidence collection. The first to enter was the medical examiner, Dr. Murdock Smith, who officially pronounced Donna Warren and Neil Burroughs dead at the scene. The bodies would later become evidence to be handled by a pathologist, but first, Corporal James Leadbetter of the Sydney Identification section had to catalogue the crime scene.
    An “Ident” officer approaches a crime scene the way a storyteller does, and Leadbetter knew that eventually he would have to tell all the stories revealed by this scene to a judge and jury. The first step towards preparing a scene in a murder investigation is a walk-through with the chief investigating officer: the two carefully examine—without touching—everything at the scene, and detailed notes are taken. Then the Ident officer takes an extensive series of photos that will give jurors a complete picture of the crime.
    After finishing his photography, Corporal Leadbetter went out to his station wagon and opened a case containing a video camera. He wanted the horror of this crime scene brought home to any judge, prosecutor, defence lawyer, or juror to become involved in the case; he wanted each of them to see the senseless brutality that had so deeply moved him and the other officers present. Leadbetter began by sweeping the camera slowly over the bloodstained floor where James Fagan had fallen. He walked the camera over to the body of Neil Burroughs, slowly zooming in to capture the grisly nature of the wounds he had suffered. Then he turned the camera towards Donna Warren, whose body had been pulled from the tiny office by ambulance attendants hoping to revive her. They had left her on the floor, her skirt spread neatly down past her knees, her legs together, almost as though she had been laid out by a mortician. Downstairs, Leadbetter filled his viewfinder with the coloured sticks, now clustered in a pool of blood where Arlene MacNeil had fallen.

    The kitchen at McDonald’s hours after the crime. The bloodstained paper towels were used by cabbies trying to help Jimmy Fagan; the marks on the door are fingerprinting dust. [RCMP crime scene photo.]
    While Corporal Leadbetter captured the disturbing images inside the restaurant, other cameras were causing problems for investigators outside. Upon returning to the restaurant, John and Dave Trickett began a new search with Storm; the dog quickly picked up a trail at the back of the building, leading to the field behind the building and towards the highway, then veering to the left and back to a garage at the corner of the parking lot. What the officers found there was not a suspect hidden in the bushes, but a television cameraman and a newspaper photographer, who had walked down from the highway to get closer shots of the action behind the restaurant. The brothers guided the big dog away and moved farther into the field. Suddenly they froze; night had turned to day. The sight of the dog master searching the field, protected by an officer carrying a shotgun, was too much for veteran CBC cameraman Frank King to resist. King flipped on the bright light on top of his camera, illuminated the field, and began recording; the photographer, Ray Fahey of the Cape Breton Post, was busy taking his own shots. Within seconds, the Trickett brothers recovered from their shock and ordered King away from the