Life in prison
Derrick Lawlor sentenced for killing man in woods behind Victoria Park
KITCHENER — Tammy McCreadie used to love nature and the outdoors. That changed when Derrick Lawlor murdered her father, Mark McCreadie, in the woods behind Victoria Park.
“Every time I see sets of trees it reminds me of where my dad was left dead and found,” she wrote in a victim impact statement read out loud in court by Crown prosecutor Linda Elliott on Thursday.
“I’m cautious and scared when I go out in public. I feel that there is someone lurking in the bushes waiting to attack and hurt me.”
Lawlor, 56, of Waterloo got an automatic sentence of life in prison Thursday with no chance of parole for 25 years after being found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder.
Lawlor strangled McCreadie, 50, with a scarf or other “soft ligature.” He also stabbed him just below the belly button.
It was the second time Lawlor had killed a man. In 1985, he was convicted of manslaughter for suffocating Locklyn Hutchings in a cabin in Newfoundland.
He was sentenced to four years in prison and later got a pardon.
“This was a brutal murder,” Justice Gerry Taylor said in handing out the sentence for McCreadie’s murder.
“All murders are senseless — this was particularly senseless.”