Lawlor appealing his murder conviction
KITCHENER — Derrick Lawlor is appealing his first-degree murder conviction.
He has launched an “inmate appeal,” which is an appeal by someone in custody who is currently not represented by a lawyer.
Documents for the appeal apparently have not yet been formally filed with the Ontario Court of Appeal. A date for the appeal has not been set.
Lawlor, 56, of Waterloo was convicted in October of murdering Mark McCreadie in the woods on the edge of Victoria Park in Kitchener on the night of April 9, 2014. He got an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
McCreadie, 50, lived in Kitchener and was the father of two.
Lawlor had sex with McCreadie in the woods before strangling him with a scarf or other “soft ligature.” He also stabbed him just below the belly button.
Lawlor did not testify at his trial and had nothing to say before being sentenced.
In an interview with police, Lawlor said he had been “vio-
lently raped” by a man a year before McCreadie’s murder.
He said he was initially ashamed, but then said he began drinking and “cruising for perpetrators.” He often drove around with a knife and rope.
The trial was told Lawlor planned to kill another gay man before murdering McCreadie but relented when the man complimented him on his listening skills.
“This was a brutal murder,” Justice Gerry Taylor said in handing out the sentence. “All murders are senseless — this was particularly senseless.”
It was the second time Lawlor had killed a man. In 1985, he was convicted of manslaughter for killing Locklyn Hutchings in a cabin in Newfoundland. He was sentenced to four years in prison and later got a pardon.
Jurors in the Kitchener murder trial were not told about the Newfoundland killing. They took a little more than four hours to reach a verdict.