Thirty years of pain
Mcdonald’s murders ‘shattered’ community
SYDNEY — Cathy Burroughs has been going to court dates and parole board hearings for 30 years.
And the fight is far from over.
But it’s changed over the decades since her brother, Neil Burroughs Jr., and three co-workers at a Mcdonald’s restaurant in Sydney River were shot during an armed robbery on May 7, 1992.
“I still am the voice of those four kids so I take it seriously,” said Burroughs, who was very close with her brother. “When my father was dying, he died of cancer, and when he was dying he looked at me and said, ‘Cathy, please continue to try and make a difference and be present for any appearance that those three individuals attend.’ And I said, ‘You never had to worry about that, Daddy.’”
It was around 1 a.m. when Derek Wood, 18, Darren Muise, 18, and Freeman Macneil, 23, entered the Mcdonald’s restaurant armed to steal the contents of the safe.
In court documents, it is noted how brutally violent the attacks on the employees were. Neil Burroughs Jr., 29, and Donna Warren, 22, both died as a result of their injuries at the scene. James Fagan, 27, died on May 8 at Sydney City Hospital. The sole survivor, Arleen Macneil, 20, spent months in hospital and was left physically and mentally disabled. She died in 2018.
Cathy Burroughs is at every hearing to make sure the victims’ voices are still heard, even as the criminal justice system is focusing on rehabilitation and release of the killers, now in their late 40s and mid-50s.
“All four of them are a team, “she said. “All four of them died in the building, just by going to work to make a living and three individuals think just because they don’t want to work for a living it’s OK to go in and kill people just to get $2,000 and some promo cards. I still can’t wrap my head around that logic.”
While not an angry person, what happened to her brother and his co-workers infuriates her. As does watching her brother’s murderer, Muise, get granted full parole in 2012.
And she’s learned firsthand how it feels to be a family member of a victim of a violent crime. Burroughs plans to use this experience to help families like hers navigate the criminal justice system and advocate for changes in laws surrounding parole and violent crimes.
“We have spoken, we’re very vocal about certain things that need to be changed and they certainly have listened in that regard but they are not willing to change the laws,” she said. “I have the time, my son is grown ... so that is my next move in life. I’m coming for them. The politicians already know I’m coming. So do the senators.”
THE CRIME
According to evidence presented in court, Wood was a part-time employee who presented the idea of robbing the Mcdonald’s restaurant to Freeman Macneil and Muise. Wood believed there would be $200,000 in the safe — a full day’s sales — not taking into account bank drops done by managers.
Leaving his bag to prop open a rarely used back door, the men entered the restaurant. Freeman Macneil and Muise were wearing a second layer of clothing to quickly dispose of on getaway. Muise was also wearing a mask.
Two employees, Donna Warren and Arleen Macneil, met the men after they entered the basement of the restaurant. When they asked what Wood was doing there, he shot Arleen Macneil in the head.
It was 1 a.m. and Neil Burroughs Jr. was cleaning in the kitchen when Wood went upstairs and shot him. Muise inflicted serious knife wounds on his throat and Freeman Macneil hit him in the head with a shovel, as well as shot him.
After Warren opened the safe, which had $2,017 in the cash box, Wood shot her.
A fourth employee, James (Jimmy) Fagan, was arriving for his backshift when he entered the restaurant and was shot by Freeman Macneil before the robbers ran from the scene.
It’s the only triple homicide during a robbery in Cape Breton in modern times.
COMMUNITY IMPACT
Retired RCMP Staff Sgt. Kevin Cleary was a lead investigator and one of the first officers at the scene. Stationed in Sydney for about two years at the time, he said “a shared disbelief” could be felt in the community.
“Just sheer disbelief that this type of thing could be happening in the community,” he said. “One of the biggest things I recall is how heavy it hit, the impact it had on the community, and the total devastation and impact it had on the community.”
Former Liberal provincial MLA Manning Macdonald was mayor of Sydney at the time. He said he also felt the change in the community.
“People were in shock,” he said. “We lost a lot of our innocence that night.”
Retired journalist Phonse Jessome reported extensively on the crime from investigation to trials and sentencing.
“Cape Breton changed for me immediately the next day. And for everybody involved in the case,” said Jessome, the author of the book Murder at Mcdonald’s: Killers Next Door. “All of the police officers, the first responders, we were all sort of walking around with a shocked look on our faces. And I had been through the restaurant by this point.”
As the face on television reporting the news on the case, Jessome was often approached by people asking what he knew.
“I’d be at Tim Hortons and people would come up to me and say, ‘It’s not people from around here, right?’” he recalled. “(They’d say) ‘They were just people passing through going to Newfoundland that had escaped prison’ or they were just passing through. No one could believe whoever did it was from Cape Breton. That was the big question in the first four or five days.”
Through Jessome’s investigation, he spoke to many teens who spoke about the three perpetrators’ petty crimes like breaking into homes. He learned the three originally planned to rob a bank truck when it was refilling ATMS but bailed on this after learning the drivers carried guns.
QUICK ARREST, SCARS FOREVER
By Saturday, May 16, all three perpetrators were arrested and their arraignment in court was the following Thursday. More than a hundred people waited outside the courthouse in Sydney to see the murderers; some screamed angrily at them demanding justice for the four Mcdonald’s employees.
Cleary said it was co-operation and dedicated teamwork that helped police make the arrest and collect necessary evidence in a timely manner.
“Everyone worked around the clock,” he said, also praising the Crown prosecutors.
Requests made to the various municipal police forces were met without hesitation, as were ones made to the media and the families, despite their immense pain.
One of the memories Cleary has every year around May 7 was the immense agony he saw the families experiencing as he presented evidence during court proceedings.
It’s a pain Cathy Burroughs knows all too well as the date will forever be a tragic anniversary.
“It’s tattooed on my soul for the rest of my life. It has impacted my life that day. It has changed me,” she said. “I don’t have my best friend around anymore. That is the biggest impact. It broke my mother. My father was devastated ... It shattered all of us.”