Warning: This story contains graphic details that readers may find upsetting.
A 74-year-old inmate who killed his first victim in northern B.C. in 1981 before fleeing Canada and avoiding justice for more than 30 years has died in a federal prison in Abbotsford.
Thomas Anthony McDonald died Friday at the Pacific Institution/Regional Treatment Centre of “apparent natural causes,” the Correctional Service of Canada said in a news release Monday.
McDonald was serving an indeterminate sentence after being designated a dangerous offender on Nov. 20, 2015.
The CSC did not elaborate on the nature of McDonald’s crimes, but the sentencing decision in his case goes into great detail about how and why he ended up behind bars for life.
The Dawson Creek killing
The 1981 killing took place on the outskirts of Dawson Creek, in the early morning hours of Sept. 26.
Earlier that night, McDonald had been drinking in the bar at the Windsor Hotel and asked Marilyn McLarty to dance. Her husband, Earl Dean Jones, took offence, and slapped McDonald in front of other bar patrons, according to the sentencing decision.
Jones and McLarty left the bar shortly after the incident and began driving home. The decision indicates McDonald followed them in his brother’s pickup truck, and as the couple was turning at an intersection, he fired a round from a .30-.30 rifle, which struck Jones in the head.
“He left for the United States the next day, despite having told others that he would be working in the Dawson Creek area for another week,” the decision reads. “Mr. McDonald’s flight from Fort St. John was sudden, unplanned, and designed to evade apprehension.”
While Mounties travelled to the U.S. and interviewed him in 1983, there was only circumstantial evidence linking McDonald to the shooting, and he was not charged at the time, according to the decision.
Instead, McDonald continued to live in the U.S. until 2002, when he was deported and travelled to South America and then to England, where he committed his second homicide.
The U.K. killing
The decision indicates McDonald met Roger Wilton at Heathrow Airport on the day he arrived in England and began living with him, paying for their accommodations with the understanding that Wilton would be able to find work for both of them.
“As the prospect of securing work diminished, Mr. McDonald became angry and felt Mr. Wilton was taking advantage of him,” the decision reads. “The two men had known one another for about three weeks before the offence was committed.”
According to the decision, McDonald confronted Wilton in the kitchen after an evening of drinking, and the two men ended up in a fight.
The decision quotes from a psychologist’s summary of McDonald’s account of the fight, in which McDonald said Wilton picked up a knife before McDonald had used any weapons in the altercation.
Eventually, according to the account, Wilton ran toward the washing machine and tried to grab an axe. In response, McDonald grabbed a sledgehammer and “let him have it.”
“Mr. McDonald recalled that Roger fell to the floor and he stated that he stood looking at Roger for what felt like five minutes,” the decision reads, quoting from the psychologist’s report.
“He recalled that he didn’t think that Roger was dead, but stated that ‘nothing was moving.’ Mr. McDonald reported that he was ‘fired-up to the point of seeing red,’ and said that he thought that ‘I’ve gone through all of this s**t and now he’s dead.’ He stated that he ‘set out to destroy him,’ hitting Roger with the sledgehammer one to two times in the groin, two to three times in the body and the final blow to the head. He stated that with each blow he said ‘f**k you.’”
McDonald was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. When he was released on parole in 2007, he was ordered to report to his parole officer and to remain within the U.K. court’s jurisdiction.
Instead, he fled the country and “surreptitiously entered Canada” sometime between 2007 and 2009, according to the decision.
Delayed justice
In 2011, the RCMP set up a “Mr. Big” sting in an attempt to bring McDonald to justice for the Dawson Creek killing for which he had never been charged. Such stings involve undercover officers posing as a criminal organization to gain a suspect’s trust and elicit a confession.
The sentencing decision indicates McDonald told the primary officer in the sting that he “really wasn’t aiming to kill” Jones on that night in 1981.
“He said he wanted to give Mr. Jones ‘a good f***in’ scare,’” the decision reads. “He said he was hoping that he ‘didn’t kill the bastard.’”
McDonald was charged with first-degree murder in the Dawson Creek case, but the trial judge acquitted him, convicting him instead of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
Because it was the second similar offence for which McDonald had been convicted, the Crown sought a dangerous offender designation and an indeterminate sentence.
The judge agreed, noting that the two offences were “similar in their essential characteristics.”
“In both cases, what motivated the killing was a perception on Mr. McDonald’s part that he had been unfairly treated,” the decision reads.
“In both cases, the victims were acquaintances, not intimates. In both cases, the victims were male. In both cases the killings closely followed a confrontation that left Mr. McDonald with a perception that he was the aggrieved party. Alcohol played a disinhibiting role in both homicides. Neither of the homicides can properly be characterized as purely impulsive acts. In both cases, Mr. McDonald sought out his victim after a short period of reflection. In both cases, a weapon was used.”
McDonald was deemed a significant risk to violently reoffend, and the judge ruled there was no reasonable possibility of eventual control of that risk if McDonald was allowed to live in the community.
“Put differently, I am not satisfied that the threat Mr. McDonald poses can be reduced to an acceptable level through the imposition of a long-term offender sentence,” the judge’s decision reads.
McDonald spent the rest of his life in prison.
The CSC is now reviewing the circumstances of his death, as it does with all inmates who die in custody.
McDonald’s next of kin has been notified, and CSC policy requires that police and the coroners service be notified as well.