Getting Off on Technicalities

• Author: David M. Paciocco
• Pages: 121-142

CHAPTER

6

Getting

Off on

Technicalities

F

every

Sunday

and

took mail

to

people

who

could

not get

out.

At

eighty-six years

of age he

still

lived

by

himself

in a

small home

in

an

isolated community

of 300

people

in the

interior

of

British Columbia,

a

place with

the

unlikely name

of

"Likely."

He

passed

the

time

after

his

wife

died feeding

the

birds

and

squirrels near

his

home

on

Cedar Creek

Road.

He

smoked Sportsman cigarettes

and

drove

a red

Datsun

pickup

truck.

He

drove

it so

slowly

and

cautiously

that

when

the

pickup

was

found

crashed

in a

ditch

at the end of a

long

set of

skid-marks,

the

local

people knew

that

Boyle could

not

have been driving

at the

time.

They

were right.

He was not

driving because

by the

time

the

truck

left

his

garage,

Boyle's skull

had

been smashed

five

times

with

an

iron bar.

It had

been smashed

so

violently

that

any one of the

blows would have killed

him.

There

was

blood

on the

walls

of the

living room where

the

body

of

Frank

Boyle

lay

face

up on the

carpet.

There

is no

longer

any

mystery about

who

killed him.

In

fact,

the

mystery

lasted only

a few

hours.

It was

Michael Feeney,

a

twenty-two-

year-old

outsider,

who

descended

on

that

quiet community like

a

plague

of

vermin, holing

up in a

windowless trailer

in the

back

of

some property

his

sister

and her

partner were renting.

The

judge

and

jury

who

tried

Feeney

knew

he had

done

it, and

they convicted him. Members

of the

British

Columbia Court

of

Appeal

who

upheld

his

conviction also knew

it. And so,

too,

did the

nine Supreme Court

of

Canada justices, including

the five who

voted

to

throw

out

virtually

all the

evidence against him.

Whatever else

it

means

to get off on a

technicality, Michael Feeney

surely

did. When

the

legal

system allows

a

person whom

it

knows

to be

guilty

to

escape punishment,

it can

only

be for

technical reasons.

For

the

RCMP

officers

stationed

at

Williams

Lake,

an

hour's drive

from

Likely,

8

June 1991

was not a

routine day. Frank

Boyle's

body

had

been found

in his

house

by a

neighbour

at

8:20 a.m.

The

neighbour

had

rank Boyle was a nice man — everyone said so. He went to church

122

GETTING

OFF ON

TECHNICALITIES:

THE

RULE

OF LAW

checked

on

Boyle when

he

noticed

his

garage door

had

been

left

open,

something

that

struck

the

neighbour

as

unusual. When

the

neighbour dis-

covered

the

body,

the

police were summoned. Constable Hamilton

arrived

a

little

over

an

hour later,

at

9:25,

to

secure

the

scene.

Staff

Sergeant

Madrigga,

the

non-commissioned

officer

who was in

charge

of the

Williams Lake RCMP detachment, arrived

on

scene

at

10:05 a.m.

He

took charge

of the

investigation.

He

entered

the

home

with

the

trepidation

that

even experienced

officers

feel

when arriving

at

a

homicide scene.

Few

become hardened

to the

sight

and

smell

of

violent

death,

and the

sight

was

worse than

he had

imagined. Boyle

had not

just

been bludgeoned

to

death.

His

head

had

been bashed

in

repeatedly,

and

the

small house

had

been ransacked.

Shortly

after

his

arrival, Madrigga learned

from

bystanders

that

Boyle's

vehicle

had

been found abandoned

in a

ditch about half

a

kilo-

metre west

of the

Boyle

residence.

It had

been driven

off the

road.

The

arrival

of the

officers

at the

scene brought

the

local residents out. Cindy

Potter told

the

police

that

she had

seen Boyle's truck

in the

ditch

at

6:45

that

morning.

A few

minutes earlier

she had

observed

a man

whom

she

knew

as

"Michael" walking

in an

easterly direction along Cedar Creek Road,

although

she had not

seen

him

driving

the

vehicle. Michael

was

holding

something

in his

hand

—

possibly

a

beer,

or a

coffee

cup,

or

perhaps

a

stick.

Kelly

Robert Spurn spoke

to the

police

as

well.

He

told

them

Michael

lived nearby

on

property

he was

renting

to

Michael's sister,

Angela,

and her

partner, Dale Russell.

He

also told

the

police

that

Feeney

had

crashed

and

abandoned

a

blue flat-bed truck

at the

same location ear-

lier

in the

morning. That truck, belonging

to

Russell,

had

been stolen

from

Spurn's

property. Spurn surmised

that

Feeney

had

probably been driving

Boyle's

red

Datsun

as

well, given

that

both vehicles

had

been ditched

in

the

same place,

and in the

same manner, within

a

short

time.

This

was

enough

for

Staff

Sergeant

Madrigga.

He

suspected

that

Feeney

had

stolen

the

Boyle

vehicle,

and

that

being

so, he

also suspected

that Feeney

was the

murderer.

He

concluded

from

having seen

the

crime

scene

that

if the

perpetrator

had not

cleaned himself

up, he

would

undoubtedly

be

covered

in

blood. Accompanied

by two

officers,

Constable Hamilton

and

Corporal Haggard,

Madrigga

went

to the

Spurn

property where Dale Russell, Angela Feeney,

and

Michael Feeney were

living.

It was

around

10:30

a.m. There

he

spoke

to

Dale Russell,

who was

trying

to fix the

blue flat-bed truck. Russell confirmed

that

Feeney

had

stolen

the

truck

and

that

he had

found

it

just down

from

the

Boyle resi-

dence, exactly where

Boyle's

truck

had

later been discovered.

He

also told

the

police that Feeney

had

come home

at

7:00 a.m.

after

a

night

of

drink-