What follows are my notes, in raw form, which I wrote immediately after our call. I was not recording the conversation. I did not ask her if I could and it was not an interview. It was an interview request.
The notes give you a sense of what that call was like for me. I would never presume to speak for Megan or anyone else in her family. She spoke for herself in a follow-up written statement.
My phone call notes read, in part:
•I explained who I was and that I was writing a book for next year … writing books in a series.
•Told her my late father was a first responder and my work primarily honours first responders.
•This work would include first responders and others … (gave examples) of people impacted by trauma. Purpose = to try and help others.
•Explained I was starting it with anecdotes stemming from the cases I covered as a young reporter, including Kimberly’s.
•I told her I still care and people still care about Kimberly and her family.
•I told her I had never forgotten about any of them.
•I did not do a sufficient job of explaining myself. I struggled to explain many people would be interviewed about how trauma has impacted them, in the hopes of helping others.
•She wanted to know the purpose of the book. She asked about it a few times …
•Told her I have always cared and would still like to help get them the answers they deserve …
•Told her I was not naming any suspect(s) and would not be adding to their notoriety with my work.
•I did most of the talking.
•I was agitated and nervous trying to explain myself.
•She said the family would always want to be notified if anything was being written about Kimberly.
•I apologized for calling out of the blue.
•I apologized for taking her off guard and possibly upsetting her.
•Reminded her I had spoken to her husband and left a message with him more than a month previously.
•My primary purpose for calling back:
1.For ethical reasons, to let her specifically hear me say I was writing the book which would mention Kimberly – which I may be interviewed about and be discussing in 2017.
2.To let her and the family know I still care and people still care.
3.To ask if she would speak to me.
•She gave me her email address and asked me to send the formal request in writing which she would review with the family within two weeks.
•I told her I would include my bio, links to my previous books, and an explanation of what I was doing.
That day I sent my short biography, publisher’s name, book titles, website addresses where my books could be viewed, and a multi-page synopsis about The Legacy Letters, its purpose and approach.
Megan Adams emailed back the same day with one question for clarification: she asked where the proceeds of my books go and whether any portion of them went to charity.
I explained non-profits, such as the Tema Conter Memorial Trust, which supports first responders and their families, are promoted and frequently appear in my work. I wrote her back clarifying, “The proceeds made by me from these books, being very frank, would never come close to covering the hundreds of man hours I put into research, writing, editing and promotion/discussion. I do this because, as a storyteller, I try to use whatever skills I have to try and help people at this stage of my career.”
Her response came one week later, August 24, 2016.
It is reprinted here verbatim with Megan’s permission.
“Thanks for letting me know. I spoke with my mother who remembers you from the early days after Kim went missing. She reminded me of when one of the many false leads had come up and you called the house and my father asked you to wait before attaching Kim’s name to the story, since we were told it was probably not related. Well the story was run anyway (I’m certainly not saying this was up to you), and we were subjected to another firestorm of ‘how do you feel?’ calls and questions from more media outlets, and as predicted, it had nothing to do with Kim. This was not the only time we requested media to hold off and were ignored, only to have it come to nothing.
“I’m not relaying this story to be rude or hurtful in any way, but to hopefully speak to the continued trauma family and loved ones are subjected to by media outlets that they cannot turn their back on, for fear of people forgetting the case, but are held at the mercy of a business where the story (real or imagined) always trumps the personal trauma caused.
“So yes, we all live with the trauma of Kim going missing and never being found, but we were all traumatized so many more times by [the] media throwing her name in the mix, not based on solid leads and information, but guesswork and unreliable sources. I guess that’s my two cents.
“As I said earlier, this was not meant to point a finger and blame; but to give more clarity to the Catch 22 that the media is for families in situations such as ours, and the effect is long-lasting.
“Thanks. Megan”
I have reread the first paragraph countless times trying to remember the call with Mr. McAndrew. I do not. I am not denying its occurrence. I just cannot remember my employer and me ever going against a request for an embargo.
However, I can say, without reservation, I did cover most of the twists and turns in Kimberly’s disappearance during the years I worked in television. I have discussed a number of them here. I thought I had been careful and ethical when I was covering them. To be clear, I am not throwing anyone I worked with “under the bus,” so to speak, but the embargo request in question has slipped my mind.
Perhaps that is also telling.
I have decided to share Megan’s response, with her permission, so professionals working in newsrooms now, and people training to enter them, can have a frank discussion about the ethics around covering highly sensitive traumatic cases.
As Megan said, “… we were all traumatized so many more times by media throwing her [Kimberly’s] name in the mix, not based on solid leads and information, but guesswork and unreliable sources.”
I am urging people to carefully read, reread, and read again what Megan Adams has said, to all of us, on behalf of the many families like hers who have no choice but to deal, long-term, with both the media and the horrific trauma that has been forced on them by circumstances beyond their control.
However, journalism is essential in society. It requires trained professionals who are consistently accurate, ethical, fair, and balanced. It requires care and compassion. The field, like all careers, is made up of human beings who still, even though they may not intend to, get it wrong sometimes.
I did not know I had inadvertently hurt the McAndrew family. I would like to publicly apologize to Megan Adams and the entire McAndrew family for any hurt caused by my work. At this juncture in my career, I am committed to trying to help people.
I wrote Megan back after reading her response, thinking it was sent on behalf of her and her whole family. I asked for permission to share what she had written with my readers and the public.
She replied: “These are my words. I never want to make those representative of my whole family, but they can certainly be attributed to me. You are free to use them in whatever manner you see fit. I know ours is not a unique experience with the media, and my heart breaks when I see families subjected to similar difficult situations. Thank you for sharing the fact that Kim’s disappearance has impacted you personally. We have heard from many caring individuals over the years, which helps to keep a person’s heart open and hopeful. I hope your book offers some perspective and comfort to those who need it, as well as yourself. Thank you and best of luck with finishing up the book and whatever else the future holds; feel free to use my words in whatever way you feel may assist others.”
I felt relief. I could sense she understood my communication was sent out of concern and compassion. What stood out for me, in the second email, is the fact Megan hoped what she had said, and this wor
k, will help someone, a sentiment echoed by Ann King. That speaks volumes about both women and both families.
I promised Megan Adams I would not contact her or her family ever again.
It is my hope her firm and poignant message will spark discussion and also spur someone who has not previously come forward or who remembers a fact, no matter how small or irrelevant you may have previously considered it to be, to finally speak out – please – to help the McAndrew family and others like them.
6
Dave Worrell: Full Course – Gone But Not Forgotten
Retired HRP Detective Sergeant Dave Worrell was one of many police officers who followed up tips and leads about Kimberly McAndrew’s whereabouts for years.
Dave was twenty-six-years-old when he joined the RCMP in 1980, in Vancouver, British Columbia. While on the west coast, he worked in the Drug Section and later Major Crime. While in Major Crime, and early in his career, one of the highest profile cases he worked on during his British Columbia stint involved a pedophile, a school principal who moved around and targeted victims across the whole province. The RCMP ended up with more than two hundred victims. It was a challenging start to a multi-faceted and distinguished policing career spanning thirty-five years, which has taken him from coast to coast.
Dave relocated to Halifax nine years into his policing career, in 1989, to join the Bedford Police Department, the same year Kimberly McAndrew went missing. As a Bedford Police constable, Worrell was promoted to sergeant in 1992. While with Bedford, he started that force’s Major Crime Unit. Because he worked with the Bedford force, he was not initially part of the Halifax Police/RCMP McAndrew investigation. The Bedford force was eventually grandfathered into the current Halifax Regional Police after the amalgamation of four municipal units in 1996, which resulted in the creation of the Halifax Regional Municipality and one large policing entity.
While at HRP, he worked in its Major Crime unit for fourteen years. This unit covers all violent crimes and highprofile criminal cases. He was part of Major Crime and the General Investigative Section (GIS) from 2002 to 2012.
Dave cannot count the number of files he has worked on in his career. It numbers in the hundreds. He has been called to thousands of crime scenes because of his later work, and knowledge, in forensics and identification, commonly referred to as “IDENT.” His work with the Forensics section began in 2002.
“Back in those days, Major Crime went to every death. When we first started as HRP that was the decision: that Major Crime would be called to all death scenes. You may be in and out, but you had to go … of course, when I went to IDENT, you go to all the autopsies, right?” Dave explained. He provided no other details and I left that latter statement alone.
Suffice to say, he has witnessed and experienced his fair share of death, trauma, and the results of violent crime. He has also kept every single notepad he has ever used. They fill two storage tubs. As he has a vast working knowledge of numerous older case files, HRP members still call him for his expertise when any new lead comes in.
Dave retired from policing on April 15, 2015, approximately one year before our interviews. He now owns and operates Worrell Consultants and Investigations. “I work primarily on all types of litigation matters, civil and criminal, missing persons, cold cases, and equivocal death investigations. I also do corporate security and bodyguard work.”
For the record, Detective Sergeant Worrell never spoke to me beyond a “hello” or other casual remarks during the years he worked in either Bedford or with the HRP/RCMP. We attended many of the same crime scenes; I remember seeing him on the investigative side of the police tape.
Dave and I would have been adversaries. I made reference to this fact when we first sat down to talk in his home. I knew I had been a thorn in the side of many police officers. It went with the territory as a journalist, especially one who specialized in crime coverage. He admitted our interviews would never have taken place while he was still an active member.
Police and journalists have an unusual and tense relationship. We both have jobs to do. Sometimes we need each other, like in the exchange or relaying of information for a purpose. In the end, we all want justice for victims and answers for loved ones.
Dave is an avid student of the behavioral sciences. It is a passion of his and one of his specialities. He worked with that particular section within the Nova Scotia RCMP before his retirement. Specifically, he worked with the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System or VICLAS. He was sent to work with VICLAS, seconded from HRP to the RCMP, and ended his lengthy career with the very force he started with, on another coast, thirty-five years earlier. “It was a good way to finish out. I enjoyed it,” he said, of the concluding part of his career with VICLAS, from 2012 to 2015.
“VICLAS … deals with all violent crimes, in our case, for the Atlantic Provinces,” Dave explained. “Violent crime took in any and all sexual assaults, attempted murders, and murders and kidnappings.” Dave would take a file and analyze it from a behavioral sciences perspective. For this part of his work, he initially trained in Ottawa for three weeks, later in Toronto, and also completed about a dozen online courses, most of which were offered through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States. “I really enjoyed it [behavioral sciences]. I wish it was something I did earlier in my career,” he said.
Dave confirmed, even in retirement, he still gets calls from police colleagues when a lead arises about an investigation he has worked. That was also the case when he was working with VICLAS and a tip led authorities to do an extensive search of a Shad Bay, Nova Scotia, property in the spring of 2013. According to Dave, the property was owned by a family member of the incarcerated man who is the primary suspect in the Kimberly McAndrew case, among others. Police spent several days searching and digging.
The McAndrew family had to be notified, once again.
Dave said he was contacted before the 2013 search was done after a tip came in to police. He will not discuss the tip or what exactly was done at the Shad Bay site, because the investigation remains ongoing. However, he does confirm, since Kimberly McAndrew went missing in 1989, no conclusive piece of DNA or personal belonging owned or worn by her has ever been found, up to and including April 2015, when he retired.
The evidence to date is, therefore, mostly circumstantial.
To be clear, there is evidence.
But until 2015, when he retired, there was not enough “hard” evidence, either DNA or forensic in nature, to warrant a charge being laid in this or any other case examined by a combined 1990s Halifax police/RCMP operation called Full Course. Full Course ran from September of 1997 to the spring of 1999, lasting approximately one and a half years, according to Dave.
He confirmed Full Course “looked extensively at sixteen unsolved homicides and/or missing persons believed to be homicides” in Nova Scotia. He was the officer in charge, with then HRP Superintendent Frank Beazley (and later HRP chief) as its supervisor.
While the media has reported on the joint operation, its actual duration, number of officers, number of cases investigated, estimated costs, and general findings have never been revealed, until now.
Dave was also the person who started HRP’s Cold Case Squad. “You’ve got to take one [unsolved/cold case] file and you got to go through it start to finish,” he explained.
The concept of the Cold Case Squad is to leave no stone unturned, examine every piece of evidence and basically go back to the start from square one, which he and others did, exhaustively, based on the numbers and facts, which our interviews have now revealed.
When he started Cold Case for HRP in 2000, Dave studied how policing agencies in the United States had set up their own Cold Case Divisions. In 2000, he had four officers working with him. “Basically, the principal is you take one file at a time and you just rip it apart, and at the end of the day, you can say, ‘There is literally nothing else we can do with this file,’ or take to management a business plan to do an operation, if you g
et a good suspect or whatever,” he explained.
With Full Course, he said they did not have a main suspect when it began in 1997. At its height, he confirmed fourteen officers worked on the investigation: seven from the RCMP and seven from HRP.
Over time, as evidence was collected and interviews conducted, one person emerged as a primary suspect. Dave said the same suspect was linked by investigators to multiple victims. One main suspect was found to have connections to approximately six of sixteen victims in the cases investigated by the members of Full Course.
The main suspect who emerged from the Full Course operation is the same person incarcerated in western Canada. He is also the prime suspect in both the Kimberly McAndrew and Andrea King files, according to Worrell. Those cases were two of the sixteen Full Course files and two of the six which were linked to the same suspect. Not all of the cases involved young women; some also involved men. “The focus [of Full Course] first started with missing or murdered … women. But it expanded to the point that we were looking at males as well,” Dave said.
The six cases, with one linked suspect, led to an important avenue in our discussion which has been speculated about for years. In the 1990s, a number of Halifax journalists, including Phonse Jessome, had reported that HRP was investigating the possibility of a serial killer operating in Halifax and Nova Scotia. Sources were cited in stories done by several reporters, including Eva Hoare, who is a friend of mine. Eva used to work for a Halifax newspaper but now is employed by allnovascotia.com. We often covered the same crime stories from 1987 to 1999 when I worked at ATV. Despite the pressure by Eva, Phonse, and others, no one in police management would ever confirm, on the record, that a potential serial killer investigation was ongoing or had ever happened.
Dave said the Full Course team had been investigating a potential serial killer, in his opinion. Keep in mind, there is no conclusive DNA evidence linking the suspect to any of the Full Course cases. That is why the word “potential” is carefully and purposely being used. Some of the evidence linking the man to multiple investigations and people involved the suspect either knowing the victims, being seen with the victims, having been in the company of the victims, or having some other association with them, like through his work. Again, that is not the only evidence, but that is all Dave would explain because the files remain open.
The Legacy Letters Page 7