Guilty plea to second-degree murder of Kitchener man

A man, previously found guilty of first-degree murder in connection to a 2014 death in Kitchener, has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

Derrick Lawlor was originally found guilty of first-degree murder in the strangulation death of 50-year-old Mark McCreadie, but last year the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the decision and ordered a new trial.

On Thursday, Lawlor pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 14 years from the date of his arrest in April 2014.

History of the case

The night McCreadie died, he had gone to Victoria Park in Kitchener to have sex with another man.

Lawlor later described joining McCreadie and another man, John Davie, for three-way sex.

McCreadie’s body was discovered in the park the next day.

Mark McCreadie in an undated photo and Waterloo Regional Police at the scene of his murder in Kitchener's Victoria Park.

Davie said during the sexual encounter, Lawlor wrapped a scarf around his neck and tightened it.

Davie then left, leaving McCreadie and Lawlor alone.

Throughout the trial, Lawlor claimed he could not remember what happened that April night. The jury heard he had a history of alcohol and substance abuse problems, in additional to mental health complications.

Derek Lawlor in an undated photograph.

In October 2017, a jury found Lawlor guilty of first-degree murder. He later appealed the conviction.

In a filing with the Court of Appeal of Ontario, Lawlor admitted to killing McCreadie, but said he had not committed first-degree murder.

First-degree murder indicates that it was planned and deliberate.

The filing states Lawlor had made several statements about harming gay men in the weeks leading up to McCreadie’s death. According to court documents, Lawlor admitted himself into Grand River Hospital’s psychiatric ward after the murder and also told a friend he had killed man in Victoria Park using a knife and a rope. He told police he had been drinking and abusing his medication and had been experiencing blackouts, had thoughts of harming gay men and had been “cruising” around Victoria Park looking for men to hurt. Lawlor told police he remembered having a sexual encounter with two men and had wrapped a scarf around the neck of one of them for “erotic purposes.” He also asked police to find out if he had caused the death of the man in the park. Lawlor was then charged with first-degree murder.

Derrick Lawlor in security video at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener.

In the appeal, Lawlor said the judge at his original trial had not properly informed the jury about his mental health complications, misdirected the jury on his intoxication and failed to tell the jury to consider the cumulative effect of his intoxication and mental health on his state of his mind during the incident.

While the provincial court dismissed Lawlor’s appeal, the Supreme Court took another view of the case.

The Supreme Court set aside his first-degree murder conviction on the grounds that the trial judge erred in his instructions to the jury regarding the evidence surrounding Lawlor’s mental health and the intent required for a first-degree murder conviction.

Previous death

Lawlor has previously spent time behind bars for another man’s death. In 1985, he was sentenced to four years in prison for the suffocation death of a man from Newfoundland and Labrador. Lawlor was later pardoned.

-- With reporting from Krista Simpson and Nicole Lampa