Kenneth Scott began the last shift of his life in the early morning of October 12, 1988. He celebrated his 66th birthday only five days earlier. Born in Trinidad, Mr. Scott was a production worker for Texaco Trinidad for many years. He and his wife Marlene, married for 31 years, had five children. In 1979 the family moved to Sidney on Vancouver Island. Looking for "something to do" in his retirement, Mr. Scott purchased a cab and a share in Beacon Taxi. He had been an owner-driver with the company for nine years. Mr. Scott's 24-year-old son Steve described him as "a quiet, non-violent person who never said a swear word in his life." Steve Scott also drove for Beacon taxi and said that although cab drivers had to put up with "a lot of antagonism," neither he nor his father had ever experienced any violence. The only Vancouver Island driver to be murdered on the job was Gerald Mulholland in 1970. Mr. Scott booked himself on duty at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 12, 1988. Five minutes later dispatcher Caroline Ager sent him to the Brentwood Bay shopping Centre, about 15 km (10 miles) southwest of Sidney, to pick up a man who called himself "Anthony." Ms. Ager worked for the Sidney Answering Service which provided call taking and dispatch services for Beacon Taxi. When Mr. Scott got to the shopping centre there were four young men waiting for them. Paul Wannet, a baker starting his own shift at the shopping centre, saw them enter Mr. Scott's cab. They were staggering and each carried a bottle of beer. One of them carried a case of Molson's Canadian. A few minutes later Mr. Scott radioed that he had stopped at the Waddling Dog Inn, a pub adjacent to a hotel of the same name at the junction of Patricia Bay Highway and Mount Newton Cross Road, about 8 km (5 miles) south of Sidney. The pub and hotel are still there in 2020. Mr. Scott's four passengers -- a 22-year-old adult, two 16-year-old cousins and a 15-year-old -- had spent the past several hours drinking. The adult, the 15-year-old and one of the 16-year-olds had started out in Duncan where, sometime before 1 a.m., they decided to take a cab to the Tsawout Indian Reserve (now Tsawout First Nation) in Central Saanich and invite the other 16-year-old to continue partying with them. Duncan cab driver Dave Woods picked them up at the Duncan bus depot. The 45-minute trip took them south down the west coast of Saanich inlet to Victoria and then north up the Saanich peninsula to Central Saanich. Mr. Woods said his passengers were quiet and polite. Two of them listened to music on a Walkman compact disk player. One of the four later said that they also consumed a litre and a mickey (half bottle) of vodka during the trip. When they arrived in Central Saanich the four asked to let them off behind the Waddling Dog Inn. This puzzled Mr. Woods. They were in a "high-class" residential neighbourhood, but his passengers wanted to get out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. He asked them about the dropoff point but they assured him that it was "fine." They paid him the sixty-dollar fare and he drove away. The four had brought burglary tools with them, anticipating the opportunity for a break-in, but decided to stash them for the time being behind the pub. They then walked to a house in Tsawout to pick up the fourth member of the group. At about 3:30 a.m. the four walked back to the Waddling Dog Inn and one of them called Beacon Taxi for a cab to take "Anthony" to the Brentwood Bay shopping mall. Caroline Ager would recognize the voice and name when she sent Mr. Scott to the same mall two hours later. This time driver William Brown picked them up and dropped them off. The group's real destination was not the mall itself but the home of bootlegger Eddie Paul who lived nearby. Mr. Paul sold them two 24-bottle cases of Molson Canadian beer for $50. The four then walked to the Brentwood Elementary schoolground and spent the next hour or so drinking a case and a half of the beer. Two of the four were armed with pellet guns and the other two had knives. They amused themselves by shooting the guns and throwing the knives at targets. In a signed statement which he later repudiated, the 16-year-old from Tsawout told how a conversation started about the prospects for committing a break-in or else robbing a cab driver since cab drivers were the only people worth robbing who were likely to be up at that time of the morning. The conversation then quickly focused on not only robbing but killing a cab driver. A plan emerged detailing how the driver would be lured down an isolated road, where each member of the group would sit in the cab, and how the murder would unfold. The 16-year-old from Tsawout was to sit in the front passenger seat with the adult in the back seat directly behind the driver, the 15-year-old in the centre and the 16-year-old from Duncan by the right rear door. The 16-year-old from Duncan had left school in grade 4, had an IQ of 72 and was virtually illiterate. Moody and unhappy, he had difficulty controlling his temper and impulses. A judge later characterized him as "seriously disturbed young man" and said that "society... requires and deserves protection from him." Mr. Scott was directed first to the Waddling Dog Inn where his passengers picked up their stashed burglary tools. This is where he made his last call to Caroline Ager. The four then told Mr. Scott to follow Jimmy Road, a dirt trail in Tsawout. Halfway down the road he was ordered to stop. At this point the adult put a pellet gun to Mr. Scott's head and demanded his money. At the same time the 16-year-old from Duncan got out, walked around the cab, opened the driver's door and threatened Mr. Scott with a knife. When Mr. Scott did not immediately surrender his money the 16-year-old stabbed him in the arm and the adult began clubbing him with the butt of the gun. A frenzy of stabbing followed and continued even as Mr. Scott tried to hand over his wallet. He was stabbed at least 17 times with wounds to the hip, head, hands and chest, but what killed him were eight stab wounds to the neck, some so violent that they went all the way through. The main arteries and veins were severed and he died of massive hemorrhaging. One of the attackers later claimed that the the stabbing and clubbing began when Mr. Scott "refused" to hand over his wallet. This version of events came to be accepted as fact in newspaper reports, as for example: "The 66-year-old Beacon Taxi driver was stabbed 17 times when he balked at handing over his wallet to four drunk passengers looking for money for booze." However, the 16-year-old from Tsawout testified in court that "the driver didn't know what to do. He just sat there." The adult also testified that he began clubbing Mr. Scott not because he refused to hand over his money, but because Mr. Scott turned to look at him and he was afraid of being identified. Mr. Scott was clearly taken by surprise and the murder was being carried out even as he tried to hand over his money. There was simply no time for him to do anything to provoke the attack. While the killer was stabbing Mr. Scott, the adult and one of the teenagers began wiping their fingerprints off the cab. The adult went to the rear of the car, opened a beer that he carried in his pocket and drank from it as Mr. Scott died. When the killer and his accomplices opened Mr. Scott's wallet they were shocked to find that it contained only $30. One of them had heard that some taxi drivers kept a box of money under the front seat, so the killer and the Tsawout teenager returned to the cab. The killer went through Mr. Scott's pockets while the other teenager searched under the seat and in the glove compartment. They found no more money. After the murder the adult and the two teenagers from Duncan accompanied the fourth teenager to his Tsawout home where the killer washed Mr. Scott's blood off himself and his knife and borrowed a clean pair of trousers. A teenage girl was at home when the four arrived shortly after 6 a.m. She accompanied the adult and the two Duncan teenagers to the Tsawout band office where the bus to Skelly's School in Saanichton was due to arrive at 7:30 a.m. One of the teens pulled identification cards out of a brown wallet and began burning them. Another teenage girl who was also related to the two cousins arrived at the band office about 6:30 a.m. She, like the first girl was there to wait for the school bus. One of the four males asked her if she wanted to go for a bike ride and when she agreed they cycled for about five minutes down Jimmy Road to where the cab was parked with Mr. Scott's body inside. "I just saw a guy slouched over the steering wheel with blood all over and I went hysterical," she said. "I just went in shock." The 16-year-old killer was "acting strange -- proud." He told the girl that he had killed Mr. Scott and warned that he would kill her too if she told anyone what had happened. The girl ran away to a nearby gas station where she had a coffee. She returned to the band office in time to catch the school bus. The killer and the two accomplices from Duncan boarded the bus along with the two girls. On the bus the three males ducked out of sight when a police car went by. At SKelly's Shool, as they left the bus, the killer repeated his death threat to the girl who had seen Mr. Scott's body. At the school the girl who had been at home when the four arrived saw one of the two teens open a knapsack to reveal a pellet gun. "I said, 'That's not a real gun.' The adult replied "'This one is' and opened his jacket and showed me a gun." The other girl also saw the gun, and saw the three "fooling around" with a knife. At the school Mr. Scott's killer attacked a 15-year-old schoolboy and stole his lunch money. The boy was kicked in the stomach and had his eyes blackened. The attack was reported to the principal who called the Central Saanich police. Officers found the killer and his two accomplices walking down a nearby road and arrested them. Meanwhile Caroline Ager had become alarmed when Mr. Scott did not respond to her calls. She alerted the other drivers on duty who began a search for him. She also called the police. One of the drivers found Mr. Scott's taxi and body shortly before 7 a.m. The Central Saanich police officers were aware of Mr. Scott's murder and suspected that the three males might be involved. Their suspicions deepened when they found the pellet guns in the knapsack and a knife tucked into the adult's sock. The three immediately gave statements incriminating each other as well as the fourth member of the group who was now at home in Tsawout. Central Saanich police turned the three over to the RCMP later the same day. The 16-year-old from Tsawout was arrested at home and was accompanied to the RCMP substation by his great-aunt, whom he regarded as his mother. She was a Tsawout elder and although she had no formal education she had learned to read and write by studying a dictionary. The RCMP officers who made the arrest said they advised the teenager and his aunt three times about his right to counsel and the aunt acknowledged that an officer she knew took her aside and cautioned her to hire a lawyer for her nephew. Another officer told them that there would be plenty of time for this need to be accommodated at the substation, but when they got there the teenager was immediately interrogated and asked to submit a statement. He and his aunt were not offered a phone to call a lawyer, or specifically informed that they could call a halt to proceedings until they had consulted one. The teenager did eventually talk to a lawyer and afterward submitted a second statement, substantially the same as the first, that was accepted as evidence in court. However the admissibility of this second statement became one of the issues in a cascade of appeals that went on for five years. [Next column]

Victoria Daily Colonist Classified ads offering shares in Beacon Taxi. Top: July 6, 1974, p. 31. Bottom: October 9, 1977 p. 49. A first-dgree (premeditated) murder charge against the adult proceeded to trial at the usual deliberate pace, but prosecuting the three teenagers was more complicated. Under the Young Offenders Act, which came into force in 1984, the maximum penalty for any Criminal Code offence was three years. This made the act highly controversial when it came to serious offences like murder and sexual assault. Given the brutality of Mr. Scott's murder, the Crown sought to have the three teenagers tried as adults. This would have subjected them to a penalty, if convicted of first-degree murder, of life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. The Crown's application was heard by British Columbia provincial court judge Lawrence Brahan who granted it in February, 1989. Judge Brahan was influenced by the Tsawout teenager's statement which he saw as evidence of premeditated murder. "I am satisfied that their prime purpose was to murder a taxi driver, and a possible subordinate purpose was to rob the deceased," he wrote in his decision. The defence immediately appealed. The appeal and Judge Brahan's decision were turned over to Mr. Justice Josiah Wood of the the British Columbia Supreme Court for review. Three months later, in May, 1989, Justice Wood revealed his own decision: Mr. Scott's killer would be tried in adult court, but the other two teenagers would be tried in Victoria youth court as young offenders. Justice Wood took the opportunity to criticise the Young Offenders Act for forcing judges to choose between three years and twenty-five years when sentencing youths for murder. He urged Parliament to revise the act to provide for a wider range of sentencing options. The Wood decision pleased neither the Crown nor the defence. Both appealed, the Crown to have the two teenagers returned to adult court and the defence to have the killer tried in youth court. The appeals were heard by a panel of three justices in a full sitting of the British Columbia Supreme Court. The court announced its decision in December 1989: all three young offenders would be tried in Victoria youth court. Speaking for the panel Chief Justice Allan McEachern repeated Justice Wood's criticism of the Young Offenders Act and like Wood called on Parliament to widen its sentencing options. The three justices were unanimous in sending the killer's two accomplices to youth court but Justice David Locke dissented in the case of the killer himself, saying that he "poses a real risk to the public of exhibiting dangerous and violent conduct and any cure, if at all possible, can only be brought about by some years in a structured setting. This young person is not one whose personal needs or society's needs can be addressed in the youth system...." Although Justices McEachern and Richard Anderson felt obliged to have the killer tried in youth court, they were uneasy about the decision. "The fact that he [the killer] might still be a threat to society after three years of confinement in a youth facility, and must then be released reflects an inadequacy in the Young Offenders Act which parliment is able to remedy," said Justice McEachern. "I sincerely wish it were possible to dispose of this appeal in such a way that he could be confined for the purpose of treatment and observation for so long as he may reasonably be regarded as dangerous." The Crown's only course at this point was to ask the Supreme Court of Canada for permission to appeal the B.C. Supreme Court decision. The application was made but five months later, in May, 1990, Canada's highest court announced that it was refusing to hear the Crown's appeal. No explanation was given. In the meantime, back in October, 1989, the first-degree murder case against the adult went to trial before a B.C. Supreme Court jury. The killer's two teenage accomplices, the 15-year-old from Duncan and the 16-year-old from Tsawout, both testified for the prosecution. The Tsawout teenager's statement was read into evidence but the teenager repudiated it, saying that he had been scared and lied to keep himself out of trouble by making the others look bad. The jury found the adult not guilty on the murder charge but convicted him of manslaughter. Justice Lance Finch sentenced him to four years in jail. The sentence provoked immediate outrage, especially when it was learned that the defendant was eligible for parole after serving one-sixth of his sentence and could be out of jail in as little as eight months. Roger Remacle of the Greater Victoria Taxi Owners' Association called the sentence "a slap in the face." "There is always a fear that something violent can happen to a driver and when something does and it is treated so lightly, you have to wonder," said Mr. Remacle. "Is the prospect of eight months behind bars likely to 'deter' anyone from committing a similar crime?" editorialized the Victoria Times-Colonist. "Little wonder Canadians have lost so much faith in their society's ability to deal with criminals." The Crown appealed the sentence to the B.C. Court of Appeal on the grounds that it was "grossly inadequate." In January, 1990 the appeal court agreed and increased the sentence to seven years. The sequence of appeals in the battle over whether to try the three teenagers in adult or youth court delayed their trial but finally in June 1990, 19 months after Mr. Scott's murder, it began in Victoria youth court before judge Robert Metzger. There was another few days delay when the adult accomplice refused to testify, but he changed his mind when the penalty for contempt of court was explained to him. The same witnesses who had appeared in the adult's trial came back to testify in this case, including Paul Wannet the baker and Eddie Paul the bootlegger. Mr. Paul explained to the court that he was now a former bootlegger. British Columbia had recently loosened its liquor laws to allow privately-owned beer and wine stores and the new competition had put him out of business. In the end Judge Metzger found no evidence of first-degree murder. He convicted the killer and the Tsawout teenager of second-degree murder and sentenced them to three years in the Victoria Youth Detention Centre. He convicted the 15-year-old accomplice of manslaughter and sentenced him to two years of detention. Judge Metzger urged Detention Centre staff to ensure that the killer "received cognitive behavior therapy, which a psychologist said would help [him] re-integrate into society." Judge Metzger ordered the 15-year-old to take the Centre's educational upgrading program, and the Tsawout teenager to take "all of the programs that will help him" while in custody. "We have all had problems adjusting emotionally since this terrible killing took place," said Kenneth Scott's widow Marlene Scott at the end of the trial. "However, my concern now is for these three young men.... My hope is that some positive rehabilitation can take place so that they can become responsible citizens in their community." Judge Metzger gave his verdict and sentences without providing an explanation for them, thereby providing grounds for two more appeals, one for each of the two teenage accomplices. Eighteen months later, in December, 1991, three B.C. Court of Appeal justices declared that it was "regrettable to a high degree" and "unsatisfactory" that Judge Metzger had not spelled out the reasons for his decisions. However, the appeal court found no evidence that Judge Metzger had "erred in appreciation of a relevant issue or in appreciation of evidence" and both appeals were denied. There was one final appeal to be disposed of. In December, 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the conviction of the Tsawout teenager on the grounds that the statement he gave to police was inadmissible. Justice John Sopinka wrote that the teenager "was neither advised of nor given a reasonable opportunity to exercise his right to counsel." Determining whether or not a young person validly waived the right to counsel "is not to be based simply on what the police told the young person, but upon the young person's actual awareness of the consequences of his or her option," wrote Justice Sopinka. The decision was moot as far as the teenager was concerned. Now 21 years old, he had already completed his detention sentence and been released. However his lawyer thought the decision would change the way police advised underage offenders of their rights. And with that the last I was dotted and the last T crossed in the legal fallout from Mr. Scott's murder. The killer and his three accomplices, to varying degrees, all got into trouble with the law after their release. The killer returned to Tsawout First Nation, no doubt causing some anxiety for the two young women who testified against him. In September, 1993, now 21, he got into an altercation with another man at a Tsawout beach party and stabbed him in the arm. He was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to six months in jail. Other criminal charges against him were pending. The 15-year-old accomplice claimed that his time in the Youth Detention Centre was a positive experience. "I've found spirituality and learned my language. These were things I never even thought about before. It helped me grow inside. It makes me feel proud." But whatever guidance and support he received in detention evaporated when he was released. Although he lived in Duncan since he was eleven years old, he was actually an American citizen and on this pretext he was deported to the U.S. even though he had no family there. In due course he re-entered Canada illegally and took up with old cronies in and around Duncan and Tsawout First Nation, spending a lot of his time and money drinking at the Waddling Dog. In November, 1995, now 22, he decided to break into the pub after closing time and rob it. Using a sawed-off shotgun he blasted his way through the front door. The bar manager, who happened to be in the washroom, prudently stayed out of sight while the intruder attacked the cash register. Unable to pry it open, he blew the register apart with the shotgun but all he got for his trouble was a handful of change. He then stole a car and drove to Duncan where police arrested him. In addition to breaking and entering, car theft and possession of a dangerous weapon he was charged with two counts of pointing a weapon at a peace officer and two counts of assaulting a peace officer. He was sentenced to two years in jail. The Young Offenders Act continued to come under fire every time a juvenile committed an egregious crime. By 1996, after several amendments, the maximum penalty had been raised to ten years. In 2003 the Young Offenders Act was repealed altogether and replaced by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.