ANNOUNCER: This program is rated 14+, and contains
scenes of violence and mature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.
[O'Brien] It looks like this is a robbery
that has gone horribly wrong.
[Stephen] We found her on the floor.
She was hit in the back of the head.
There was blood all over the floor.
[indistinct radio chatter]
This is now 100% a homicide investigation.
[Deb] Why was she in this area working by herself?
I didn't sleep for weeks after that.
[O'Brien] Within fairly short distance of each other,
within just a couple hours, we had two significant attacks.
[Jackson] The victim had been very severely beaten
and was in life-threatening condition at the moment.
[Guigon] What really made a difference in the ATM robbery
was there was CCTV.
We thought, "Oh, we just were watching a homicide."
We got the blood trail, right?
[Rocks] We're not saying the incidents are connected,
but there is a number of similarities
that make us tend to look that way.
[snow crunching]
[indistinct chatter]
[O'Brien] Our number one priority
is to get that offender in custody.
That offender has killed an innocent individual already,
and who knows what they're capable of.
Welcome to Crime Beat. I'm Antony Robart.
A brazen and violent attack on a young store clerk
left an entire city in fear.
There were no eyewitnesses and no CCTV,
but soon police discovered she wasn't the only victim.
Here now is Nancy Hixt with "The Night Shift."
[unsettling music playing]
[Nancy] On a cold and snowy Thursday in February of 2000,
two young men took a break
from a night of watching movies
to go get some fast food.
As they approached a nearby Subway,
they noticed a sign on the door that read,
"Less than $50 in till.
Clerk cannot open safe."
They joked about how pointless
a holdup at this shop would be.
Seconds later, they saw the outcome
of that very scenario.
I believe she was robbed. We found her on the floor.
She was hit in the back of the head.
There was blood all over the floor.
She was vomiting.
We saw the mess behind the counter,
and when we walked around the counter,
and he started calling 911, and I started giving her CPR.
[O'Brien] At 11:42 p.m. on February 17th,
the Calgary Police Service get a phone call
to assist the paramedics at a Subway
along 17th Avenue, and that particular Subway,
when the paramedics get there, when the police get there,
we have a 25-year-old employee of the Subway
that is in critical condition,
and the paramedics are working on her.
She's been attacked.
[Nancy] The young woman had suffered
massive head injuries.
[siren wailing]
She was rushed to hospital by ambulance,
but despite best efforts,
just minutes after she arrived,
she passed away.
This is now 100% a homicide investigation.
[tense music playing]
The entire Subway restaurant and parking lot
is now part of the crime scene,
so we've called in our forensic crime scenes unit.
Again, they're going to take photographs.
They're going to look at what evidence they can collect.
And they're going to look for fingerprints.
They're going to look for swabs.
Even back then, we had DNA that we were looking for.
There's napkins and pieces of paper
that would normally be on a counter
that are scattered on the floor.
They can see that there's a large pool of blood.
There appears to be some things
that have been moved around or are missing,
and one of the things that they noted fairly quickly
is it looks like a cash register is missing.
One of the things
that the investigators did right away
is start talking to neighbouring businesses,
asking people if they saw anything.
We start, again, doing neighbourhood inquiries
to find out, do we have any witnesses?
Is there film footage somewhere?
The Subways back then,
again, like most businesses, just didn't have the cameras,
certainly not like you see today.
We were really coming up dry.
[Nancy] Police identified the victim from a wallet
and ID found at the scene.
Tara McDonald had been working alone at the Subway that night
when her attacker burst into the store.
[O'Brien] It looks like this is a robbery
that has gone horribly wrong.
This is a significant event in our community.
You have a young 25-year-old woman working alone
in what should be a safe job making sandwiches for people.
And so it's not lost on anybody that responded
or anybody working in the city
that this was a significant event
and it was really all hands on deck
to do whatever we could as quickly as we could.
One of the techniques that we use,
and used in this case is we called our canine unit.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Utilizing their canine dog, they began a track.
[Nancy] What the dog followed was a trail of coins
that led officers directly from the crime scene
towards a nearby residential neighbourhood.
[O'Brien] We were able to determine
which way the subject left from the Subway.
And so the working theory is that the coins probably
fell out of a cash register or a cash drawer
that may have come from the Subway.
[Nancy] Investigators located parts of a cash register
not far from the coins in a dark alley.
[O'Brien] The crime scene unit would go
to any of the pieces of evidence that we were finding.
[Nancy] But once again,
hopes of identifying a suspect were quashed.
[O'Brien] Yeah, unfortunately, when we examined the evidence
that we had at this point, it was still a whodunit.
We did not have a name of an offender.
Our number one priority is to get that offender in custody.
That offender has killed an innocent individual already
and who knows what they're capable of.
♪
Welcome back to Crime Beat.
A violent robbery for petty cash
left a young store clerk dead.
This happened decades ago
and surveillance cameras weren't as common,
so the killer eluded police.
That is, until officers realized
he had a signature MO.
Here again is Nancy Hixt with "The Night Shift."
[tense music playing]
[Nancy] Police worked around the clock
as the hunt for a killer intensified.
This was indeed an extremely brutal, brutal homicide.
The police service is doing everything in its power
to-- they're leaving no stones unturned in this one.
[Nancy] Early on Friday, February 18th, 2001,
Deb Dore was getting ready to leave her home in Lethbridge.
She had a two-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of her
to see her daughter in Calgary.
Earlier that week,
she had confirmed plans with Tara on the phone,
not realizing
those would be their final words to each other.
[Deb] "I love you."
We never ended a conversation without saying that.
[somber music playing]
[phone ringing]
[Nancy] At about seven in the morning,
Deb got a strange phone call.
[Deb] My ex-husband phoned.
He was sobbing and he had said,
"Hey, there's been a robbery. Tara's dead."
And as he said that, I turned the TV on
and there's Tara on the TV
because he had released her name to the press.
So they had a picture and her name,
as I'm being told,
because the Lethbridge police hadn't got to us yet.
Oh, I screamed. It was, yeah.
So we went to the police station in Lethbridge
and I walked up to the front desk
and they had been notified
and they had said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Deb,
we were just putting a few things together for you."
I said, "Don't worry about it. I already know."
And we left and came to Calgary.
[Nancy] Later that day, Deb met with Calgary police
at the sandwich shop.
They had just said that she was working alone
and they hadn't caught the person yet,
but they had some leads...
and that two young boys had tried to...
save her.
They administered first aid and tried.
They knew that there was robbery,
the cash register was missing
and that they would keep me posted
as soon as they knew anything.
It was roped off
and there was hundreds of bouquets of flowers
and teddy bears and everything outside the door.
[Nancy] A stream of strangers had stopped by
to pay their respects to Tara,
including a former employee of that very Subway.
It's sad to see someone die over less than $50.
[Nancy] Officers continued to search,
retracing all steps previously taken in the dark,
hoping to find further evidence,
including the murder weapon.
[O'Brien] So the autopsy of Tara McDonald indicates
that she died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head
and that it was a blunt instrument that had struck her
and the investigators believe that it was likely a hammer.
[Nancy] Police didn't release details
of the murder weapon to the public.
[O'Brien] As you know, hold back
is very crucial to an investigation
and it's a significant piece of evidence
that-- or information that only the killer
and the police investigators would know.
[Nancy] A hammer as a weapon stood out to investigators.
We got the blood trail, right?
[Nancy] There had been another similar violent attack
two hours before Tara's murder just down the street.
We're not saying the incidents are connected,
but there's a number of similarities
that make us tend to look that way.
[O'Brien] On February 17th of 2000,
the Calgary Police Service received a phone call.
There had been an individual from our community
that had been at a Bank of Montreal ATM
and had been doing some banking transactions.
It's about 9:30 at night.
As the community member is doing his transaction,
somebody comes up from behind and begins assaulting him
with what turns out to be a hammer
and strikes him multiple, multiple times.
[Nancy] The victim had been badly injured,
but was somehow able to stagger
to a nearby business to ask for help.
Covered in blood. [indistinct]. Blood were dripping actually.
From his head, right on forehead,
and all over his face.
He was literally covered in blood.
[Nancy] Minutes later, police and EMS arrived.
The victim was taken to hospital by ambulance
with severe head injuries.
Certainly we had a lot of resources put into that.
There were cameras,
and so we were doing neighbourhood inquiries.
We were looking for evidence.
We would have had a significant patrol response.
And then also detectives from our general investigation unit
came out to take over that investigation.
We were told that there was what we call a roll job.
So a person had been-- a personal robbery.
But the victim had been very severely beaten
and was in life-threatening condition at the moment.
[Nancy] Investigators immediately noticed
surveillance cameras at the bank
and put a rush on getting access to CCTV.
In the meantime, witnesses were interviewed
and forensic evidence gathered.
Just hours later, officers were shocked to learn
the victim had miraculously
regained consciousness in hospital.
[Guigon] Around four o'clock in the morning,
my partner and I attended the hospital.
He couldn't recollect anything about the incident at all.
He remembers running some errands prior to
and then going to the bank
to take some money out for groceries and pay some bills,
and that last he remembers.
Didn't remember getting hit.
Didn't remember stumbling along 17th Avenue.
Nothing like that.
[Nancy] Later that day, the victim underwent surgery
as doctors tried to mitigate the damage
caused by multiple depressed skull fractures
that were putting pressure on his brain.
His injuries were the result of repeated blows to the head
with a hammer, all captured on CCTV.
[Guigon] It was amazing.
We thought we were watching a homicide.
It was amazing that he pulled through.
We reckon that had he not escaped
the vestibule at that point and got out into the public,
he probably would have perished, yes.
[Nancy] Investigators learned that his wallet,
which only had about $30 inside,
had been stolen.
His red Toyota Corolla was also missing.
[Guigon] Just the sheer brutality of it.
There really was no reason
to strike a person in the back of the head.
Simply brandishing it and demanding money
would have been sufficient.
[Nancy] Horrific violence for a $30 payoff.
Thankfully, the attacker left behind evidence
that couldn't be disputed.
His face was captured on video.
[Guigon] He had a very unique look about him,
and if you were a cop in Forest Lawn
in the late '90s and early 2000s,
you knew exactly who he was.
I'd call him an opportunistic career criminal, I suppose.
His big thing was break-and-enters,
typically commercial break-and-enters.
He'd done a couple residential ones,
stealing cars, a lot of car thefts,
simple drug possessions,
being intoxicated in a public place, stuff like that.
Just a career guy that everybody knew.
[Nancy] With a person of interest identified,
investigators began the arduous task
of finding the career criminal who had a way of disappearing.
Just blocks from the ATM investigation,
detectives at the Subway homicide scene
wondered if they could be looking for the same offender.
[O'Brien] When you have two violent crimes like that
in close proximity,
that's a flag,
and really the ATM robbery
is still being actively investigated and being pursued.
So it didn't take long for the investigators
to figure out there might be a link here.
It is possible that it's the same offender
that committed the ATM robbery a few hours earlier
and then traveled to the Subway and committed another robbery,
except this time also committed a homicide.
♪
[Nancy] In her hometown of Lethbridge,
hundreds gathered to remember Tara McDonald.
[priest] We are in a state of disbelief,
shock, horror, and sadness
that a member of our family
could be the victim of such a violent crime.
It's not going to be easy to live through...
but God calls you to walk close with Him,
and He will pour out His grace upon you.
He will touch your hearts with His love,
and you will have your memories of Tara
to carry you through.
[Nancy] Loved ones reminisced about Tara's determination
and how her strength inspired others,
especially after being badly injured
when she was just six years old.
[Deb] She stuck a piece of cardboard into the furnace,
and it ignited her.
She was burnt from her neck to her knees...
and her arms to the--
from her shoulders to her elbows,
and both her hands.
[Nancy] For more than a decade,
Tara was in and out of hospitals,
undergoing reconstructive surgery.
[Deb] It was awful, but she came through it
with such a phenomenal attitude.
[Nancy] She had a compassionate heart
and aspired to be a police officer.
[Deb] I came home from work one day,
and there was a homeless person sleeping on the couch.
I said, "Who's that?" She said, "I don't know."
I said, "How did he get here?" "I brought him home.
It's not right that people sleep outside."
And she just would help anyone if she could.
[Nancy] Now, her life had been stolen
for the pittance that the robber got away with.
[priest] There will be nothing
that I believe will take away our pain.
[Nancy] Back in Calgary,
detectives were making progress
in both the murder investigation
and the attack at the ATM.
[intriguing music playing]
Just a few blocks from the bank,
on a nearby residential road,
police recovered the victim's car
and seized it for a full forensic examination.
In the meantime, the public got their first glimpse
at the person of interest in connection with both attacks
when investigators released a sketch.
[Redford] We had some really, really good descriptive details
from the person that helped us with that composite,
so we were confident that that would be a good composite.
And in fact, it was.
[woman] First thought was, "He's a regular.
He's been here for years.
He's been drinking and associating
around the T&C for years.
[Nancy] Detectives were able to confirm
that Trevor Stang
was their suspect for both crimes.
[O'Brien] Sometimes we put out sketches
and we might get one or two tips.
In this case, you know, we had well over 60 tips,
all indicating that it was Stang.
Trevor Stang was a--
at that time, a lifelong offender,
amassing a lot of convictions over his life,
up until the Subway Sandwich Shop for crimes of violence,
break and enters, possession of stolen property,
that sort of thing.
[Nancy] This was a significant break,
and Tara's mother reacted by sending a message to Stang
through a local newspaper.
[O'Brien] Back in those days prior to social media,
newspapers were a significant way of communication,
as was the traditional news,
and so I don't think there's anybody in the city
that didn't know what had happened
and that we have an innocent 25-year-old woman
that's murdered while working.
That shouldn't happen in our city.
And so when the family comes forward
and when the victim's mom comes forward
and basically pleads for the killer
to turn himself in, that was pretty powerful.
[Nancy] By now, investigators
had also finally tracked down Stang
and put him under 24-hour surveillance.
[O'Brien] There is a lot going on,
and the investigators are trying
to balance the investigation
as well as the risk of keeping this person
in our community and not locked up.
So we didn't have anything significant
to charge him when it comes to the murder.
Again, it's all speculation.
He's our suspect, but it's because of the MO,
it's because of the location,
but that's not good enough to arrest somebody.
[Nancy] But police felt the risk was too high.
When covert officers saw him
head towards the same busy area
where both violent crimes had taken place.
[O'Brien] At 5:30 in the morning,
our surveillance units
indicate that Stang is walking by himself
on a sidewalk on 17th Avenue,
and that's our opportunity.
There's nobody else around.
There's very few pedestrians, very few cars.
That was our opportunity to make the arrest,
and the detectives themselves arrested him.
[Nancy] Trevor Stang was taken into custody.
[O'Brien] He's transported to the arrest processing unit,
and not only is he photographed,
but also we seized the clothing that he was wearing,
and ultimately we sent that clothing
up to the crime lab for analysis.
[Nancy] Stang immediately called his sister.
[Nancy] At that point, Trevor Stang was only charged
in connection with the attack and robbery at the ATM.
He called to update his mother.
[Nancy] That's when key evidence related
to the murder came to light.
[man] The investigators realized that
where Stang's sister's house is,
and where Stang has been staying multiple times,
is just a short walk from where the Subway homicide took place.
On February 26th at 11:00 p.m.,
investigators go to the sister's residence
with a search warrant, and we were able to talk
to the sister and obviously search the residence
for some things that we were looking for.
[Nancy] As officers searched Stang's sister's home,
she agreed to go to police headquarters
and speak with detectives.
[man] As part of that interview...
she was shown the video
of the ATM robbery, and she broke down.
It was pretty clear that she knew who the offender was,
and again, it's a very violent attack,
and she decided at that point that she wanted to speak
to police and tell what happened.
[Nancy] In the days following the murder of Tara McDonald,
police expanded their search from the trail
canine trackers had originally identified.
We've had a number of Crime Stoppers tips come in,
as you well know, and some of the tips
indicate that perhaps something was either deposited or thrown
into the field here, so that's what we're searching for.
[Nancy] Police recruited volunteers skilled
in using metal detectors.
[reporter] How good are these things?
Very. I can pick up the back off an earring
three inches underground with a good, clear signal.
[Nancy] But in the end, it wasn't these volunteers
who located key evidence in this case.
[Redford] We were doing a grid search there
with searchers, including canine,
and the team came across
what we were looking for,
one of the things we were looking for.
It's significant because it's close to the Subway shop
where the homicide took place and the ATM.
It helps us to establish a number of things,
including the path of the person
who took the cash register.
[O'Brien] We found some black pieces of plastic.
We also found what looked like a metal cash drawer,
and we also found that some of the items had been
duct taped and they were inside a plastic bag.
All of the exhibits were sent
for fingerprinting, and sometimes this happens,
but unfortunately we weren't able to get any further
forensics from those pieces of evidence that we found.
[Nancy] In the meantime, forensic crime scenes officers
continued to search Trevor Stang's sister's home
as she opened up to homicide investigators.
So she talked about how earlier in the day
that Stang had indicated that he needed to go get some drugs.
He left for a period of time.
When he came back, he had $30 cash.
He had some vehicle that had not been seen before.
As investigators start piecing this together
and putting it together, they realize that...
the timeline seems to fit with the ATM robbery
where $30 were stolen from the victim,
and the vehicle matches
the vehicle that was stolen from him.
She also talks about her boyfriend being
at the house at the same time.
So when Stang came back, it was her, her brother,
and her boyfriend, and they all did drugs together.
Throughout this time, Stang is showing up
with some money and or drugs, or he has money,
he leaves, gets drugs, comes back,
they smoke it, he then leaves again.
So there's this coming and going of Stang
throughout that time.
[Nancy] Carol Stang told police that around 10:30
on the night of the attacks,
her brother once again left to get more money and drugs.
She said he returned about an hour later
carrying a steel box.
[O'Brien] And the three of them, Stang,
his sister and her boyfriend,
all are attempting to gain access to this box.
When they did get access to the box,
there was a couple hundred dollars in there.
Stang's sister indicates that she knew that the box
came from Subway because of the pieces of paper
that were in there, but she just assumed
that it was a theft.
And it wasn't until the next morning
when it really broke on the news,
that she saw that there had been
a homicide at the Subway, and that's when she was able
to piece things together and realize that her brother
very, very likely committed a homicide.
She indicated to us that as she was panicking and trying to
clean some of these items, she took them out of the house
and got rid of them,
but that she would be willing to show us where they were.
[Nancy] In the middle of the night,
the murder suspect Trevor Stang's own sister,
agreed to walk investigators
to the place she had disposed of key evidence.
This is Sunday, February 27th.
It's 3:30 a.m.
We're now at 2804 46th Street Southeast,
and this is Carol Stang.
- Carol Stang. - I'm John Dukes.
I acknowledge that you're still under oath,
that we were able to provide you with a KGB statement.
Now you've offered to take me from your house and show me
- where some items were stashed. - Yes.
Okay, this is all of your own free will.
[Carol] Yes.
You're not being forced to do this.
No.
We appreciate your cooperation, and this is all the truth.
All the truth.
[Nancy] Carol Stang told police she hid
the cash drawer near this tree,
which is exactly where officers had located it
during their grid search just hours earlier.
[O'Brien] Stang's sister told us that she found
a ball-peen hammer in the residence.
She believed that it was the homicide weapon,
and in fact had taken steps
to clean that particular hammer.
Again, that was hold-back information
that we hadn't told anybody.
The hammer was covered in snow, and really it was just
a partial piece of the hammer that we're seeing,
but the fact that she was able to lead directly
to there and point out exactly where she put the hammer,
again just adds to the reliability
of the information she's giving.
She did say that she had cleaned the hammer,
and when we sent it to the lab, forensics did indicate that
it looked like it had been cleaned,
and so there was no DNA
that we were able to get that was usable.
[Nancy] That night, Carol Stang told her boyfriend
to cooperate and tell officers the truth.
Okay, good.
[shutters clicking]
[Nancy] Suddenly, police had a mountain
of evidence against Trevor Stang for both the attack
at the ATM and the murder of Tara McDonald.
But investigators continued to gather further proof
against him while he was in custody awaiting trial.
[O'Brien] So one of the things that Stang was doing
while he was in remand was he was calling people
and having conversations with them about what he did,
and essentially was making confessions to them.
[Nancy] Those calls were recorded and included
this one to his mother.
[Nancy] Stang reached out to several friends.
[Nancy] In one conversation, he complained about
his sister's cooperation with police.
[Nancy] And then, Stang admitted to attacking
Tara McDonald with a hammer.
We have Stang, who is caught on wiretap,
actually admitting to striking Tara McDonald on the head
with a hammer and killing her.
Also striking the ATM victim on the head with a hammer.
And that's all caught with his own voice,
which is a very, very powerful confession.
[Nancy] But would this new evidence
be enough to convince
a jury beyond a reasonable doubt?
Welcome back.
Two seemingly random acts of violence
just ten blocks from each other left one person dead,
another badly injured.
Both victims were attacked with a hammer,
leading police to look at the same suspect.
But will key evidence from his own sister
be enough to secure justice for Tara McDonald?
Here now is Nancy Hixt
with a conclusion of "The Night Shift."
So this here is the...
BMO where the first attack happened,
right in the vestibule here at the ATM.
And then about ten blocks behind us,
in that direction, is where the subway is,
or was, and where we had the murder.
[Nancy] On a cold winter night in February of 2000,
police believed a drug addict's desire
for money and cocaine-fuelled a violent crime spree
that left one man with a brain injury
and a young woman dead.
[O'Brien] What we have is a prolific offender
that was addicted to drugs,
and that's what he cared about,
was getting money to buy drugs.
[Nancy] That would be the prosecution's theory
in two separate trials.
[Hak] So after the ATM robbery, where he gets $30
from the victim's wallet and the car,
he goes back to his sister's place,
tells them that he has this car,
which they ask him to park
somewhere else, and he's got $30.
So he then goes out to buy some crack cocaine,
comes back, $30 of crack cocaine
doesn't last long, they use up the crack cocaine.
Then he has the brilliant idea of going to get more money
to buy more crack cocaine.
That's where Tara McDonald came in.
These types of crimes are target-focused.
The target is the money, and however you get
the money doesn't really matter.
So whether it is hitting someone
over the head with a hammer, stealing a car,
breaking into a home, any of those things,
the target is to get the money to get the drugs,
and then you need to get more money to get more drugs,
and so it is crime that fuels
that repetitive, endless cycle.
[Nancy] At the onset of the first trial
for the attack at the ATM that was caught on video,
Trevor Stang pleaded guilty to robbery,
but he denied attempting to kill the victim.
A key forensic finding in this case came from
the jeans that Trevor Stang was wearing when he was arrested.
Those jeans had blood on them, and through DNA testing,
that was linked not to Tara McDonald,
but to the ATM robbery victim.
And so that also helped to link his involvement
in the spree that occurred that evening.
[Nancy] In the end, a judge acquitted him
of attempted murder
and convicted him of aggravated assault.
In handing down a ten-year prison term,
the judge noted Stang made no expression of remorse.
Then, in the fall of 2001, Tara McDonald's mother
went to court to see her daughter's accused killer
stand trial in front of a jury.
[overlapping chatter]
[Hak] The Subway Sandwich Shop murder
was a crime of convenience.
Tara McDonald was a young woman working
at the Subway Sandwich Shop, working by herself at night.
She wasn't hanging around with the wrong people.
She wasn't doing bad things.
She was just doing her job.
And that's the kind of murder that people are more afraid of,
where you're just doing your life.
You're just doing things in life,
and you happen to be the chosen victim.
Little did she know, but Trevor Stang was out
looking to make some quick cash to buy some crack cocaine.
He went into the Subway Sandwich Shop.
She was working alone. There were no customers.
He went up to her and, with a four-pound hammer,
struck her on the back of the head,
collapsing her skull,
and then stole the cash register.
He wasn't smart enough to open the cash register,
so he actually stole the entire cash register
and then ran away with it.
[Nancy] Along with wiretap admissions Stang made
while in custody awaiting trial,
the jury heard evidence
from Stang's own sister and her boyfriend.
[Hak] His calls from the remand centre made it
very clear that he was the killer.
His remand centre calls alone probably would have put him
in the frame for conviction.
But his sister's evidence really gave us the context
for the robbery, for coming home with the cash drawer,
for getting rid of the evidence,
that sort of thing.
[shutter clicking]
[Nancy] The evidence against Stang was overwhelming,
yet he refused to admit to the murder.
[Hak] The defence was that this was a manslaughter.
The argument before the jury was that
there was no intent to kill, no intent to cause bodily harm
that would rise to the level of murder.
This was an unintentional killing,
a robbery gone bad.
And that was the logical argument
for the defence to make to the jury.
[Nancy] After hearing nearly three weeks of evidence,
the jury deliberated for just five hours.
The jury did not convict of first-degree murder,
and it was absolutely open to them to do what they did.
They convicted him of second-degree murder.
They could have convicted him of first-degree murder,
but they clearly weren't satisfied
beyond a reasonable doubt that there had been enough planning
or premeditation to rise
to the level of first-degree murder.
But they clearly had no difficulty convicting him
of second-degree murder because they were satisfied
there was an intent to kill
or an intent to cause bodily harm
and being reckless as to whether death ensued or not.
[Nancy] Prior to being sentenced,
Stang stood up in court
and said he wished he could take it back.
I mean, you say I'm sorry to people
when you bump into them on the street.
You don't say I'm sorry to their families
after you hit them over the head with a hammer.
[Nancy] Stang was sentenced to life in prison
with no chance of parole for 18 years.
It's a fair sentence.
This was a terrible crime.
There's no doubt about it,
and it resulted in very tragic consequences.
Well, all the evidence went before the judge.
I think he considered all the appropriate factors,
and he gave a decision that's within the range in law.
I'm a bit disappointed, but that just meant that
he can't fight to get out until 18 years is up,
doesn't mean he's going to get out
if I have anything to do with it [indistinct].
[Nancy] Even with Tara's killer behind bars,
there was no peace for her mother.
I thought it was unfinished because I do believe that...
not out of revenge or anything,
they should have to face the victim's family.
[Nancy] She decided to visit Trevor Stang
at Bowden Institution.
[Deb] Because I was raised that...
prisons are country club settings
and that they can get their education,
and I'd never had anything to do with the justice system.
So to go in and go through the doors that slam
automatically behind you and the security clearance.
And then it was in a room half this size just across a table.
They brought him in, handcuffed and shackled,
and he was absolutely terrified.
And I think that might have given me...
the strength to...
I wasn't going to buckle in front of him.
Oh, he was crying, and he...
apologized prophetically,
and he kept asking me if I forgave him,
and I said, "No, that's not up to me.
I don't have to forgive you, it's not my place."
You know?
He said Tara was his only victim he had ever left behind.
And I said, "But you had 40-some prior convictions,
maybe not murder, but other victims."
And he didn't see them as victims
because they were alive.
[Nancy] Stang remains in prison.
Deb Dore continues to attend his parole hearings
and even visited him
for a second time in custody in 2025.
He was just very quiet and reserved
and said he'd served his sentence,
and I said, "Yes, but your 25-year sentence
is what they consider life,
where I get the life sentence...
without my daughter."
And he didn't say nothing to that.
I really don't feel anything towards him.
Like I say, I think I'm more angry about...
well, I'm angry at him, and I always will be,
but not to the point where it's going to eat me alive.
I don't care if he forgets me, but I don't want him
to ever forget what he did to her.
[Nancy] Deb often visits
her daughter's final resting place
at a cemetery not far from the home
where Tara grew up in Lethbridge.
Every time, she's reminded
of the magnitude of what she lost.
[Deb] There's been lots of weddings and births.
I'm lucky enough, I've got ten grandchildren
and two great-grandchildren.
And...
I see what they missed out on.
To me, all my kids were spectacular,
but Tara fought for everything she had...
and excelled at everything
and still never lost the compassion or the caring.
She would help anyway.
I mean, if he demanded the money,
she probably would have made him a sandwich to go with it.
[Antony] When Trevor Stang was convicted of murder,
he had a record with
approximately 40 prior convictions.
Stang was also investigated in relation to hammer attacks
and robberies involving two cab drivers in 1999.
In the end, he was convicted of one count of robbery.
Tara McDonald's family hoped her death
would lead to laws being passed preventing
businesses from having solo workers at night.
But that never happened in Alberta.
Thank you for joining us tonight on Crime Beat.
I'm Antony Robart.
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