In 1983, Derrick Lawlor was charged with the murder of Locklyn Anderson Hutchings. He smothered the man at a cabin near Carbonear, and was charged not with murder, but manslaughter. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison, but was eventually pardoned of the charge.

Years after his release, Lawlor studied pastoral counselling and social work in Ontario, and wound up a student adviser at AccessAbility Services at University of Waterloo. He also sat on the board for the Waterloo Regional Homes for Mental Health.

Lawlor is in the news again this week, having been given a life sentence in jail for the first-degree murder, by strangulation, of Mark McCreadie. It happened in a public park in Kitchener, after asexual encounter with the man, demonstrating Lawlor’s lack of restraint, and his proclivity for taking people’s lives in the same manner.

A man named John Davie was a damning witness in the trial. Davie says he and McCreadie were having sex in the park on the night of McCreadie’s murder, and Lawlor stumbled upon them and asked to join in.

Davie claims Lawlor tried to tighten a scarf around Davie’s neck at one point in the encounter, prompting Davie to leave Lawlor and McCreadie alone. McCreadie’s body was found near this section of the park the next day.

The Crown contended that Davie used that very scarf to strangle McCreadie; Lawlor claims to have no recollection of the night, and pleaded not guilty, despite having confessed to police that he has strong desires to harm men exhibiting what he deems promiscuous sexual behaviour.

He says this urge to harm stems from having been raped a year prior to McCreadie’s murder, and that the trauma of that event has led him to often get drunk and “cruise the park” for sexual encounters, because this “sexual deviance” tamed his welling rage to hurt someone. Yet a friend reportedly told police that Lawlor once told him he cruised the park looking for sexual predators to kill.

McCreadie had recently moved from Toronto to Kitchener to care for his aging mother.