After he had been singled out as a killer, Craig Allan appeared to realize he had reached a fork in the road.
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London police Det. Sgt. Micah Bourdeau had just told him that Allan’s associate had spoken to the police and pointed the finger at Allan as the one who killed London musician Daniel Fawcett, 52, in Gibbons Park on Nov. 6, 2022.
“(The associate) has told the police that you are responsible for this murder,” Bourdeau said.
“Really? Seriously?” Allan said.
Allan appeared stunned. For almost an hour during his police interview following his arrest just outside Toronto, he had told Bourdeau he wasn’t even there when Fawcett was fatally stabbed in the heart. He went as far as to say in the beginning that he wasn’t even in London.
But the lies he spun were easily refuted through video surveillance showing him with the associate together before Fawcett’s death at a hotel and just outside the park, then afterwards. Cell phone communications between Fawcett’s and the associate’s phones showed they had agreed to meet.
News of the direct accusation meant that he was the prime suspect in a murder investigation into the death of the former guitarist with the Canadian rock band Helix. “Tell me what you saw in the park,” Bourdeau said to Allan once he relayed what the associate said, during the videotaped interview played at Allan’s Superior Court of Justice second-degree murder trial Monday.
“As it stands, you’re charged with murder. This is not the time to be holding back,” the officer said.
There was a long, quiet pause while Allan appeared to be thinking about what to do next. More than five minutes passed before he spoke.
“Being a rat is something that I’ve always been against and I’m about to break it. Oh my god.”
He immediately pointed the finger at the associate, who has already testified at the trial that began two weeks ago, and whose identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban. The associate testified that Allan stabbed Fawcett after the associate lured Fawcett into the park, presumably to sell him drugs. And it’s what they told the police at the time of Allan’s arrest.
But Allan, once he knew he’d been thrown under the bus, told Bourdeau that the associate, not him, did the stabbing. He said that he left the associate just outside the park, presumably so the associate could sell crack cocaine, he took a cab to retrieve a stolen car he’d left at White Oaks Mall and then met up with the associate at Adelaide and Cheapside streets later.
Allan said the associate never told him who they were meeting when they parted at the park. “When I met (them) at Adelaide, (they) said something went south.”
Allan recalled the associate saying, “Something went south and I stabbed someone in the leg. We have to get out of here.”
Allan said he didn’t ask any questions about what happened, however, he knew that the associate said Fawcett had assaulted, stole and pestered the associate for weeks.
He noticed over the following days when he and the associate left London, came back briefly to buy drugs and then headed to Toronto that the associate was frequently checking their cell phone for media reports on the stabbing.
Also, he told Bourdeau, the associate told Allan to say to the police that the associate joined up with Allan in Toronto after Allan had left the city. However, there was surveillance video and photos showing that the pair was together in London, staying at a hotel, and left together.
Allan said he saw the associate with a knife that they always carried – a black folding knife with gold on the handle. When he and the associate were leaving town in a stolen SUV, the associate threw it out the car window somewhere between London and Woodstock.
“I never touched it, never touched it,” he said.
Justice Patricia Moore has heard that the police searched for the knife but never found it.
Bourdeau asked Allan why he would leave the associate alone near the park in the middle of the night. “(They) wanted to deal with something (themselves),” he said. He said he never asked any questions about the stabbing because “I didn’t want to know.”
Bourdeau asked Allan why the associate would accuse him of the killing. “I have no clue….I’m a scapegoat.”
There were long periods of silence in the interview once Allan knew the associate had made him the main suspect. He smoked cigarettes and put his head in his hands. During one long break, when Bourdeau was out of the room, he cried.
He didn’t see the associate stab Fawcett but believed that they did it. “I was not there,” he said.
And he admitted he met Fawcett days before his death while he was with the associate and smoked a joint. “He seemed like an all-right guy.”
Bourdeau said the associate went even further, telling the police that it was never the plan to kill Fawcett, but “Craig was only supposed to beat the (expletive) out of him.”
Also, Bourdeau told Allan, the associate said “that you talked about the murder afterwards and that it felt good.”
Allan denied the allegations. He told Bourdeau that he hadn’t been in legal trouble since 2008, until he started hanging out with the associate and had since been to jail three times committing crimes with them.
“I feel like I’ve been set up this whole (expletive) time,” he said.
The Crown closed its case once Bourdeau’s testimony finished.
Allan’s defence lawyer Carolynn Conron told Moore the defence would not be calling any evidence.
Closing submissions are expected on Thursday.