Murderer: ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen’ - Jun. 01, 2010
BY KATHY BOCKUS
kathy@stcroixcourier.ca
ST. STEPHEN – In a quavering, quiet voice, convicted murderer William David White, 33, of St. Stephen, addressed the court.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he repeated after being told by Court of Queens Bench Justice Hugh McLellan to speak up.
White was sentenced Thursday afternoon to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 20 years from the date of his arrest Dec. 10, 2009, for the death of Mary Claire Scott. Her body was found in the basement of her modest home on Queen Street in St. Stephen by family members and police on Nov. 30, 2009.
An autopsy revealed Scott, 59, bled to death from multiple knife wounds.
When asked by the judge if he wanted to address any of his victim’s family, White, in the prisoner’s box facing the judge, turned and first looked to his right where members of the media sat in the courtroom.
White then looked to his left, but didn’t speak to Keith Doyle of St. George, son of the victim, Mary Claire Scott, 59, of St. Stephen.
An unsmiling Doyle raised his right hand and gave White the finger.
In his sentencing remarks, the judge said the members of Scott’s family and the community will forever bear the loss and feel the pain that “this generous sweet lady was so brutally taken by this man a few weeks before Christmas.”
The judge said what he felt was particularly aggravating was the “brutal nature of this death by stabbing of an older lady on the basement floor of her own house.”
He later stated “the senselessness and brutality of this ghastly crime in a person’s own house is a real aggravating circumstance.”
McLellan said the only benefit to White for the killing of “this poor lady” was his finding a little bit of money she had stashed in her house because she didn’t use banks.
He noted that according to a police report and White’s own lawyer Joel Hansen, when White noticed Scott was bleeding from the wounds he had inflicted, “A final, fatal knife wound was struck to end her suffering.”
“Words are lacking to describe how wrong that was,” said the judge.
McLellan noted how religious Scott was and said the victim “may have been too kind, too generous and too Christian to Mr. White.”
“She may have been conscious of the Biblical injunction ‘whatever one does to the least of these (you do to me)’,” said the judge.
The judge said, “Somehow Mrs. Scott, a resident of a small quiet town, was kind to this troubled man.”
Crown prosecutor Jim McAvity and defence counsel Joel Hansen made a joint submission to the judge asking him to establish White would be unable for parole for 20 years. McAvity also asked for a lifetime weapons ban, which the judge granted.
After court, McAvity told reporters that both he and Hansen felt the parole term was an appropriate resolution.
“I would quite frankly, as I told the court, be surprised if Mr. White ever gets out of jail given his past psychological and psychiatric history,” said McAvity.
He noted in White’s pre-sentence report that the murderer had been in trouble since his early teen years and had been in and out of institutions and detention facilities in Nova Scotia. McAvity said White had received fairly extensive rehabilitative treatment while in prison for sexually related offences, but that at the end of those the prognosis have not been very good.
“When he was released from the penitentiary in 2006 there was a clear indication at that time that he remained a danger to society. He actually served every day of his last sentence, and was not released on parole,” said McAvity.
That sentence was for 42 months for sexual assault with a weapon.
Calling this case “sorrowful” McAvity said there were no winners, just losers.
“He’s going to jail. They’ve lost their mother, their sister, their grandmother. That pain won’t go away.”
Hansen told reporters he agreed with the information in the pre-sentence report that said White would always need supervision, based on his turbulent upbringing.
Calling White’s family life “very, very destabilized, dysfunctional and violent” Hansen commented “this is the fruit of that,” and said his client’s frame of mind and mental development were very much hindered by his family background.
Hansen said White began to be abused as a young child. He developed mental health issues and because of that was in constant care of the Department of Social Services in Nova Scotia from the time he was 11 years old, having been placed in care by his mother who had lost control of the situation due to her own issues, suffering from abuse from partners coming in and out of the family situation.
But Hansen said he wasn’t blaming the system for the way White turned out. “I don’t believe in that,” he stated.
He did confirm that White told him he had been living with the victim and her husband for at least two weeks prior to the murder, having been homeless just before that.
“I believe Judge McLellan stated it very correctly. This lady was a Christian woman who would do anything to assist a person in need and I think that’s why he was there,” said Hansen.
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