First Degree: From Med School to Murder: The Story Behind the Shocking Will Sandeson Trial - Softcover

Hounsell, Kayla

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1771086661 ISBN 13: 9781771086660

Publisher: Nimbus Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

A murder, a missing body, and a sensational trial that shocked the community. Will Sandeson seemed like a model son. A member of the Dalhousie University track and field team, he was about to start classes at Dalhousie's medical school. He had attended a medical school in the Caribbean; he worked at a group home for adults with disabilities. "There's times for whatever reason that things don't go quite as planned," a Halifax police officer told Sandeson shortly after he was arrested for the first-degree murder of Taylor Samson, who also, on the surface, seemed like a model son.

Samson lived in a fraternity house near Dalhousie, and when the six-foot-five physics student disappeared without a trace, the focus eventually turned to Sandeson. Sandeson's trial, blown open by a private investigator accused of switching sides, exposed a world of drugs, ambition, and misplaced loyalties. Through interviews with friends and relatives, as well as transcripts of the trial and Sandeson's police interrogation, award-winning journalist Kayla Hounsell paints a complex portrait of both the victim and killer, two young men who seemed destined for bright futures. First Degree includes previously unpublished photos and details never made public until now.

About this title

About the Author:

Kayla Hounsell is an award-winning journalist who covered the murder trial of Will Sandeson. She is now the CBC Network Reporter for the Maritimes. Based in Halifax, she has worked in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ottawa, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Liberia. This is her first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Bad Cop

Then there's a knock on the door. Allison leaves and another officer enters. This is different. He's not patient, like Corporal Allison, but firm, almost angry, from the outset. He's physically bigger too, tall, with a commanding presence.

"Will, remember me―Detective Constable [Roger] Sayer? I spoke to you last night. Remember that?"

"Yup."

"I told you last night that I was one of the lead investigators on this file, and I've been here all day, all night, all week, okay. I've been watching you all day, and you've done nothing since I first saw you yesterday but lie. I told you that evidence would show that, and it has been doing it all day, and we haven't stopped collecting evidence. Do you understand that, Will?"

"Yes."

"Have not stopped. And you sit in here and you keep going on and lying and lying and lying, and you don't need to. You need to get past that. That needs to stop." He points to the growing pile of photos and documents on the floor and explains that so far the evidence disproves everything Sandeson has told police.

"Blood evidence. People come in and take twenty pounds of weed and $40,000 and they leave you what-―a damage deposit? Not to mention the stack of twenties that's found in your bathroom underneath the garbage bag in your garbage can. Will, you need to start to get your head right, 'cause you think all this bullshit you're laying down, you think you're smarter than everybody that's working on this, you're making a very drastic mistake. Drastic."

Sandeson is quiet, listening intently.

"Jody believes in you. I tried to tell him 'cause I was in here last night and I saw what was what, but he believes that what you're trying to say is true. I don't."

It's clear Sayer is playing the "bad cop" in the "good cop/bad cop" scenario.

Sayer picks up a photo. "There's blood on this table that somebody cleaned up and, like they always do because they all think they're smarter than they are, you wiped the top but don't think of the side. What's that going to be tested for?"

"dna," Sandeson barely squeaks out.

"dna," Sayer confirms.

"More blood," announces Sayer. "Blood on the chair. There's blood in your bathroom, on the floorboards, on the curtain. Your own words were that it happened in your kitchen area. How'd all that blood get in your bathroom?"

Sandeson keeps his eyes to the floor.

"Will, look at me. You're in here crying and going on, and you know what happened. There is nothing that I have seen in here today that suggests anybody showed up at that place. Nothing. That video runs for over an hour. No one comes, no one leaves. Then your system is turned off. If you think that people are that stupid, you're fooling yourself."

Sandeson is still silent.

"Listen, buddy, you don't have to be Colombo to figure out that between 11:33 and 1 a.m., when that system was turned off, is when he left―however he left."

Sayer tells Sandeson they've also seized his car. "How much of that do you think we need to find to get dna," he asks, smacking a photograph of blood.

"Less than a drop," Sandeson replies meekly.

"Yup," Sayer responds. "And when we check your car, what if his dna's in there? What's your story then? These mystery people made you drive him away?"

And then the interrogation takes another turn. "You're a liar, cold, calculating, and lying." He jabs at a photograph again, this one of Taylor Samson. "Where is this man? Where is he, Will? What happened in your apartment?"

Sandeson sniffles and bows his head.

"Don't put your head down, man. Where is he?" He thrusts the photo of Samson under Sandeson's eyes. "What did you do to this man?"

He runs down the evidence police already have against him.

"You're lying, man. You've been lying all day." It's now coming up on six o'clock in the evening.

"When you're in this room with people who are innocent, they kick and scream, bud."

Sandeson hangs his head.

"I heard him ask you a hundred times, 'Who's the name?' You crying and blowing in the Kleenex," he mocks, "like you're some kind of victim. You're a predator, bud."

Sayer's voice is aggressive, but slow and deliberate.

"I want to bring that man home to his family. Where is he?"

There is no crying now.

"You're done, bud. Done. There's no going past that, but you can do something right."

Sandeson still says nothing.

There's a knock on the door. Sayer gathers up the photos he's spread over the floor of the interrogation room. He places the one of Taylor and his brother on the chair and sets it in front of William Sandeson. "I'm going to leave and watch you push that away." He walks out.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nimbus Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1771086661
• ISBN 13: 9781771086660
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256