Unsolved: The Murder of Jason MacCullough

True crime has always been a passion of mine. I’ve always found myself interested in the workings of serial killers, and the reasons why and how they became the monsters they eventually were. How could people who seemed so normal, so to speak, get away with such heinous crimes? Ted Bundy was charming; it allowed him to still abduct victims despite every woman with brown hair being on high alert. Dennis Rader, the BTK killer seemed like your average working, married man, only his desire for attention being the reason for his eventual capture. Or how about Albert Fish, who was a cannibal who was able to lure a young girl away from her family so easily, simply by lying about a street that didn’t exist.

While those killers and many, many others through history are so fascinating, there’s another area of true crime I feel deserves a lot of attention: unsolved murders.

While we know what Bundy, Rader, Dahmer, and Fish were capable of, and who their victims were, there’s just something different about a murder, and even twenty years later, it still not being solved.

The Murder of Jason MacCullough

Through my research of various true crimes, I stumbled upon this case. Though it happened in 1999, there are still no arrests made, and the reason behind his killing still remains unknown. Despite his parents pleas to the community and police, 22 years later, the police are no further ahead than the night of the murder.

The Murder

On August 28th, 1999 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Jason was attending a party with some friends. Around 1 am, he decided to walk home; it was only about a kilometre away from the party. He decides to take a shortcut through a local park, something he and many others had done before him.

It was a park that was well travelled by many, and was surrounded by townhouses and apartments. He would have felt safe taking this short cut. It was a little run down, but it was by no means one of the more dangerous areas of Halifax.

It’s at 1:30 am Jason was shot at point blank range in the back of the head. Neighbours in the surrounding area hear the gun shot and commotion, and call the police.

2:30 am, his body is discovered in the park, and he’s only a few blocks away from his house. How could something so violent happen so close to home?

Jason was not affiliated with any gang or criminal activity. He was simply a 19 year old kid who was walking through the park on his way hole from a party. At the time of the murder, police did not have any suspects or leads. It wasn’t a robbery, nothing had been taken. Jason wasn’t involved in any criminal activity, and was a very well liked and rounded person. There was no sexual or personal motive; this was a senseless crime.

Wrong place, wrong time?

There are some who believe Jason was the victim of mistaken identity; he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Whoever shot him must have thought he was somebody else; what else could explain this senseless act of violence?

In Dartmouth, to make things harder for police, there is tension between the city and its citizens. The people have what they call a “code of silence”, making it harder for police to have any witnesses come forward. Through the years, police have been convinced there were witnesses to this crime, but nobody has come forward. It’s this tight-knit silence of the community that’s stopping anyone from coming forward, even with a substantial reward for any information.

The Investigation

Tom Martin was the lead investigator of the case. He worked the case from the night it happened, until 2008 when he retired. He had been involved with over 500 major cases, and was considered one of the more experienced officers with the Halifax Regional Police.

He had interviewed a total of at least 250 people in his investigation. There seemed to be a little bit of hope for Jason’s family in the first year of the investigation, when the composite sketches of five potential suspects were released to the public. One of the suspects had a gun.

Hours before the murder of Jason, three of these men had broken into a home on Pinecrest street, which was simply a few hundred metres away from where Jason was found. They demanded money and valuables, and eventually were arrested and charged after pleading guilty. However, they were never charged in the murder of Jason.

It would be years before more information pertaining to the case would be released. In 2005, the police revealed they believed there was a woman who was at the same park as Jason the night of the murder. Nothing ever came with this lead, however; a name was never released, and whether or not they found the woman was unknown.

In 2014, Martin revealed in an interview that they were “very close to laying charges”. There was only one other cold case that was being investigated like Jason’s, and that was the disappearance of a young 19 year old, like Jason, who went missing in front of a Canadian Tire in 1989, and foul play was suspected.

After all the years of investigating the crime, the cold case task force was disbanded. They simply did not have the money and resources to continue their investigation. It’s unfortunate, not having the time, money or resources to do these poor people justice; but the task forces assigned to these cold cases can only do so much.

Twenty years later

On the twentieth anniversary of the killing, The Halifax Police repeated the same message they had been spreading for years: if anyone has any information regarding the murder, to contact them. They still after all these years, believed there were witnesses of the murder.

Jason would be in his 40’s now. Who knows what he would be doing. He was a smart young man with his entire life ahead of him. He had been accepted to universities. He was known in the neighbourhood for helping his elderly neighbours, shovelling snow, doing lawn work and bringing in groceries for them. He worked at a gas station, and was well known for his excellence in customer service. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him; he was described as the sweetest person you could ever meet. If this was the case, and Jason was such an upstanding member of the community, why was he the target of such a violent crime?

The case remains open to this day. The police are still looking for witnesses to come forward, in the hopes that any information they can provide will lead to his killer.

This case hit home for me because it happened in the same province I was born in. A 19 year old, simply walking home at 1 am, which is something I do all the time, was murdered simply for taking a shortcut. The sad reality is the family may never know what happened. After all these years, their lives have been forever changed, and justice has not been served.

The question of why will always be in the air. But maybe, just maybe, someday someone will speak up and come forward, and Jason’s killer can finally be brought to justice.