McGray pleads guilty, gets life in prison
Michael Wayne McGray has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. McGray pleaded guilty to the first degree murder of Joan Hicks in Moncton two years ago.
No remorse was the description of Michael Wayne McGray in a Moncton court Monday. He pleaded guilty to murdering of Joan Hicks of Newfoundland, but refused to admit his part in the murder of her 11-year old daughter Nina. Proceedings in that case have been stayed, or suspended, for the time being.
Crown prosecutor Tony Allman says McGray told his side of the story to a police officer at the Renous Institution last fall.
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"And it was lengthy statement, over an hour long. Part of it related to the murder of Joan Hicks and basically what I told the court today is what he had said in that statement."
In the statement, McGray describes how he'd spent the day mainlining cocaine, shooting it intravenously with a drug dealer. He says he became overwhelmed with an urge to kill somebody. His girlfriend was the at the home Joan Hicks. He went to Hick's home and sent his girlfriend away. McGray's statement described how he choked Hicks against the wall. Once she was unconscious, he said he slashed her throat with a breadknife to make sure she was dead.
McGray has also confessed to the murder in Saint John of Mark Daniel Gibbons in 1987. Gibbons was stabbed to death in Market Square shortly after McGray, Gibbons and another man had robbed a taxi driver at knifepoint. McGray will appear in Saint John on that charge in May.
The other confessions related to the stabbing death in 1991 of two Montreal gay men. He has also been charged with those murders.
Constable Adrian Tomkins was the officer who took McGray's confessions. He says there may be even more murders in McGray's past.
"There are numerous responses from other jurisdictions within Canada and we are working together to try to assist them with any information that we can provide, which will possibly give a conclusion to some of the murder investigations that have been open for some time in those areas."
McGray was sentenced today to the maximum sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. However, police aren't ruling out asking that McGray be declared a dangerous offender, which would keep him behind bars indefinitely.