The Unsolved Murder of Jason MacCullough (1999) - Dartmouth, NS (Interview with Vanessa Clark)
By S.M. | Published August 22, 2020A Shot in the Dark:
The Story of Jason MacCullough
Interview with cousin Vanessa Clark
August 28, 1999
It’s a humid night in August in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A group of friends gather for a party at a house on Joseph Young Street. Sometime after 1 a.m., 19-year-old Jason MacCullough decides to leave the party alone. It’s just over a one kilometre walk to his parents’ home on Russell. He takes a shortcut through Highfield Park, a children’s playground connecting Joseph Young to Pinecrest Drive. It’s a well-known and well-trod path. Jason has walked it before.
At 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, August 28, 1999, Jason is shot in the back of the head at near point-blank range.
Residents of the duplexes surrounding the park hear the shot and sound of footsteps scatter. They call police.
At 2:30 a.m., Jason’s body is found on the path, between 100 and 104 Pinecrest Drive, less than six blocks from his home.
Jason MacCullough was never involved in criminal activity. At the time, police said they had no motive, no suspects and few leads. His murder was, and is, considered to be a completely random act of violence.
For investigators, these are among the most challenging types of crimes to solve – even more so in communities like Dartmouth, where tension between the community and police have enforced what some consider a “code of silence.”
For families, it’s a defining, inexplicable loss.
Who was Jason MacCullough?
To understand the shock and senseless evil of Jason’s murder, you have to understand the person he was.
Vanessa Clark was 12 years old when Jason died. She remembers her cousin as “down to earth person” and “super friendly always… if he was cranky or having a bad day, he would have a smile on his face, and he was always willing to help.”
He was known for helping his elderly neighbours with their groceries and lawn work. He’d shovel their snow in the winter. There was a neighbour who lived across the street who Jason had helped for years. He was a Chief Scout for Scouts Canada and volunteered as a leader with the Boys and Girls Club at the Dartmouth North site. Friends and co-workers called him Piglet; his family called him Jase. Piglet ultimately stuck.
Clark grew up in the duplex directly above Jason and his parents. She was the only female cousin and was close with Jason and his brother. “We used to play outside with water guns, and they would teach me how to play basketball,” she says, adding “they didn’t make me feel like ‘the girl.’ They’d make me feel like I was family.”
Jason loved music, especially R&B. He had graduated from Dartmouth High School the year before and had been accepted to St. Mary’s and Dalhousie University. He’d thought of joining the Navy to fund his education. Jason had also worked at a gas station, and Clark says he was known for his excellent customer service. “All his friends agree with that too,” she adds. Jason shared many of the same friends as his younger brother, and Clark says they all thought of Jason the same way: “He was the sweetest guy you could have met, would give you the shirt off his back, and I know that he did in one case… like that's kind of guy that he was.”
Jason had just celebrated his 19th birthday on July 9.
“They think that the person - the suspect - that shot him was looking for someone else and it was a mistaken identity kind of thing,” Clark says.
Should the answer to who killed Jason ever come, his murder will never make sense. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Aftermath
On August 29, 1999, Carolyn and Allan MacCullough made an emotional plea for information about their son’s murder at a press conference. They described him as a shy and giving kid. “We might have over-protected him a little, but we never thought something like this would have happened in north end Dartmouth,” Allan said. “We had 19 good years with this kid,” said Carolyn. “I only wish we could have more.” (Edmonton Journal, 30 Aug 1999).
“I’ll never forget that morning ever,” Vanessa says of the morning she found out that Jason was gone. “It was just like it was yesterday.”
On Saturday morning, she returned home after spending the night at her friend’s house to find both her parents upstairs in their room. She could tell they were upset and knew something was wrong. Her dad was home from work. He always worked Saturdays.
“They told me ‘go do your paper route, come right home, we have to talk to you,’” she says.
Vanessa rushed to complete her delivery of 32 papers throughout the neighbourhood. When she returned, her aunt was downstairs.
“They took me in the bedroom and they told me that my cousin Jason was walking home last night and he was shot. And I remember going, ‘did he live?’ And they said no, he passed away,” she says. “And it’s just, after that it was a little bit of a blur.”
That’s when family started coming over. Then, the story came out.
“The next day after that, the 29th, I was delivering the newspaper with the front page… the whole front page of the Chronicle Herald was my aunt’s face bawling her eyes out, and I had to deliver 32 papers around the neighbourhood looking at my aunt. And that's all it was, literally for the next two to three weeks, every day on the front page was my cousin.”
Vanessa would read the articles before she made the deliveries. “I literally was in the front of it every day.” She says she’ll never forget the front pages of those papers.
That year, she began Grade 7. What she remembers most is that everyone knew her cousin. At one point, he’d gone to the same school. “It was literally like living in a nightmare that I never expected to live.”
Clark says Jason’s passing was the first major death to happen in her family. “It was really - it still is - kind of surreal.”
She said that when Jason passed, “everything kind of fell apart.”
The Investigation
Throughout the 1990s, Canada experienced a decrease in violent crime. By the end of the decade, Nova Scotia was the only province to report an increase in violent crime (Statistics Canada). The murder of Jason MacCullough is one of 100 cases listed in the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program, which offers tipsters a reward of $150,000 for information in certain cases. Many of these occurred in the 90s. But Jason’s murder is unique.
He was a 19-year-old kid who had never been involved with criminal activity. There was no financial, sexual or personal motive. Jason wasn’t robbed. Whoever killed him took nothing of value. It was, in every sense, a senseless crime.
There’s also the location: a densely populated residential area on a well-travelled paved pathway. Twenty years ago, the area was “a little run down.” Vanessa admits is “wasn’t the best area,” but said it “wasn’t the most dangerous part of Halifax either.”
Jason would have felt safe on the path, surrounded by townhouses, basketball courts and apartment buildings.
“He was 19. It was a quickest way for him to go home and he's taken that route before,” she says. “It wasn't just like a wooded area.”
Pinecrest Drive, at the exit of the path where Jason MacCullough was murdered.
For years, police have said they strongly believe there were “many people in the area who witnessed the homicide.”
“But no one's ever come forward,” says Clark. “So it's been a very tight-knit quiet thing.”
According to an interview with Jacob Boon of The Coast, Tom Martin led the investigation into Jason’s murder from the first night until his retirement in 2008. Having been involved with over 500 major cases, Martin was considered one of the most experienced investigators with the Halifax Regional Police.
Martin worked with RCMP to interview “at least” 250 people in Jason’s case.
In the first year or so, there would be hope for a resolution when police released five detailed composite sketches of men who were seen in the area and considered “persons of interest.” Clark describes seeing the photos as “surreal.” In 2000, the now-defunct Daily News made the somewhat controversial decision to publish the names of four alleged suspects.
Composite sketches of the alleged suspects released by Halifax Regional Police and published in the now-defunct Daily News. Photo: The Coast.
Hours before Jason was murdered, three of those men had broken into the home of an acquaintance on Pinecrest, a few hundred metres away from the path. They demanded money. One pointed a gun. They stole several hundred in cash and were later arrested. The men lived in the area, and all pled guilty to those charges. They were never charged in connection with Jason MacCullough’s murder.
In April 2005, police announced they had received new information and launched a search for a woman believed to be at Highfield Park on the night of Jason’s murder. No other details were released, and it’s unknown if the woman was ever identified or located.
In another interview with The Coast in 2014, Martin said that was the year police came “very, very close” to laying charges.
He also said the only other case that had been investigated to the same degree as Jason MacCullough’s was the disappearance of Kimberly McAndrew, who vanished from a Canadian Tire parking lot on Quinpool Road on August 12, 1989. Foul play is suspected in her case. Like Jason, she was 19 years old.
Then, the cold case task force was disbanded. In his interview with The Coast, Det. Martin reiterated his concerns with the management of cold cases. He said it would take prolonged commitment and more funding to find closure in cases like Jason’s.
"We know there are persons out there with information in relation to what happened," said Const. Jeff Carr in a 2006 CBC News article. "Maybe I would ask those people to put themselves in a position where if Jason MacCullough had been one of their family members, what would they want? I think that they would want to see this horrific crime solved." In the same article, Const. Carr said the case would not move forward until a witness was found, adding that witnesses would not be charged with failing to report a crime.
"It's just going to take the right person to step forward… There's people who've witnessed it and are living with it. Do the right thing,” said Allan MacCullough in a 2014 interview with The Coast.
On August 28, 2019 – the 20 year anniversary of Jason’s murder – Halifax Regional Police re-iterated their message in a news release: “Investigators believe there were several people in the area at the time of the homicide and strongly believe there were witnesses to the crime.”
Police continue to urge those people with knowledge of what happened to come forward and report anything that they might remember about that day, no matter how small the detail might seem. They have also said they hope those who might have been afraid to come forward will feel freed by the passage of time.
Community and the Police
Unanswered questions have lingered for decades.
In a 2019 CTV News Atlantic article, Allan MacCullough expressed his belief that the problem extended beyond that. “"I blame it on maybe a lack of communication between the police and the community," he said. "If there was more communication, then people would be coming forward with more information, but if they believe the police are the enemy, people aren't going to come forward and be forthcoming."
Clark says she agrees completely. “If the relationship with the community and the police would have been different, I think it would have been solved,” she says. “Even now more information maybe would come out.”
“My aunt said something on the news quite a few years ago, it was along the lines of ‘there's a Code of Silence in the streets,’” she adds. “And I believe that. I do believe that more information would have been released if people weren't scared to say something and there was a better relationship with the police and the community. I do completely agree with that.”
She says she knows people who won’t talk to the police and prefer to deal with situations in their own ways. “If that's how it wouldn't be… maybe it wouldn't take 20 years for anything to come out, or maybe [it] would have [been] solved right away.”
At one point, Clark says Crime Stoppers did a re-enactment video of Jason’s murder in hopes of generating new leads. “It looked just like Jason… it was very hard to watch that commercial,” she says. “And still nothing came from that either.”
She knows how hard Jason’s parents tried in the years after his death. In the beginning, Jason’s dad was calling police “every day or every week.” Clark says she has nothing against the police, but is disappointed that there’s been 20 years without answers. She never thought Jason’s murder would go unsolved for this long.
“It's been so silent,” she says. “It's just been 20 years of nothing, I guess is the best way to put it, really.”
Each year, police put out a release with Jason’s photo.
In the 14 years since the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program was launched, only three rewards have been paid.
Early news coverage of Jason’s murder, showing Pinecrest Drive. Photo: CTV News Atlantic
Family Impact
Vanessa and her family moved out of the area last year. She now lives in a rural part of Nova Scotia. “After Jason died, that place got a little rundown, people moved out of there,” she says. “The rumours started flying [about] what happened.”
Eventually, the city put in a family co-op to house low-income families. “There’s mostly children around there now,” says Clark, adding “back then it wasn’t.”
Clark says it took “about five or six years” for the city to clean up the area. They started fixing the buildings. They renamed the park in Jason’s honour.
It’s now the Jason MacCullough Memorial Park.
When it was first re-named, Clark said it didn’t take long for someone to vandalize the sign. “They replaced it instantly,” she says. “So, after a while they did start taking care of it, because I think the community was sick of the constant garbage… like other people have been killed in that area too and those have been solved. So I think the community was just tired of having that hang over their head.”
“They take care of that park now.”
She still meets people who mention the park in Highfield. When she asks if they’re talking about the one named after her cousin, people are sometimes surprised to hear what happened. “They never heard the story and they never knew about that being so close to home and in their own backyard.”
Jason is never far from her mind. “When I lived right in Halifax, it was always on my mind. I didn't want my kids going very far from home because something could happen.”
Jason’s passing had “put a huge scare into the family” and changed the way Vanessa’s parents raised her and her younger brother, who was too young to remember Jason. Vanessa says her mother always kept him close to home. Vanessa wasn’t allowed to go out after dark. “Even when I was 15, 16, up until I moved out, I wasn’t allowed out after dark unless she knew exactly where I was and when I was coming home,” she says.
“We never… we weren't expecting it, and then all of a sudden something that my cousins did all the time was now something that was dangerous.”
Jason’s murder has also impacted the way Vanessa has raised her own kids. “I think it always will.” She hopes it impacts them too, if or when they have children of their own.
She says that when her eldest was old enough to go play with her friends, she felt nervous to let her go off on her own. She still feels nervous. “It’s not that I’m scared something will happen to them, it’s that… the idea is that you never know when something could happen and to always be careful.”
The world is unrecognizable compared to the one Jason left two decades ago. While the family and community support for Jason has been unwavering, it is in the context of a more complex and tragic world. Events like the April 2020 attacks in Portapique, NS, and the COVID-19 pandemic, have created a divide between past and present.
“[It] sometimes makes it seem like your problems aren’t as bad as everything else,” she says. “Sometimes you think about Jason's murder compared to Portapique… it happened so long ago, you know what I mean? Like, there's still awareness to it. But now everyone's look is more on what's happening now with COVID, with the shooting and everything going on,” she says. “It's hard to kind of remember what happened 20 years ago or even want to talk about what happened 20 years ago.”
Remembering Jason
On October 17, 2018, over 200 people attended the annual Walk Against Violence which honours Jason and other victims of violence. That year, Jason’s mother, Carolyn MacCullough, read a statement: “For one evening, we are not alone,” she said. “We have a lot of people who really care and know what we are feeling.”
For the past 21 years, The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Halifax Dartmouth North site has organized the Annual Walk Against Violence. Families, community members, advocates, media and police come out to remember Jason and other victims lost to crime, and show solidarity to end violence. They walk from the Boys and Girls Club on Farrell Street to the Jason MacCullough Memorial Park. They share a moment of silence.
Vanessa calls TV stations and media every year to invite them to the walk. She carries a stuffed Piglet in honour of Jason. “When we buried him, I put a stuffed Piglet in his arms, and I kept a stuffed Piglet,” she says. “I try to carry that with me every walk. It has got pretty ratted through the years.”
In his life, Jason MacCullough made his community better. Death could not diminish his impact.
“People still talk about Jason,” says Clark. “He was a strong supporter of the Boys and Girls Club in the area and a lot of kids - they never met him, they know who he is. So yeah… it's nice. The community still keeps his memory alive.”
On Jason’s birthday, and the anniversary of his death, Vanessa says she and her family change their Facebook photo to a picture of Piglet for the day. “Everyone knows what that means… It's for Jason.”
“That's how everyone remembers him, was by Piglet.”
Jason MacCullough would have been 40 years old this year.
His photo still hangs on the wall at Dartmouth High School, and each year, a graduate is awarded the Jason MacCullough Memorial Scholarship. In 2018, after learning about the Parkland shooting, musician Jim Henman of April Wine wrote the song “Some of These Children” to bring awareness to youth and gun violence. He dedicated the song to Jason, and donated song 50 per cent of all iTunes and CD sales to the Dartmouth North site of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Halifax.
For Vanessa, Jason’s love of music is something that will always connect her to him.
“At his funeral they played I Believe I Can Fly and that's always stuck with me for years, and whenever I hear that song, that's all I think about. I know people think Space Jam,” she laughs, “but for me, I think of him.”
The other is Shawn Mullin’s Lullaby. “That song just captures the moments that we were living in at the time. And there's words in it, it says, ‘everything's going to be all right,’ and that song is stuck with me my whole - since I was 12 years old. It's just little things like that,” she says. “I hear songs and it makes you think of him, because he would hear it, and he would be like, ‘I like this song.’ And you’d instantly just know like, this is Jason’s song.”
$150,000 REWARD
Contact Information:
The Government of the Province of Nova Scotia is offering rewards of up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000) for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the murder of Jason Allan MacCULLOUGH.
Any person with information regarding the person(s) responsible for the murder of Jason Allan MacCULLOUGH should call the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program at 1-888-710-9090.
Anonymous tips can be sent to Crime Stoppers by calling toll-free 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), submitting a secure web tip at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca or via the P3Tips App.
Sources and Links to other stories about Jason MacCullough: The Ottawa Citizen - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 5
Times Colonist - Victoria, British Columbia, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 5
The Windsor Star - Windsor, Ontario, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 11
Jason's father said his son had been accepted at two universities and was considering joining the navy to pay for his education.
Edmonton Journal - Edmonton, Alberta, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 9
The Province - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 15
Calgary Herald - Calgary, Alberta, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 6
National Post - Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 8
The Vancouver Sun - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Mon, Aug 30, 1999 · Page 8
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/85-002-x2000005-eng.pdf?st=cQ3CRX6F
https://www.claudiachender.ca/news-1/2019/10/16/21st-annual-walk-against-violence
Photo
2016: https://haligonia.ca/police-continue-to-in%C2%ADvestigate-murder-of-j%C2%ADason-maccullough-160433/
Investigators believe there were several people in the area at the time of the homicide and strongly believe there were witnesses to the crime. Investigators continue to urge these people to come forward and report anything that they remember about this day, no matter how small the detail.
(2019)
https://haligonia.ca/police-continue-to-investigate-murder-of-jason-maccullough-4-267163/
https://globalnews.ca/news/5825001/jason-maccullough-murder/
https://globalnews.ca/news/4566223/maccullough-murder-unsolved-walk-against-violence/
Photos of Walk Against Violence
https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/the-ultimate-crime/Content?oid=4394599
https://novascotia.ca/just/public_safety/rewards/case_detail.asp?cid=35
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/hunt-for-killer-continues-7-years-later-1.582832
Investigators believe MacCullough was the victim of a random act of violence and that a number of people were in the area at the time, said a spokesman for Halifax Regional Police.
"We know there are persons out there with information in relation to what happened," said Const. Jeff Carr.
"Maybe I would ask those people to put themselves in a position where if Jason MacCullough had been one of their family members, what would they want? I think that they would want to see this horrific crime solved.”
https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/musician-releases-song-in-memory-of-dartmouth-murder-victim-1.4165771
https://novascotia.ca/just/Public_Safety/Rewards/case_detail.asp?cid=17
https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/too-many-anniversaries-for-jason-maccullough/Content?oid=4394658
https://haligonia.ca/police-continue-to-investigate-murder-of-jason-maccullough-4-267163/
https://globalnews.ca/news/2291936/dartmouth-walk-brings-attention-to-cold-case-violent-crime/
https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/AsianOrgCrime_Canada.pdf
https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/saving-the-stuff-that-matters/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/hunt-for-killer-continues-7-years-later-1.582832
In April 2005, police said they received new information and launched a search for a woman believed to be at the park the night of the shooting
https://novascotia.ca/just/Public_Safety/Rewards/case_detail.asp?cid=17
https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/too-many-anniversaries-for-jason-maccullough/Content?oid=4394658
Composite photo, interview with Tom Martin
https://stephenkimber.com/dead-wrong/
https://novascotia.ca/just/Public_Safety/Rewards/case_detail.asp?cid=17