to plot the assassination of the presiding judge, the crown prosecutor and a police officer who had participated in the operation. Although, as a convicted felon, he was prohibited by law from owning a firearm, he had obtained a sawed-off shotgun to use in carrying out his plot.
In a rural hunting culture such as that on the Miramichi, guns are commonplace in most homes. Although, by law, guns are supposed to be registered, registration is considered a hassle and an expense, so it is common practice to simply fail to mention guns in the house, acting as though they don’t exist and thus the law isn’t violated, rather than go through the trouble of registering them. With guns everywhere and a ready supply of people in need of money, it’s not difficult for someone looking for a gun to obtain one. Sawing off a shotgun is an easy way to convert a readily available hunting tool into an easily concealed and extremely lethal weapon.
Once he’d obtained the sawed-off, David Tanasichuk had wrapped his altered weapon in a tarp to protect it and hidden it in the woods just inside the city limits, in a spot where it could be easily retrieved when he was ready to execute his plan. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for his intended victims, he had confided some of the details of his scheme to a fellow drug dealer who, it turned out, was working with the police as an informant.
As reported by the local paper, The Miramichi Leader, on October 27, 1993, the presiding judge, Judge McNamee, called the plot “a plan of wholesale slaughter” and, recognizing its lethal potential as an easily concealed weapon, he described the sawed-off shotgun as “the most sinister weapon imaginable.” Noting that it had the potential to do untold damage, he observed: “These individuals [the targets of the plot] would have no way of knowing the seriousness of this or the timing. One could only imagine what they must have gone through because of this threat…The thought of the use of this weapon almost makes one’s blood run cold.”2
David Tanasichuk was an on-again, off-again drug dealer who was suspected of having grown marijuana in the woods outside the city and of having a “back door” clientele who bought drugs from his house. Although he was prohibited from having guns and despite the fact that they occupied the same residence, Canadian law did permit Maria to have her own guns in the house. David was an avid hunter. Employing Maria’s guns and perhaps others he had secreted in tarps in the woods, he hunted deer, moose and bear, in and out of season. Despite their tight financial circumstances, he didn’t hunt solely for the meat. He hunted for the pure pleasure of stalking and killing, sometimes leaving the animals he killed lying where they died.
Also, he was an avid bow hunter.
Provincial records show that at one point in May 1989, during a period when he and one of his brothers had escaped from prison and were on the run, his path crossed that of the Miramichi region’s most notorious serial killer, Allan Legere. He was even briefly considered as a possible suspect in one of Legere’s murders, that of Annie Flam, but authorities quickly decided the Tanasichuk brothers were too disorganized. According to prison lore reported by the corrections department’s internal information system, he was fascinated by Legere, although he considered himself smarter, and therefore superior, to Legere, whom he criticized for having killed only women and old men. Some who knew him suspected him of having provided food and support to Legere during the months Legere was terrorizing the region.
David was tall and had a physique that showed his fondness for working out with weights. He had eyes described by one investigator as “shark’s eyes”—cold, gray and expressionless. His torso was covered in tattoos, primarily guns and anti-police slogans. At the base of his throat, he had tattooed the words “
The story was that the Tanasichuks had met when Maria was visiting her fiancé at the Springhill correctional facility. Once she met David, that engagement was off and ever after, David Tanasichuk was the only man in the world to her. It was, by all reports, a very strong attachment. Friends and relatives who spent time with David and Maria together said it was like a match made in heaven. The two of them shared a passion for outdoor activities, for hunting, fishing and riding through the woods on their three-wheelers. Sometimes they would be seen walking around Miramichi, holding hands. They did everything together. When they fought, friends reported, they cried, kissed and made up. Afterward they were closer than ever.
David nurtured a deep hatred for the police and this was something the Tanasichuks shared. Maria had escaped from a harsh family life in her early teens and had become involved with drinking and drugs, stealing and men who liked young girls. That behavior had gotten her sent to a reform school for girls as a teen. Her early experiences soured her on the criminal justice system and left her as hard-edged and suspicious as her husband when it came to dealing with the police. She rarely talked about her time in custody, even with close friends or family, except to tell her sister on the occasional home visit that it was an experience no one would want to have. She was adamant that she was never going to be incarcerated again, a resolution her relationship with David would ultimately cause her to break.
Maria’s sister, Sharon, describes a childhood in a poor family with eight children that was largely devoid of love and affection. Many homes in Miramichi in that era still had dirt floors. Catholic families had many children, the economy was poor and the financial and emotional costs of alcohol abuse were common problems for families trying to get by with too little. Maria’s family life was harsh and spare, in a home where her father, though kindly, had nerves damaged from the war and her mother was frustrated by poverty and overwhelmed by so many children. Care and attention came only when a child was sick and even that was meager at best. Pleasure was rare and presents even rarer.
According to Sharon, they usually got nothing for Christmas and they had learned not to expect anything. But one magical Christmas, when they were around eight and nine, both girls got their first dolls. During that long winter, they spent countless hours loving them and playing with them. To mark the specialness of these rare gifts, Sharon and Maria not only named their dolls, they also gave each other new names to use as they became loving mothers whose babies laughed and cried.
By her mid-teens, like many other young girls in the province, the strong-willed Maria had little supervision or correction. After a stint in reform school beginning around the time Maria was fifteen, she didn’t return to Miramichi but moved to the larger city of Saint John to stay with her brother. There she became romantically involved. At fifteen, she was hardly more than a child herself when she had her son, B.J., and she spent seven years in a common-law relationship with B.J.’s father.
The relationship was reportedly abusive, due in part to the father’s temper and in part to Maria’s sometimes careless mothering. As a very young mother without the support of her family, Maria struggled with the challenges of rearing a child while desiring the partying, drinking and drugs available to unencumbered friends her age.
During those years, she became close to B.J.’s father’s family. Her former sister-in-law, Cindy Richardson, remained a good friend to her over the years and was devoted to B.J. Cindy described Maria as always lively and fun—people describing Maria often used the word “bubbly”—but said that because of Maria’s drinking, drugs and partying, the family became concerned about B.J. when he was tiny and asked social services to become involved.
Eventually, Maria left the relationship and Saint John and moved back to Miramichi to raise her son away from the larger city’s temptations and be nearer to her family and her closest-in-age sister, Sharon. She had had enough of city life and looked forward to quieter times in Miramichi. By then, she had met David Tanasichuk and, wanting to become a better mother to B.J. and knowing she needed
