'Summer of Fear': On-the-run felon freely preyed on children for months despite parents' alert to authorities
It has been almost a year since Morgan MacDonald left parents in and around Nova Scotia terrified for the lives of their children in what Canadian media dubbed the "Summer of Fear."
MacDonald, a violent convicted felon with a history of mental health problems, had inexplicably been allowed to go free by the very police who were supposed to be keeping an eye on him and subsequently went on a fourth-month crime spree that involved sex trafficking of children, as well as drug trafficking. The 31-year-old had been released from a maximum-security prison in New Brunswick on May 16, 2019, and had been ordered to serve the rest of his four-year sentence at a halfway house in Saint John.
But he never showed up.
CBC.ca reported that the day he was released from the Atlantic Institution in Renous, New Brunswick, it was unclear how he was supposed to be taken to the halfway house, which was located 250 km away in Saint John. It is the responsibility of the jail's parole officer to determine in advance if the prisoner needs transportation, which can be a private car, government vehicle, or even public transit. It's unclear if MacDonald was accompanied, though a spokesperson for Saint John Police Force said they had been notified he was missing immediately.
The decision to free him in itself has been questioned by many over his extensive criminal record, which included convictions for uttering threats, assault, and robbery, and dated back to 2007. In 2009, he was accused of robbing a restaurant employee by taking a knife to her face. Four years later, in 2013, he and four accomplices robbed a taxi driver at knifepoint in Dartmouth. Parole board documents from 2018 also said he had "difficult relationships with women in the past and they need to be protected against your use of manipulation, influence, and control to gain personal advantage."
His disappearance was especially concerning to parents, not just because of his violent past, but also because they said police were not taking them seriously over their concerns for their childrens' well-being. Indeed, it took officials more than a month after he went missing to notify the public and issue a warrant for his arrest.
By that time, MacDonald had already reached Truro in Nova Scotia and had forged a fake identity for himself. He went by the name Kaycee MacDonald on Facebook, and to locals, he was known as 'Flip.' He developed a reputation as a party animal who regularly had his way with the girls and showered $50 bills on the boys.
Over the next four months, he was allegedly involved in dozens of criminal activities, including sex trafficking of youth and indigenous children.
Parents said they had tried telling police about the 31-year-old but that they were met with skepticism. None more so than the mother of a 14-year-old boy who revealed she raised concerns to Colchester District Royal Canadian Mounted Police but was ignored. She said she reported her son had not come home despite being under a court-ordered curfew and that she had seen him earlier in the day with 'Flip,' but was dismissed and told the boy's behavior was typical for a teenager.
The mother said as the summer progressed, she noticed changes in her son's behavior and that he was, more often than not, gone from home. He had also stopped responding to texts. It was then that she was informed that Flip went by Kaycee MacDonald on Facebook and heard he might even be the man with a Canada-wide arrest warrant to his name. When she compared a mugshot to a photo of him standing next to her son, she was all but convinced they were the same person. However, her concerns were not taken seriously by Crime Stoppers.
On August 11, 2019, she had proof the man hanging out with her son was a convicted felon. She found a puffer in his bedroom with a prisoner identification number from the prison where MacDonald had previously been jailed. But once again, she was ignored. She said no one from the police even bothered to take information from her to retrieve the puffer. By this point, her son had been missing for a week.
Megan Moody, who runs a parenting support program for the Native Council of Nova Scotia, said she was not the only parent who was noticing changes in their children.
"Youth were not returning home at night, and parents feared their children were doing drugs and being manipulated by adults who were supplying their children with drugs and leading their children into illegal activity, including human trafficking and violence," she said.
Desperate, the mother of the missing boy turned to her local MLA's office, where she met with a member of the Truro Police Service and reported that a man named Flip, who was likely Morgan MacDonald, was luring and providing drugs and alcohol to girls in town.
Another woman who had similarly terrifying experience said MacDonald arrived at her home -- which was a safe house for some of her son's friends trying to escape the 31-year-old -- on August 20 looking for a 17-year-old boy, who he was later charged with assaulting. Also present were two 14-year-old girls, who he was later charged with luring.
She said she asked MacDonald to leave, only for him to threaten to come back with a gun and then kill her and her children.
While the Parole Board of Canada notified the Truro police that MacDonald may be in the area the next day, he remained at large for another month after that incident before he was finally arrested on September 23 in a vacant basement apartment.
In January, he was charged with 31 crimes, including trafficking four children, procuring a child into prostitution, advertising the sexual services of a child, living off the proceeds of child prostitution, possessing child pornography, and trafficking cocaine, ecstasy and tranquilizers to teenagers.