Suspect Admits To Stabbing Deaths Of Man, Woman At Alberta Oilfield Work Camp

Kyle Warnke woke to the sound of screams.

It was just before 1 a.m. on June 30, 2015, at an isolated oilfield work camp in northern Alberta.

Warnke heard camp worker Hally Dubois plead, "Danny, stop. Danny, stop."

He peeked into the hallway and saw Dubois kneeling on the floor. Further down the hallway, he spotted piles of blood-stained blankets.

Warnke locked his bedroom door and pushed a couch in front to serve as an extra barricade. When he looked out his window, the scene was even more horrifying.

Daniel Goodridge is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Dubois and Dave Derksen. He is also accused of "indecently interfering with the human remains of Derksen by cutting off numerous pieces of his body," and the assaults of two work camp occupants and an RCMP officer.

In Grande Prairie Court of Queen's Bench on Monday, through his lawyer Goodridge pleaded not guilty to all six charges "by way of a mental disorder." Defence lawyer Anna Konye plans to argue Goodridge should be found not criminally responsible for the crimes.

Warnke's account of that night was included in an agreed statement of facts entered at the trial.

Warnke watched Derksen emerge from the front entrance of an adjacent building, covered in blood. Goodridge was chasing him. He saw Goodridge grab Derksen and pull him to the ground and onto his back.

Goodridge, then a 28-year-old camp cook, got on top of his victim and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck, head and stomach. Then he saw Goodridge begin to cut the victim's stomach, reach inside and pull something out.

Finally, Warnke watched the killer put cardboard boxes on top of Derksen. He doused the body and the cardboard with liquid and set it on fire.

Just hours earlier, Warnke had spotted Goodridge mopping the floors and thought he appeared normal.  

Not guilty by way of mental disorder

Two psychiatrists for the Crown and one for the defence are watching the trial remotely by closed-circuit television. The Crown experts are expected to testify later in the week.

It will be up to Justice Ken Nielsen to determine if Goodridge knew what he was doing at the time of the offences.

An explicit and detailed agreed statement of facts was entered as the first exhibit in the two-week trial. It does not explain why Goodridge attacked Derksen, but indicated Dubois became a victim when she tried to intervene in the attack.

The court document lists the extensive injuries suffered by both homicide victims.

Derksen was stabbed and cut more than 70 times with a weapon, which others described as a yellow-handled knife. His most serious injuries were a stab wound that injured his right carotid artery and a stab wound to the chest that penetrated his lung.

The five-foot-eleven camp worker who weighed 269 pounds tried to fight back. There were defensive wounds on the 37-year-old's hands, arms, lower legs and left foot.

According to an autopsy report, Derksen was mutilated after he was dead by "extensive carving." His left eye was missing completely, along with most of his left ear and portions of his stomach. 

"There were also some reports that alluded to the assailant consuming parts of the body," the medical examiner wrote.

By the time RCMP officers found the body of Hally Dubois, 50, curled up and facing a wall, she had no pulse. She had been stabbed 11 times on her head, torso and upper left arm. Dubois also tried to fight back. She had defensive injuries on her right hand.

Knife-wielding Goodridge shot repeatedly by RCMP

RCMP arrived at the work camp, located 54 kilometres southwest of Fox Creek, Alta. at 1:50 a.m.

The police knew two people were dead and the suspect was still roaming through the work camp with a knife in his hand.

According to the agreed statement of facts, when officers spotted Goodridge, he looked at them and calmly turned around and walked away. Goodridge crouched behind vehicles, holding a knife in one hand and a spray bottle in the other, inching ever closer to the police.

When he got within striking distance and still refused to drop the knife, the officers opened fire. He fell to the ground and the constables approached him to remove the knife from his hand.

Goodridge had his eyes closed. When Cst. Bradley Schram touched the knife with his extendable baton, Goodridge suddenly opened his eyes and swung the knife. Schram's partner fired one more shot. Goodridge fell to the ground and finally, officers were able to get the weapon away from him.

The officers were later cleared of any wrongdoing by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.

EMS worker Tina King loaded Goodridge into an air ambulance. When she asked him if he knew why he was in the ambulance he answered, "Yes, I just killed a guy."

King told him he'd actually killed two people.

When she asked why he had killed his co-workers, Goodridge responded, "I wanted some excitement."

'He was a great guy'

The accused's mother, Jean Goodridge, was the first witness called by the Crown.

She described her son as easy-going, fun and charismatic until he entered junior high in Edmonton. That's when she began to notice disturbing changes. Over the years, she had him committed to a psychiatric facility under the Mental Health Act at least seven times.

She testified that her son had said he sometimes heard voices in his head. She worried about him when he tried to commit suicide, was withdrawn or talked to himself. Jean Goodridge also told the court her son was very bad at taking the medication prescribed to him by psychiatrists.

Daniel Goodridge's girlfriend Chandra Cunningham, who also testified in court Monday, said she never saw any evidence of him taking prescribed medication.

Cunningham met Goodridge online and began dating him in Dec. 2014. She described the first five months of their relationship as "very good."

"He was a great guy," Cunningham told the court. "Very kind and caring. We didn't fight. He was very sweet."

But she said that began to change in April 2015 when he started to act strangely.

"He would disappear for days and he had told me he would have to go to a park to be around trees. He would sleep in the park... It just made him feel good being around the trees. It brought him power. He changed all the pictures on his phone to trees."

Cunningham said one night Goodridge stayed up all night at her Edmonton apartment. When she saw him in the morning, his shirt was on inside out and backwards. He had gathered up every teal coloured item in the apartment he could find and was lying on top of his collection. He told Cunningham it gave him power.

The couple broke up at the end of May 2015, a month before the murders.

The last time Cunningham saw Daniel Goodridge was on June 20th, when she went to his parents' home to get some money he owed her.

"He looked horrible," Cunningham testified. "He didn't look like himself at all. He'd lost a lot of weight. He looked exhausted."

She thought he seemed very upset, almost depressed. But when she asked Daniel Goodridge if he had any mental health problems, he told her, "as far as I know I don't."

The trial is scheduled to last two weeks. 

Source: CBC