When A Promising Med Student Is Charged With Cold-Blooded Murder

By Kieran Leavitt

He was about to go to medical school before he was charged with murder.

Will Sandeson, 24, is charged with first degree murder of Taylor Samson, 22, on Aug. 15, 2015, after the victim allegedly went to Sandeson’s apartment to sell 20 pounds of marijuana.

They were both students at Dalhousie University, and both had promising futures.

Samson’s body has yet to be found, but his mother, Linda Boutilier, hasn’t stopped looking for her son since the day he went missing.

“I’m not going to stop until I find Taylor,” she said during an interview.

According to friends and family, Samson started a tutoring business that posted videos on YouTube so less financially fortunate students could get help with calculus when they needed it.

Samson studied physics, they said, but had the mind of an entrepreneur.

“Taylor sold marijuana to help get through school, that’s what he did. People don’t like it? Well, too bad,” said Boutilier.

The trial just finished its 23rd day in Nova Scotia’s Supreme Court and the Crown is laying out its case using surveillance footage from a camera that Sandeson set up himself in his apartment building, as well as DNA evidence matching Samson, and eyewitness testimony.

The Crown says Samson entered the apartment around 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 15 and never came out.

On surveillance footage, the jury saw him walk in behind Sandeson carrying a big black duffle bag. A few minutes afterwards, the footage shows two other men looking into the apartment. Eyewitnesses Justin Blades and Pookiel McCabe, who were track-and-field teammates with Sandeson, testified they had been across the hall and looked in after hearing a gunshot.

They both testified to seeing a bloody body slumped over in a chair, blood covering most of the kitchen floor, and Sandeson running around frantically saying “I gotta clean up.”

Blades said there were “pints and pints of blood all over the floor” and that Sandeson asked him to bring a car around, but he said that he wouldn’t.

“You don’t expect the nicest, most educated, one of the better people out of the group to do something like that,” he said.

After showing the two men leave the apartment, the surveillance tape was shut off for an hour and a half, testified police officers. Over the next couple of days, Sandeson can be seen on tape carrying out various bags and cleaning supplies from his apartment and loading them into a vehicle outside.

Later, investigators told the court that a kitchen-aid box, a black backpack and a grocery bag were seized from a house on Chestnut Street in Halifax where Sandeson’s brother lived.

They all contained marijuana in vacuum-sealed bags which amounted to about 20 pounds, according to police testimony.

Sgt. Sandy Johnston was part of the investigation team that analyzed the apartment where the murder is alleged to have occurred and told jurors she found a bag of wet money and a nine millimetre handgun.

The bag of money smelled of decomposition, she said, and the gun was found to have red staining on it. Using a substance called amino black, forensics officers determined a substance that could be blood was cleaned up in the bathroom sink and bathtub, she said. She added that amino black is only a presumptive test.

Officers swabbed pieces of the floor in the kitchen, a shower curtain, and the gun and sent them to a DNA lab in Ottawa.

DNA analyst Florence Celestin has testified that all of the swabs matched the DNA of Samson. A nine mm bullet recovered from a window frame in the kitchen of the apartment also had Samson’s DNA on it, Celestin said.

Also recovered were a big black duffle bag, a blue duffle bag, and three garbage bags from Sandeson’s family farm in Truro, according to police testimony. Swabs from the items also matched Samson’s DNA profile.

Samson was reported as a missing person on Aug. 16, 2015. Sandeson was questioned by police and said that he hadn’t seen Samson that night. Officers later seized his phone and recovered text messages between the two students that showed they were planning to meet up Aug 15.

Sandeson changed his story and said that Samson was there but a number of intruders broke in and may have abducted Samson, according to a police interview video played for the court.

After nine hours of interrogation, Sandeson told officers that two men dressed in black morph suits waited in a bedroom until Samson arrived. Then, they shot him in the back of the head.

“They put him in the bag with the weed,” he said.

Afterward, said Sandeson, they told him to shut off his surveillance system and the two men left.

Thirty-two days have been set aside for the trial. The court is scheduled to sit for nine more days and the defence has said it expects to call witnesses and present evidence.

Defence lawyer Eugene Tan told reporters he didn’t know if Sandeson will take the stand.