Mchale and Noahs Story
The loss of your spouse and child, the weight of that grief, is a burden no one should ever have to bear. But for Cody McConnell, this is the devastating reality he is now forced to live with every day.
In early September 2021, Cody, his partner, Mchale Busch, and their young son, Noah McConnell, moved into an apartment complex in Hinton, Alta. Unbeknownst to them, they moved in next door to Robert Major, a convicted sexual offender with a dangerous and violent history.
On Sept. 16, Cody came home from work to find that Mchale and Noah weren’t home. Not knowing where they could be and concerned for them, Cody went to the two parks near their new home to look for them. They weren’t there. When he got back home, Cody called friends and family to see if they had heard from Mchale. Cody then called the police, as well as his friend, Jared. While waiting for the police to arrive, Cody and Jared knocked on all the apartment doors on Cody’s floor, asking neighbours if they had seen or heard from Mchale that day.
After the RCMP arrived and began investigating, Cody and Jared remained at Cody’s apartment, waiting for news, until about 2 a.m. Then Cody, Jared and now Jared’s girlfriend, Baileigh, were taken by the police to a local hotel. They were told the police wanted to search through the apartment.
Around 10 a.m. the next morning, Sept. 17, the RCMP’s homicide unit arrived on scene. According to the RCMP, they had discovered Noah’s body in the dumpster outside the apartment building. It was after this discovery that they moved Cody to the hotel.
The RCMP were questioning Cody at the police station when they received additional information that Mchale had been found, deceased, in Robert’s apartment.
In an article from Global News, Robert was released from prison in 2017 and, at that time, police issued a public warning stating they had reasonable grounds to believe he would “commit another sexual offence against a female, including children, while in the community.” Robert was on several court-ordered conditions at the time, but it remains unknown when he moved from Edmonton to the Hinton area and how he came to live in an apartment complex with women and children, near parks and schools, without anyone realizing or doing anything to stop it.
Cody, Mchale and Noah lived next door to a violent, repeat sexual offender. Mchale and Noah’s deaths were senseless and completely preventable, and that’s what the Noah’s Law campaign is hoping to achieve – among other things, changes to Canada’s Criminal Code that will increase monitoring of these offenders. You can help us by spreading awareness of this campaign, signing our petition when it becomes available and speaking with your MPP and MP to let them know that Mchale and Noah have not been forgotten, that their deaths should lead to meaningful change within Canada’s criminal justice system so that no other family will ever have to go through a tragedy like this again.
