by Greg Marquis
In April, Oland had travelled to Spain in connection with a new sailboat project. He spent most of the month of May in the Saint John area. On June 8, he flew to Providence, Rhode Island, accompanied by a sailing friend, Jamie McCormick, to take part in the New York Yacht Club Annual. His yacht, Vela Veloce, raced in the annual regatta at Newport from June 8 to 12. Oland next travelled to Connecticut and took a ferry from New London to Block Island, Rhode Island, to compete in the IRC division during the June 20–24 race week. Oland flew back to New Brunswick on a Grand Manan–based charter plane to attend a family gathering, the one-hundredth birthday celebration of a relative in Rothesay. On June 26, he left for a fishing trip at the Miramichi Fish and Game Club (founded by Americans in the 1890s), which is located on the Northwest branch of the Miramichi. Oland was a member of the lodge and had also served on the executive of the Miramichi Salmon Association. He returned from the fishing trip on July 4 and had a meeting with Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Harris on a major fundraising project. July 6 was his first full day back in the office and, according to his secretary, his inbox was full.
At 9:08 A.M. on July 6, Richard, from his home in Rothesay, sent realtor Diana Sedlacek a text message regarding a planned trip to Portland, Maine. As the public would find out in subsequent months, Sedlacek, who was younger than Oland, had been his mistress for several years. At 9:50 A.M., he was telephoned by his secretary, Maureen, with a reminder about a scheduled meeting at his office. Driving in from Rothesay in his 2009 BMW, Oland tried without success to call Sedlacek who was in a spin class at Quispamsis, outside of Saint John. After arriving at his office, Oland met with his employee Robert McFadden and financial advisers Gordon Graham and Barry Prosser to discuss life insurance. McFadden’s son Galen was also working in the office that day. Oland’s last meal appeared to have been a takeout pizza from Pizza Hut on nearby King Street. There is no evidence that he left the office that day.
It was a busy day, with Oland reading investment reports and attending to other matters. At 12:01 P.M., he sent his last text, from his iPhone 4, to Diana Sedlacek, relative to their trip to Maine. His last outgoing call or text message was sent at 12:57 P.M. Computer records indicate that Richard last backed up his Cellphone at 4:44 P.M. Sedlacek’s final attempt to contact him during office hours was at 1:57 P.M., when she was working at an open house in East Saint John. Adamson told investigators that when she finished work, Oland was having his final meeting of the day, with his son, Dennis, who had shown up unannounced after 5:30 P.M.4 Adamson later told police that as she began her winding-down routine her employer advised her: “I will be here for a while.” The scanning of a camp logbook belonging to the Connell family, which Richard had borrowed for a year, was complete, so Maureen laid it aside for her employer (although exactly where was not clear in hindsight). Entitled “The Island Camp,” this was a record of several generations of visitors to a camp once owned by the Connell family. Sometime after 5:30 P.M., Dennis dropped in and briefly chatted with Adamson. She thought his brown sports coat was an odd choice on such a hot day. Richard greeted his son in a friendly fashion, and the two were soon absorbed in family-history talk, aided by the materials Dennis had gathered on a recent trip to England. At approximately 5:45 P.M., Maureen reached her vehicle and told her husband that Dennis had stopped by to discuss genealogy with her boss. She was fairly sure of the time as she had printed a document just prior to leaving.
Given the significance of Dennis Oland to the case, it is worth reconstructing his day for July 6, 2011. From 6:55 A.M. that day to 1:28 P.M. on July 7, he sent or received dozens of text messages and emails from his BlackBerry, as well as a number of phone calls. Most of these communications were with his immediate family or friends, but a number were work related and two were with his father. Dennis was at his office in Brunswick House at the foot of King Street most of that day. At 12:45 P.M., he reminded his daughter to phone her grandfather Richard to thank him for a donation he made to her sports team. At 2:41 and 2:51 P.M., he sent emails to Richard on a stock split and a Registered Retirement Income Fund matter. To no great surprise for a busy father of three children and a stepson, most of his messages dealt with family matters such as the behaviour of one daughter, his son’s trip to the beach, or his other daughter’s orthodontic appointment. Between 5:08 and 5:10 P.M., Dennis was captured on security cameras leaving Brunswick House and entering the Brunswick Square Shopping Centre, wearing a dark brown blazer and carrying a number of books. He headed to the parking garage and a few minutes later a silver vehicle (presumably his VW Golf) was captured driving east up King Street in the direction of Canterbury Street. Seven minutes later, at approximately 5:22 P.M., the car reappeared, driving up lower King Street in the same pattern. According to the Thandi’s parking-lot camera, a light-coloured car parked on the west side of Canterbury Street near the Far End Corporation office at approximately 5:26 P.M.5
A Thandi’s restaurant camera captured Maureen Adamson joining her husband at their vehicle at 5:44 P.M. (time stamps can vary slightly from device to another). After she left, we have only Dennis Oland’s account of what happened in the Far End Corporation office during the next forty-five minutes or so. Cellphone and computer-usage data and street security cameras offer some clues. At 5:39 P.M., Richard opened a file on a yacht-racing program on his main computer. Evidence would be entered at trial to suggest that all human-induced computer activity ceased after the son’s arrival and there is no evidence that Richard used his iPhone or office line. At 6:12 P.M., Dennis mistakenly sent a text message to his sister Lisa (Oland) Bustin instead of his wife, Lisa (Andrik) Oland, explaining that he was at his father’s office doing “history stuff” and would be home shortly. At this point, Dennis must have been on the street because within seconds he was captured on security camera walking along the west side of Canterbury, carrying a red shopping bag. When he disappears from the camera’s view, he is crossing the street in the direction of 52 Canterbury. Soon after, he appeared at his vehicle on the west side of the street, opening its rear hatch. At approximately 6:14 P.M., a silver car headed south past Thandi’s. A few minutes later, the same car was detected by a camera on lower King Street, apparently making the same loop it had earlier. The Thandi’s parking-lot and restaurant cameras captured the vehicle heading south for the last time that evening, at roughly 6:21 P.M. Three minutes later, a call from his wife went to Dennis’s voice mail, suggesting that either the ringer was turned off or that he was still driving or did not have his BlackBerry on his person.
At 6:36 P.M., Lisa called from home to her husband’s BlackBerry and spoke with him for forty-one seconds. At this point, Dennis presumably was on his way home to Rothesay, a trip that normally takes twenty to twenty-five minutes. Eight minutes later, Richard’s iPhone received a text from Diana—“Are you there?”—which was not answered. Diana, home with her husband on Darlings Island and increasingly frustrated, tried to reach Richard by phone five times in the next half hour and sent another text at 7:19 P.M. This and all subsequent texts failed to reach his phone, and a dozen or so unanswered calls went directly to voice mail. She also rang the Far End office phone at 7:15 and 8:01 P.M. At one point Diana threatened, “I will call your house.” Her unanswered 6:44 P.M. text message would become one of the key factors in the investigation.
Following the 6:36 P.M. call from his wife, the next activity on Dennis’s cellphone was an email response at 7:24 to a message from a family friend. Cellphone records indicate that between 7:24 and 7:28 P.M., Dennis and Lisa, both at home, called each other a number of times until they finally connected. Ten minutes later, according to security video, they were at Kennebecasis Drugs in Rothesay. Their next stop was nearby Cochran’s Country Market where they encountered Dennis’s aunt Jane Toward, Richard’s sister. The security camera shows Dennis, who has changed out of his formal work clothes into a golf shirt and shorts, paying for items at the counter and then departing. Between 8:09 and 9:16 P.M., he excha
nged email messages with a client, and between 8:19 and 10:01 P.M. there was a phone conversation with Mary Beth Watt, who, with his wife, co-owned the sailboat Loki, and text messages from a friend. The final security-camera documentation of Dennis that evening is at around 10:30 P.M. when he is buying milk at the Irving convenience store on the Marr Road in Rothesay, a short drive from his residence.
The next morning, Diana, who still had not heard from Richard, drove in to Saint John. At 9:37 A.M., parking her car near his office, she texted: “What the hell is going on?” She also tried his cell and office phones, with no luck. On her way to a hair appointment, she saw his green BMW in his parking spot, uncharacteristically early, and grew alarmed. As she approached 52 Canterbury Street, she saw police officers on the street and once again tried texting Richard. Sensing that there was a problem, she tried to bluff her way past the police, telling them that she had an appointment. Told that there was no access to the building (and not much else), Diana returned to her car and sent more emails or texts. In court more than four years later, she could not remember exactly when she realized her lover was dead, but recalled the sense of foreboding when she saw his car being towed away (it was taken to the police garage at 1:10 P.M.). At some point later that morning, in an emotional state, Diana called Richard’s home and spoke to his wife, Constance. For the victim’s wife, this was the first inkling that something was wrong.
Meanwhile, the victim’s son, Dennis, was having an errand-filled morning that had little to do with investments. As he would explain in court, his mission that day was to repair the throttle cable on the sailboat Loki, berthed at the Royal Kennebecasis Yacht Club (RKYC). At 8:08 A.M., he stopped at the Kent Building Supply store in Rothesay where he remained until 8:23 A.M. At 8:47 A.M., Dennis purchased a sail cover from the Estey Group on City Road in Saint John, and then continued on to the RKYC in the Millidgeville area of Saint John. On the way, he stopped to buy gas (9:22–9:25 A.M.) at an Irving station on Millidge Avenue. Between 9:35 and 10:02 A.M., he had email exchanges with his assistant at investment company CIBC Wood Gundy, Ethel Harrison, and a client. Dennis told Harrison that he would not be coming in to work that day as he was working on a boat. In the period 10:10–11:57 A.M., he exchanged emails with his uncle Jack Connell concerning the family Camp logbook and investment issues. These overlapped with a visit to the Canadian Tire store in East Saint John (10:32–11:09 A.M.). Between then and noon, Dennis received phone calls from his wife and stepson and exchanged more email messages with Connell. By this point, neither Dennis nor anyone else in his family had been informed of his father’s death. This changed after Diana called the Oland residence and spoke to Constance. Between 12:20 and 12:34 P.M., there were six calls between Dennis and his mother. Constance found out about her husband’s demise not from the SJPF but from Robert McFadden, whom she had called. Dennis was contacted and told to return to his parents’ residence as soon as possible. In the period 1:21–28 P.M., he also was called by his ex-wife, Lesley, and tried to reach his sister Jacqueline Walsh. Dennis later testified that he first feared something had happened to one of his children.
At approximately 2:00 P.M., Constables Stephen Davidson and Tony Gilbert, and Mary Ellen Martin of victim services arrived at the victim’s home in Rothesay to inform the family of his death. Constance, Dennis, his wife, sister Lisa (Oland) Bustin, and uncle Jack Connell were present. With the investigation only beginning, the police offered few details. At 2:30 P.M., the officers left Rothesay after asking family members to proceed to the SJPF headquarters to be interviewed by investigators. The family members, joined by Richard’s second daughter, Jacqueline (Oland) Walsh, agreed and headed in to the cramped quarters of the police station, then located in Saint John’s city hall building. Between interviews with witnesses at the scene and with the victim’s family, the MCU hoped to be able to gather information on the victim, including his routine and associates, and whether he had any known enemies. The other purpose of the interviews was to exclude individuals as potential suspects.
Accountant Robert McFadden, who had known the victim since the 1980s, was interviewed just before noon on July 7. He told police that he and his son had left work at roughly 5:30 P.M. the previous day. On the street outside 52 Canterbury they saw and acknowledged William Adamson who was waiting for his wife in his parked car. This was corroborated by Adamson, who recalled viewing a man in a brown sports coat entering the ground-floor door of Far End Corporation. Because of the angle, he had been unable to see the man’s face, but he remembered that the person carried a red, reusable grocery bag “not empty but not overly full or heavy.” He would later tell police that he thought the person was Dennis Oland.
Important testimony came from Anthony Shaw and Printing Plus owner John Ainsworth, who had been working on the ground floor of the building possibly during the time of the murder. At roughly 6:00 P.M., Shaw, a former employee, popped in to see his friend Ainsworth and was enlisted to help him with a tricky computer program. The two men would remain on-site for approximately three hours, including part of the period during which Dennis claimed he was visiting his father. They heard “loud, quick pounding thumps,” similar to “banging on a wall,” and shuffling sounds emanating from upstairs, from the direction of Oland’s office. They noted the time as they scanned a document and sent it by email on behalf of an after-hours customer, who appeared to be from the Middle East, at 8:11 P.M. Although Ainsworth owned the building, neither man was sufficiently concerned to check upstairs.6 Shaw thought that the noises were heard sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 P.M. Ainsworth, unlike Shaw, had been in the Far End Corporation office many times and said he could pinpoint the sounds geographically. In his initial statement to police, he concurred with the 7:30–8:00 P.M. time frame, but as time passed, he would become less certain. The men, who noticed nothing suspicious on the street, left Printing Plus at 9:00 P.M.
In any criminal investigation where adultery is involved, a mistress is an obvious person of interest. Diana Sedlacek, following the terrible news, had gone to Moncton, probably to see her son. She returned at the request of the SJPF and was interviewed late on the evening of July 7 by Constable Charles Breen. She told the police that she contacted Richard every evening on his cellphone at 6:30 P.M. She claimed they had been in a “romantic relationship” for eight years and she felt that most of his family knew about the affair. She described it as “very unusual” that he did not respond to her 6:44 and 7:19 P.M. texts. Diana would also claim that her lover was disappointed in his son. Sedlacek would be interviewed again on July 8 and 13. During one of these meetings, or on another occasion, she agreed to submit to a lie-detector test.
In her video statement to Constable Stacy Humphrey, Lisa Oland explained that she and Dennis had been together for more than four years and married for two. She alleged that Dennis had tried to win his father’s respect and found it difficult to do so, but felt that the shared interest in genealogy was a way to improve their relationship. Her explanation as to what the couple did after Dennis arrived home the previous evening matched her husband’s timeline.7 She told Humphrey that she had felt ill and had been lying down when her husband arrived home after 7:00. Before she saw him, he had gone to the master bedroom to change into casual clothes. She explained that Dennis had spoken of his visit with his father as being “really nice,” with the two men discussing family history. After this, the couple went to Cochran’s Country Market for bananas and Kennebecasis Drugs for medicine. After they returned home, they watched television before turning in for the night.
Constance Oland, according to her police statement, appeared to have no knowledge of her spouse’s or her son’s finances, or of any assistance provided by Richard to Dennis. She described Sedlacek as her husband’s “friend.” She told police that it was not unusual for her husband not to return home at night and that his principal mode of communication was text messaging. The image of the victim derived from the interviews of Constance and h
er daughters was that he was an extremely volatile and difficult person and was obsessive-compulsive about money. Constance told police that her late husband was “strong and controlling” and was not above emotionally and verbally abusing his three children. Dennis, as the only son, supposedly suffered the most from his father’s high expectations and brittle personality. Yet, she did not think he was capable of hurting his father. Lisa (Oland) Bustin told police that her parents, who had been married for more than forty years, had grown apart and that Richard’s aggressive business style meant that he could have “anyone for an enemy.”8
Sergeant Mark Smith, a forensic identification officer, arrived at the crime scene just after 10 A.M. Smith, who had worked on fifteen homicide investigations, ten in the lead capacity, went back to headquarters to get his equipment and then returned to start processing the scene. He later testified that he gave the patrol officers at the scene no special instructions but expected the area to be made secure. He did supervise quick visits by various officers into the inner office to view the body. That morning, Smith took more than three hundred photos of the body and other exhibits. His work was only beginning. His next major task was directing, under the eyes of Coroner Andrew Cavanagh, the removal of the victim to the morgue. There the body and clothing would be minutely examined by forensic officers before a pathologist performed an autopsy. Removing the body was not an easy task. The corpse of a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound man had to be picked up with as little disturbance as possible, which meant it had to be lifted and placed in a body bag face down on the stretcher. It also had to be carried out of the office without compromising blood and other evidence. Once Sharlene MacDonald and Adam Holly, two funeral-home employees, arrived with their folding stretcher, Smith directed Const. Squires (who incidentally was too big to fit into a crime-scene suit) to assist him in rolling the body onto a sheet, which was used as a sling to place it in a body bag on the stretcher. Holly and three officers then carried the body down the narrow staircase to the ground floor. Smith removed his protective gear before he went down.
