by Greg Marquis
According to Reid training, one goal is to employ questions to provoke certain responses from the suspect and watch for non-verbal cues. During the interrogation phase, the tone was accusatory, with the officer doing most of the talking and sitting very close to the suspect. Copeland tried minimization, suggesting that the deceased was “a mean son of a bitch” who “controlled every penny” and disrespected his wife and his entire family. Drawing on the interviews with other members of the family, and the first hour or so of Dennis’s interview, Copeland portrayed the victim as a selfish, mean-spirited adulterer who pinched pennies with his own family while fulfilling his own indulgences. Richard supposedly sat in judgment of his long-suffering son while spending money inherited from his own father, money that rightly belonged to the younger generation. Copeland had observed Dennis’s earlier comment that his father was one of his investment clients but in reality had treated his son like “an order taker” not an adviser. Another possible cause of resentment was that the wealthy victim had been making his daughter Jacqueline, who had health problems, pay rent for use of a farm property. At one point, Copeland described Richard’s death as beneficial to the family: “The tyranny is over.”
Like Davidson, Copeland explained that he was trying to help Oland, and declared that he was a “fair cop.” On first view, this attempt to establish a rapport with the suspect, however rough around the edges, appeared to be genuine. Copeland claims that he understood the Oland family’s lack of remorse over news of Richard’s violent death because he, too, had experienced a difficult childhood. He tells Dennis that his father left after he was born and that his mother was an extremely difficult parent with whom he felt no bond. The tale initially is plausible, but Copeland later goes too far with a claim that he had been sitting in an unmarked police car at Renforth Wharf on the evening of the murder, catching up on paperwork, when the suspect appeared at the scene on his way home. At this point Oland, who had been relatively silent, protests in an almost childlike voice, “You’re sneaky,” signalling that he neither trusts nor believes the officer. Copeland and other monitoring officers had probably read the pure version statement and heard Dennis’s explanation about stopping at the wharf on the Kennebecasis River despite the fact that, as he had told Davidson, his wife was sick and mad at him for running late. A detective would view this stop as a chance to dispose of evidence, and that night an officer was sent to the wharf to conduct an initial search. As an educated professional, and personal friend of Bill Teed, Oland, despite his quiet demeanour, probably did not appreciate Copeland’s observation that he should not trust a lawyer’s advice. Yet at no time during the five-hour session did Dennis express any outrage at the allegation that he had killed his father, protest his innocence, or attempt to establish an alibi. Reid trainers usually state that innocent parties tend to actively protest their innocence, so Oland’s silence, which he justified on the grounds of following his lawyer’s advice, may have been misconstrued. Copeland also repeated Davidson’s earlier bluff, suggesting that Richard’s Oland’s office had hidden video cameras and that the police would be checking the digital imagery. In reality, there were no security cameras at the building but the police had already started to review video surveillance from the restaurant across the street, a nearby parking lot, and other businesses. Soon after Dennis’s realization that the officer had been misleading him, the interrogation, which yielded no information after the suspect was read his rights, ended. Oland had followed the advice of his lawyer, and on this important level the interview failed.
The complete interview, including the part not made available to the jury, can be watched on YouTube and various media websites. It does raise a number of important questions: Should the police have been so quick to show their hand? Was Dennis acting like the son of a person who had just been murdered? Why was he not more upset? Did other family members show any emotion when they were interviewed? Did Dennis’s demeanour encourage investigators to prematurely construct a theory of the crime that was marked by tunnel vision? How did his responses influence the trial jury, both in terms of their substance and perceptions of his character and credibility? Although it is logical to view individuals in these situations as acting suspiciously or at least abnormally, police perceptions of a lack of empathy can lead to bad investigations and wrongful convictions.24
The suspect, whose faithful mother was waiting for him outside, had been in the small interview room for five hours. In hindsight, one major gaffe in the investigation was to tell Oland that he was suspected of killing his father, but then fail to ask him to voluntarily surrender his brown shoes and khaki pants, which he claimed to have been wearing the day of Richard’s death. Once details of the case became known to the public, many in the community faulted the SJPF for not acting more swiftly to secure warrants to authorize searches of the residence, vehicle, and workplace of the accused. Especially after they made the threat (or warning) during the interrogation that a search warrant would be forthcoming. Yet a week would elapse before warrants were executed. The statement and delay can be explained: the SJPF needed time to gather more probable-cause evidence to satisfy a provincial court judge. What Dennis was not told was that starting that night, and for several days, he would be under police surveillance. Viewers of the A&E television series The First 48 are continually reminded that the first two days following the discovery of a crime are critical to the closing of the case. While it is true that SJPF investigators believed they had identified their suspect less than eleven hours after the victim’s body had been found, at first they appeared to be operating more on intuition than fact.
* * *
1Jennifer Pritchett, “Final day of Richard Oland’s life,” Telegraph-Journal, Oct. 6, 2012, A1.
2Nicholas Köhler, “Murder and a maritime dynasty,” Macleans.ca, July 28, 2011, http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/murder-and-a-maritime-dynasty/.
3Chris Morris, “Inside the Oland murder investigation,” Daily Gleaner, Sept. 14, 2013, A3.
4Pritchett, “Final day of Richard Oland’s life.”
5The details for July 6 and 7 are taken from R. v. Dennis James Oland, Exhibit #D-80 (Timeline), July 6–7, 2011.
6Her Majesty the Queen v. Dennis Oland, Ruling following a preliminary inquiry by the Honourable Ronald LeBlanc, judge of the Provincial Court, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Dec. 12, 2014, 40–41.
7The author did not have access to any of the family video statements; the relevant if partial information was obtained from ITOs prepared as part of applying for search warrants.
8Stephen Kimber, “Spilled secrets: The Richard Oland murder mystery.” Atlantic Business, Dec. 19, 2013.
9CTV News, “A deeper look into the interrogation of Russell Williams,” Oct. 22, 2012.
10Interview of Dennis Oland, July 7, 2011: http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=732471.
11Kirk Makin, “No right to counsel during interrogation: top court,” Globe and Mail online, Oct. 8, 2010.
12Interview with Mary Ann Campbell, March 14, 2016.
13Susan H. Adams, “Statement Analysis: What Do Suspects’ Words Really Reveal?” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 65 (10) (October 1996): 12–20.
14R. v. Dennis James Oland, Exhibit P-78, Oct. 21, 2015.
15Vincent Bugliosi, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away with Murder (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996), 104.
16Interview with Mary Ann Campbell, March 14, 2016.
17Timothy Appleby, A New Kind of Monster: The Secret Life and Chilling Crimes of Colonel Russell Williams (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2011); Joseph Brean, “Famed detective Jim Smyth’s interrogation techniques derail murder case,” National Post, Oct. 24, 2011.
18CBC, “The Interrogation Room,” The Fifth Estate, Nov. 21, 2014.
19Joseph Brean, “You’re guilty, now confess: False admissions put police’s favourite interrogation tactic under scrutiny,” National Post, Nov. 25, 2011; Douglas Quinn, “Alberta judge slams use of ‘Reid’ interrogation technique in Calgary police investigation,” Calgary Herald, Sept. 11, 2012.
20CTV News, “A deeper look into the interrogation of Russell Williams,” Oct. 22, 2012.
21James Orlando, “Interrogation Techniques,” Connecticut Office of Legislative Research, Report, March 12, 2014: https://www.cga.ct.gov/2014/rpt/pdf/2014-R-0071.pdf.
22Ibid.
23Curt R. Bartol and Ann M. Bartol, Criminal Behaviour: A Psychological Approach, 10th Edition (Toronto: Pearson, 2012), 256.
24Julian Sher, “Until You Are Dead”: Steven Truscott’s Long Ride into History (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2002).
Chapter 2
The Oland Clan
In 2012, Derek Oland marked his fiftieth year with Moosehead. At a celebratory lunch at the Opera Bistro, a five-minute walk from the scene of his brother’s murder fourteen months earlier, he stated, “Dick was my brother and what happened to him was a family tragedy.” The last time Derek saw his brother alive was in spring 2011, at lunch at the Union Club, which is one street away from 52 Canterbury, and where the city’s lawyers, business types, and other professionals had traditionally socialized.1
Moosehead Breweries, based in Saint John, is a Canadian success story. In 2014, it employed 250 people in Saint John and another 150 in the United States and elsewhere in Canada. Its plant was capable of producing 600-million bottles of beer each year. Since then, the brewery’s workforce has shrunk. In contrast to modern businesses, where corporate executives are selected from outside and report to shareholders, the business is family owned and operated. By the early twenty-first century, Moosehead, a minor player in the national beer business, found itself the largest Canadian-owned brewery.2 Although Richard Oland stopped working directly with the family business in the 1980s, he continued to benefit from his family connection both before and after the death of his father, Philip W. Oland. His son, Dennis, did not work in the family business but ended up owning his grandfather’s Rothesay residence.
If the history of Moosehead Breweries had played out differently, Dennis Oland, rather than serving time in a federal penitentiary convicted of killing his own father, may have been running, or helping to run, the largest independent brewery in Canada. Although a minor player nationally, the company has done well in the United States in recent decades, and has been making inroads in markets such as Ontario.3 Yet, the path has not always been smooth.
In New Brunswick, big business, especially family-owned enterprise, enjoys economic power, political influence, and social status rare in the rest of Canada. The Irvings in 2015, for example, were described as the second-richest person or family in Canada. The exact number of Irving-owned companies is not known, but they may total more than two hundred and employ an estimated one in twelve New Brunswickers. Power brings privacy and a lack of public scrutiny and criticism. In 2016, a journalist working on the Irvings discovered that “former premiers and other politicians, academics, businesspeople and family friends” refused to be interviewed.4 The Olands are not in the same class as the Irvings, but they clearly are not the typical New Brunswick family.
Moosehead lore and public relations often refers to the Halifax Olands as opposed to the Saint John Olands, but the reality is more complex, as there were really two branches of the family running breweries in New Brunswick for several decades. The family brewing business can be traced back to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1867, the year of Confederation. That year, English immigrant John James Oland became a partner in a brewery located at Turtle Cove. According to family tradition, his wife, Susannah (Culverwell) Oland, was the active force in the enterprise, which was based on her recipe for brown ale. When John died a new investor became involved and the firm was known as Fraser, Oland and Co. (and sometimes the Army and Navy Brewery). After inheriting money in the late 1870s, Susannah bought out Fraser and the company became S. Oland and Sons, a rarity in an era when business owners and partners tended to be men. After Susannah’s death, son George W. C. Oland operated the business as the Maritime Brewing and Malting Company. A few years later, it was purchased by a syndicate, Halifax Breweries Limited. Brothers George and John C. Oland worked with that firm until 1909. George W. C. and his son Sydney purchased another brewery and renamed it Oland and Sons Limited.
George W. C.’s son George B. took part in the South African War, then returned to Nova Scotia where he gained experience in the family trade. He served in the First World War, during which the Dartmouth plant was levelled in the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Following that disaster, the Olands expanded into neighbouring New Brunswick. George W. C. and George B. purchased the Red Ball Brewery, located in Saint John.5 Four years later, Red Ball was advertised under the name of George W. C. Oland, “successor to Simeon Jones Limited” and marketed as a low-alcohol (2 percent) prohibition beverage.”6 In contrast with his flamboyant brother, Sid, who ran the Oland brewery in Halifax and who purchased the Alexander Keith brewery there in 1928, George B. lived a low-profile existence in New Brunswick. One of his seven children, Philip W., began working in the family business at age eighteen. P. W. attended the University of New Brunswick, then studied brewing in England and at the Carlsberg and Tuborg breweries in Europe. In 1928, George W. C. purchased the James Ready brewery, located in Lancaster, a municipality west of Saint John. Run by son George B., it was later renamed New Brunswick Breweries.7 Provincial prohibition had just ended and the two Oland breweries in Saint John enjoyed a special place in the new system of government liquor stores that began to spread across the province. Later, they were joined by taverns and licensed dining rooms.
In 1933, family patriarch George W. C. died and his estate left two breweries in Halifax, Saint John’s Red Ball Brewery, and 20 percent of the Lancaster brewery to his son Sydney. George B. was given the controlling shares of the Lancaster operation (renamed Moosehead Breweries Ltd. in 1947).8 The years between the end of the Second World War and the 1960s were those of steady growth. In the late 1950s, P. W. Oland claimed that Moosehead was responsible for more than three-quarters of the market in New Brunswick.9 In 1962, P. W. became president and chief executive officer of Moosehead; the next year he was named chair of the board. In 1963, in response to New Brunswick’s liberalized liquor laws, which allowed brewers with plants in the province to sell draft and bottled beer in now-legal taverns, Victor Oland of Halifax decided to build a new plant in Lancaster, home of rival Moosehead Breweries, and closed down the old brewery in Saint John. Like Moosehead, the market for this brewery was limited to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The new, partially automated Oland brewery officially opened in the fall of 1964. In response, Moosehead built a new plant in Dartmouth to compete with Oland’s in Nova Scotia.
P. W. was heavily embedded in the community as a business leader and philanthropist. During the Second World War, he served in the Canadian artillery and after the war was involved with the militia, retiring as a brigadier in 1961. He was also involved in many charity and community organizations, such as the UNB Board of Governors, the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, the United Way, the Saint John Board of Trade, the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, PEI, and the Saint John Foundation. A major promoter of the establishment and expansion of the Saint John branch of UNB in the 1960s and 1970s, his honours included the Order of Canada and honourary degrees. P. W. was regarded as a prestigious and trustworthy public figure, serving with the Atlantic Development Council and the Saint John Port Development Commission.
Described as a hard-working but modest and down-to-earth man, P. W. dressed conservatively and enjoyed golf, curling, and cruising in his boat on the St. John and Kennebecasis Rivers. In a 1992 interview, he made an oblique reference to his own father’s parenting style
when a reporter asked him if photographs on display at Moosehead brought back any memories: “Yes. Like a big bump on the head.”10 There are hints that life was not perfect in the household of this apparently benign patriarch. In her 2016 letter to the court on behalf of her son, Constance Oland alleged that her late husband, Richard, had been raised by one or more parents who resorted to yelling at and belittling their children. When P. W. made his will in 1992, son Derek and daughter Jane were named executors. Under the terms of the will, Derek, Jane, and second son, Richard, would split a trust fund of $1.5 million. Each grandchild, including Dennis Oland, would receive $50,000 when of age. In terms of the brewery, P. W. left 53 percent of the company to Derek, 33 percent to Richard, and 14 percent to Jane.11 Jane, who later moved back to Rothesay from Montreal, was reportedly very close to Richard.
Born in 1939, Derek graduated with a business degree from the University of New Brunswick in 1962. He started working at Moosehead when the province’s liquor laws and social attitudes were being liberalized.12 In 1964, Derek met his future wife, Jacqueline Evans, a veterinarian newly arrived from Britain.13 Around this time, he moved to Nova Scotia to oversee the new Moosehead brewery, competing head to head with his cousins. By the early 1970s, Moosehead, with a small share of the national beer market, was the largest in the Maritime provinces. Looking back nearly two decades later on the sale of the Halifax brewery, Oland’s, to John Labatt’s of London, Ontario, in 1971, Derek commented: “I guess maybe we pushed them [the Halifax Olands] too hard.”14 The next year, the New Brunswick Olands finally acquired full control of Moosehead.15 One reason the company survived in an era of corporate mergers and takeovers by multinationals was the decision in the late 1970s to diversify into the American market. The export strategy was a success: Moosehead captured up to 30 percent of the import market south of the border and went on to be marketed in Britain and Australia.16 In comparison, interprovincial trade barriers, the sort that had allowed Moosehead to dominate the New Brunswick market starting in 1927, were an impediment to significant expansion within Canada.17
