Truth and Honour

by Greg Marquis

  Given its importance to the case, it is ironic that the SJPF was relatively slow to examine the Hugo Boss jacket that remained folded up and wrinkled in a box for weeks after its seizure. Const. MacDonald finally scrutinized the garment in November—four months after Oland’s death—and then personally transported it to the RCMP Halifax crime lab on November 30. As defence counsel would argue in 2015, given the terms of the relevant search warrant, this was possibly a violation of the legal rights of Dennis Oland. Sgt. Wentzell examined the jacket starting on December 6, taking digital photographs which he then magnified by a factor of twenty. He had been asked to detect any stains on the garment and determine how they may have been deposited. Although other areas had been circled by MacDonald, Wentzell documented small bloodstains on the right outer and inside sleeve, the left inside sleeve, and the upper chest. The exhibit was sent back to the Halifax lab in 2012 and by this time several test areas had been cut out. Wentzell was unable to identify any further stains. He also examined the victim’s blood-soaked shirt and his shoes, which had spatter on the tops. The lab reports on the items sent for RCMP testing in late 2011—the jacket, red grocery bag, other articles of Dennis Oland’s clothing, and swabs from his BlackBerry—did not appear until March 2012, whereupon another series of exhibits, including blood swabs from the crime scene, were sent to Halifax.

  One week before Christmas 2011, the CBC and Telegraph-Journal, employing the services of Nova Scotia media lawyer David Coles, applied to have a number of search warrants and ITOs released for publication. Judge Leslie Jackson decided to seal investigative details for a further six months on the grounds that the investigation was still active and that the release of the information would breach the privacy of individuals. The hearing revealed that one unnamed witness was refusing to co-operate with the police. The public also learned that the lead investigator in the case had retired. The sealed court documents contained details on what the SJPF had been looking for when they executed search warrants in Saint John and Rothesay months earlier. Gary Miller, acting on behalf of Dennis Oland (who had not yet been namedpublicly as a suspect) requested that Jackson release the documents to his client so that he could assess the grounds for the searches. Bill Teed represented Lisa Oland and Mary Beth Watt at the in-camera hearing.28

  A graduate of the UNB law school, Teed had been in practice since 1978 and made a Queen’s Counsel in 1989. His area of expertise is corporate law, specifically in commercial and property leasing, but also banking, finance and securities, and corporate restructuring. Indicative of the sometimes closed world of the Saint John area (and especially the corporate world), Teed not only lives in Rothesay, he is actually a neighbour of Dennis Oland. He shares another apparent connection with the Oland clan: support for the PCs. In the summer of 2014, when the Oland preliminary inquiry was underway, he nominated the incumbent MLA in Rothesay, Ted Flemming, as the PC candidate for the Rothesay riding. He is also of the class of lawyers and businesspeople that end up being elected or appointed to various public boards and agencies such as Enterprise Saint John, another reality for the Saint John elite.

  In December, following Judge Jackson’s decision to seal all documents and search warrants for six months, Chief Reid issued a statement explaining that his officers were still working on a “complex” case, the type that did not get “settled in an hour on a TV show.” Reid continued: “It’s in the community, people talk about it, it’s got national attention and at the end of the day, while you can appreciate everyone’s curiosity, while you can appreciate most people want this to be solved, time and patience are the most important thing here.” As St. Thomas University criminology professor Michael Boudreau noted, Reid’s press conference, held within days of the start of the investigation, was somewhat unusual, but other observers explained that centralized control of statements to the media was becoming the new normal for Canada’s police services.29

  Dennis and Lisa Oland, whose financial situation appeared to have improved, were involved in other transactions in the new year. In February of 2012, 660673 N.B. Inc. secured a collateral mortgage on the Germain Street property for $182,000.30 In April 2012, Dennis and Lisa acquired a $462,000 collateral mortgage on their Rothesay residence. On May 1, 2012, the couple’s 2010 collateral mortgage for $75,000 was discharged, meaning it was paid off. Three weeks later, the $163,000 collateral mortgage from 2011 was also discharged. As of June 2016, the April 2012 mortgage had not been discharged and the degree to which it had been paid down is not a matter for the public record.31 Later in 2012, Lisa opened a vintage-clothing consignment shop in their new property, which is located on a picturesque section of Germain Street, a gentrified streetscape in the Trinity Royal heritage zone. The shop, Exchange on Germain, features designer wear and by May of 2012 had more than 1,200 Facebook likes. Somewhat ironically, it is located one street away from where her father-in-law was bludgeoned to death. According to a 2013 story in Maclean’s, Dennis, who no longer seemed to have a job, was involved in his wife’s new business, appearing at a Heritage Preservation Board meeting to discuss the building’s exterior. The story noted that Dennis’s aunt Jane Toward, sister of the murder victim, posted a positive comment on Exchange on Germain’s Facebook page. One Facebook photo, dated April 14, 2014, showed a smiling Dennis standing at the counter during a fashion show featuring young models.32

  As would be revealed at the preliminary inquiry (but not to the public) in 2014, and at the subsequent trial, the investigation continued in 2012 with further forensic testing of swabs and other exhibits and a series of field tests by the SJPF to track with which cell towers an iPhone 4 would connect based on the location of the caller. There were also DNA samples to obtain. When the bathroom sink in the lobby of the Far End office had finally been tested in July 2011, there was a presumptive positive result, which was confirmed as blood by follow-up testing. Could this be the blood of the killer? Investigators would not complete this task until 2015, but they set out to surreptitiously collect samples from a number of people other than Dennis Oland. One was Richard’s right-hand man, Robert McFadden, who, for whatever reason, refused to provide a voluntary DNA sample. In December 2012, in a scene out of a movie, he was tracked to the East Side Mario’s restaurant in Saint John where an undercover officer, sitting at a table a few feet away, acquired a cast-off drinking straw. (In the Stillman case in 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the seizure of cast-off evidence such as straws, cigarette butts, drinking glasses, and Kleenex tissues is entirely lawful in the case of persons not in custody.33)

  In June of 2012, as the anniversary of the crime approached, Chief Reid gave an interview where he spoke of the case as “long” and “complicated” and explained that the investigation was waiting for the results of forensic tests. He told the Telegraph-Journal, “We have to be absolutely right.” Reid explained that investigators had identified a suspect who was known to the victim, but were still exploring leads and were aware of the problem of tunnel vision. The chief also explained that charges could only be laid after the Crown prosecutor’s office gave its approval. He declined to comment on whether the case turned on one single piece of evidence and disagreed with any suggestions that the prominence of the victim or his family had forced the department to treat the investigation differently.34

  In the summer of 2012, the Crown, the SJPF, and lawyers acting for Dennis Oland and others renewed their legal battle against the application by the CBC and the Telegraph-Journal to have the court unseal search-warrant information in the name of public transparency. The Supreme Court of Canada in 1982 had ruled that once a warrant had been executed and the evidence in it obtained, it became a public document. Sections of the Criminal Code, however, still gave judges some discretion to prevent the publication of suspects’ names until after they had been arrested. The latter provision has been subjected to Charter of Rights challenges.35 On June 15, Judge Jackson, who was the province’s chief provincial court justice, rule
d that search-warrant information would remain sealed until he made a determination on a request by the SJPF for a further six-month publication ban. On July 31, Jackson released to the media Const. Davidson’s affidavit of June 7, 2012, but several ITOs, search warrants, and lists of seized items, were not unsealed. In the document, the lead investigator claimed that the SJPF wanted to test 243 of 378 seized items but to date fewer than 50 had been forensically examined. The police had interviewed sixty people to date, but Davidson’s affidavit argued that further publicity might discourage other potential witnesses from contacting them. Testimony by Davidson the following month indicated that unlike the police chief, the lead investigator did not believe an arrest was imminent.36

  On July 31, the Crown agreed to permit the release of some of the documentation in connection with several warrants, including those relating to 58 Gondola Point Road, the sailboat Loki, an unidentified automobile, and the CIBC on King Street, Saint John (the victim’s primary bank). The Crown and lawyers for the Oland family objected to the publication of items seized as evidence, anything that could identify certain individuals interviewed by police, and those who allegedly were with Oland on the day of his death (including a person with whom he had a meeting). On August 16, Jackson released a series of documents, heavily redacted, that made no mention of a weapon, a cause of death, or a suspect, which the Crown still considered “hallmark” evidence. Yet, the unsealed documents did reveal, for the first time, that the SJPF believed it was investigating a murder (as opposed to homicide) and that the crime had been committed on July 6, 2011.37 Prior to Jackson’s next release of documents, Gary Miller, on behalf of Dennis Oland, and Bill Teed, acting for the Oland estate and other members of the family, requested that they be given the opportunity to examine the documents first in order to safeguard the interests of their clients. The SJPF continued to oppose the unsealing of any details that could compromise its investigation.

  In late September, the judge issued a written decision announcing that he would be unsealing more search-warrant documentation. One-hundred pages of documents released the first week of October revealed, without directly naming the suspect, many of the stages of the investigation. They indicated that immediately after the murder, police believed there was a financial motive. The name of the suspect was redacted in the release, but the unnamed person allegedly owed the dead man half a million dollars. The unsealed material also indicated that DNA evidence and security-camera footage was important to the investigation. There was reference to a video interview of the last known person to see the victim alive, a description of the clothing he had worn, and an account of his activities on the evening after his meeting with the victim. Items seized in the investigation, such as clothing and a red shopping bag, were listed. The release also revealed that John Ainsworth and Anthony Shaw, working in Printing Plus, told investigators they heard pounding and thumping noises from the second storey on the evening of the murder. The supporting documents revealed details of Richard Oland’s last day alive, that there were tensions within the family, and that he had a mistress. They confirmed that Far End Corporation was still in business under McFadden, but made no mention of the involvement of Dennis Oland. One reporter argued that fifteen months after Oland’s death, the murder was “unsolved,” but from the SJPF’s point of view, that was not quite true. Despite the formal publication ban on much of the warrant information, other details leaked out on social media such as Twitter. In late October, lawyer David Coles revealed that he would be making further submissions on behalf of the media for the release of the names redacted in the documents.38

  Judge Jackson’s rulings on the Oland warrants broke new ground in terms of New Brunswick legal history, according to an interview the judge gave after his retirement.39 With the release of the warrant information, newspaper columnist Kurt Peacock, who coincidentally owned a rental property next to 52 Canterbury Street and had been there briefly on the evening of July 6, 2011, to collect rent, wrote that “the pressure to obtain justice for this crime will likely be greater than ever.”40 The state of the investigation by late 2012 raised three basic questions: Was Dennis Oland the suspect in his father’s murder? Would an arrest ever be made? And if so, would the accused, in light of the mounting publicity, receive a fair trial? The police were also on trial, both for the Oland matter and their failure to make an arrest in the death of twenty-two-year-old Selena Perry, a psychiatric patient who wandered off her ward in February 2012 and was found dead in another part of the Saint John Regional Hospital. In addition, Matt Foley, president of the Bacchus motorcycle club (or gang, according to its critics), had shot dead a young man on the street in broad daylight and eighteen-year-old A. J. Dennison had been fatally stabbed while taking part in a home invasion on the city’s West side in early November. The Telegraph-Journal published an over-the-top editorial that concluded the SJPF had a “poor recent record of solving murders,” and that the public was actually alarmed by “killers who remain at large.”41 (By way of comparison, Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers lists fourteen unsolved murders for Halifax since 2010.)

  * * *

  1Tamsin McMahon, “Mystery brewing around Dick Oland’s murder.” National Post, July 24, 2011.

  2Mike Landry, “Police tried to get DNA from Moosehead boss, jury told,” Telegraph-Journal, Oct. 29, 2015, A1-2.

  3McMahon, “Mystery brewing around Dick Oland’s murder.”

  4Ibid.

  5Julian Sher, “The inscrutable murder of a magnate.” Globe and Mail, Oct. 15, 2011.

  6Ibid.

  7CBC, “Police call the Telegraph-Journal a ‘yellow rag,’” CBC News New Brunswick, July 24, 2012; “RCMP likely not interested in Saint John contract,” CBC News New Brunswick, Jan. 14, 2014; Karissa Donkin, “Saint John police to implement some recommendations from MacNeil report,” Telegraph-Journal, Feb. 11, 2015, B5; Kelsey Pye, “Police commission wants to take a new, more positive direction,” Telegraph-Journal, April 3, 2015, B1.

  8Craig Babstock, “Crime statistics don’t tell full story,” Moncton Times & Transcript, Feb. 8, 2014, A1; Statistics Canada, Police-reported crime statistics, 2012, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2013001/article/11854/tbl/tbl03-eng.htm.

  9Interview with Chief John Bates, March 11, 2016; Interview with Mary Ann Campbell, March 14, 2016.

  10Alan M. Dershowitz, Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O. J. Simpson Case (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 17.

  11Josh O’Kane, “Oland investigation puts Saint John in eerie calm,” Globe and Mail, July 21, 2011. Dennis did drop in to his office for a few minutes early that morning.

  12Robert Jones, “RCMP forensic delays not a problem, says Toews,” CBC News New Brunswick, Aug. 21, 2012.

  13NBQB 051, Sentencing, R v. Jason Alderich Getson, Jan. 4, 2011.

  14Tamsin McMahon, “Son of murdered Saint John businessman hires top defence lawyer,” Financial Post, Aug. 8, 2011.

  15Chris Morris. “Acquittal appealed Augustine may face another trial,” The Daily Gleaner, May 22, 1999.

  16Jennifer Pritchard, “Oland Toronto lawyer ‘well suited’ for case,” Telegraph-Journal, Nov. 20, 2013, A1.

  17Editorial, Globe and Mail, April 15, 1998; Michele Lansberg, “False Memory Label Invented by Lobby Group,” Toronto Star, Nov. 13, 1993.

  18Clare Hoy, “A feminist highjacking of justice,” Toronto Star, March 3, 1999.

  19John Honreich, “Star’s statistical analysis hold up to scrutiny,” Toronto Star, March 1, 2003; Greg Marquis, The Vigilant Eye: Policing Canada from 1967 to 9/11 (Halifax: Fernwood, 2016), 219.

  20Mick Lowe, Conspiracy of Brothers: A True Story of Murder, Bikers and the Law (Toronto: Seal Books, 1989).

  21Betty Powell and Peter Edwards, “Angels in Court,” Toron
to Star, April 6, 2007; Tony Van Alphen, “108

  22How the RCMP botched a sting,” Toronto Star, Dec. 23, 2007.

  23Dean Pritchard, “Former Manitoba Hell’s Angels leader Dale Sweeney sentenced to 11 years in prison,” Winnipeg Sun, April 29, 2013.

  24Affidavit of Dennis James Oland, January 12, 2016.

  25Ibid.

  26Sher, “The inscrutable murder of a magnate.”

  27Ibid.

  28Jennifer Pritchett, “Sealed Oland search warrants contested,” Telegraph-Journal, Dec. 16, 2011, A1.

  29April Cunningham, “Richard Oland murder remains shrouded in mystery six months later,” National Post, Dec. 30, 2011.

  30Collateral mortgage, Land Titles Act, S.N.B., 1981, c.L-1.1, s. 26, 660673 N.B. Inc., 2012-02-27, Registration number 31197495.

  31Collateral mortgage, Land Titles Act, S.N.B., 1981, c.L-1.1, s. 26, Dennis James Oland and Lisa Andrik Oland, Registration number 31360879. (30) Discharge of mortgage, Land Titles Act, S.N.B., 1981, c.L-1.1, s. 26, Dennis James Oland, 2012-05-01, Registration number 31412787; Discharge of mortgage, Land Titles Act, S.N.B., 1981, c.L-1.1, s. 26, Dennis James Oland, 2012-05-23, Registration number 31494314.