by Greg Marquis
As mentioned earlier, following Oland’s death, McFadden and Dennis were the executors of his estate. The former received the lion’s share of the executor’s fees and both were paid $50,000 as trustees. The will allowed the executors to tap into the trust on behalf of the widow. McFadden became president of Kingshurst Estates and Far End Corporation and Dennis president of the deceased’s holding company. McFadden testified that the office had to be not only cleaned but partially remodelled, as “the blood seeped through four layers of flooring to the ceiling below.”37 The witness acknowledged that he was aware of the affair with Diana and that Dennis had asked him to speak to his father about it. Like Dennis, McFadden seemed unable or unwilling to directly confront his boss on the issue. One could simply “follow the money,” he explained, such as travel itineraries and airline tickets, to see evidence of his employer’s adultery. In addition, by virtue of his access to Richard’s phone and email account, he had seen messages from Sedlacek. In cross-examination, McFadden testified that he had never heard the victim complain about his son’s financial situation or express antagonism towards Dennis: “It was more fun building sailboats.”38
The second witness that day was Jin Hee Choi, originally from Korea, who, with her husband, operated VIP Dry Cleaners in Rothesay. On the morning of Friday, July 8, 2011, the brown jacket and other items had been dropped off in the name of Lisa Oland less than twelve hours after Dennis’s police interview ended. Choi, testifying through a translator, explained how clothing was tracked at the business, including how items were identified with tags. She remembered that Lisa had picked up the order on Saturday as Dennis waited in the car.39 Twelve days later, the court heard from her husband, Yang Gwan (Steve) Nam, who did the actual washing, dry cleaning, and ironing. Also speaking through an interpreter, he said that the customer had given no special instructions about stains and that he remembered telling police he had detected no blood or other stains as part of his routine inspection prior to cleaning the garment. In another example of an investigatory lapse, the SJPF did not fully interview Nam until February 2015. Part of Gold’s cross-examination dealt with the chemical products used in the dry-cleaning process.40
The next three days were devoted to financial matters, which, according to the Crown, were central to motive. Michelle (Taylor) Lefrancois, formerly of the CIBC, explained that Dennis had obtained a $75,000 line of credit secured against his house in 2010, and that by March 2011 it had increased to $163,000. CIBC financial adviser David Cosman described Richard Oland as a “high-value” customer. John Travis, the accused’s supervisor at Wood Gundy, had worked for Richard at Brookville Transport and considered him a mentor. Introduced into evidence was an email message to Travis wherein Dennis claimed he had convinced his father and another investor to bring $10 to 20 million to the company. In a June 1 message, Dennis cited cash-flow difficulties and asked for an advance on his expected earnings. Travis, who had floated the idea in May 2011, agreed to advance him $8,000 a month for June and July. (Oland told his wife this was “pay”). Later, he expressed concern about a delay in the advance on the day his loan and child-support payments were being deducted. The jury heard that Dennis was forced to leave Wood Gundy in late July 2011 as clients had begun to depart because of the controversy. He was given a financial settlement. Travis estimated that Dennis’s clients had invested $20–25 million and explained that when an adviser left the firm they sold their client book to other advisers.41
The next witness was Eric Johnson, a senior forensic accountant with Public Works Canada contacted by the SJPF with the task of summarizing and analyzing the suspect’s financial records. His testimony focused on Oland’s finances as of January 2011. The records indicated trips to Italy, Hungary, Florida, and England between November 2010 and April 2011, which added $21,000 to his credit-card debt. Dennis’s main bank account for January 1 to July 7, 2011, was often in overdraft. In this same period, he withdrew more than $28,000 from an investment account and his credit-card debt rose to more than $31,000. During this time, Oland’s employment income was $34,000, yet he was on the hook for almost $52,000 a year for child support and $20,000 a year for his father’s loan. The Crown, for whom motive was a combination of money issues and ill will over the victim’s adultery, was attempting to show that the defendant, although a financial adviser, was living beyond his means. It may have also been attempting to send a message about his character.42
On November 10, the court was packed to capacity: “the mistress,” Diana Sedlacek, who now lived in British Columbia, would deliver her testimony. Following Richard’s death she had suffered an additional loss; her mother, Lina, who came from a large Acadian family, passed away in 2015. Wearing large sunglasses and a head scarf, and accompanied by her sister, Karen Breen of Fort McMurray, Alberta, she braved the media gauntlet and entered through the same security gate as any other visitor to the justice complex. Examined by an excessively diplomatic Veniot, Diana (who had been called a “bitch” and a “whack job” by Dennis) was relaxed and clear on the stand. She testified that she would visit Oland at his office, “perhaps once a month,” often on Sundays following church. They had been in a “romantic relationship” for close to eight years, and her spouse had not known. Much of her testimony centred on the text messages entered earlier as evidence. The messages of July 6 reflected her frustration with Richard’s lack of a response. Her last text that evening was to the point: “Pathetic.” By the morning of July 7, her messages were more frantic: “What has happened? Please, I love you…God be with you my love….Praying. Praying.” Calls to Oland’s office also produced no answers. On that morning, she testified, she drove past Oland’s office and saw his BMW in his parking spot. When she saw police towing the car away, “I knew that something terrible had happened.”43
The main purpose of Diana’s testimony and associated cellphone evidence was to show that she and the victim were in constant contact, usually via text message, and that Richard’s failure to respond to her texts and calls starting at 6:44 P.M. on the evening of the murder indicated that something was wrong. Who knew the victim’s routine better than his mistress of several years? Her testimony was also used to counter recurring defence questioning about Oland’s alleged scalp condition (the inference that blood and DNA could have been transferred by the “close-talking” Richard to his son and others). The jury did not hear about Sedlacek’s polygraph test or that her phone records suggested she had been at home on Darlings Island the night of the murder. She was familiar with Oland’s iPhone 4 and explained they had a routine for calls and texts. Like Dennis taking orders at CIBC Wood Gundy, she was expected to respond immediately to Richard’s messages.44
On a previous day in court, Gold had remarked that the defence was “not sure what to expect” from Diana’s testimony and even the Crown had worries. Many court watchers and journalists anticipated that the cross-examination of Sedlacek would be a dramatic moment. For example, Gold stated that the defence would question her about some of her “unpleasant” text messages to Oland. The second-biggest surprise of the trial was the decision, announced after the noon break, that the defence would not be cross-examining Diana. This suggested that it did not consider her a suspect and /or feared that she could reveal negative aspects of the father-son relationship.45
Diana was followed by now ex-husband, Jiri, who was eighty-seven and lived in Hampton, New Brunswick, to the east of Darlings Island. Sedlacek, well dressed, urbane, and calm, spoke in an East European accent with an English inflection. He totally charmed the courtroom when he told Alan Gold, “I’m delighted to see you.” Sedlacek explained that in his final years at Bata headquarters in Toronto, he was director of corporate planning when the firm was operating in eighty-eight countries and had eighty-thousand workers. He had married Diana in 1987 when he was fifty-nine and retired the next year. He denied to Patrick Wilbur that he had any involvement in Oland’s death and claimed that he had been completely unaware of the
affair until he heard the allegation in a media report more than two years after the murder. (This conflicted with Diana’s testimony, which suggested he had found out two years earlier.) Sedlacek told the court that he and his wife had socialized with Mrs. and Mr. Oland. He thought that the last time he had spoken to the victim, an interesting and “worldly” man, was at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Rothesay at Christmas mass in 2010. Jiri testified that he had spent the evening of July 6, 2011, at his home on Darlings Island, where he had been busy gardening.46
The other-guy-did-it strategy can be useful for the defence to amplify reasonable doubt about the prosecution’s evidence, but it cannot solely be based on speculation. It can be devastating when one or more key prosecution witnesses has a history of criminal activity or conflict with the victim. Jiri Sedlacek was questioned twice by the SJPF but had been ruled out as a potential suspect. The cross-examination of a witness whose wife had been having an affair with the victim was completely necessary, but many court watchers described Gold’s questioning of a man who was eighty-three years old at the time of the killing as one of the trial’s low points. The aggressive cross-examination came across as excessive and generated animated pen tapping from a grim-faced Justice Walsh. Gold began by flattering the witness about his education, manners, and career, asking him if he was “an honourable man.” He then more or less accused him of lying. Jiri agreed with Gold that he “probably” would have been angry if he had learned about the affair. Gold continued to ask him what he had known, indelicately reminding the aged man that his wife “had sex with this man.” Sedlacek reiterated that he had been in the dark about his wife’s infidelity. Next, Gold asked him if the police had asked for his phone records and bank statements (which presumably could have provided leads connecting the cuckolded husband to a contract killer). Jiri replied no. The seven-minute cross-examination revealed a side to Gold that may have alienated members of the jury. Tellingly, the Crown asked for no redirect.47
Week ten of the trial opened with the cross-examination of forensic officer MacDonald (who never visited the scene). Under Gold’s questioning he agreed that the handling of the Hugo Boss jacket “could have been done better.” Gold asked if any of the evidence from the jacket, which had been rolled up and folded in a bag, could have migrated after it was seized. MacDonald responded that it was a “dry” exhibit. He then detailed how he had examined various exhibits with special lights, conducted presumptive tests for blood, and taken swabs. The defence used this opportunity to have a SJPF forensic specialist tell the jury what the Crown did not have: any blood, DNA, or other trace evidence—other than possibly the jacket—to link Dennis to the crime. And the evidence sites included the crime scene, the victim’s body and clothing, the Loki, the VW Golf, the red bag, the logbook, the BlackBerry, the suspect’s clothing (including a J. Crew shirt he allegedly had worn on July 6), shoes, various items from his residence, and even the lint trap of the clothes drier (sometimes a fruitful source of forensic evidence in sexual assault and homicide cases).48
The next two Crown witnesses were Sylvie Gill, a Rogers Communications investigator, and Joseph Sadoun, a radio-frequency engineer who specializes in the design and operation of cellphone towers. Gill had received a judicial order for the victim’s cellphone records on July 9, 2011. Examined by Crown prosecutor Derek Weaver, Gill used spreadsheets indicating incoming and outgoing calls and texts from Richard’s iPhone, and the cell towers associated with this activity, for July 6. According to Gill, the last incoming text—“You there?”—to the missing cellphone pinged off a tower in Rothesay at 6:44 P.M. that evening. Subsequent texts (which never arrived on the victim’s phone) pinged off the Quispamsis tower between Saint John and Sedlacek’s Darlings Island location.49 When Rogers attempted to locate the iPhone 4 in its system on July 9, the response code was “roaming error.” The jury was informed that this meant one of three things: the phone was on “a foreign network” that had no agreement with Rogers, the location was unknown because of an “unspecified reason,” or it was a case of an “absent subscriber.” The last explanation could have meant that the device was turned off or was out of the coverage area. The court did not hear evidence on the latter issue, but in 2011 one did not have to travel too far from Saint John or Rothesay in order to lose Rogers’s cell coverage. For example, St. Martins, a coastal village which is a thirty-minute drive from Rothesay, did not have Rogers coverage.50
Sadoun was recognized as an expert witness and submitted a twenty-one-page report on cell-tower coverage for the Saint John and Rothesay areas. The Crown’s evidence was that the incoming text at 6:44 P.M. had registered on the tower at 2524 Rothesay Road, close to Renforth Wharf. He told the court that cellphones generally register with the tower geographically closest because it has the strongest radio signal. Anticipating the defence theory that Richard’s phone was in uptown Saint John at 6:44 P.M. because he was still alive, Weaver asked Sadoun about the probability of an incoming signal to uptown Saint John pinging off a tower in Rothesay. Sadoun replied that this was “minimal” and his evidence indicated that in addition to two towers in Saint John’s central business district only a block from the murder scene, there were other cell towers in East and West Saint John.51 The other part of Sadoun’s testimony dealt with his review of the test calls conducted by the SJPF. The point of these calls was to establish the cell towers that were most likely to connect with the wireless signals. Gold had compelling cross-examination questions on the accuracy of the software program used to predict tower-coverage areas (many of the actual tests calls had not connected as predicted) and on whether the elevation of the test calls and the time of both year and day would affect their accuracy. Gold also had Gill admit that the victim had allowed his earlier voice messages on July 6 to go to voice mail, implying that there was nothing suspicious about his failing to answer between 6:30 and 7:30 P.M.52
The last two Crown witnesses, both qualified as DNA experts, were Joy Kearsey and Thomas Suzanski. Kearsey, formerly of the RCMP crime lab in Halifax, had testified more than forty times in court and had worked on the Robert Pickton serial-killer case in British Columbia. The first part of her testimony, led by Wilbur, educated the jury on the basics of DNA typing and how samples were extracted and analysed. She explained that 99.9 percent of “the blueprint of life” is similar between people but that forensic analysts focus on the remaining 0.1 percent and that the chances of the DNA of two people matching was virtually impossible. Kearsey was an excellent witness, but her subject matter was somewhat intimidating in its complexity. Following the tutorial on DNA, she testified as to the findings in the Oland case based on eleven separate reports. Her evidence was that the Hugo Boss jacket contained three areas of bloodstaining and that within these areas were DNA samples matching the victim’s. The stains on the jacket were tiny, but scientists require less than a nanogram (one billionth of a gram) of genetic material to test with accuracy.53
Here was the key forensic evidence on which the prosecution was based. The areas were the outside right sleeve, the upper left chest, and the lower part of the back of the jacket. The probability that the samples would match another Caucasian male, based on the Canadian database, was 1 in 510 billion. Although blood was not confirmed inside the right sleeve, there were two areas of mixed origin, with the major component similar to the victim’s DNA. (In this case, the odds of the DNA not being Richard Oland’s was 1 in 180 million.) Kearsey agreed with Gold that it was impossible to determine how the DNA was transferred to the jacket or the length of time it had been present. Gold suggested that DNA can be transferred when people cough or touch one another, and Kearsey agreed. He also raised the issue of the jacket being rolled into a paper bag and stored away for several months before being tested. Kearsey responded that dried blood tends not to “migrate” from one surface to the next but that it can flake.
Suzanski, based in Ottawa, had worked for the RCMP as a forensic biologist since the late 1980s.
His involvement in the case was relatively late, having contributed two lab reports in May 2015 based on the newer Identifier Plus amplification kit, which tests for fifteen areas (“loci”) within a DNA sample. He told the jury that he had analysed the DNA samples taken from the bloodstained areas of the jacket and calculated that the estimated probability of selecting an unrelated individual at random from the Canadian Caucasian database was 1 in 20 quintillion (a quintillion being a prime number followed by eighteen zeros). He described the stained areas as “clearly interpretable” despite the fact that the garment had been subjected to dry cleaning before it was seized. Gold asked the witness if it was possible to know with certainty how the DNA was deposited on the jacket. Suzanski agreed with Kearsey that in his expert opinion it was “rather unlikely” that Richard’s DNA was deposited through any other biological substance than his blood.54
The following day, one month before Christmas, on day forty-four of the trial, Miller rose to start the case for the defence. He explained that not only the accused, but also two expert witnesses, several members of the Oland family, and a friend of the family would be testifying. The veteran barrister, now sixty-seven, told the jury that the Crown had not satisfied the burden of proof and that the only logical outcome was a verdict of not guilty. His client’s testimony, he explained, would explain his whereabouts and movements on July 6 and 7, 2011, including his electronic communications. Miller also suggested that the defence would challenge the Crown’s assertion that Dennis was the last person to see his father alive. The defence denied that the Crown had entered convincing evidence that Dennis’s financial situation and resentment over his father’s affair were motives for murder. Miller rejected assertions that there had been bad blood between the father and the son over money, the affair, or anything else, and promised that his witnesses would bring no evidence of this nature. These would include the defendant’s mother, his sister Jacqueline, who supposedly saw Dennis after his arrival home on July 6, 2011, and his wife, who would be questioned about her dry-cleaning errand on July 7.55
