The most explosive testimony about the police investigation came on October 13, in the fifth week of the trial, when the alleged conduct of a senior officer at the crime scene raised new questions about the force’s abilities, already under the critical scrutiny of Oland’s defence team.
The morning was uneventful. An officer testified about his role at the crime scene on July 7, 2011 — when he was called, when he arrived, where he walked, whether he wore protective gear, whether he touched anything, what he did, and who was with him. By that stage of the trial, the questions had become routine, even predictable. The day took a dramatic turn after lunch, when retired staff sergeant Mike King took the stand. Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur opened with the standard questions he posed to every police witness. Then, about forty-five minutes into his direct examination, Wilbur reminded King he was under oath and had sworn to tell the truth.
“At any time previous to this, did anyone suggest to do otherwise?” asked Wilbur.
“Yes,” replied King. A faint collective gasp arose as stunned observers looked at one another quizzically, wondering what they were about to hear.
King alleged his former supervisor, Glen McCloskey, encouraged him to not reveal that McCloskey entered the crime scene to view the bludgeoned body. McCloskey was the top-ranking officer involved with the case at the time. He was the inspector in charge of the criminal investigations division, overseeing both the major crime unit and forensic identification unit. King said the conversation occurred sometime in 2014, either before or during Dennis Oland’s preliminary inquiry, when they were alone together in McCloskey’s office. McCloskey referred to another officer as an “idiot” for telling people that he, McCloskey, was in Richard Oland’s office, he said.
As noted, King had entered the crime scene purely out of curiosity not once but twice that day, including one trip with McCloskey, and he said he responded by saying, “You were in the room.” He alleged that McCloskey replied, “Well, you don’t have to tell them that.”
King did not appear to enjoy his time on the stand, but he did not shrink from it, either. His testimony was soft-spoken and straightforward, without embellishment or prevarication. King said he didn’t see McCloskey go “near the body.” In fact, he said, McCloskey was behind him when they entered the office. King also said McCloskey never used the word “lie,” but he believed McCloskey was asking him to suppress information about McCloskey’s presence at the crime scene. “There was no misunderstanding for me,” King testified. He told McCloskey he had “never lied on the stand in thirty-two years,” and he “wasn’t about to start,” he said. “I didn’t care if it was a murder or a traffic ticket, I was telling the truth.” According to King, McCloskey didn’t say, “You misunderstood me.” His only reaction was to stand, walk over to a window, and look outside, King testified.
King’s testimony also described another visit to McCloskey’s office. He alleged McCloskey had a box of exhibits related to the Oland investigation in his office and asked King to arrange for another officer to deliver the box to the RCMP in Fredericton. King did not say what was in the box or why McCloskey wanted it delivered to the RCMP, but he did say under cross-examination by Alan Gold that the request was highly unusual.
“Normal procedure was that exhibits seized would stay in the possession of the forensic identification officer,” King said, and any movement should be documented.
“And that is because every person who handles exhibits has to be a witness to the continuity of those exhibits?” Gold asked.
“Basically, yes,” King replied.
King said he never told any superior officers that McCloskey wanted him to alter his testimony. McCloskey was subsequently promoted to deputy chief in January 2015 and served as the acting chief for about six months after Bill Reid retired in April 2015. King confided only in his wife, mother, and two lower-ranked officers, sergeant Charles Elgee and constable Grant Lyons, he said, “a long time ago, probably last winter.” More recently, on September 8, shortly before the trial began, he also told the lead investigator, constable Stephen Davidson.
As King described it, Davidson was talking about wanting to get out of the major crime unit; the Oland case was wearing him down, said King. “He was pretty worked up,” King testified. “He felt like things were making him look bad, and he didn’t want to look bad.” King said Davidson told him “the testimony was taking a toll on him and he wanted out…. There has been a lot of attention on the case, and he was feeling he would take a hit if something goes wrong.” King encouraged Davidson to hang in. “I said, ‘Just tell the truth, just report the facts; that is all you can do.’” That’s when King disclosed to Davidson that McCloskey wanted him to alter his testimony, he said. Davidson responded, according to King, “That could be career-ending.” King retired in April 2015, around the same time that McCloskey became acting chief.
Stephen Davidson corroborated King’s testimony about their conversation on September 8. He told the court he was aware of King’s allegation that McCloskey suggested he mislead the court, but he couldn’t remember if he described King’s allegation as “career-ending,” and he hadn’t made any notes of their discussion. “It was a serious thing he said to me, so it’s likely I would have said something like that,” he said when cross-examined. Davidson also didn’t report what King told him to senior officers.
The allegation was that McCloskey was essentially “counselling perjury,” an incredulous Gary Miller noted, and yet the lead investigator on the case didn’t see fit to report this to his superior officers. Davidson said he didn’t tell anyone because he only knew what King had told him. “I didn’t know the truth of it,” he said. King had told him he planned to tell the Crown himself, Davidson testified, “So I had every belief it was going to be known.”
King said he told the prosecutors on September 29, just before he was originally scheduled to testify. On that day, the trial ended early and abruptly, with little by way of explanation, but Dennis Oland and his defence team appeared jubilant, smiling, sharing whispered exchanges, and strutting confidently around the courtroom. “An unexpected issue has arisen,” the judge told the jury. Court would not sit the following day, he said. “Don’t speculate about anything. You have enough on your plate,” he instructed.
Gold showed self-restraint when he cross-examined Mike King, his questions stretching over two days.
“I take it it was not a pleasant decision for you to blow the whistle on what took place at this time?” he asked.
“Very difficult,” replied King.
“Didn’t look forward to it?”
“No.”
Gold then read from King’s statement to the prosecutors. “It’s been bothering me for some time. I just wanted to get it off my chest,” he quoted King as saying, which King confirmed was correct. Gold asked about the fact King applied for an inspector’s position before he decided to retire. King said he applied while on sick leave with what he described as a “bad case of vertigo,” but after a conversation with his physician, he decided not to follow through.
“What would you say to the allegation you’re just saying these things about McCloskey because you got turned down for inspector and you’re bitter?” Gold asked.
“False,” said King. He wasn’t turned down, he said; the process hadn’t started when he decided to withdraw his application. He was not a disgruntled former employee; that was not the reason for his testimony, he stressed.
The courtroom buzzed as everyone waited for Glen McCloskey to take the stand. But the judge was informed McCloskey hadn’t yet left the police station, so he suggested it was a good time to take the mid-morning recess. Within twenty minutes, the courtroom was packed with more people than had been there on day one, a few of them standing along the back wall.
McCloskey arrived via an underground pedestrian walkway between the police station and the courthouse, managing to avoid any news cameras. Unlike other officers, who testified in their dress uniforms, McCloskey wore a suit and tie.
Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur led the deputy chief through his work history, as King listened from the back row of the crowded courtroom. McCloskey had been with the force since November 1998, when he started as a constable. He was promoted to sergeant in May 2005 and promoted again to staff sergeant the following January. In April 2010 he became inspector of patrol services, overseeing about 110 officers, as well as the community policing, canine, and traffic units. Two months later, he became inspector of the criminal investigations division. The CID investigates crimes that either require extensive follow-up by trained investigators or would be too time-consuming for a member of the patrol division to handle. The various units within the CID have specialized expertise in investigating different types of crime, including major crime, forensic identification, street crime, stolen auto, fraud, family protection, and polygraph. McCloskey described his job as a “macro role.” He was not an investigator. Rather, he was responsible for overseeing human and financial resources and reviewing files — “how we made out; where we’re going,” as he put it. The CID handles about a thousand files a year, he said.
On the morning of July 7, McCloskey testified, he received a call from Mike King about a “dead body” on Canterbury Street. “He wanted me to come to the scene,” he said. King told him the victim was believed to be a “prominent businessman.”
McCloskey said it was not unusual for other officers to call him to a crime scene. He attended all five homicide scenes in Saint John between 2008 and 2011. McCloskey walked to 52 Canterbury Street with David Brooker, the head of the major crime unit, arriving at 10:59. At first Brooker stayed outside and McCloskey went in. His role was only as an “observer, resource person,” he said. Brooker eventually went inside the building, and he and McCloskey, along with King, entered the blood-spattered office under the direction of forensic sergeant Mark Smith sometime between 11:20 and 11:50 for, he said, “observation of the person that’s deceased.” Smith led the way into the “inner crime scene,” along the table in the middle of the office, and they followed the same route, stopping where he instructed. “I could see most of the body,” said McCloskey. None of them wore protective gear to avoid contaminating the scene, as far as he could recall. “I don’t remember touching anything,” he said. They were in and out quickly, “somewhere around forty-five seconds to a minute,” said McCloskey. He believed he was at the back of the group, because he was the tallest, and suspected they backed their way out because it was such “close quarters.”
“Were you assisting the investigation in any way?” asked Patrick Wilbur.
“No,” said McCloskey. His voice periodically dropped during his testimony, prompting Justice Walsh to remind him to speak up.
If those in the courtroom thought the only shocking thing they’d hear about McCloskey was Mike King’s allegation, they were in for another surprise. Approximately thirty minutes into his testimony, McCloskey revealed that he entered the crime scene a second time — without Mark Smith. At around twelve thirty p.m., he went back into Richard Oland’s office with constable Greg Oram, a polygraphist with the major crime unit; it was Oram whom McCloskey allegedly called an idiot for mentioning that he and McCloskey had been in the office.
“Had he been assigned to the file to your knowledge?” Wilbur inquired.
“I didn’t ask him that question, but David Brooker may have. I don’t know.”
“Is that something you would ask someone — why is someone here or not — as an inspector?”
“Well, I probably should have.”
“And why do you say that?”
“Well, it’s important. Why are all these people here, right? What are we doing?” He said he and Oram were “chit-chattin’ for a bit” outside the office doors in the foyer, and then they went in. At first they walked “roughly where Sergeant Smith had taken us to,” McCloskey explained, but then they took another step, closer to the filing cabinets, and headed deep into the office, to a room at the back (Robert McFadden’s office). McCloskey testified that he noticed some small drops of blood on the floor as they passed through the office. “[I] just tried to step over and into the room,” he said. Neither officer wore protective gear. Wilbur asked McCloskey the purpose of this second visit to the crime scene.
“Curiosity, I guess,” the deputy chief replied, as reporters scribbled furiously in their notebooks and pounded away on their keyboards, already knowing this would be their lede for the day’s proceedings. “It was just to look around in general and very quickly come back out.” Mark Smith walked by and saw McCloskey, his superior officer, and Oram in the crime scene. “Hey, guys, get out,” he said, or “words to that effect,” McCloskey recalled, and they obeyed. He estimated they were inside for “probably a minute.”
McCloskey said he asked Smith if he wanted him to “stay for support, and he did,” because McCloskey could assist him with getting extra resources. It was at this point that McCloskey said he noticed the door to the rear alleyway and went out to look around. He couldn’t remember whether or not he touched the door, and he did not remember any steps leading from the door to the ground below. Wilbur asked McCloskey to mark on a diagram of the office floor plan the routes he took on his two trips. McCloskey marked one in green, the other in orange. The diagram was shown to the jury and submitted into evidence.
It wasn’t until after the court lunch break that Wilbur addressed King’s accusations. He started with King’s testimony that McCloskey had kept a box of Oland-related exhibits in his office, contrary to proper procedure. “Did you handle any exhibits?” he asked. “Not to my knowledge,” said McCloskey.
Wilbur turned to King’s other serious allegation. “What, if any, suggestion did you make to anyone to change their testimony in relation to your attendance at the scene?”
“None,” McCloskey testified under oath.
Asked whether King’s retirement was “amicable,” McCloskey said, “Not in my view.” He said they had shared a professional and personal friendship for years, but problems between them started in March 2014, when King failed a Canadian Police College course in critical incidence command, which is required to lead the emergency tactical services (ETS) unit he was already in charge of. McCloskey asserted that King was interested in becoming an inspector, but budget cuts in January 2015 began to limit his chances. He seemed concerned the department was considering promoting a woman who was an acting staff sergeant at the time and had seven years less service than him, according to McCloskey. “That’s when the relationship really started to break down,” he said. Other restructuring stripped King of some of his duties, including responsibility for the ETS unit. “It didn’t go over well,” McCloskey said. He claimed that King came to his office, and they had what he called a “heated conversation.”
King went on sick leave for three months and then retired. He declined, McCloskey said, to come in to accept a retirement ring from him, the acting chief at the time. According to McCloskey, King told him to leave the ring at the front desk, and his wife would pick it up. “I didn’t allow that to happen,” said McCloskey. He claimed that King appeared at the station in June and said, “Just give me the ring” and “Shame on you” to McCloskey; McCloskey believed the latter remark referred to the appointment of a female inspector, the first woman in the force to hold that rank. McCloskey said he had no doubt in his mind that King was bitter that he was passed over for promotion.
Alan Gold handled the cross-examination for the defence and was aggressive with McCloskey from the start. First, he pointed out that some forty other officers — essentially everyone who had anything to do with the case — were called as witnesses at Dennis Oland’s preliminary inquiry.
“Why were you not called? Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You weren’t feeling well that day? You had a tummy ache?” he asked with unmistakable sarcasm.
McCloskey responded that he had a conversation with prosecutors about, he said, “some things going on with my personal life.” Later, on redirect by Patrick Wilbur, McCloskey elaborated on the personal issues that kept him from testifying at the preliminary inquiry. In 2013 his older sister, a Toronto police officer who inspired him to follow her into policing, died of cancer, and his younger sister was diagnosed with cancer. The next year, his younger brother succumbed to a heart ailment and McCloskey was diagnosed with the same condition. He was off work for about seven weeks.
“And who was the other officer that just happened not to be called? I’ll give you a hint: Oram,” Gold said, naming the officer with whom McCloskey entered the crime scene the second time. “Just a coincidence that you and Oram were the only two officers not called at the preliminary inquiry?” (Oram did not testify at the trial, either.)
Gold theorized that McCloskey, who had testified in approximately one hundred other court cases during his career, would have known the easiest way to get away with not telling the truth in court is to say something for the first time at the trial so no one can check it out beforehand. Had McCloskey testified at the preliminary inquiry, the defence would have had the opportunity to properly prepare its cross-examination of him and to verify McCloskey’s claims with other witnesses, Gold said.
McCloskey said he told Wilbur on April 30, 2014, that he was at the scene. “Yes, but before that, you had asked Officer King to lie about it, hadn’t you?” asked Gold.
“No,” replied McCloskey.
“And you told the Crown you were at the scene. You didn’t tell the Crown you’d gone too far into the scene and that Sergeant Smith had yelled to get out of there. You didn’t tell the Crown that then, did you? Did you?”
“I’m not sure what I told the Crown, now.”
“Is it any wonder [Smith] yelled at you to get out of there?”
“No, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have been in there,” the veteran with twenty-seven years of experience conceded.
“You knew you were wrong?”
“Absolutely.”
Gold also quizzed McCloskey about using the pejorative term “idiot” to refer to Oram. Oram, he noted, was saying that he and McCloskey had gone into the murder scene. In what way was he wrong?
“He wasn’t wrong,” McCloskey replied. “I was embarrassed that we went in there so I just didn’t want to talk about it.”
The lawyer, however, offered a different theory. He posited McCloskey created the suspected partial footwear impression in blood that Mark Smith found at the crime scene. As noted, Smith originally thought the geometric pattern may have been created when the body was removed, but he later realized, upon reviewing photographs of the crime scene, that the pattern had been there before the removal, the court had heard. Gold suggested Smith contacted McCloskey in April 2014, before the preliminary inquiry, to tell him about the discovery, saying the perpetrator could have made it.
“When Sergeant Smith came to you about this footprint, didn’t you become worried that maybe you and Oram had perhaps made the print and that you didn’t want any evidence about this second time into the crime scene [to get out]? Is that what was troubling you?”
McCloskey said he didn’t recall Smith coming to him about a partial footprint.
“But you understand how it sort of fits with what Sergeant King is telling us, because he says that you told him that Oram was saying you went into the crime scene — that would certainly fit with the second trip — and you called Oram an idiot, and you wanted King to deny that you’d gone in on the second trip. Is that what happened? Is that what this is all about?”
“No,” McCloskey said, reiterating that he didn’t recall any such conversation with Smith.
“This was such an important case. The whole police department is under pressure. You don’t remember a discussion about a partial footprint in the blood, officer?”
McCloskey’s response was inaudible. “He’s indicating no,” said Justice Walsh.
“For a senior officer in your position, it was quite a professional disgrace to have to hear publicly in evidence what you had done at this murder scene, and you wanted to cover it up. That’s the long and the short of it, isn’t it? Isn’t it? I’m not hearing an answer, ‘No,’” Gold sneered.
“Well, I was embarrassed that it happened, that’s for sure,” said McCloskey, but he denied trying to get King to lie. As noted, Smith’s attempts to match the suspected footprint to the footwear of those who attended the crime scene or to Dennis Oland proved unsuccessful.
Gold also raised a series of emails McCloskey sent to King after their alleged conversation. McCloskey emailed King several times, asking if he had testified at Oland’s preliminary inquiry yet, the court heard, and Gold asked him to account for the messages. McCloskey said he was “concerned” about King. They had both just returned from assisting RCMP in Moncton with the two-day manhunt for Justin Bourque. Several Saint John officers were involved— around 350 officers from across the country joined in the search for Bourque — but King and McCloskey had roomed together. They were “very close,” he said. McCloskey wasn’t sure if King was the only officer whom he repeatedly emailed about testifying at the preliminary hearing.
Gold submitted the email exchanges into evidence. The first began on the morning of Friday, June 13, 2014, when McCloskey asked King: “Did u testify yet?”
“No, adjourned to June 23rd….” King replied.
“Heard [constable Stephen] Davidson got a scolding?” McCloskey asked.
“I talked to him after and he said it was over frivolous things that u wouldn’t be expected to remember and the defence preys on it,” King replied. “He didn’t seem concerned.”
“OK,” McCloskey responded. “[Davidson] got the next day off from [sergeant David] Brooker as Brooker advised he was worked up. It probably was frivolous things but that’s what they do.”
“That’s what we talked about,” King wrote. “They go after what they think you won’t know to make u look bad.”
On Wednesday, June 25, 2014, McCloskey again emailed King about his appearance at the preliminary inquiry. “Did u make it court?” he asked in an email that also discussed other, unrelated issues. King responded: “Still haven’t testified.” A few minutes later, King answered another email from McCloskey, writing: “Not going today. They’ll let me know. Supposed to switch back to DNA stuff again.”
On August 22, 2014, King declined an email invitation from McCloskey to attend a mock incident-planning session slated for September 3. “Scheduled for Oland,” he wrote, to which McCloskey replied, “Oh I think that will be moved a few more times.”
On Monday, September 1, 2014, at eight-fifteen p.m., McCloskey emailed the force’s crime analyst, Angela Totten, and copied King. “Can u review PDF file Oland and advise SSGT Mike King when his name appears?” he asked. A few minutes later, McCloskey emailed King directly. “Mine appeared 29 times,” he wrote. “I had no idea until I had her look.”
“What is the PDF file?” King asked.
“It is the whole Oland file and she can submit your name and determine what page your name appears,” McCloskey wrote.
“Nice to know,” King typed back. “I’ve gone through all the supplements by guys I gave direction to. All looks good. We’ll see….”
On the morning of September 3, 2014, the day King expected to be “scheduled for Oland,” King emailed McCloskey, letting him know his prediction had been right. “Not required today. Now it’s tomorrow morning.”
Gold revisited McCloskey’s suggestion that King had lied about him in court because he was bitter about being “passed over” for inspector.
“Are you blaming that as the reason why someone would come to court and testify under oath that they got tired of carrying a burden for so long and they wanted to tell the truth that you essentially had asked them to lie under oath?”
“I never said anybody lied under oath,” said McCloskey.
“Because certainly the Mike King you knew would never lie under oath, correct?”
“I would hope not.”
“And of course, he told you that in your office. He said he hadn’t lied under oath in all his years as a police officer, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a traffic case or a murder case, he’s not gonna lie under oath. Do you remember him saying that to you?”
“Maybe words to that effect. I don’t know. I go around and say that to all kinds of officers, the same thing: ‘Don’t lie, never lie under oath for a traffic ticket or anything.’”
Gold asked McCloskey if he ever had a box of exhibits related to the Oland case in his office. McCloskey said he couldn’t recall. He shouldn’t have, unless someone else signed them out and brought the box to him for him to take somewhere, he said, “but I don’t remember anybody giving me exhibits.”
The lawyers had no more questions for McCloskey. After nearly four-and-a-half hours in the witness box, he was free to go. He raised his husky frame, straightened his suit jacket, and held his head up as he exited the courtroom into the turmoil that awaited him.
That same day, the Saint John Police Force’s new chief, who had only taken the helm a few weeks earlier and, having come from Ontario, was the first chief appointed from outside the force in more than fifteen years, ordered an investigation into “the recent allegation” against his second-in-command “pertaining to the Oland murder trial.”
Chief John Bates directed the force’s professional standards unit to open an investigative file, and both the Saint John Board of Police Commissioners, the governance authority for the police force, and the New Brunswick Police Commission (NBPC), the independent oversight body that investigates and resolves complaints relating to any aspect of policing, had been advised, “as per procedure,” Bates said in an emailed statement to CBC News. Bates said he would be in contact with the NBPC “with regard to conducting a thorough investigation into the allegation.” In the meantime, McCloskey would remain on active duty. Bates declined to comment on any of the testimony, noting that would be improper. “The men and women of the Saint John Police Force have and will continue to deliver exceptional and first-rate service to this community each and every day,” he said. “Our members go about their duties with my full confidence; they have already earned and continue to hold the confidence and respect of the greater Saint John community.”
City councillors Susan Fullerton and John MacKenzie exchanged emails (obtained through a right-to-information request) on the subject. Fullerton, who “nearly fell over” when she read a media report about the McCloskey allegations, wrote, “I surely hope it is not true.” MacKenzie agreed, noting, “We have enough problems.” Rick Caswell, a sergeant, sent an email to Chief Bates, describing the allegations as “the most embarrassing and humiliating event ever in the history of the force, and in my twenty-eight years. Even people I know are bashing us on social media with conviction.” He urged the chief not to “give up on us in the trenches.” Bates responded, in part, “We will, as a force, get through this.”
On October 15, Bates contacted the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, to ask him to undertake an external investigation. “Needless to say,” Bates wrote, “the whole city/province is in an uproar.” In the end, the NBPC announced the appointment of former Fredericton police chief Barry MacKnight to look into the matter. The investigation under the provincial Police Act would not begin until after the trial concluded, the commission noted. As it turned out, the commission’s probe wouldn’t be the only investigation McCloskey would face. And the commission would end up investigating more than just the allegations against McCloskey.