When Alan Gold cross-examined the pathologist, Ather Naseemuddin, he asked him if Richard Oland’s killer would have been covered in blood. “Certainly the weapon,” Naseemuddin replied. “I don’t know about the clothing.” Gold reminded Naseemuddin that when asked at the preliminary inquiry if the attacker would have had a substantial amount of blood on them, Naseemuddin answered, under oath, “Yes.” Gold put the question to him again. “I would agree that answer is true,” Naseemuddin replied.
The defence had scoffed at David MacDonald’s “weak positive” Hemastix result on the “red and brown coloured” spots on the right cuff of Dennis Oland’s jacket, a result that, MacDonald said, took fifteen seconds to materialize. Gold asserted that the RCMP standard for a Hemastix test is ten seconds, and any reaction beyond that should be considered negative. But Gold’s real attack on the DNA evidence and the brown sports jacket started with his cross-examination of RCMP sergeant Brian Wentzell.
Gold pointed out that the blood tests the RCMP used didn’t distinguish between human blood and animal blood. Wentzell confirmed that was true. Not all human blood is the same, Gold continued. There are four types: A, B, AB, and O. There is also the Rhesus (Rh) factor, the inherited protein found on the surface of red blood cells, to consider. Rh positive indicates the person’s blood has the protein; Rh negative means they don’t. Gold asked if anyone had tested the blood type on the jacket to determine if it matched the victim’s. Wentzell said the lab does not test for blood type.
Gold submitted that Wentzell could say only if blood was present; he couldn’t say if it was animal or human or if it belonged to the victim. Wentzell confirmed this was true. Gold stressed how small the stains were — other than the “diluted” areas, all were less than three millimetres in diameter. Wentzell agreed the drops were minute. “There’s a small quantity there,” he said.
The drops were so small, Gold suggested, they could easily go unnoticed by the wearer. In fact, Wentzell missed one of them himself, despite carefully examining the jacket “inch by inch” on two occasions, Gold noted. The sixth stained area, measuring five millimetres by five millimetres on the back of the jacket, in the centre, near the hem, was not found until November 2012, the court heard. Wentzell said the stains “were visible, but quite faint and varying in concentrations.” He added: “Because of the colour of the jacket, they don’t show up very well.”
Gold asked if it was true that the blood drops close to a body would be larger in size than drops farther from a body. “Yes,” said Wentzell. Shouldn’t the killer or killers have larger spatter stains on them, since they would have been close to the source? Wentzell replied that air resistance and gravity can affect spatter size.
If the killer wore the brown sports jacket during the murder, Gold argued, a significant amount of blood would have stained the garment, not a few tiny specs. He had made the same suggestion earlier in the trial to constable Duane Squires, the first officer to witness the carnage at the crime scene. The photographs of the crime scene, Gold argued, made it “obvious.”
“Whoever had done this, you expected to see blood on them, didn’t you?” Gold asked Squires.
“Yes,” the officer replied.
“This wasn’t a gun shot from twenty yards. It was up front and close, with a lot of blood flying through the air,” Gold had said.
In questioning Wentzell, Gold posited that Richard Oland’s attacker —“assuming there was only one,” he said —“was the perfect target for spatter,” given the amount of blood. Richard Oland suffered a “brutal, vicious beating,” and the victim and “perpetrator or perpetrators” would have been in close proximity, he said. “The bloodstain evidence would support that,” said Wentzell.
However, when Gold suggested the killer would have had “dozens and dozens” of spatter stains on him or her, Wentzell replied that it’s “reasonable there would be some,” but he could not say how much. Gold emphasized that the blood spatter radiated 360 degrees from the body. “Hundreds” of blood drops from the injuries and cast-off from the weapon or weapons flew around the room, some travelling up to three metres away. He led Wentzell through a series of the crime-scene photos, asking him to confirm the number of blood-spatter spots the defence had circled and counted in each area.
“To the right of the victim’s body, fifty-four?”
“That’s a reasonable estimate,” said Wentzell.
On the front of Richard Oland’s desk, Gold said, “our count was over one hundred and fifty.” Wentzell agreed. The table surface where Adamson had set down the tray of coffee? Forty-six spots. “That’s the exact number I had counted in my report,” Wentzell confirmed.
When the running tally reached approximately seven hundred, Gold pushed again, trying to get Wentzell to agree that a similar volume of blood would have marked the killer. “Look at these numbers,” he said to Wentzell. “Wouldn’t it be in the same ballpark as the assailant?” But Wentzell wouldn’t budge. “I’m not saying there wouldn’t be [any blood],” he testified. “I’m just not able to say…that there would be a large amount.”
According to Wentzell, several factors could affect the amount of blood on the killer. The first blows would not generate much blood. The pathologist had previously testified that forty of the forty-five separate wounds were sharp-force. Police believed a “linear-shaped weapon” caused those incised injuries. Such a weapon may have a small surface area, which tends to disperse blood to the sides, rather than back at the killer, or forward. A blunt-shaped instrument, Wentzell noted, would cause the spatter to travel in all directions. The court also heard there was no void in the spatter pattern; no area free of blood where the assailant or assailants’ body would have blocked the spatter during the attack. There was less spatter in the south end of the office but no distinct void, Wentzell said.
Gold was unrelenting. He introduced a diagram illustrating the range of blood spatter in the crime scene. “Some of those dots actually represent hundreds of dots,” he said, reminding Wentzell that he had previously stated unequivocally that there were “no less than one hundred separate, visible spatter” marks on the back of the victim’s shirt collar alone. “Isn’t the assailant just another location where, if we had him, we could draw fifty, seventy-five, or one hundred [spatter] circles?” Gold challenged. “In fact, the assailant would probably have more,” he argued. He displayed a close-up photograph of Richard Oland’s head wounds for the courtroom and urged Wentzell to look at “the bloody state of this man’s head.”
“By blow number twenty, or twenty-five, or thirty, do you agree there’s a reasonable prospect of the assailant having spatter on them?”
“I’m not saying there wouldn’t be any. I’m just not able to establish how much,” Wentzell replied.
When Gold suggested that Wentzell’s role as an RCMP officer biased his analysis, Wentzell, now into his third straight day of testimony, was unfaltering. He said he was giving his opinion as a blood-spatter expert, noting he had conducted experiments over the years comparing the blood spatter from knife-like and blunt weapons. Gold asked Wentzell to explain how the killer could avoid getting spattered, prompting Justice Walsh to interrupt. “He didn’t say that,” Walsh admonished. Wentzell “has been agreeing with you all along,” Walsh told Gold. The only disagreement was over the adjective “significant,” he said. Wentzell, the judge noted, “won’t go there.”
Gold told the court that Saint John police, acting on information Wentzell provided, swore to a judge that “significant” blood spatter would be found on the killer’s clothes in order to obtain warrants to search Dennis Oland’s home. Gold’s counterpart, Gary Miller, had earlier raised this with forensic sergeant Mark Smith. Smith confirmed that, yes, he told the officer who applied for the search warrant that “the killer would likely have had substantial amounts of blood on them” and that this justified the search warrant. But when Miller asked Smith if this meant he thought the killer “had substantial amounts of blood on him after the attack,” Smith replied, “That’s speculation.” Now Gold cited constable Stacy Humphrey’s sworn affidavit, in which she stated that Mark Smith told her that he and Wentzell had examined the crime scene and reviewed photographs of the body, and in their “expert opinion,” the assailant would “have significant bloodstain spatter on their person.” Wentzell said he didn’t recall using the word “significant” but acknowledged the possibility. Gold questioned whether Wentzell changed his opinion when police didn’t find significant blood on Oland’s clothes, or any of his possessions that police tested. Wentzell didn’t waver. “My opinion is an unbiased opinion.”
Gold turned his attention to Dennis Oland’s brown sports jacket. If the stains on the jacket were blood, Gold put to Wentzell in a question that was really a statement, “you’re unable to say how it got on there?” Wentzell agreed; he “was unable to determine how the blood was deposited.” Gold also argued there was no way to know how old the stains were. They could have been on the jacket for weeks or months before the murder. Wentzell confirmed there was no way to verify the age of the stains. “So you can’t say the bloodstains on the jacket are connected to the murder?” Gold asked. Wentzell acknowledged that he could not.
Police had not found any evidence, Gold noted, that the killer or killers tried to clean themselves up before leaving Richard Oland’s office. Wentzell agreed. The lawyer then played the security video that the defence said showed Dennis Oland leaving his father’s office at 6:12 p.m. on July 6, 2011. Nothing in the video suggested the accused had taken part in a bloody attack, Gold argued. Wentzell acknowledged that from what he observed in the video, this was true, but he added, “I can’t see anything in that video.” Even Grant Fredericks, the forensic video analyst brought in from Washington State, wasn’t able to glean much from the grainy footage.
When Gold cross-examined Joy Kearsey and Thomas Suzanski, he argued that there was no way to know how Richard Oland’s DNA got on Dennis Oland’s jacket. It wasn’t necessarily from the blood. Touching, sneezing, and coughing can all transfer DNA, he observed. “As far as how DNA got somewhere, you have no idea, correct?” Suzanski agreed that was true. The test allows scientists to determine only if there is a match and to calculate the frequency. “We can’t say when DNA was deposited, how it was deposited, the order in which it was deposited, or how long it was there,” he told the court. In his opinion, however, the DNA came from the blood. The extracts, he noted, came from three different locations on the jacket: the right sleeve, the upper left chest, and on the back. He considered it “rather unlikely” that any other possible DNA source, such as saliva or sweat, could occur in all three instances.
With Joy Kearsey, Gold reiterated that no one could say with any certainty how the blood on the jacket got there, how long it had been there, or how degraded it was. “They were tiny, tiny spots” that “could have been on the jacket for weeks or months,” but went unnoticed because they were so small, said Gold. The third stain on the back, he pointed out, was missed during three previous careful examinations of the garment. Kearsey agreed there was no way to know how the blood was deposited or the age of the blood, but she said she would expect some would be removed every time the jacket was cleaned, depending on the thoroughness of the laundering or dry cleaning.
Gold went on to argue that the DNA extracted from the bloodstains did not necessarily come from the blood. He suggested it was possible the bloodstains were so degraded that the DNA came not from them but another source underneath or on top of the stains, such as saliva, perspiration, or tears. He even suggested that since the tests do not distinguish between human and animal blood, the blood could be animal blood, and the human DNA came from another biological source.
Kearsey acknowledged she could not say “for certain” the blood was the source of the DNA, but testified it was “more likely” it came from the blood than the other two possibilities. “I base that on my experience and knowledge of how the process works,” she said. “I can’t put a percentage or anything on it.” The RCMP tests didn’t distinguish between human and animal blood because that’s generally considered a redundant exercise, Kearsey explained. When DNA is extracted from a blood sample, a quantification test determines how much human DNA is present, confirming whether the source is human or animal. She said she was aware of only one case where the RCMP tried to distinguish between human and animal blood, and that was a unique situation; she referred, of course, to the Pickton case. She found no indication of any animal DNA, she added.
Gold also referred to Kearsey’s earlier point that DNA can be transferred by touch. Some people are “good shedders” who leave behind more DNA than others, he said. Richard Oland could have been one of them, said Gold. DNA can also “migrate” depending on how an item is packaged, he continued, referring to how the jacket had been stuffed into a small bag, where it remained for months. Some stains could be “offspring” of other stains, he suggested. Kearsey responded that she wouldn’t expect a bloodstain to transfer if the blood was dry, but she acknowledged that flakes could potentially dislodge.
The critical question, Gold emphasized for the jury, was how the blood and DNA got on the jacket — a question Kearsey couldn’t answer. “All you can say is, ‘I did my work, these are the profiles,’” Gold put to Kearsey. “Everything else is for the triers of fact, the jury, to say. Correct?”
Kearsey agreed.
When Alan Gold cross-examined Yang Hwan “Steve” Nam, co-owner of VIP Dry Cleaners, about Lisa Andrik-Oland’s July 8 dry-cleaning order, Nam revealed that Saint John police did not formally interview him until February 2015, almost three and a half years after the murder. During his in-chief testimony, Nam told the court that the police mostly talked to his wife earlier in the investigation. Gold also questioned Nam’s wife, Jin Hee Choi.
She testified that VIP does not often receive bloodstained clothes. Gold pointed out that she had said the opposite at the preliminary inquiry, to which she responded that in the year since the inquiry, they had not received many bloodstained clothes. With that point clarified, Gold asked Choi if bloodstains require special treatment to remove. He suggested saliva works well because the enzymes help break down the protein. If a stain is not removed and gets heated up, it becomes permanent, he submitted. Choi agreed. (Walsh would later rebuke Gold for this.)
Gold asked her if the Olands’ clothing bore stains. “I’m not sure,” Choi replied. But she and her husband had both told police at the time there were no stains, Gold pointed out. “My husband received those clothes, and he said there were no stains,” Choi said. She said she normally handles the administrative side of the business, dealing with customers, but her husband accepted the order that Friday and let it be picked up without payment on Saturday. Dennis Oland’s wife came in to pay later that Saturday, sometime between two and three p.m., she said. Andrik-Oland came in alone, but Choi said she saw Dennis Oland outside, sitting in a parked vehicle.
Gold argued there was nothing unusual about the Olands’ request for next-day service, and Choi confirmed that their previous order had also been dropped off on a Friday for Saturday pickup. VIP, Gold pointed out, offers two-day, one-day, and same-day service for the same price. If the Olands were anxious to get rid of any stains, they could have asked for the items right away, he posited. Choi agreed.
On redirect, Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur introduced into evidence VIP’s customer information sheet for Lisa Andrik-Oland, covering the period between November 1, 2010, and July 9, 2011. It included 185 items and invoices totalling $1,103.85. He asked whether any of the other orders included any men’s sports jackets. There were none, only one other transaction with a man’s suit, she said.
In his bid to further discount the significance of the blood found on his client’s jacket, Gold’s cross-examination of Brian Wentzell raised questions about the absence of blood outside the crime scene, despite there being no evidence that the killer cleaned up before leaving Richard Oland’s office. Joy Kearsey’s in-chief testimony established that no blood was found on Dennis Oland’s other clothing. Forensic constable David MacDonald examined Oland’s shoes using large halogen lights and chemical tests in 2011 on September 3 and 4, and again on November 2 and 18, the court had heard. Shoes are typically an excellent source for blood evidence, Gold noted, because blood can soak into the stitching and laces and get trapped in the eyelets and treads. If Dennis Oland wore the shoes in question during the murder, as the Crown alleged, wasn’t it certain that blood would be on them? Gold asked. “If they’re exposed to the blood source” and not altered in some way, Wentzell acknowledged. He noted that no identifiable footprints were found at the crime scene.
Gold handed Wentzell the camp logbook Maureen Adamson had left out on the office table that night for Dennis Oland to take to his mother so she could return it to his uncle. The book, which MacDonald processed on December 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 15, 2011, tested negative for blood.Could the book have been in the office “during the spatter event, if I can call it that,” and remain clean? Gold asked. Wentzell replied that it would depend on whether the book sat behind another object that caught the blood first, like the typewriter observed in the crime-scene photos. “I can’t conclusively say one way or another,” he said.
Gold also inquired about the red reusable Sobeys grocery bag Oland reportedly had with him when he visited his father that night. William Adamson, Maureen Adamson’s husband, testified to seeing a man matching Dennis Oland’s description enter the Canterbury Street office with a red bag on the evening of July 6, and security video appeared to show Oland leaving the building with a red bag. As Joy Kearsey had testified, extensive tests on the bag came back negative for blood. If a bloody murder weapon were put into a container, such as the red bag, would the container have also gotten blood on it, asked Gold. “If it wasn’t wrapped up in something,” said Wentzell. “Whatever touched that weapon, it would have significant transfer of blood, wouldn’t it?” the lawyer asked. Yes, Wentzell replied.
Nor did Dennis Oland’s Blackberry test positive for blood, as Kearsey’s testimony confirmed. Oland had sent forty-two text messages on the day his father was murdered, according to records submitted into evidence, including one at 6:12 p.m., at which time, he said, he was in his father’s office, and he also said he took a call from his wife at 6:36 p.m., just as he was leaving, and yet no blood was found on the Blackberry, its battery, or the battery housing, Gold reminded the jury. Police also could not find any blood in Dennis Oland’s Volkswagen Golf, despite running numerous tests, and the car did not appear to have been cleaned recently. If the killer had gotten into that car shortly after the slaying, Gold argued, there would be an “excellent chance” of blood being in the car. “The probability is yes, there would be blood transfer,” Wentzell said.
“The killer would have a better chance of winning the New Brunswick lottery than not leaving any trace in that car. Is that fair?” Gold asked, eliciting a brief smile from Wentzell, who said he couldn’t comment on the lottery odds. Gold persisted. “There’s almost no chance of that being true. Isn’t that the bottom line?”
“If the individual had clothing on and received blood on their person and went to that vehicle and the blood was still wet, there would be a good opportunity for transfer,” said Wentzell. He added, however, that he did not know the “circumstances” of the case in question. Several other tests conducted throughout the investigation, from the lint trap in Dennis Oland’s clothes dryer and bags of garbage seized from his home to swabs of the crime scene and hairs and fibre samples taken during the autopsy, failed to produce “fruitful” results, Gold told the court.
Gold argued that the “probabilities” of finding “some sort of evidentiary material” on the assailant’s clothing, car, or other items would be “excellent.” Wentzell, placid and firm, said he agreed, “based on those circumstances and assumptions you’ve provided to me, there could be…but it’s speculative.” Gold pointed out that Wentzell agreed with the proposition when it was put to him during the preliminary inquiry, quoting from the transcript. Wentzell countered that he had clarified his meaning at the preliminary inquiry, but Gold refused to read aloud his qualification, saying that the Crown prosecutors could bring it up on redirect if they wished. Veniot did indeed bring it up. “In order for blood to be transferred, it has to be in a wet, liquid state,” Wentzell had said.
The defence’s blood-spatter expert, Patrick Laturnus, told the court he had conducted many blood-spatter experiments over the years, recreating blows to study the results. He had tested a variety of weapons, such as hatchets, hammers, and crowbars, he said. The number of blows in the Oland case, forty-five, was unusual, Laturnus noted. That many strikes would release more blood, he said, adding that it made for an interesting case.
Gold led Laturnus through some of the graphic crime-scene photos he had reviewed as part of his analysis, including ones with the victim’s body still splayed on the floor. Laturnus said the photos showed the blood spatter travelled up and out from the victim’s body, radiating 360 degrees. He suggested the jury visualize a fountain to imagine the blood flying off the victim’s body as he was struck.
Blood travels in straight lines but resistance and gravity affect it, he said. If the blood source is close to a target surface, the stains are long and narrow. As the source moves away, the stains get wider until they become circular. The round blood spots on top of Richard Oland’s desk indicated they originated from below, flew straight up, and then gravity forced them straight down to land on the desk, said Laturnus. If the victim had been standing, the blood would travel down and sideways and would not retain its circular shape, he said. That meant the victim was on the floor for at least some of the repeated blows, and the assailant would have been standing over him during part of the attack, said Laturnus.
What, if any, spatter would be on the assailant, asked Gold. “It follows the assailant would also have spatter on themselves,” Laturnus told the crowded, attentive courtroom. He said the killer would have bent over the victim during the strikes, “so it follows and it’s logical” to say a “significant amount.” The blood could be anywhere, “from head to toe,” he said, but likely primarily on the killer’s hands, face, and upper body. If Oland’s brown sports jacket had been worn during the slaying, it would have had “so much blood” on it, the blood would have been visible in the images the Crown showed the court, despite the jacket’s dark colour, said Laturnus. Gold asked whether spatter or routine transfer caused the bloodstains found on the jacket. There “isn’t any analyst that could say with any certainty how those stains originated,” Laturnus said.
If the camp logbook had been on the table in the centre of office during the killing, it would have had spatter on it, too, he noted, and the weapon would have been “covered” in blood. “There’s no doubt [it] would have a significant amount of blood on it,” Laturnus said, adding he saw no evidence of any cleanup at the scene.
Gold asked Laturnus what he would expect to find if the perpetrator did not wash their hands and drove a vehicle right after the killing. Laturnus said he would expect to find blood transfer. What would he say was the probability of finding no blood? Anything was possible, Laturnus replied, but he expected the possibility of finding traces of blood was very good.
Gold dug Dennis Oland’s Blackberry out of the exhibit pile and handed it to Laturnus. “What about on a Blackberry that was handled after the slaying?” he asked. Laturnus replied that he’d also expect to find traces on the phone. Skin is pliable, so if the blood on the killer’s hands was wet, it would transfer, and if it was dry, it would flake off, he explained. A bag or wrapping used to conceal a weapon would also have traces of blood on it, he noted. Gold handed him the red reusable grocery bag seized from the trunk of Dennis Oland’s car. Laturnus told the court that he’d expect to find traces of blood on it, noting that the texture of the bag’s fabric would promote transfer.
When prosecutor P.J. Veniot cross-examined Laturnus, he asked how long blood continues to transfer from one item to another. Laturnus said that it depends, but transfers lessen over time because blood dries and gets worn away. Veniot asked if it was possible the blood on the killer’s hands had dried by the time they got in their car and would not transfer to anything they touched. “It’s possible,” Laturnus conceded.
Veniot asked whether the cross-hatching pattern the pathologist noted in the blunt-force wounds could have affected the blood spatter differently than in other cases Laturnus had seen or in his experiments. Laturnus said he suspected it would. Was it possible the weapon may not have been lifted high enough to cause cast-off, Veniot asked. Laturnus replied that it was. And how did Laturnus know if a bloodstain resulted from impact spatter from a wound or cast-off from a swinging weapon? They typically create a different pattern, he said, but in this particular case the pattern was difficult to discern because of the volume of blood. Veniot noted that there were no bloody footprints or blood drips leaving the scene of the crime and asked Laturnus if the killer was covered with blood, would he expect to see footprints and/or a drip trail. Laturnus said it was possible the assailant didn’t step in the blood pool because the blood pool may have been smaller during the attack. He also said the killer’s clothing would have to be saturated with blood to leave a trail. A person can have a significant amount of blood on them but not be saturated to the point of dripping and leaving a trail, he said. Veniot asked if he was suggesting the killer would have been covered in blood to the point of being concerned about visible staining. Yes, Laturnus said.
Veniot displayed some of the crime-scene photos that showed numerous bloodstains similar to the size of the ones found on the jacket. He asked Laturnus if it was true that blood hitting fabric can be absorbed, and spots will appear smaller than they would on a hard surface. Laturnus agreed that it was. But when Veniot proposed that Laturnus was quite possibly wrong about the amount of blood that would have been on the assailant, Laturnus flatly replied: “No.”
Veniot asked Laturnus if he reviewed Brian Wentzell’s PowerPoint presentation on blood spatter. Laturnus said he had, and he had agreed with the content. Veniot pointed out that Wentzell’s presentation had stated that spatter analysis is based on science and math, not conjecture, which Laturnus acknowledged was true. Venoit referred to a well-known article, “Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence,” published in the Journal of Forensic Identification in 1996, in which co-authors Paul Kish and Herbert MacDonell stress that conclusions should be based upon what is present, not on speculation about why something isn’t present or on what one might expect to find.
Veniot prodded Laturnus. Wasn’t he supposed to deal in facts, not theories? Didn’t experts in his field argue against assuming that extensive blood at a scene means extensive blood on an attacker, and wasn’t it true that the absence of blood spatter on the clothing of a suspect does not necessarily exonerate the accused? Laturnus agreed, but he said the article also states that if a suspect does not have blood on them, the analyst needs to ask more questions, such as whether the suspect may have been naked during the attack.
On redirect, Gold returned to the issue of the lack of bloody footprints or a blood trail. He asked Laturnus if that absence was, in any way, inconsistent with his opinion the killer would have significant spatter on their hands and face and clothing. Laturnus said it was not.