Saint John police began interviewing members of Richard Oland’s immediate family on the day his body was discovered. It didn’t take investigators long to uncover the long history of strained, even stormy, relationships and secrets.
Oland’s wife, Connie, had not reported him missing on July 6. When he didn’t show up for dinner, she figured he must have gone to a meeting at Ganong, the candy manufacturer, in St. Stephen, roughly an hour’s drive from Saint John. “Earlier in the day I had been talking to a friend of mine whose husband was attending such a meeting,” she would later explain. “Ganong was in a dire financial position, and Dick had put money into the company.” Later that evening, when he still didn’t come home, she figured he had spent the night in St. Stephen. It was not uncommon for her husband not to come home at night, she said.
Connie told police her husband had high expectations of their three children, expecting them to perform at “150 per cent” all the time. Oland did not have much to do with the children, but Dennis had “always tried to connect with his father,” she said, and the father-son relationship had improved recently because of Dennis’s work on family genealogy. Dennis and her husband “developed a connection” over this shared interest. She did not believe Dennis would hurt his father.
Oland’s daughter Lisa Bustin told police her parents essentially lived separate lives and described their relationship as “out of convenience for the kids.” Although she had an unresolved argument with him about his affair, she said she had a good relationship with him. He was “pure business, and if you worked hard, you would get his respect.” Her father was a “hard-nosed businessman” who “could have anyone as an enemy.” Oland had “high expectations” of Dennis, which he was unable to live up to, she noted. Oland’s other daughter, Jacqueline Walsh, told police her father was “the type of guy some people got along with and some people did not.” She said he could be “very difficult to deal with at times,” but “could be very loving and caring, too.” Still, she learned to keep him at a distance.
Dennis’s wife, Lisa Andrik-Oland, told police her husband had always tried to earn his father’s respect but felt he could never live up to his standards. She said the relationship had been strained for years, but Dennis thought his involvement in the Oland family tree was of interest to his father and was allowing them to build on their relationship. On the night of July 6, Dennis told her that he met with his father at his office, and they had a “really nice” meeting, talking about family history. She did not see Dennis when he first got home, she said. He came in, went straight upstairs, and got changed.
Police also interviewed Diana Sedlacek, who told them she had been in a “romantic relationship” with Richard Oland for eight years. She believed that most of his family was aware of their affair. Recently, they had started talking about getting married, she said, although they were both still married to and living with other people. Oland arranged for her to see a lawyer to go over the details, she said. She told police Oland was distant from his family and had complained to her about his son’s work ethic. He thought Dennis was lazy, and he didn’t have a lot of respect for him, she said.
Police knew from Maureen Adamson’s statement that Dennis Oland visited his father at his office the night before, making him the last known person to see his father alive. He was therefore a particularly important witness. Constable Stephen Davidson took him to Room 2, a small, mirrored interrogation room equipped with two video cameras.
“Long day, huh?” Davidson started out.
“Oh yeah,” replied Oland, sitting with his feet flat on the floor, his hands in his lap. Davidson asked Oland to write down “all the important details” about the previous day, from the time he got up in the morning until he went to bed that night. Davidson left him alone, and after about twenty minutes, Oland, knowing, or at least assuming, he was being filmed, called out, “I’m done.” Davidson returned and Oland handed him a two-page printed statement.
Davidson opened the routine questioning by asking if he had anything on his mind he wanted to talk about. “The biggest thing that’s on my mind is, what happened?” Oland said. “It’s pretty clear in my head that he didn’t have a heart attack and die. Something’s happened to him.” But instead of asking Davidson for more information about how his father died, Oland, unsolicited, offered his own theory. “So the first thing that runs through your head is, you know, is this one of those, uh, crackhead type things or whatever, where someone goes in and, you know, does that kind of thing or, you know, like sort of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” (Only later would Dennis ask, “What happened to him? What did they do?” Davidson replied that he didn’t know any details.)
Oland said his mind was “racing” and it was all “troubling,” but he showed no flicker of distress during the videotaped interview. Rather, he appeared relaxed and chatty. He chuckled as he talked about how his father — to whom he referred as “this guy” — was “living his dream,” sailing “like crazy,” winning races, and skiing about forty days a year. And yet, within three minutes, he described him as not being “the easiest guy in the world to get along with.” Some people might say he was a “ruthless bastard,” Oland noted. His father was “intensely, intensely, intensely intelligent,” but lacking “certain social skills,” Oland said, suggesting he “had some sort of spectrum thing” that would “rear its ugly head at times,” alienating both family and friends.
They did not have a close father-son relationship; his father “had this thing that you can’t be friends with your son,” he said, launching into a laundry list of his father’s past offences, including the episode involving the Christmas rum cake. But that was about two years ago, he said, and while there was “a ton” of smaller arguments, it was “amazing how quickly water would be under the bridge” between them. Being an adult had given him some perspective, he said. “You know there’s that overall blanket, that this guy is a really difficult person to get along with. And I think when you’re a teenager, you wear it differently, like, ‘This guy’s coming down on me. He’s a jerk all the time; he’s so hard on me.’ When you’re my age, you actually… I can actually look at him and say, ‘You know, it’s not all his fault,’ because he had such a hard upbringing.” His father was “a product of his generation,” he said. Oland also spoke fondly of how his father had “stepped up” and “bankrolled” his divorce. “That’s very powerful stuff,” he said.
His father’s suspected extramarital affair was a more recent “family concern,” and Oland told Davidson “the only person that comes to mind” as someone who might have caused his father’s death was “this supposed girlfriend.” Oland noted that he didn’t know Sedlacek himself, but “this woman’s reputation is a real kind of hot-blooded type of person.” According to Oland, his sister Lisa had on more than one occasion answered the phone at their parents’ home only for the caller, a woman, to laugh or hang up. He also said that his sister had told him she’d seen someone she believed to be Sedlacek around the Oland house, “sort of stalking, for lack of a better term.” He told the police about the time his sister found a bottle of Viagra and, he said, she felt he was a “dirty pig, I guess, because of it.”
The conversation shifted when Davidson asked Oland to focus on the events of the previous twenty-four hours. “Until I went over to his office, it was a very typical day,” Oland said. If this cryptic comment registered with Davidson in the moment, he did not let on. He did not ask Oland to explain himself. Instead, he let the near-monologue continue, offering the occasional, “Mmm hmm,” “Yeah,” or “OK,” in response. Davidson wanted to keep his subject talking.
Oland said he had spoken to his father on the phone and emailed him earlier that day about a stock trade he did for him. The transaction went “a bit hooky,” he said. “There was a stock split, so what he wanted sold and what actually got sold were different things.” Later, after work, he went to visit his father at his office to talk about genealogy, but he ended up making two trips because he forgot some of the documents he wanted to show him. “I went to the top of the stairs, and I might’ve used the bathroom [located in the second-floor foyer], and then I left.” He was just steps away from the Far End Corporation door, but he didn’t tell his father he was there. Instead, he started back toward his own office to get the documents he had forgotten, driving even though his office was at most a three-minute walk away. He realized he didn’t have a pass card to access the work elevators after hours. “So I went back and just said, ‘Oh well, I have enough information; I have what he wanted.’” They had their visit and “that was it, then I left,” Oland said. He drove home to Rothesay, stopping along the way at Renforth wharf to see if his children were swimming, he said.
Davidson let him finish, then circled back to the beginning, asking questions in a calm, non-accusing manner. So you got there around what time? Was that the first time or the second time? And what time did you leave, approximately? Which way did you go? Where did you park? He was probing for Oland’s inconsistencies.
Eventually, approximately halfway through the interview, Davidson said, “Dennis, I have to ask you this: did you have any involvement in your father’s death?”
“No,” he replied, impassive.
“I ask you that because you were the last person there.”
“Yeah.”
“And, you know, it’s something that I have to cover.”
“Yeah…. I have no reason to want my father dead, to kill him, to… I mean, no. I mean, we’ve had our things, but no, I wouldn’t rob someone of the fun that they’re having and… You know I… He’s just… No.”
Davidson excused himself for a few minutes and left Oland alone in the room. When he returned, he apologized for the interruption, saying new information was coming in all the time. In truth, Davidson had gone to consult with the officers secretly monitoring the interview from the next room. Normally, only one officer monitors a police interview. Oland had three.
Davidson said he wanted to “clarify a few things” with Oland. He stressed the importance of the timing of different events and explained that he needed to make sure everything lined up with the videos from the security cameras that were “all over the place.” Having alerted Oland to the probability that some of his movements were documented on video, Davidson led Oland through the chronology of events again. This time, new details emerged.
Oland didn’t make it all the way back to his office. He only started to go back, “then gave up,” he said. Why did he take his car back to the office instead of walking, Davidson wanted to know. Another new detail: “Because I wasn’t sure I was going to be going back. I was just probably going to leave.” What happened after the visit? More new information: Oland remembered crossing the street, away from his parked car, back toward his father’s office. His account was becoming increasingly convoluted.
Davidson asked Oland what he wore so he could be identified on security video. “Um, these pants, these shoes, a dress shirt, and a navy blazer,” Oland replied.
“You were wearing those pants, those shoes…”
“Those shoes, a dress shirt — not this, you know, a collared dress shirt.”
“Yeah.”
“And a navy blazer.”
“And a navy blazer.”
“Yeah.”
Oland’s assertion he wore a navy blazer when, in fact, he wore a brown sports jacket would become a central part of the investigation, but Davidson would later testify he only became aware of the discrepancy after the interview. Davidson asked him to again go over the time between his first and second trip to his father’s office. “That’s just a little bit confusing to me and I just want to clarify it,” he said. This time, Oland said he thought he might have sat in his car “for a bit and did some texting or business.” Davidson let the incongruity pass and moved on, trying to nail down the exact sequence of Oland’s whereabouts. He asked Oland to describe the route he travelled. “It’s really important that you remember,” Davidson said. “I mean it was yesterday, right?” It was at this point that Oland said he might have gone the wrong way on a familiar one-way street.
“I might’ve got confused when I was going along, and I might’ve turned up Princess Street, into the gravel parking lot.” Canterbury Street crosses Princess, a one-way street running down the steep hill to the harbour. At the corner is a gravel parking lot with an entrance off Princess. Accessing this lot from Canterbury would normally mean circling the block, but Oland described making a left at Princess and driving briefly in the wrong direction before turning right into the gravel lot.
“You went the wrong way?” Davidson asked, surprised by the revelation but unsure of its relevance.
“Yeah, I might’ve done that because it’s such a short little zip up there, right?”
“Why wouldn’t you have mentioned that to me the first time?” Davidson asked. “I mean, that’s a significant thing.”
“I’m sorry, it’s not a hundred-per-cent clear to me,” Oland said. “I mean, I don’t know how I get to work sometimes. I don’t. I can be, you know, totally zoned out on what’s going on.”
“Is there something else that happened that you’re not telling me?” asked Davidson, still treading lightly but intimating that he did not believe Oland. “Tell me what happened,” he insisted.
“You’ve got me all confused,” said Oland. “You have me intimidated now, so now I’m getting a mental block.”
“Just give me one sec, OK?” Davidson stepped out again.
Once he left, Oland mumbled to himself, using his finger to retrace his route on the table in front of him, pausing frequently as he mapped out his thoughts. “So I went up the driveway…and sat there…and then I parked…there, there…no…I went in…and sat there…. I drove in and I parked…then I left…went around and then I stopped there…and then I went in…. So I…I came in and I parked there…then…I left there, and I went around, and I stopped there…. Then where did I go after that?” Before Oland left the station that evening, Davidson advised him that the police suspected him of involvement in his father’s death and would execute search warrants against him. For the time being, at least, Oland was free to go.
From the moment Oland left the police station, “at or around 11:01 p.m.” on July 7, 2011, members of the street crime unit of the Saint John Police Force had him under surveillance. It was “pretty much” twenty-four hours a day for a full week, his lawyer Gary Miller would later say. No wiretaps were used, however, as the Crown would later disclose during a pre-trial conference. The lead investigator at that point, constable Rick Russell, said the surveillance was not his decision. Criminal investigations division inspector Glen McCloskey and sergeant David Brooker of the major crime unit set it up without consulting him, he said. (McCloskey would later testify that then deputy chief Bruce Connell and David Brooker were the ones who organized the surveillance.) But Oland was “a suspect-slash-person of interest, in my mind,” Russell said.
Even while Oland was still being interviewed, at around eight thirty that evening, Brooker dispatched an officer to search the Renforth wharf area, where Oland mentioned he had stopped on his way home after visiting his father the night before. The next day police conducted a two-hour “secondary search” of the wharf area, from a quarter to four to a quarter to six. Dog handler Mike Horgan and his dog, Leo, along with constable Shawn Coughlan scoured the wharf, around the Bill McGuire Centre on Renforth Drive and its baseball field and playground, and along Regatta Row to the water, two small docks, the shoreline, and the beach.
Constable Anthony Gilbert, meanwhile, went to Rothesay to try to retrieve security videos from the places Oland said he went on the evening of July 6, including Cochran’s Country Market; Kennebecasis Drugs, a Guardian pharmacy outlet; and the Irving gas station on Marr Road. A member of the Rothesay police accompanied Gilbert, since it was their jurisdiction. The two also went to the Bill McGuire Centre and the Rothesay Rowing Club, seeking security videos. On July 9, Constable Davidson was assigned to interview people Dennis Oland came into contact with on July 6, including some of his co-workers at CIBC Wood Gundy. On July 13, watchful police seized fast-food wrappers Oland had discarded at a Rothesay gas station, hoping to get a cast-off DNA sample.
On July 14, 2011, one week after the discovery of Richard Oland’s battered body, police prepared to execute search warrants at Dennis’s home. Oland lived at 58 Gondola Point Road in Rothesay with his wife, Lisa, his three children from his first marriage (he shared custody with his ex-wife, Lesley), and his stepson. The large yellow and brown, vine-covered house, largely hidden behind trees, had been in the family for about seventy years. Oland moved into the home in 1998, following the death of his grandfather, Moosehead patriarch P.W. Oland.
Lead investigator Rick Russell briefed the search team. They needed to search approximately twenty rooms plus the basement and attic and the sprawling property. Russell divided the officers into teams of two, assigned them areas, and told them what they were looking for. The list included a brown sports jacket, a navy blazer, a blue-and-white-check dress shirt with a button-down collar, khaki pants and dress shoes, as well as genealogy documents, a red bag, computers, cellphones and other electronics, and “any other items relating to this offence,” according to the search warrant.
Russell instructed the officers to search each area completely before moving on to the next. If they found anything of interest, they were directed to stop and promptly notify him. “The entire process was carefully mapped out and then controlled in that environment on that day,” he later said.
Russell acted as the “search leader” inside the home, while MCU constable Keith Copeland took charge of the exterior search of the nearly three-hectare property, which included horse stables, a large detached garage with a loft apartment, several small outbuildings, and a large, fenced pasture, horse-riding ring, and woods. Some of the property was, of course, owned by Richard Oland, who purchased it from Dennis as part of the terms of the loan that allowed Dennis to keep the house when he and his first wife divorced.
Forensic constable David MacDonald served as the seizing officer. When any of the other officers located an item to seize, MacDonald would photograph it, bag it and catalogue it, then document it on a handwritten flow chart that described each item and where it was found. He would enter the flowchart into a computer later, back at the station.
Russell and two other colleagues went ahead of the other officers to serve the warrant. They walked up the gravel driveway to the front porch, adorned with potted geraniums and a welcoming wicker rocker. Oland’s wife, Lisa Andrik-Oland, was home when they arrived. She phoned her husband and told him to come home. Oland was, in fact, at the police station, having been called in for further questioning. He went in at ten with his newly retained lawyer, Gary Miller, and spoke briefly with constables Sean Rocca and Greg Oram of the MCU before returning home for the search. Russell sat down with the couple at the dining-room table to explain the “rules of engagement,” as he put it. He read the “whole document to them, start to finish.” They were welcome to remain in the home, he said, but they would have to be accompanied by an officer. They decided to leave, but not before police showed the warrant to Gary Miller.
Miller, one of the most prominent and experienced criminal defence lawyers in New Brunswick, is also one of only a few in the province who practise criminal law exclusively. He once headed the New Brunswick Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association and has earned a reputation for fiercely protecting his clients and disdaining the media. Miller gained notice in 1984 as part of former premier Richard Hatfield’s defence team, which won an acquittal on a marijuana possession charge; Hatfield denied any knowledge of the marijuana found in his luggage. At the time he took on Dennis Oland’s case, Miller was perhaps best known for representing the late aboriginal rights activist Noah Augustine, who in 1999 was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Bruce Barnaby of Eel Ground First Nation.
A Saint John transit bus loaded with about thirty officers descended upon Dennis Oland’s property shortly before noon. At least two forensic vans and six unmarked police cars parked outside the house. Just down the road, other family members grieved at the Almon Lane home of the late Richard Oland and the newly widowed Connie.
Media soon found out about the search, tipped off either by sources, chatter on newsroom police scanners, or calls from area residents about the heavy police presence. Reporters started arriving on the scene. But in keeping with the silence surrounding the high-profile case, Saint John Police Force spokesman sergeant Glenn Hayward would not confirm the activity was related to the homicide investigation, saying only that the major crime unit was “executing a criminal search warrant.” He would not comment on what police were seeking or even say who lived in the house, which had a handmade wooden sign that read “Private, Friends Welcome.” Reporters searched city property records to confirm the home belonged to Dennis Oland. CBC News tried to get copies of the information police filed in support of the warrant, but the documents were sealed by order of a provincial court judge. Every search warrant in the case, and all the police’s findings, would be sealed until media successfully fought to have them made public.
Although police wouldn’t comment, the identity of their suspect was now an open secret; an unthinkable tragedy for the Oland family, said neighbour and friend Kelly Patterson. “It was such a brutal vicious crime to somehow get your head around while you’re grieving the loss. I think that’s a pretty tall order. And then, right on the heels of that, you realize that one of our own is in the police’s sights. I think that’s, to me, one of the real tragedies of this is that family, I don’t think, ever had an opportunity to properly grieve the loss of their father or husband [or] grandfather.”
Officers covered some of the windows with cardboard, preventing reporters and other onlookers from seeing what they were doing inside. Approximately ten officers searched the interior while the others worked outside. Russell sketched the layout of each of the three storeys of the house, numbering each room. He also made diagrams of the grounds and outbuildings. As the search progressed, Russell wrote in red what, if any, items were seized from which rooms. When “nothing of evidentiary value was recovered,” he wrote “neg” for negative.
Constable Stephen Davidson was paired with sergeant Jay Henderson. They searched the sunroom — and found nothing. The dining room: nothing. The butler’s pantry: nothing. The kitchen: nothing. They moved on to the staircase and upper foyer, still nothing. A child’s bedroom: nothing. In another child’s bedroom they seized a laptop. And in the upstairs bathroom, a USB stick found on the windowsill was seized.
Years later, Henderson couldn’t remember wearing latex gloves for the search, but it was part of his training to do so. It’s like putting on shoes and tying the laces — “automatic,” he’d later explain. Besides, he said, he remembers rummaging through the contents of a white garbage can that had a reddish stain on it. He wouldn’t even search his own garbage without gloves on, he said.
At about 3:20 p.m., Davidson and Henderson reached the master bedroom, where a brown duvet cover and brown throw pillow, which both had stains on them, were seized. Then Henderson turned his attention to a closet full of men’s clothes. “I noted several items that were contained in the warrant,” he said, including a brown sports jacket, which had a dry-cleaning tag attached to the collar, and a navy blazer. The jackets were hanging side by side. Henderson didn’t touch either of them. He used coat hangers to move through each piece of clothing. “I stayed quite a bit of time at the closet,” he said.
Henderson then searched a chest of drawers, where he found an iPhone, passports, ID, and “lots” of receipts, including one of particular interest from VIP Dry Cleaners. It was under Oland’s wife’s name and dated July 8, at 9:08 a.m., roughly ten hours after police questioned Dennis Oland and told him he was a suspect. The receipt listed one pair of pants, two sports jackets, and sixteen shirts. The items were due to be ready by July 11 at three p.m., but that was crossed out and “SAT” for Saturday, July 9, had been handwritten instead as the pickup time.
The forensics officer, David MacDonald, was systematically working his way through the house, covering the ground floor first, starting with the front entry closet, and then the basement and upper floor. He was asked to seize and catalogue the items of interest that Henderson found in the bedroom closet, including the two jackets, seven dress shirts, a golf shirt, and six pairs of shoes.
MacDonald was methodical about the seizures, donning a fresh pair of latex gloves to handle each item. He put clothing in paper bags in case they were wet or soiled, so they could breathe, while other items, such as electronics, went into plastic bags. Each bag was labelled and catalogued.
Outside, a canine unit circled the grounds, where horses grazed and brown hens clucked. Constable Mike Horgan and his dog, Leo, searched in front of the house, the pasture area, and the driveway. They searched around the barn but not inside because, as Horgan later explained, other officers had already “contaminated” it in a “hand search.” They also searched around piles of compost and manure — but not in them. “I did not find any evidence at all,” said Horgan, who wrapped up at around three p.m. Other officers wearing latex gloves used shovels and rakes to roll back large strips of sod approximately four car-lengths from the end of the tree-lined driveway. They dug through the soil beneath the grass before rolling the sod back into place.
By the time the search ended, police had seized a total of fifty-seven items, ranging from financial and legal documents to a note found in a purse, a pair of brown work boots, and the lint trap from the clothes dryer. Police also seized Dennis Oland’s Blackberry. Police hauled four orange garbage bags, some brown paper bags, several large cardboard boxes, a desktop computer, and two metallic suitcases from the house and loaded them into a forensics van parked out front.
After about seven hours, the officers gathered for a debriefing. Although the warrant was valid for another three days, between seven a.m. and nine p.m. each day, police “determined it was a thorough search,” said Russell. The property was turned back over to the family lawyer by 7:50 p.m., he said.
The head of forensic identification did not participate in the house search. Mark Smith’s only involvement was to seize Dennis Oland’s silver 2009 Volkswagen Golf from the driveway, which was towed to the police garage shortly before one. Oland actually had three vehicles registered in his name at the time, according to the motor vehicle branch. The other two were a 1998 black Mazda and a 1996 Toyota Land Cruiser, but the Golf was the vehicle Oland drove on July 6.
Smith cordoned off the car in a secure area of the police garage with limited access and turned his attention to some of the other case files that were “backing up.” By a quarter to six, Smith was back on the Oland case. He photographed and examined the impounded car. He didn’t note anything unusual about the exterior of the vehicle, he said. It appeared to have been washed recently and didn’t test positive for bloodstains.
The interior, on the other hand, “was untidy and did not appear to have been cleaned for some time.” There was “dirt and debris” on the floor and mats, and stains on the backseats. Documents, business cards, and receipts were strewn across the dashboard, tucked into the centre console, and stashed in the glove compartment. Some of the papers were seized, including a receipt found in the front passenger door from the Irving gas station in Saint John’s north end, dated July 7 at 9:24 a.m., shortly after the victim’s body was discovered in his uptown office.
In the trunk, Smith found a socket wrench tool kit, a sail cover, a receipt for repair to a sail cover, lawn mower blades, plastic cups, dog toys, a dog bed, and “other miscellaneous items.” Although no one ever made much of it later, Oland purchased five “No Trespassing” signs and three “Private Property” signs, each measuring 8" x 12", at Canadian Tire at 11:10 on the morning of July 7. Smith also found a red reusable Sobeys grocery bag, which contained a cellphone charger, a large orange garbage bag, a Canadian Lifesaving manual, a CPR worksheet with handwritten notes, a 2011 herb and vegetable catalogue, and publications related to Oland’s genealogical research.
Smith used a magnifying glass and a forensic light to go over “the entire inside” of the car, looking for any “anomalies,” or stains that might be blood. He continued working on the car until after ten.
The next morning, a security car blocked the driveway at the Oland homestead and the newspaper remained uncollected. Just a few minutes’ drive down the road, about fourteen officers had started another search. They spent the morning combing a wooded area near the Bill McGuire Centre.
The officers, clad in dark T-shirts, dark pants or jeans, and in a few cases, baseball hats, stood shoulder to shoulder, examining the area one foot at a time. They did not appear to be carrying anything when they emerged from the woods at around twelve thirty, after roughly four hours of trudging through the thick brush. To some witnesses, it looked like nothing more than a training exercise.
But it was at least the third time people had spotted police scouring the area since the prominent businessman was found dead. Two days earlier, kayak instructor Emily Benson saw officers combing through garbage bins at the nearby Renforth beach, and other area residents had seen the canine unit a few times. Saint John police still weren’t talking, but Rothesay police (now Kennebecasis Regional Police Force) confirmed the searches were not related to any of their investigations.
Back at police headquarters in Saint John, Smith resumed his examination of Oland’s car for a second day. He swabbed for DNA and tested for trace or latent bloodstains. If Oland had killed his father and fled the bloody scene in his car, there might be transfer stains. Smith swabbed eleven areas, including the door handles, inside and out; the trunk release button; the steering wheel; the headlight and turn-signal switches; the emergency brake; and the passenger seat — anywhere Oland might have touched after leaving his father’s office.
Smith got “weak positive” results from the front passenger-door handle, seat, and headrest, the front and back of the steering wheel, and the emergency brake handle. But it “took a while” for the swabs to turn green/blue when he applied the testing chemical, and there “wasn’t a lot of colour,” he said. “Other areas had very weak positive results, and some, not at all.”
Next he sprayed the interior with two different chemical reactants, Bluestar and Leucomalachite Green, which would fluoresce in the possible presence of blood. He sprayed the fabric seats, the floor, pedals, dashboard, and steering wheel. All produced negative results for blood. Smith spent all day inspecting the car, a full eight hours, on top of the approximately four hours’ of inspection the day before. It was a long and arduous task, he admitted. But he still wasn’t done.
On Sunday, July 17, Smith formally seized the red grocery bag from the trunk, along with some of the documents it contained. And on July 18, twelve days after the murder, he devoted two hours or so to giving the car a final once-over. He checked under the seats and the trunk lining, delving into every nook and cranny he could think of to locate items that might be related to the offence. He seized some more receipts and documents before finally turning the car back over to Dennis Oland.
On July 20, police were granted another search warrant and a general warrant for a 25-foot sailboat co-owned by Oland’s wife, Lisa Andrik-Oland, and her friend Mary Beth Watt. Police made the request after speaking to Oland’s new assistant at CIBC Wood Gundy, Ethel Harrison Wood. She told police Oland had emailed her between ten thirty and eleven on the morning of July 7, the day his father’s body was discovered, saying, “‘It is too nice of a day to work’ and he was going to work on his boat.” Oland’s former assistant, Karla Yurco, corroborated that in an interview. She said she saw Oland in the office that morning, and at eleven he told her he was going to work on the boat, called Loki.
Doug Orford, who used to work at CIBC, told police he saw Oland that afternoon at the Royal Kennebecasis Yacht Club, where the boat was docked. Orford, who also had a sailboat at the north-end club, arrived at around twelve thirty to drop something off, he said. When he arrived, Oland was talking with three men whom Orford named as Sean Keyes, Dave Richards, and Chris Gilmore.
Mary Beth Watt, who had purchased Loki with Lisa Andrik-Oland years before she married Dennis, told police she had been out on the boat with friends on July 6 when she experienced a problem with the boat. She called Dennis Oland for help, he told her how to deal with it, and he went the following day to fix it, she said. The next time she went to the boat, the tools were left out, said Watt.
The search at the private yacht club at 1044 Millidge Avenue was conducted on the morning of July 21, but once again police refused to confirm if the search was connected with the Oland homicide investigation, or what they were looking for. The warrant listed many of the same items as the other search. Police also wanted to “forensically examine [the Loki], swab, record, log, or duplicate, photograph, measure and seize items, and any other forensic investigative procedures necessary,” according to the sworn documents filed with the provincial court.
Police blocked off access to the club to everyone but members for approximately six hours; a uniformed officer stood guard at the gate. One member at the club that day, Ken Ward, noticed that the divers searched under most of the roughly two hundred boats at the club but paid special attention to the avocado-coloured Loki. Ward didn’t know what the divers were looking for, but he knew they’d be hard-pressed to find anything in the murky water surrounding the marina. “Be almost impossible to find anything,” he observed to the media, “especially if they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
In the hours, days, and weeks following the murder, police obtained search warrants for Dennis Oland’s office computer at CIBC Wood Gundy, a camp logbook, and the cellphone records of Oland, Richard Oland, and Diana Sedlacek. Police also interviewed more than sixty people. For the next four years, the investigation wound on, even after Dennis Oland was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, ending just a few months before his trial started.