It was a few weeks into the trial, not long before Thanksgiving weekend. The start of proceedings was delayed, and defence lawyer Gary Miller, remembering when someone’s cellphone rang in court a few days earlier, broke the bored silence with a story about a similar experience in Truro, Nova Scotia. A cellphone rang, and Miller turned to the other lawyer. “What idiot left their phone on in court?” he demanded. “I don’t know,” the other lawyer replied, “but it’s coming from your briefcase.” Everyone laughed. Then the testimony of the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Richard Oland’s body starkly reminded those present that a horrific, violent loss of a human life was at its crux.
Dr. Ather Naseemuddin presented graphic post-mortem photographs to illustrate his findings. The jurors had some previous exposure to images of Richard Oland’s violent death on September 16, the first day of the trial, when 119 photographs of the crime scene were entered into evidence. The images showed a wide halo of blood, bone, and tissue around Oland’s head, his lifeless legs sticking out from under his office desk, pants askew, pale flesh exposed, three Werther’s Original candy wrappers by his feet. “There was a piece of skull in that area” and “what appears to be tissue and blood and hair on the back of his sweater,” sergeant Mark Smith noted when he led jurors through some of the images in early October.
Jurors had also glimpsed the thirty autopsy photos when they were entered into evidence but not reviewed on October 2. Walsh examined the photographs before binders of hard copies were distributed to the jurors. He questioned whether all were necessary. The Crown replied they were.
Walsh warned jurors that the crime-scene images were “going to be a bit of a shock.” He urged them to “steel” themselves. When the autopsy photos were entered into evidence, Walsh told the jury, “If at any time you feel uncomfortable and you feel you need to take a break, don’t be embarrassed about that. Everybody’s different. You’ll get through this. It’s just going to be a little tough for a while.” He also imposed publication bans on the photographs of both the crime scene and the autopsy; the media successfully challenged the ban on most of the crime-scene photos deemed “blood” images but did not challenge the ban on the head wound images or the post-mortem photos. Walsh offered another caution when Naseemuddin took the stand. He advised people in the public gallery they might wish to leave or at least avoid looking at the monitors. They could leave anytime, he said. But nothing could have prepared the jurors or spectators for the gruesomeness.
A wide-angle shot of Richard Oland face down on a cold metal gurney at the morgue came first. Next were close-ups of the deep gashes to his hands. Then came images of the massive head wounds — his scalp slashed open, his skull shattered, and bits of his bone and brain, a testament to the ferocity of the attack. As disturbing as the photographs undoubtedly were, the jury had been spared some of the worst ones used at the preliminary inquiry, which depicted a probe in the wounds to measure their depths, Oland’s skull hacked open, and the removal and dissection of his brain.
Naseemuddin testified he had done about 150 autopsies, but that was as of the time of his testimony; he was not asked how many autopsies he had conducted prior to Oland’s. He started working at Saint John Regional Hospital a year before Richard Oland’s death and had previously completed his residency in 2008 and fellowships in 2009 and 2010.
Richard Oland’s autopsy was gruelling and took about five hours to complete, the court heard. Naseemuddin’s final report numbered twelve pages in addition to three sketches he made of Richard Oland’s head injuries. Naseemuddin counted forty-six wounds: six to Oland’s hands and forty to his head. Although Crown prosecutor P.J. Veniot mentioned neck injuries in his opening statement, Naseemuddin’s testimony did not.
The doctor took pains to number each wound with a piece of medical tape in a bid to keep them straight, but Walsh pointed out a discrepancy between his report and his testimony. Naseemuddin inadvertently counted one wound twice. He initially thought the wound was a laceration and assigned it twenty-six but later realized, when examining the skull, that it was a fracture and assigned it forty-five, he explained. “I regret the error,” he told the court. No need to apologize; we’re only human, Walsh reassured him.
Naseemuddin systematically inventoried Oland’s wounds for the jurors — left side of the head, right side, top and back; length, width, and depth; horizontal or vertical; and whether they were bevelled left to right or right to left. Five of the head injuries were blunt-force and round, he said. They measured between two and two and a half centimetres in diameter and had a “faint cross hatching pattern in them.” The other thirty-four were sharp-force injuries, “consistent with chop wounds.” Seven of the lacerations on the right side of Oland’s head were parallel and closely spaced together. “It would appear these injuries were made in quick rapid succession,” said Naseemuddin as the jurors followed along with the photos, either on the overhead monitors or in the binders open on their laps. They appeared increasingly uneasy with the images of Oland’s scalp peeled back to expose his skull and brain as Naseemuddin noted that several of the incised wounds cut through or crushed bone.
The accused did not look at the photos on display. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, eyes cast down. His mother averted her gaze. His wife did, too, at first, until she left the courtroom.
Underneath the scalp, Naseemuddin counted fourteen fractures as the “skin and soft tissues broke apart,” he said. The spindly doctor turned in his seat to face the jurors and motioned to his own head as he tried to explain his specialized report in layman’s terms. His testimony was enthusiastic and animated, his speech rapid. During Naseemuddin’s two days on the stand, Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur reminded the doctor to slow down. “Haste makes waste,” he said.
Four of the six fractures on the left side of Oland’s head created a concave in his skull measuring ten centimetres in length, seven centimetres in width, and two centimetres in depth, said Naseemuddin. Some of the wounds “breached the outer table of the skull,” and “entered the cranial cavity,” exposing the brain. The injuries were “not survivable,” he said. Even if Oland received prompt medical attention? asked Wilbur. “I do not believe so,” Naseemuddin replied.
When asked, Naseemuddin said he could not estimate the time Oland’s injuries were inflicted. He found no overt signs of decomposition. The decomposition process starts immediately after death but doesn’t “manifest” itself for a few hours, and it can be affected by a number of factors, he noted, including temperature, humidity, and air circulation. As Maureen Adamson had already testified, the office air conditioner was running when she discovered the body. Sergeant Smith noted the office temperature was 19°C. Decomposition starts inside the body and works outward, said Naseemuddin. It may manifest as discolouration of the skin or an offensive odour, he said. Oland’s secretary and several other witnesses had testified to the vile odour at the crime scene.
Although Naseemuddin could not comment on when the injuries were inflicted, he did say the six wounds to Oland’s hands likely came first, when he was still conscious and able to fight for his life. “In the early part of the assault, the victim made defensive motions with his hands.” But Oland was no match for his attacker and whatever weapon was wielded against him. Naseemuddin said Oland likely survived only minutes into his vicious bludgeoning. “In my opinion these injuries would be rapidly fatal,” said Naseemuddin. “Maybe ten minutes. Maybe five.” That meant the attack likely continued after Oland was lying on the floor, unconscious and defenceless. “There are so many injuries…which are terribly incapacitating,” Naseemuddin observed. “I would think those would have come after the victim was able to make any defensive motion.”
During cross-examination, defence lawyer Alan Gold raised the notion of two perpetrators. He suggested Oland was “physically quite capable of defending himself,” because he was a “healthy, robust man,” nearly six feet tall and 192 pounds in weight. “There must have been some initial involvement…with the attacker or attackers?” he asked, referring to the defensive wounds to Oland’s hands. Naseemuddin agreed that Oland tried to defend himself, but he could not say how many assailants were involved or whether they were left- or right-handed.
Gold described Oland’s death as a “vicious beating.” He asked if Naseemuddin had ever seen such a “massive amount of head injuries before” in terms of the number of blows. “It’s a very high number,” Naseemuddin replied.
“This poor man’s skull was completely broken, correct?” asked Gold.
“Yes, that’s fair to say,” Naseemuddin said.
Gold suggested breaking the skull would have taken “considerable force” and created noise. “I presume you haven’t heard skulls being broken by weaponry,” he said, “but it’s obvious to say some noise would be created?”
“That’s correct.”
Gold also asked about a bruise on Oland’s chest that Naseemuddin determined predated the attack, although he could not say when it occurred. Gold suggested the bruise was in an odd place. “People get bruises all the time in different places,” Naseemuddin replied. Bumping into a table or a wall could cause such a bruise, he suggested.
Blood evidence at the crime scene supported the theory that many of Oland’s injuries were inflicted after he fell to the floor, according to the blood experts for both the Crown and defence. RCMP sergeant Brian Wentzell, a bloodstain pattern analyst who examined the bloody office on July 11, 2011 at the request of Saint John police, gave a lengthy, detailed PowerPoint presentation to the jury on the laws of physics that govern the distribution of blood spatter and the mathematics used to interpret the patterns.
Wentzell, who bore a physical resemblance to the comically clumsy Peter Sellers character Inspector Clouseau, was anything but. He held a bachelor of science degree and had been with the RCMP since 1987. Wentzell completed a four-year forensic identification specialist apprenticeship, later earned certification as a bloodstain pattern analyst, and is now the acting non-commissioned officer of the forensic identification services division based in New Minas, Nova Scotia. Walsh declared him an expert qualified to give opinion evidence on the size, shape, location, and distribution of bloodstains and in the interpretation of the physical events that gave rise to their origin.
The soft-spoken Wentzell appeared relaxed on the stand, looking directly at the jurors as he explained the technical information. He seemed to command their full attention. Wentzell told the jury blood patterns are “predictable and reproducible.” Whether the victim is old, young, male, female, drunk or sober, their blood behaves the same. It’s often possible, based on how the blood has travelled, to determine the position of the victim and assailant or assailants during the attack, any movements during and after the bloodletting, the minimum number of blows delivered and the force involved, the mechanism used, and whether the spatter is from impact or weapon cast-off. The three main categories of bloodstains are passive, spatter, and transfer, said Wentzell. Passive stains are primarily caused by the pull of gravity. Blood from an injury drips straight down and pools or splashes if it is flowing quickly and trails if the injured person is moving. Spatter stains result when some form of force is applied to the blood. Some of the different types of spatter stains are impact, cast-off (the blood shed by a bloody object in motion), and blood expirated from the victim’s nose, mouth, or an injury to the airway or lungs, said Wentzell. Transfer stains result from an object touching blood and then contacting another surface, leaving wipes, swipes or patterns behind, such as a shoe that tracks blood on a floor.
The volume of blood, the texture of the surface, and the distance it falls affect the shape of bloodstains, he said. If blood drips straight down, it creates a circular shape. If it strikes a surface at an angle, the shape is elliptical. The direction of movement at the time the blood was deposited, known as directionality, can also be determined by “scalloping,” which will be prominent on the side the blood was moving.
Wentzell found that some of the stains on Richard Oland’s main computer monitor were “associated with an event in front of the desk.” They were circular, indicating the source of blood was directly in front, where Oland would have been sitting, he said. Oland’s body was found on the floor. Wentzell directed the jury’s attention to bloodstains on the chair mat beneath the desk. He determined the area of origin of some of that spatter was 27 centimetres from the floor, 187 centimetres from the north wall, and 333 centimetres from the west wall. Those measurements would be consistent with where Oland’s head was located when his body was discovered, he said. Wentzell wasn’t explicit, but he implied the blood showed that Oland was attacked while seated, and the attack continued after he was on the floor.
Wentzell showed the jury a photograph of the victim’s left loafer-style black leather shoe, which he examined at the RCMP forensic lab on December 7, 2011. It had two spatter stains on the outstep side, near the heel, and a minimum of three stains on top, in the toe area of the instep side, he said. The location and shape of those stains suggested they were deposited while the shoe was sole-down on the floor.
The defence had its own blood-spatter expert, Patrick Laturnus, a retired RCMP forensic specialist and former forensic instructor at both the Canadian Police College and Ontario Police College. In fact, as Laturnus pointed out, he taught Wentzell; “I’m not going to ask you what his marks were,” defence lawyer Alan Gold joked. Laturnus now works as a consultant and serves as the president of the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. He’s been doing forensic work since 1975 and has been a bloodstain analyst since 1990, working primarily on homicide investigations across Canada but also internationally. As with Wentzell, Walsh deemed Laturnus an expert in his field. Laturnus said the blood spatter was consistent with Oland being struck while seated at his desk and while on the floor. He could not comment on the sequence, but he did say the patterns indicated the assailant, or assailants, were moving around.
What killed Richard Oland? No weapon was found at or near the scene of the murder. Earlier in the trial, forensic sergeant Smith, who had been present during the autopsy, testified the blunt-force wounds were round, measured about three centimetres in diameter with a “whirl” pattern in them, and appeared to have been caused by a hammer-type instrument. He believed a sharp instrument about six or seven centimetres in length made the “long and slender” incised wounds. Naseemuddin could not comment on the type of weapon or weapons used to kill Oland, but he did say the injuries were inflicted by two separate surfaces: one blunt and round that left a “faint cross hatching pattern” imprinted in the wounds, and one with a sharp edge, strong enough to deliver the force to cut through bone without breaking apart and leaving pieces in the wounds. Whether it was two weapons or two different surfaces on the same weapon, he could not say. At the time of the autopsy, Saint John police “did not ask me to speculate about any specific weapon, and I did not do so,” Naseemuddin said. It was “entirely possible” that police asked him about the weapon at a follow-up meeting “at least a few months later,” but he could not recall.
Alan Gold asked if Naseemuddin had ever seen round wounds like the ones Oland sustained. Never, he said.
“So you, like everybody else, have no idea what that could have been, is that correct?” asked Gold.
“Correct.”
“The implement remains a puzzle,” said Gold.
When Sergeant Wentzell examined the victim’s clothing, he found two unusual patterns he thought might provide a clue. One was a linear indentation mark on the blood-saturated navy sweater. Whatever contacted that area had that shape and had blood on it, he testified. A similar linear transfer stain was also located on the front right side of the victim’s blood-soaked white-striped shirt. Below the back of the shirt collar, which had “hundreds” of blood-spatter stains on it, Wentzell found a transfer stain “indicating some kind of pattern detail” with small wavy lines. “I’m not able to say what that was,” he said.
(When retired staff sergeant Mike King was questioned by prosecutor Patrick Wilbur about a possible weapon, he said, “I made my own assumption.” He said he believed he had mentioned it to two senior officers, but before he could continue, Justice Walsh cut off the line of questioning, saying he wasn’t interested in King’s conjecture. At the preliminary inquiry, however, Judge Ronald LeBlanc noted that King, a former roofer with seventeen years’ experience, speculated that the weapon was a roofer’s hatchet, a tool with a blade on one end and a cross-hatched pattern on the surface of the hammer end.)
The suspected weapon wouldn’t be revealed until several weeks later, when the lead investigator, Stephen Davidson, told the court that Saint John police surmised that a drywall hammer or “hammer-type” instrument was the murder weapon as early as the day after the discovery of Oland’s bludgeoned body. Drywall hammers, also known as drywall hatchets, are hand tools that typically have a bevelled hammerhead with a waffle design on one side to nail gypsum board in place and a sharp axe on the other side to score the drywall. Davidson testified that “speculation” about a drywall hammer arose after the autopsy revealed the cross-hatch pattern. “That was the idea that was passed around” among officers, he said.
Davidson said he searched online to see what drywall hammers look like. Asked whether he ever looked into the availability of drywall hammers at local hardware stores, he said he did. Defence lawyer Gary Miller asked when. “Through the course of the investigation,” Davidson replied. “Nothing formal; just to get an idea of what they looked like and what different styles there were,” he said. “There are many different kinds.” He never bought one, and he never showed one to Naseemuddin for his opinion on whether it could have been a possible weapon, he said.
But Miller noted Davidson had testified at the preliminary inquiry in September 2014 that he didn’t take any steps to investigate the type of weapon, other than some Internet searches. There was no mention in any police reports about officers going to local hardware stores either, said Miller. Davidson said he went on his own time.
“Is there any evidence that Dennis Oland ever owned or was in possession of a drywall hammer?” asked Miller.
“No.”
“Was that something police were looking for when they searched Dennis Oland’s home?”
“Yes.”
The police searches at Renforth wharf and the community centre near Dennis Oland’s home also failed to produce a weapon. Nor did it seem that the crime scene furnished whatever object the killer used to murder Richard Oland. When Robert McFadden, Oland’s business associate, testified, he told the court that the only tool he kept in his office was a small screwdriver he used for minor repairs.
Could the killer have found a weapon in the vacant adjacent office? This may never be known. The question of whether that office was under renovation that July also remains, frustratingly and bafflingly, unresolved, with two equally credible witnesses — the building’s owner, John Ainsworth, and Oland’s secretary, Maureen Adamson — making conflicting assertions.