Truth and Honour Page 2
Why was I drawn to this tragic story of Richard Oland? First of all, I am an academic historian who specializes in the history of crime and policing. I grew up in a legal family and I have been researching the histories of Saint John and the Canadian legal system since the early 1980s. Years of research have suggested that an examination of a prominent crime offers the historian an evocative window into a community at a specific time in its history.5 I was born and raised in Saint John (near the Moosehead Brewery), I have lived in Rothesay, home to many of the Olands, and currently live in the neighbouring community of Quispamsis. I have taught classes in Philip Oland Hall at the University of New Brunswick Saint John and organized events in the Mary Oland Theatre at the New Brunswick Museum. I drive past the grave of Richard Oland on a daily basis. And over the years, I have consumed my share of Moosehead beer.
In a nation with many high-profile criminal cases, there are several reasons why the Oland case is so exceptional. In a city where most victims and perpetrators of major crime are poor, both the victim and the chief suspect were members of one of province’s most prominent families. Right or wrong, celebrity crimes such as the 1973 murder of model Christine Demeter in Toronto and the 1983 murder of JoAnn Wilson, ex-wife of controversial politician Colin Thatcher, in Saskatchewan, draw media and public attention.6 Murder and adultery always make for good copy—especially in the Maritimes, where society supposedly is more conservative. (Extramarital affairs are a fact of life in modern society but they appear to be more rare, according to surveys, in New Brunswick than elsewhere in Canada. According to the online dating service Ashley Madison, as of 2013, Saint John definitely was not considered one of the nation’s top twelve “infidelity cities.”7) This created complications for journalists and writers covering the case, as the New Brunswick business elite not only values its privacy, but it is also protected by a web of complex business, personal, and social ties that makes many people unwilling or unable to go on the record. When Dennis Oland was convicted of murdering his father, not a single prominent New Brunswicker stated in public that justice had been served. Similarly, there were no editorials in provincial newspapers and even the victorious Crown attorneys refrained from any statements that could be interpreted as self-congratulatory. In New Brunswick, the business elite exercises a disproportionate share of economic, political, and social power. Partly because of the control of the province’s print media by the Irving interests, the public constantly hears of, and local politicians channel, business perspectives on education, economic development, poverty reduction, energy policy, urban planning, municipal services, and even policing.8
The Olands are not the Irvings or the McCains, but they are clearly not an average New Brunswick family. When a working-class mother of four children was killed by her husband the same year Richard Oland was murdered, the mayor did not order municipal flags to be flown at half-mast, and the media did not describe her loss as “a heavy blow” to the community.9 Paul Zed, a Saint John lawyer and former Member of Parliament who once was married into one of those families (the Irvings), explained in 2011 that it was the celebrity factor that was drawing public interest in the case.10 Identified with Moosehead beer outside of the community, in the Saint John area the Olands are also identified with Rothesay, an upscale, well-educated, and socially homogenous town that has its own associations: people who golf, sail, play tennis, live in nice houses, and send their children to private school and the best universities. (Rothesay, for example, is one of the few communities in Canada to say no to the American retail giant Walmart.) Yet until the crime, the Olands were relatively low-profile celebrities and the victim’s controversial reputation was not common press fodder. Dennis, for example, drove a VW Golf and although his residence was in the tradition of a Rothesay blueblood, he lived the lifestyle of a suburban husband and dad. The Saint John Olands, compared to their Halifax cousins, were supposedly down to earth. According to writer Harvey Sawler, author of Last Canadian Beer: The Moosehead Story (2008), in contrast with the Irvings and the McCains, the Olands have not polarized public opinion in New Brunswick. In Sawler’s words, the public sees the family “in a positive light,” with their beer company being associated with “social interaction, conviviality, and the sharing of happy times.”11
The investigation and trial revealed evidence of adultery, family tensions, and a less-than-flattering image of the victim, who was described in family statements to the police as a self-centred, selfish bully who was obsessively tight with his money. The Olands are accustomed to a certain lifestyle and many, particularly investigating officers, believed this lifestyle was a factor in Richard’s demise. In 2011, the median annual family income in Rothesay was a third higher than the New Brunswick average. Saint John, where the Oland trial was held (and from where part of the jury was drawn) in 2012 had a poverty rate of 18.8 percent, one of the highest child-poverty rates in Canada, a teen-pregnancy rate double the national average, and a large minority of families headed by a single parent. As Dennis Oland would be told during his first police interview, the SJPF was accustomed to investigating suspects who were poor and had criminal records. In fact, in the period 2010 to 2015, only one other murder or manslaughter case in the Saint John area involved a victim or accused who was middle class.
Another factor that distinguished this case is the length of time between the discovery of the crime and the laying of a murder charge—more than two years—despite early police assurances that they had identified a lone suspect. This caused many in the community to speculate that the case for the prosecution was weak and the accused would go free. Next, given the lack of eyewitness testimony, is the key role of forensic evidence in a murder prosecution taking place in a city where most serious crimes are solved by old-fashioned techniques and confessions. Since the 1994–95 O. J. Simpson case, where forensic science failed to secure a conviction, the public and media have been fascinated with DNA typing and other tools of forensic investigation. In the Oland case, the most contested evidence was bloodstain and DNA evidence. Video-surveillance footage, cellphone and cell-tower data, and records of computer usage were important for both the prosecution and the defence. A further reason why this case is noteworthy is the size and reputation of the defence team which was presumably bankrolled by the Oland family—blood relatives of the victim. It included one of Canada’s leading defence lawyers, who specializes in discrediting “junk science.” Another intriguing factor is the Oland family’s continued public insistence, despite circumstantial evidence, that Dennis Oland is innocent. This is backed up by their considerable financial resources in a case that has probably cost them millions of dollars. This outward solidarity appears so strong that it strikes many that the family views the accused son, not his dead father, as the real victim of the tragedy. After the jury’s verdict, the family supported not only an appeal of Dennis’s conviction, but also an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to allow his release on bail, which was argued on October 31, 2016.
In addition to the personal tragedy, the Oland murder was not good for Saint John’s soul. Both the city’s morale and outside reputation, never totally positive, suffered a heavy blow with the unsolved murder of one of its most prominent citizens. Both the economy and population were in decline, the city government’s fiscal situation was grave, little construction was taking place, and the office-vacancy rate was high. Fires and the demolition of derelict buildings, such as the once-iconic Paramount Theatre on King’s Square, left behind piles of rubble or empty lots, which were converted to parking spaces. The young and many middle-aged people were leaving in droves, often for the greener pastures of Alberta. Richard Oland’s violent death, the silence of the police and the Oland family, and the lack of an arrest were depressing enough, but these developments were topped off by more shocking revelations.
In 2012, new allegations surfaced regarding Kenneth Estabrooks, a Saint John police officer who had died in 2005. In 1999, he had been convicted
of molesting four boys during the period 1957 to 1982. Estabrooks had been investigated in 1975 following a complaint but had not been charged, only moved to a new job in another city department, from where he continued to molest children. In 2012, a private investigator working on behalf of the municipal government identified at least fifty possible victims and estimated that the total might exceed two hundred and sixty. In 2013, a Nova Scotia lawyer launched a class-action suit against the SJPF, the City of Saint John, and the police commission. In early 2013, before an arrest was made in the Oland case, police apprehended Donnie Snook, a popular common councillor and youth worker, for sexual offences against minors and child pornography. He pleaded guilty to forty-eight charges and received eighteen years in penitentiary for his crimes.12
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1Adam Cotter, Homicide in Canada, 2013 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2013).
2Eric Andrew-Gee, “Sex, class, family discord fuel Saint John’s fascination with Oland trial,” Globe and Mail, Dec. 13, 2015.
3Stephen J. Adler, The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1994), 39.
4Rick MacLean and Andre Veniot, Terror: Murder and Panic in New Brunswick May–November 1990 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990).
5See for example Charlotte Gray’s fine study of the 1915 Massey murder in Toronto: The Massey Murder: A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2013).
6Demeter’s husband, Peter, was convicted of her murder, and in the case of Wilson, it was her ex-husband, the businessman and politician Colin Thatcher. In both cases, the suspects had accomplices and wiretap or body-pack tape recordings had been key in securing a conviction.
7Richard Johnson, “The demography of adultery,” National Post, Nov. 16, 2012.
8John DeMont, Citizens Irving: K. C. Irving and His Legacy (Toronto: Doubleday Canada First Editions, 1991); Jacques Poitras, Irving vs. Irving: Canada’s Feuding Billionaires and the Stories They Won’t Tell (Toronto: Viking, 2014).
9Oliver Moore, “Oland’s killing a heavy blow to Maritime community,” Globe and Mail, July 12, 2011.
10Julian Sher, “The inscrutable murder of a magnate,” Globe and Mail, Oct. 15, 2011.
11Harvey Sawler, Last Canadian Beer: The Moosehead Story (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2009), 3.
12“Scandal and suffering,” CTV Atlantic News, Nov. 7, 2012; “Ken Estabrooks may have had more than 260 victims: investigators,” CTV Atlantic News, Sept. 30, 2012; “Ken Estabrooks sex abuse victims file for class action suit,” CBC News New Brunswick, Dec. 04, 2013; April Cunningham, “Snook sentenced to 18 years,” Telegraph-Journal, Oct. 11, 2013, A1; “Donnie Snook Sentenced to 3 Months for N.L. Sex Crimes,” CBC News, Dec. 17, 2013.
Chapter 1
Discovery of the Crime
July 6–7, 2011
On July 7, 2011, Richard Oland’s long-serving secretary, Maureen Adamson, arrived for work at 52 Canterbury Street at approximately 8:45 A.M. to find the ground-floor door unlocked. This was not unusual, as both Oland and his employee had keys to this side of the building. She was carrying cups of coffee and paperwork. Reaching the top of the stairs, she noticed the door that opened up into a lobby on the second floor was partially open. Normally, the door was locked at this time of day. As she passed through the lobby into the office of Far End Corporation, Oland’s investment firm, she immediately noticed four things: the lights and air conditioner had been left on, the blinds were drawn, and a foul stench filled the air. A television monitor that habitually displayed the CNBC channel was on, but the sound was down. Advancing further into the office, she spotted two legs on the floor near her boss’s desk. Adamson immediately ran down to seek assistance from Printing Plus, the commercial printing business that occupied most of the building’s ground floor.
Fifty-two Canterbury Street is a late-Victorian three-storey building located in a relatively quiet block of Saint John’s central business district, opposite a popular restaurant, Thandi’s, and, in 2011, was next to a former garage turned storage space. The area, part of the Trinity Royal Heritage Conservation Area, continues to slowly gentrify. The other suite on the second floor was unoccupied. The third floor was used from time to time by rock bands as a practice space. Far End Corporation had its own set of stairs that led from the ground floor, and its own entrance on Canterbury Street, although the entrance was accessible from the printing establishment on the ground floor. This block, located near a number of other restaurants and bars, had been moderately busy with traffic and pedestrians the previous evening. Some of that activity was caught on nearby security cameras, such as two on the exterior of Thandi’s restaurant, across the street from the crime scene. The building itself had no internal security camera, and no camera on Canterbury provided a view of the main entrance.
Reaching the Printing Plus office, located on the south end of the building, Adamson called out for help and was answered by Preston Chiasson, a friend of business owner John Ainsworth, who also owned the building. Richard Oland had run Far End and his real-estate company, Kingshurst Estates Ltd., from the second floor since 2005. Ironically, he was planning to move his office to nearby Brunswick Square, an office tower whose entrances are monitored by security cameras. Chiasson proceeded upstairs, saw the body, and called 911 at 8:54 A.M. with a report that a male “was not breathing.” The call was relayed from the Public Safety Communications Centre to the SJPF. Constables Don Shannon and Duane Squires, together with cadet Trinda Fanjoy, responded within minutes, unaware they were entering a crime scene. At 9:00 A.M., paramedics Phil Comeau and Chris Wall, whose ambulance had been parked nearby, arrived.1 They were told not to bother to bring up special equipment, meaning that the person was now deceased. The paramedics were in the room for only a minute; Comeau pushed down on the body and determined that rigor mortis had set in. The officers checked the rest of the office, and then Shannon went down to speak to Chiasson who was experiencing some distress. The paramedics were called back to check Chiasson’s vital signs. Others, including John Ainsworth, the coroner, and Major Crime Unit (MCU) members, continued to arrive at the scene.
When Oland was attacked, he was probably reading or thinking about his real passion, competitive sailing. On his desk, face down, was a 2010 book from the New York Yacht Club, an organization he was hoping to join. Nearby was a memo on electronic gear for his new sailboat being built in Spain, and a printed copy of a weekly investment advice newsletter. On his wrist was a Rolex watch, likely the engraved Yacht-Master model he had been presented during the New York Yacht Club’s race week at Newport, Rhode Island. The police only confirmed the identity of the victim when they checked his wallet, which was still in the pocket of his pants. A healthy man who was nearly six feet tall, the victim appeared to have been killed at his desk; his body was found face down in a pool of blood, an ugly gash in the back of his skull. Crime-scene photos revealed a gory scene, yet there was surprisingly little trace blood evidence beyond the immediate vicinity of the body. There were no signs of a forced entry or robbery. The office contained several computers, cameras, an iPad, and other devices, all untouched. The victim’s wallet, credit cards, watch, and car keys, as well as petty cash and an envelope containing cash for the family gardener, were also safe. According to Adamson, she, the victim, co-worker Robert McFadden, and Ainsworth held the only keys to the building. (Ainsworth later stated that the musicians who periodically used the third floor had a key and may have made copies.) In addition, there was no evidence of a murder weapon or a cleanup at the scene. The autopsy would reveal that the victim did try to defend himself from the assailant or assailants, but had been overwhelmed by the ferocity of the assault. The public would not learn the details of Richard Oland’s injuries for more than four years.2
If most semi-retired men do not come home at nigh
t, their family worries. Although he still lived at home on secluded Almon Lane in Rothesay, Richard Oland was not necessarily missed by his wife, Constance. She later explained in a character-reference letter for her son that she believed her husband had travelled to nearby St. Stephen on the evening of July 6 to attend a meeting of the board of Ganong Brothers, the candy manufacturer. A former mayor of Saint John explained to the media that given Oland’s work ethic, he could have been at his office all night. Yet the building owner later testified that Oland rarely stayed beyond the early evening as the musicians practising on the third floor were unpredictable with their schedule. The reality was that Richard and Constance Oland, married for more than four decades, appeared to be estranged. Richard often was away for weeks at a time and had been involved with a mistress for several years. According to one of the victim’s daughters, her parents lived “separate lives” but had refused to divorce out of consideration for their children. Oland had just returned from a salmon-fishing trip on New Brunswick’s Miramichi River. Upon his arrival home, Constance was hosting her brother Jack Connell, who was visiting from Toronto. When Oland left Almon Lane on the morning of July 6, 2011, it was the last time his wife would see him alive.3