The Douglas Garland verdict caps four weeks of riveting testimony from forensic experts, police and relatives from both the victims’ and Garland families. Here are the 19 days of testimony, beginning back in January, which went into the verdict:
Day 1, Jan. 16
The Crown’s first witness to testify was the couple’s daughter, Jennifer O’Brien, who had left her son Nathan at their home for a sleepover shortly before they disappeared.
When she returned the following morning, she found a bloodied residence and no sign of the three victims.
“Throughout the whole house it was just like a bloody scene,” O’Brien testified. “There was pools of blood on the side of the bed and on the wall and all throughout the kitchen.”
She went outside and called her husband and told him: “My son … my family’s been murdered and he’s taken the bodies.”
In Crown lawyer Vicki Faulkner’s opening address to the jury, she said police found a smouldering burn barrel on Douglas Garland’s parents’ farm. Inside the barrel, investigators discovered bones and a small tooth, just the tip of the iceberg of evidence found on the property northeast of Calgary.
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Day 2
Douglas Garland’s sister told police he drove a distinctive, older-model, green pickup truck, similar to one spotted near the home of a Calgary couple who disappeared along with their grandson, she testified on the trial’s first day.
Patti Garland said she recognized the truck in a photo police released to the news media.
“It’s the green Ford F-150 that my father owned,” Garland told her elder brother’s triple-murder trial.
Patti, nine years younger than her brother, painted the accused as a loner with few friends.
The accused’s parents also testified about their son in a similar vein.
But Doreen Garland added that her son was an intelligent man who liked to read books and was handy around the home.
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Day 3
Despite the blood-stained scene at the home of Alvin and Kathy Liknes, police had hoped to find a hiding Nathan O’Brien, the trial was told
Const. Trevor Matthes said police did a thorough search of the 38A Ave. S.W. home after Jennifer O’Brien had called to say her parents and son were missing.
But Matthes said hopes of a happy ending were dashed once the home was completely searched.
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Day 4
An expert locksmith testified the keypad lock to the home of Alvin and Kathy Liknes was disabled using a power drill.
The lock, the same make and model the Crown alleges Garland was researching in the days leading up to the Likneses’ disappearance, had two holes drilled near where an override key could be used, said Monte Salway.
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Day 5
Police conducted a frantic search of Douglas Garland’s family farm in hopes of rescuing a Calgary couple and their grandson who had disappeared days earlier, court was told. But Calgary police homicide Det. Mike Shute, who helped arrange the raid by the RCMP’s emergency response team, said no one was found, dead or alive, during the July 4, 2014, search.
Shute said the search was considered a potential rescue mission and occurred after he placed Garland under investigative detention for kidnapping after he was grabbed in a traffic stop near his property.
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Day 6
The burn barrel on the farm where the Crown believes Douglas Garland disposed of his victims was left smouldering overnight after the initial police raid, court heard Monday.
Staff Sgt. Timothy Walker testified he went to the Airdrie farm north of Calgary the morning of July 5, 2014.
An RCMP emergency response team had raided the property the previous evening, hoping to find the missing Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their five-year-old grandson, Nathan O’Brien, alive.
“We discovered a burn barrel, it was a large tank, if you will,” Walker said of the metal cylinder found smouldering when police arrived the previous evening.
“We found some bone,” Walker said. “We thought we may have recovered a tooth, and there was a pair of glasses we recovered.”
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Day 7
Police seized hundreds of forensic exhibits, including multiple weapons, more than a dozen handcuffs and what appeared to be charred human flesh, in a scouring of the Douglas Garland property, court heard.
Const. Ian Oxton, the forensic crime scenes unit officer tasked with collecting the exhibits, said he found items of interest in two outbuildings on the property, an area around a burn barrel, which was still smouldering when police arrived on July 4, and in the basement Garland occupied in his parents’ rural home.
Oxton also found two meat hooks, a large hacksaw and an array of knives.
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Day 8
Const. Ian Oxton, in his second day on the witness stand, told the three-woman, 11-man jury he also found a pair of child-sized handcuffs and about 50 adult diapers among the pieces of evidence seized from the sprawling acreage Garland shared with his elderly parents.
“I believe these to be handcuffs that we generally use to restrain children, youths and small adults,” Oxton said, holding up a pair of cuffs for the jury to view.
Oxton spent about 550 hours over 10 months removing items of interest from the ashes found in the burn barrel. “Included in that material was 17 fragments that could be teeth,” he said.
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Day 9
Two things caught the attention of Douglas Garland’s neighbour in the days after a Calgary couple and their grandson went missing — a glow from the greenhouse and a large fire.
Brian Kalmbach, who lived just south of the Garland farm, said he awoke between 2 and 3 a.m. on July 2, 2014, and noticed a light on in his neighbour’s greenhouse.
And later that same morning, Kalmbach saw a large fire burning on Garland’s acreage.
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Day 10
Jurors were shown disturbing photographs of dead and dismembered bodies found on a computer hard drive hidden in the basement joists of Douglas Garland’s home.
The jury also viewed graphic images of women in adult diapers, many of them bound with handcuffs and other restraints.
Digital forensic examiner Const. Doug Kraan said he also found photos of both Kathy Liknes and the couple in deleted files on the hard drive.
“There were a number of documents about killing that I found on this hard drive,” he added. “Kill, or murder in the title.”
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Day 11
Information on the hard drive found hidden in Garland’s home included Internet searches for ways to torture people.
Const. Kraan testified he found one “Google search for most painful torture.”
Other Internet queries included autopsy scalpel blades and an amputation retractor. “Lack of oxygen brain damage in minutes,” and “what happens to the brain without oxygen,” was also searched.
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Day 12
Downloads found on a hard drive hidden in Douglas Garland’s basement included a manual on how to become an effective assassin, court heard Wednesday.
Const. Brian Clark testified he reviewed multiple documents found on the hard drive, including Death Dealers Manual, How To Kill, Hitman and Murder Inc.
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Day 13
A small fragment sifted from ashes found on Douglas Garland’s Airdrie farm was “very likely” a baby tooth, a forensic dentist testified Thursday.
Also, a video analyst with the Calgary Police Service gave evidence of comparisons she did of Garland’s green pickup truck to one captured on CCTV footage from one of the Likneses’ neighbour’s home.
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Day 14
A police officer testified that video surveillance showed a vehicle and a shadowy figure on the street near the Liknes home.
Const. Gerald Bouchard said two hours later the truck seemed to have disappeared, but he was able to find video of it again on a nearby roadway.
“From what I saw from here, I did view there was something in the back of the box different,” he testified. “There was something large and white in the back box.”
Further video showed the truck on a major route heading north through Calgary. Two hours later, video picked it up again and showed there was no longer a large, white object in the back.
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Day 15
In evidence that visibly shocked jurors and family members, three figures — two nearly naked adults and a child — could be seen in aerial photographs of the Garland acreage shown in court.
The images, captured by an aerial surveying company doing work for the City of Airdrie, shows what appears to be two adults, face down in the grass, wearing white underwear. Nearby, a third smaller figure can be seen.
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Day 16
DNA of Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their grandson, Nathan O’Brien, were discovered on rubber boots, a hacksaw and a meat hook recovered from the Garland farm, court heard.
A pair of rubber boots found outside one of the outbuildings on the Garland farm had genetic material matching all three victims, while a bloodied light switch inside the building matched the DNA profiles of both the Likneses.
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Day 17
Both Kathy and Alvin Liknes would have been struck while on or near the floor of separate bedrooms in their Calgary home, a bloodstain pattern analyst testified Wednesday.
Acting Sgt. Jodi Arns, with the Calgary Police Service’s forensic crime scenes unit, examined the couple’s residence on July 1, 2014, the day after they and their grandson disappeared.
Arns told Crown prosecutor Shane Parker she found bloodstains throughout the house, on the main level, the upper level and a lower landing, as well as stairs leading to those areas.
DNA testing showed the blood belonged to both Likneses and their five-year-old grandson, Nathan O’Brien.
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Day 18
Infrared video captured Garland crawling through a stand of trees as a rookie Calgary cop moved in to arrest him.
Const. Jamie Parhar said the HAWCS helicopter, using an infrared camera, was keeping her apprised of where Garland was in what she described as “a very thick wall of trees and shrubbery.”
Parhar said when she handcuffed Garland, “he was very calm and collected.”
Parhar is the Crown’s last witness called to testify at the trial.
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Day 19
In his final submission to the jury, defence lawyer Kim Ross said there is no evidence to link Garland to the crime, and the jury should disregard evidence found on Garland’s farm.
“What happened on the farm, that does not prove to you that Douglas Garland caused the deaths of Alvin Liknes, Kathy Liknes and Nathan O’Brien,” Ross said.
The lawyer said despite a violent crime scene at the Liknes home, in which the blood of all three victims was found, there was no evidence which placed Garland there.
Read the story here.