Dennis Oland will testify in his defence at murder retrial, court hears

Dennis Oland will testify in his own defence during his retrial for second-degree murder in the 2011 bludgeoning death of his father, a Saint John courtroom heard Wednesday.

Lead defence lawyer Alan Gold made the statement during his opening remarks as the trial got underway following weeks of delay.

"You will hear him tell you, 'I am innocent. I did not kill my father. I did not do this cruel, horrible attack on my father,'" Gold said.

It's what Oland told police on July 7, 2011, the day his father's body was discovered, it's what he testified to at his first trial in 2015, and it's what he maintains today, Gold said.

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Oland, 50, was re-arraigned at the beginning of Wednesday's proceedings and pleaded not guilty for a third time to killing his father, multimillionaire Richard Oland,

The body of the 69-year-old businessman was discovered face down in a pool of blood in his Saint John office.

A jury found his only son guilty in December 2015, but the New Brunswick Court of Appeal overturned the conviction in October 2016 and ordered a new trial, citing an error in the trial judge's instructions to the jury.

"The evidence will support beyond reasonable doubt that Dennis Oland killed his father," Crown prosecutor Jill Knee said during her opening statement.

She said the killing happened the night of July 6, when Dennis Oland visited his father at his office and was the last known person to see him alive.

Financial problems, strained relationship

Knee outlined the Crown's case against Oland, including his financial struggles in the months leading up to the killing. His bank account was overdrawn and credit maxed out, she said. He was spending more than he earned and his latest monthly loan payment to his father — worth more than $30 million at the time of his death — of $1,666.67 had bounced.

"This was the financial burden carried by Dennis Oland when he went to visit his father," Knee said. "A burden he created by living well beyond his means."

She also painted a picture of a strained relationship between father and son. Oland did not approve of an extramarital affair his father was having with Diana Sedlacek, said Knee.

The younger Oland had referred to the affair as a "family concern" and had asked his father's business associate, Robert McFadden, to talk to him and "tell him it should stop," she said.

Knee noted the brutality of the attack. The victim suffered more than 40 blows to his head, neck and hands, the autopsy showed. No weapon was ever found.

'Crime of passion'

"This was a crime of passion, way beyond what was required to cause his death," said Knee.

The evidence will show it wasn't a robbery, she said. There was no sign of forced entry and the only thing that went missing from Richard Oland's office was his iPhone, despite there being other items of value, such as his Rolex watch, wallet, the keys to his BMW parked outside and cash.

It's unclear why the iPhone was taken, said Knee, but during the day, while the victim was working, his phone connected with an uptown cell tower near his office.

Would even a professional killer be so calm and normal after such a brutal, bloody, bashing murder?- Alan Gold, defence lawyer

At 6:44 p.m. — approximately eight minutes after Dennis Oland told police he had left his father's office and headed home to Rothesay — the victim's missing iPhone pinged off a cell tower in that community when his mistress sent him a text message.

The tower was located near the wharf where Oland told police he had stopped to see if his children were there swimming. That text was the last message the missing iPhone received.

A radio frequency engineer will testify cellular devices usually connect with the tower that provides the strongest signal, which, as a general rule, is the closest one, said Knee.

Blood, DNA on jacket

Oland told police he was wearing a navy blazer when he visited his father. But his father's secretary said he was wearing a brown sports jacket, confirmed by video surveillance of him earlier in the day.

The brown jacket was taken to the dry cleaners the following morning and still had the tag attached when it was seized from his home by police on July 14, 2011, during the execution of a search warrant.

Forensic testing found four areas of blood on the jacket and the DNA found in each of those areas matched the profile of Richard Oland, said Knee.

Oland's lawyer described those blood stains as "miniscule," and "barely visible to the human eye." By contrast, the crime scene was extremely bloody with spatter radiating 360 degrees around Richard Oland's body for a considerable distance, said Gold, putting a photo montage of the crime scene and the jacket on large screen for the courtroom.

"The Crown has to convince you that jacket was worn by a killer doing that bludgeoning, creating that scene, and that's how [the] jacket looked afterward," he told the judge.

There was no evidence of any cleanup at the scene, yet no blood was found on Oland's shirt, pants, shoes, or in his car or on the cellphone he used to call his wife after he left the office, said Gold.

He noted the forensic testing cannot age the bloodstains on the jacket or indicate how they originated. They could have predated the murder, he argued, suggesting they were the result of "innocent transfer."

Having the jacket dry cleaned was consistent with Oland needing clothing for his father's upcoming visitation and funeral, Gold said.

No bloodstains were pointed out to the dry cleaners, none were noticed and no bloodstain remover was used. The jacket still had the dry cleaning tag attached to it when it was seized by police and the receipt was nearby, he said, suggesting that was inconsistent with Oland being the killer.

Case is circumstantial 'jigsaw puzzle'

He argued the Crown's case is a circumstantial one, which he compared to a jigsaw puzzle

"With circumstantial evidence all the pieces have to fit the Crown's puzzle and not another, reasonable puzzle," he said. "It's not whether you can see a picture or think you know what the puzzle will show once some of the pieces are put together, it's that all the pieces fit."

He showed the court security video footage of Oland and his wife shopping in Rothesay and chatting with his aunt — "what appears to be casual, good-natured banter" with the victim's sister — around 7:40 p.m., just an hour after the murder, according to the Crown's theory.

"Would even a professional killer be so calm and normal after such a brutal, bloody, bashing murder?" Gold asked.

In addition, two witnesses told police they heard thumping noises coming from the victim's office around 8 p.m. — when Oland was about a 20-minute drive away. 

"Could these sounds have been anything other than the horrible beating of Richard Oland?"

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The legal burden of proof is on the Crown to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, Gold stressed.

"It is only through a rigorous application of the burden of proof and the presumption of innocence that the proper questions can be identified and answered without risking a miscarriage of justice."

The court heard from the Crown's first witness, the victim's secretary, Maureen Adamson, who discovered his body in his second-storey office on Canterbury Street.

She described being struck by a "vile odour" and seeing legs splayed on the floor before she rushed back out to get help.

The trial is scheduled to resume Thursday at 9:30 a.m. AT with continued testimony from Adamson.

Justice Terrence Morrison is presiding over the new trial without a jury after he dismissed the 16 jurors chosen for the initial retrial on Tuesday over concerns the jury selection was tainted.

After jury selection last month, it was discovered that a Saint John police officer who sat with the Crown during jury selection had screened potential jurors using a police force database that shows any interactions people have had with city police.

That could be seen as "juror shopping," Oland's legal team argued, and call into question the jury's eventual verdict.

Morrison agreed and granted the defence's request for a mistrial.

The retrial is scheduled to last four months.