'I'm not that kind of monster,' Dennis Oland testifies at his murder retrial

Dennis Oland says the notion he brutally bludgeoned his father to death is "absolutely ridiculous."

"I'm not that kind of monster," he testified Thursday at his second-degree murder retrial in Saint John.

"I'd never do that to my dad, or any person."

Oland said he did not bring a weapon or any kind of tool with him when he visited his father at his office on July 6, 2011, the night he was killed. Nor did he swing any such object at him.

He did not wear any coveralls during the visit, or wrap himself in a cloth, he said under questioning by his defence lawyer Michael Lacy.

He did not take his father's cellphone with him when he left, he said.

And he did not dispose of the missing cellphone or any weapon when he stopped at the Renforth wharf on his way home to Rothesay after visiting his father, he told the packed courtroom.

​Oland, 51, is being retried for second-degree murder after the Court of Appeal overturned his 2015 conviction, citing an error in the trial judge's instructions to the jury.

He is being retried by judge alone in Court of Queen's Bench.

Oland will be back on the stand for a third day of questioning Friday when the retrial resumes at 9:30 a.m.

Oland is the last person known to have seen his father alive when he visited him at his office on July 6, 2011, between around 5:35 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

The body of the 69-year-old multimillionaire was discovered in the office the next morning with 45 sharp-and blunt-force injuries to his head, neck and hands. No weapon was ever found and his iPhone was the only item missing from the office.

Oland acknowledged Thursday he made errors in his statement to police on the day his father's body was discovered regarding what he wore during the visit and how many times he went into his father's office.

Oland told police he was wearing a navy blazer that night, but security video and witness testimony showed he was wearing a brown sports jacket.

"What can you tell us about that?" asked his lawyer.

Oland said he had been wearing the navy blazer early in the morning of the day he was questioned by police, as supported by security video of him shopping at Kent at 8:08 a.m., but changed into a golf shirt later that morning to work on his wife's sailboat.

I was not trying to hide anything.- Dennis Oland

"I think that just because it was briefly enough that I was wearing it, that I had it in my head I must have been wearing it the day before," he said.

"​That was a mistake … The information that I gave to Const. [Stephen] Davidson, wrong."

"Were you trying to purposely mislead him?" asked Lacy.

"Absolutely not."

"Were you trying to hide the fact that you had been wearing the brown jacket when you went to visit your father?"

"I was not trying to hide anything."

The brown Hugo Boss jacket, which was taken to be dry cleaned the morning after Oland was questioned by police, was later found to have four small bloodstains on it and DNA matching his father's profile, the retrial has heard.

Oland told the court he had nothing to do with the jacket being dry cleaned. He did not drop it off, arrange for it to be dropped off, or ask anyone to do so, he said.

The dry cleaners previously testified they could not recall who had dropped off the jacket and requested next day service, but the order, which also included another sports jacket, a pair of pants and 16 dress shirts, was under the name of Oland's wife, Lisa.

Jinhee Choi, who co-owns VIP Dry Cleaners with her husband, testified Lisa paid for the items the next day, and she saw Oland waiting outside in the passenger seat of the couple's vehicle.

The defence has suggested the clothes were taken to be cleaned due to the upcoming visitations and funeral. Lacy did not directly ask Oland the question on Thursday, but Oland did say that his stepson Andru Ferguson, who was 17 at the time, tried on the dry cleaned jackets and they didn't fit him, even though they both wore size 38 or 40.

The court also saw an email Oland sent to some of his friends on the morning of July 10, seeking a navy blazer for Andru for the 2 p.m. visitation.

3 trips to father's office

Asked about his visit with his father, Oland testified he took three trips to the office, not two, as he had told police.

The first one was right after he finished work at the nearby CIBC Wood Gundy, where he was a financial adviser.

The visit wasn't planned, he said, but he had done a stock trade for his father that afternoon, so he knew he was around and he wanted to discuss some family history information he had discovered on a recent trip to England. Genealogy was an interest they shared, he said.

In addition, he wanted to pick up an old camp logbook that belonged to his uncle, Jack Connell, who was visiting from Toronto, he said. His father was supposed to scan it for Connell, but he'd had it for about a year and Connell had recently expressed "frustration" it was taking so long.

Oland said he parked his car in the same lot his father did, at the corner of Canterbury and Princess streets, and went up the stairs to his father's second-floor office, but when he got to the foyer area, he realized he had forgotten some of the genealogy information he wanted to show him at his own office.

So he went back to his car, drove the short distance back toward CIBC Wood Gundy, planning to park at the foot of Chipman Hill and take the elevator up to his office, but he realized he didn't have a pass card required to operate the elevator after business hours.

So he turned back up King Street and headed back to his father's office, deciding he could show him the documents he did have and deal with the forgotten material another time.

He parked on the west side of Canterbury Street, across from his father's office, went upstairs, spoke briefly with his father's secretary Maureen Adamson, who was leaving for the day, and visited with his father for about 45 minutes, he said.

As he drove away, at around 6:21 p.m., according to time-stamped security video, he realized he had forgotten his uncle's logbook, so he looped back around, he said. He couldn't find a parking spot on Canterbury, so he made an illegal left turn up the one-way Princess Street and took a quick right into the gravel lot there.

Oland said he went back up to the office and spent about another 10 minutes with his father. "He wanted to show me some things in the logbook." Then he headed home.

"The Crown is going to say that you had bludgeoned your father to death in his office by then," said Lacy.

"Absolutely not," said Oland.

"Did you tell [police] about going back to get the logbook?" his lawyer asked.

"Unfortunately no, I did not," he said, without elaborating.

"Were you trying to lie to the police by omitting that?"

"Not at all, no."

Not worried about debt

Oland said he did not discuss his financial situation with his father during the visit, or his father's extramarital affair — the Crown's two alleged motives.

The Crown contends Oland was "on the edge financially," his $163,000 line of credit and $27,000-limit credit card both maxed out. He had received a $16,000 advance on his pay, was overspending by about $14,000 a month, and his monthly $1,666.67 interest payment to his father had bounced the day before, the court has heard.

Oland testified he wasn't worried about his heavy debt and didn't know his cheque had come back for insufficient funds at the time of the visit.

His lawyer asked him about trips he took with his wife to Hungary and Italy, England and Florida between November 2010 and April 2011, when he racked up more than $20,000 on his Visa.

"In terms of incurring this kind of credit card debt … were you concerned about doing that?" asked Lacy.

"No," said Oland.

"Why not?"

"It was just sort of stuff that we always did. It was a continuation of that, I guess."

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Lacy questioned what Oland's financial plan was, come August 2011, when his salary advance would end.

Oland said he was working on building his "book of business" to increase his income.

"The other thing is the market always picks up that time of the year," he said.

He also expected his wife would be going back to work that fall, earning between $75,000 and $100,000, after being off for about a year because of some back and shoulder problems that required "extensive surgeries," he said.