RCMP officer who considered N.S. gunman a contact has no memory of threats complaints

An RCMP officer who visited the Nova Scotia mass shooter about 16 times, years before the mass shooting, says he was never asked to officially investigate the gunman in "any way," even after reports of illegal firearms.

Const. Greg Wiley gave evidence Tuesday at the Mass Casualty Commission leading the inquiry into the April 18-19, 2020, mass shooting in which 22 people were killed across the province. Proceedings this week are virtual, and Wiley was testifying via a closed video link to media, lawyers and commissioners located in Halifax. The video was not webcast.

• CBC's full coverage of the inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass casualty

Wiley previously spoke to RCMP officials shortly after the 2020 murders and with commission investigators last June. He is no longer based in Nova Scotia, and has said he was shocked to find out the gunman, Gabriel Wortman, was the same man he'd visited in Portapique, N.S., for tips on local crime.

"I know in retrospect as everyone looks at this and sees what he's done, they probably think I'm out of my mind. But at the time, the individual that I was dealing with was level-headed, articulate, well-spoken, mannerly, seemed pro-police," Wiley said Tuesday.

First met after tool theft

Under questions from commission counsel and lawyers for victims' families Tuesday, Wiley said he had developed a professional relationship with the gunman after responding to a break-in at his garage where tools were stolen around 2007 or 2008 when Wiley was working out of the Bible Hill detachment.

Wiley said Wortman himself eventually passed along the name of the person he suspected stole his tools — which turned out to be correct.

"He did not have a sense of frontier justice where he was going to go after the guy himself: he phoned me," Wiley said.

"Somebody who put his case in the hands of the police officer and did it the right way, was helpful, seemed to have an ear to the ground in the community, he seemed like a good person to have as a community contact."

Wiley previously said he learned the value of community contacts at the RCMP Depot in Saskatchewan, and on Tuesday said he had five other similar contacts besides Wortman while policing out of Bible Hill.

These contacts are not official sources, Wiley said, so he wouldn't have kept a log of their names in any police system or taken notes on visits with them unless they passed along something relevant to a case. Instead, contacts might point an officer in the right direction. Wiley said he wouldn't take their "word as gospel" either.

"And isn't it ironic how things have turned out?" said Wiley.

The Mountie estimated he dropped in to visit the gunman about 16 times over the years, often sitting and chatting together having a soda in the cottage living room, or just standing in the driveway. He said some of his Portapique visits would last an hour or more if he wasn't responding to other calls, but on Tuesday Wiley said generally they were around 10 to 20 minutes or less, while some were just a few minutes.

Wiley said Tuesday the amount of time he spent with the gunman was not as great as "people think" and he was never a personal friend.

"Any time I ever stopped at his house in Portapique I was in uniform, in a marked police vehicle, and I was on the clock," Wiley said.

He clarified Tuesday that all of these visits would have been between 2008 and 2011 before he was transferred to the Parrsboro area in neighbouring Cumberland County. Wiley said he last saw the gunman on a Colchester County wooded trail in 2017 when Wortman drove by him on an ATV, and before that had not seen him in "years, probably."

The gunman never seemed overly interested in his RCMP uniform or car, Wiley said, adding he would never have guessed the same man who hosted him in his large Portapique cottage would eventually create a mock RCMP cruiser he drove through communities killing strangers, neighbours and acquaintances.

Halifax police call after threat to parents 

A couple years after Wiley struck up a connection with the gunman, a Halifax Regional Police officer said he reached out to Wiley in June 2010 about a tip that Wortman had threatened to kill his parents in New Brunswick.

Cordell Poirier, a retired Halifax Regional Police officer of 35 years, said in a commission interview that an RCMP officer from Moncton, N.B., called to tell him about the alleged threat. The gunman's father also had reported that his son was an alcoholic with "several long-barrel weapons." The gunman never had a firearms licence.

Poirier investigated but decided there weren't grounds for a search warrant at the gunman's Dartmouth home.

The Halifax officer said he then spoke with Wiley over the phone about the complaint. Wiley "told me that he was a good friend" of the gunman's, according to Poirier, and would try to find out if Wortman indeed had weapons at his Portapique cottage.

Poirier said he never heard back from Wiley, and closed the file on his end.

On Tuesday, Wiley echoed his earlier statements and said he had no memory of dealing with Poirier.

"I'm not going to call the guy a liar or anything but I don't have any recollection of speaking with him about that," Wiley said, but added later he "contested" Poirier's comments since Wiley would "never" have called the gunman a friend.

While Wiley has told the commission he didn't recall hearing from another officer about a threats complaint, didn't recognize Poirier's name, and didn't remember ever asking Wortman about guns, he said Tuesday that he could have and just didn't remember.

When asked where a complaint of uttering threats and suspicion of illegal firearms would fall on a spectrum of concerning behaviour, Wiley said threats tied to firearms would be higher — but he'd never been dispatched to anything like that around the gunman's Portapique cottage.

"No one wishes they could remember clearly having spoken with Sgt. Poirier more than me. It makes me uncomfortable," Wiley said Tuesday.

He added that if the information was a "red alert" that needed immediate attention, Wiley would assume Poirier's management would have reached out to his RCMP management and coordinated a "more formal" approach. But Wiley said based on Poirier's report, it doesn't seem like that was the case because there wasn't enough information for a search warrant.

'Never officially tasked'

"To the best of my recollection I was never officially tasked to investigate the perpetrator … in any way, shape or form with him as a suspect," Wiley said Tuesday.

He added that if he did indeed follow up with Wortman about any firearms, that would have been done in person when Wiley had a day shift over a weekend when the gunman was in Portapique, which only happened once a month.

On top of that, Wiley said his priority on a weekend shift would be incoming calls, Portapique was a long drive from Bible Hill, and their detachment was short-staffed, so to see the gunman at all "the stars have to align for you," Wiley said Tuesday.

Wiley did recall talking with the gunman about some type of "disagreement" he had about a will or property with his family in New Brunswick, "but he wasn't over the top about it." The situation seemed like a typical thing Wiley himself experienced growing up on a farm in Ontario, he said.

Wiley said he didn't see any gun rack or weapons at the cottage, but never searched the home.

On Tuesday, Wiley said to do this he would need a search warrant, requiring first-hand evidence from multiple reliable witnesses to convince a judge to sign for one.

What exactly Wiley did in 2010 to investigate the weapons and threat tip is unknown, as the RCMP files from that time have been purged as part of their regular practice. Wiley also searched for any of his notes about the gunman, but found none.

During that 2010 visit, Wortman's common-law-spouse Lisa Banfield has said Wiley asked Wortman if he had any guns. The gunman showed the Mountie an old musket and one decorative gun above a fireplace that was filled with wax. Wiley was only in the Portapique cottage for about 10 minutes and didn't seem to take an official statement from the gunman, nor did he search the home, said Banfield.

Lawyers for the victims' families, including Michael Scott of Patterson Law, have asked for Wiley to come before the inquiry.

Scott has questioned whether Wiley was the right officer to be assigned to investigate the gunman given their connection, and said he's unclear on the "appropriateness of those interactions."

On Tuesday, Scott said he had not learned anything new from Wiley's testimony.

 "There are times where what we want from a witness is new information. There are other times where the fact that they're not giving you clear answers, or they're taking a somewhat reactive posture to questioning, tells you what you need to know. And I think Const. Wiley falls into the latter category," Scott said.

A year later in May 2011, an officer safety bulletin about the gunman was sent to all police agencies in the province based on an anonymous tip given to Cpl. Greg Densmore of the Truro Police Service. 

Densmore said an unknown man had approached him while on duty and said the gunman "stated he wants to kill a cop."

Wiley doesn't recall following up on 2011 tip

According to Densmore's report, the source said Wortman had "at least one handgun" he'd take between Dartmouth and Portapique, plus "several long rifles located at his cottage" that may be stored in a "compartment located behind the flue."

"Use extreme caution when dealing with WORTMAN," the bulletin said.

Poirier recognized the name, and called the RCMP's Bible Hill detachment, where he spoke with on-duty supervisor Const. John MacMinn. MacMinn said he'd review Wiley's file on the 2010 threat to "determine what action, if any, was taken last year" and get back to Poirier.

But Poirer said that never happened, so from his perspective "that was it" and he left the case with the RCMP.

Wiley testified Tuesday that he didn't know anyone by the name MacMinn, and he did not recall seeing the 2011 bulletin.

Chief Dan Kinsella of the Halifax Regional Police recently testified before the inquiry that it was up to the RCMP to take ownership of investigating that tip because the guns were reportedly in the Portapique cottage in Mountie territory.

He said if a similar bulletin came into Halifax police, his expectation is that action would be taken "right then and there."

"It's not to go into a database to be looked at later, and hopefully somebody finds it. Whether that happens in every instance, I don't know," Kinsella said.

In his interview with police, Wiley said he didn't remember seeing the Densmore bulletin with details about Wortman wanting to kill a cop, or any conversations about it. When the commission asked about whether hearing that the gunman wanted to kill a cop was alarming, Wiley said he doesn't remember getting something "that formal."

"How I thought of him as a person was benign, so … I knew Dr. Jekyll, but I didn't know Mr. Hyde at all," Wiley said.

Any records of Wiley's or other RCMP officers' investigations into the 2011 tip, if they existed, have also been purged from the system. 

Scott has told CBC that details like the 2011 tipster referencing firearms being stored in the flue in the gunman's cottage suggest first-hand knowledge — and that's "pretty reliable information" for a warrant. 

Clear memory of Butlin case

The commission also questioned Wiley about his involvement in the case of Susie Butlin, a Tatamagouche woman who was killed by her neighbour in September 2017 after reporting him to RCMP for sexual assault and harassment.

When Butlin called the RCMP on Aug. 26, 2017, to report harassing messages from her neighbour trying to intimidate her to drop a peace bond application against him, Wiley was assigned as the lead investigator. He discussed the messages with Butlin, and determined there was no basis to lay a criminal charge. 

On Tuesday, Wiley became emotional when talking about his phone call with Butlin.

He said that Butlin read the texts she was getting from [Junior] Duggan to him over the phone, and decided they didn't meet the threshold to lay a threat charge. Wiley then told Butlin she should clearly tell Duggan she didn't want any more messages, and if he did send more, those would be reported to police as harassment.

Wiley also said he offered to phone Duggan, or stop in to see him, to emphasise that any further attempts to talk with Butlin will be viewed by the police as harassment. But Butlin declined this, Wiley said, saying it would likely "stir him up or make matters worse."

He also asked Butlin if she was worried for her safety or others at the hands of Duggan, Wiley said, and she answered a "clear no."

To those who question how Wiley can be so clear on the conversation he had with Butlin when there are major gaps in his memory around his visits to Wortman, Wiley said he's been over it again and again in his mind, wondering if he could have done more for Butlin.

"When you run it through your head, something like that, that many times — it's branded in your memory forever," Wiley said through tears.

But Wiley said he never knew a 2018 internal police review was done about how the Mounties handled Butlin's case until he saw it last week.

He said he wasn't contacted about his role in Butlin's harassment complaint, where the review noted various investigative gaps. But, Wiley said since he's now in RCMP federal police work outside Nova Scotia and not general duty, it could be that no one within the RCMP thought it was relevant to talk with him about it.

Concerns about virtual testimony

Although journalists watched Wiley's testimony and filed reports, the commission banned any sharing of his video image or voice recordings after federal justice department lawyers applied for accommodations on Wiley's behalf.

This decision, and the reasoning behind the request for accommodations, raised concerns with at least one professor and lawyers.

"I think it's outrageous that they're not sharing this video and it's entirely problematic," Christopher Schneider, a sociology professor at Brandon University in Manitoba, told CBC Tuesday.

He said by not sharing Wiley's testimony video publicly, it only hurts the RCMP's goals of reestablishing trust with Nova Scotians and Canadians. If the public can see the recording, they could have a full understanding of what changes the RCMP might make in better preparing for another mass shooting and learning from past mistakes.

Sandra McCulloch of Patterson Law said a long-standing point of contention has been that participants are not told why accommodations are being granted.

She said given Wiley's role as a person who was asked to follow up on at least one weapons complaint in 2010, and regularly met with the gunman, the perception of him not having to face the public in the same way as many other witnesses "does cast a bit of a cloud" over the commission.