Garland jury not shown shots of Ontario victims
Photos of girls killed by Paul Bernardo on hard drive found in accused’s farmhouse
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
As disturbing as some of the images shown jurors in the Douglas Garland triple-murder trial were, they could have been worse.
According to Crown prosecutor Shane Parker, images from a hard drive found hidden at the Airdrie farm Garland shared with his elderly parents had to be vetted to remove certain horrific ones.
Parker made the comments during a media application to obtain pixelated copies of aerial photographs which appear to show the bodies of the three victims Garland is accused of slaying.
Two figures in the photos, taken by an aerial surveying company the day after Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their five-year-old grandson, Nathan O’Brien disappeared from the couple’s southwest Calgary home, appear to show the Likenses’ bodies, clad only in adult diapers, face-down on Garland’s property.
A third figure, which isn’t as clear, is, in the Crown’s theory, the body of little Nathan.
The three went missing June 30, 2014, and the pictures were taken on the morning of July 1, 2014.
Two additional photos taken July 2, show the figures were no longer present.
While Postmedia applied for the photographs, Calgary Sun editorin-chief Jose Rodriguez said there was no intention to publish them, but the application was made on principle.
While opposing the application, Parker told Justice David Gates that while jurors were shown graphic images of dead and dismembered bodies found on the hard drive, other photos were edited out of the evidence.
“You’ve also heard other evidence in other voir dires in this case,” Parker said of pre-trial motions where exhibits were discussed.
“You’ve heard of the collection of photos, like those of (Leslie) Mahaffy and (Kristen) French from the (Paul) Bernardo case and the supposed autopsy of Amanda Todd, which has been vetted out in this case from the jury seeing it,” Parker said.
“Photos of Mahaffy and French were vetted out of (the hard drive) because there’s an appetite for gore. “Don’t add to the collection.” Bernardo and his then-wife, Karla Homolka, kidnapped Mahaffy in 1991, and French in 1992, in southern Ontario before they were murdered.
Bernardo was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, but Homolka, as part of a plea bargain to testify against her husband, was sentenced to 12 years on two counts of manslaughter.
Todd committed suicide in October 2012, in Port Coquitlam, B.C.
Her death came after she posted a haunting video on YouTube in which she used flash cards to explain how she had been relentlessly cyber-bullied.
Parker said that while he wasn’t concerned with the mainstream media getting ahold of the aerial shots, he was worried what social media bloggers might do if they were to obtain them.
“Social media is everywhere,” Parker told Gates, who declined to release the images even in an edited form.
“They consider themselves, in a definition, media,” the prosecutor said of unchecked bloggers.
“But they’re media without limits or bounds. They have no editorial boards, no code of ethics. It is a wild west frontier world.
“And, of course, once something goes on the Internet, it never goes away.”
Jurors are now deliberating the fate of Garland, 57, on three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Alvin, 66, Kathy, 53, and Nathan.