Grim details revealed by witnesses raise frightening questions about plans of man who went on to kill 22 people in Nova Scotia,
Edited documents reveal details of RCMP probe, testimony of witnesses
When the gunman in last month’s mass shooting in Nova Scotia bought $800 worth of gas a few weeks before the massacre, those who knew he’d done so didn’t think much of it … until the night the neighbourhood went up in flames. Those who knew Gabriel Wortman, who took 22 lives and left a trail of destruction across several small communities in the province, said he was a “psychopath,” “paranoid” and “controlling,” but also “a millionaire and very smart.”
He talked about the ways he knew to get rid of a body and claimed he kept the chemicals to do so in barrels under the deck of his house in Portapique, N.S.
A heavily redacted document unsealed by the courts Tuesday revealed these details and also raised questions about the state of mind of the man who would go on to commit one of the worst mass murders in Canadian history.
The document, used by the RCMP to obtain a search warrant in the days following the shootings, offers disturbing witness descriptions of the shooter.
The gunman talked about the different ways he could get rid of bodies, either through burning or chemical means, one witness told the RCMP.
The witness said the shooter talked about using lime and muriatic acid to get rid of bodies and kept barrels of each under the deck of his Portapique property. U.S. serial killer John Wayne Gacy was known to have used lime and muriatic acid to help dispose of some of the bodies of his victims in the late 1970s.
Three witnesses interviewed by RCMP commented that the shooter had bought a large quantity of gas in the weeks leading up to the massacre. On the night of the murders, he used gasoline to help set fire to his cottage, his warehouse and his cars. The next morning, he also burned down another house in Wentworth, N.S., after killing its occupants.
The shooter’s longtime girlfriend — who had been having drinks with the gunman before he assaulted her the night the massacre began — told police he had guns “like the military people have” and that he had put all of them on the front seat of his car. According to police documents, she told them he had approximately five guns, two of which were handguns, one of which was a military firearm — the details of which were redacted — and two more unnamed weapons. Those details were also redacted in the RCMP document.
The girlfriend, whose name was redacted throughout, managed to escape that evening and hid in the woods until she was found by police the following morning. The report also indicated the police believe the shooter obtained parts of his uniform from a retired RCMP member.
That is just some of the information brought to light in the document after Nova Scotia provincial court Judge Laurel Halfpenny MacQuarrie released the first of a series of information-to-obtain (ITO) documents and production orders that were filed by the RCMP after the shootings.
An ITO document is the rationale submitted by police to a judge in asking for a warrant. A production order compels a person or organization to produce documents and records to police.
Lawyer David Coles, on behalf of a consortium of media organizations, requested the unsealing of the five ITOs and two production orders. Police have since filed10 similar documents with the provincial courts.
In the ITO, dated April 24, Sgt. Angela Hawryluk of the RCMP stated that police would be searching Wortman’s Portapique properties for, among other things, human remains.
“It was not just a search warrant. It was a search warrant and an assistance order,” said Peter German, a retired RCMP deputy commissioner. “And the assistance order requested the judge’s approval to perform excavations on the property.
“That combined with the fact that the police are seeking the assistance of an anthropologist leads me to believe that they are following up on the comments that he made to witnesses that he knows how to dispose of bodies. And they are being careful to ensure that there are no bodies buried on the property.”
An initial warrant had been filed to search the premises on April 20. The April 24 document sought to extend the term of that first warrant to accommodate the anthropologist, who would be travelling from Ontario.
The ITO also raised questions about Wortman’s state of mind in the days before the massacre.
Various witnesses who knew the shooter told police he was: “a millionaire and very smart,” “cheated, was a psychopath and abused (redacted).” They also said he was “controlling and paranoid,” “paranoid about the pandemic,” and “had a mental breakdown.”
The girlfriend said though he was known to collect firearms, decommissioned police cars and role-play in a Mountie uniform, he “wasn’t a police officer wannabe and didn’t like police officers and thought he was better than them.”
“There definitely are red flags that were there,” German said. “People knew things about him, but there’s no indication that those red flags reached the ears of the police.”
One witness told police that on April 18, he drove past the gunman’s house, which was on fire, when an RCMP vehicle pulled up beside his car and as he rolled down the window to talk to what he presumed was a police officer, he was shot.
The witness drove away and came across the first officer on the scene. He told the officer he’d been shot, and said that “there is a police car down there or a car that looks like a police car” that was shooting at them.
Given that witness evidence, it is not clear why police did not alert the public to the fact the killer was driving a replica police car until the next morning. Questions have also been raised about the RCMP’s failure to issue a provincewide emergency alert once the force knew a killer was on the loose.