Family of Canada Day plotter convinced he was entrapped
The family of “terrorist” John Nuttall awaits Friday’s verdict on the Canada Day bomb-plot sting by preparing for his release, hoping he will come home.
Found guilty last year of planting inert pressure-cooker explo- sive devices on the legislature lawn, primed to detonate during 2013 national day celebrations, the 41-year-old and his partner Amanda Korody could be set free if the B.C. Supreme Court rules the sophisticated RCMP operation that snared them was an abuse of process.
Sitting in the diner of Paul’s Motor Inn in Victoria, Nuttall’s mom, grandmother, stepfather and stepbrother are convinced it was entrapment.
“We still pretty much remained a cohesive family concerned about each other’s welfare,” stepdad David Taggart said with a grin.
“We split up almost 23 years ago,” mom Maureen Smith noted, “but David has been really generous giving me money to send to John and some to Anna (Korody).”
The family insisted the 41-yearold Nuttall is a victim of his childish naiveté. “He’s immature,” his mother said. “He’s like a nineyear-old emotionally.”
She met his biological dad, Glen Nuttall, in 1969 and John was born in 1974. When they split, John originally lived with his biological dad. Nuttall, though, did not fit in with his dad’s new second family and, at 11, he moved in with his mother, who was working as a marketing secretary with the Vancouver Symphony.
The only thing I disapproved of, was when he hit that guy over the head. … But that was because he was on cocaine.
“We were always going on an adventure,” she remembered. “We would go camping, go to Stanley Park, go biking and stuff like that. Weekend trips. He was very musical. A friend from California bought him a set of Ludwig drums, then he decided he’d rather do guitar. He’s very talented. He’s an artist like you wouldn’t believe.”
But Nuttall had trouble adjusting.
“He wasn’t used to a big city and freaked out,” Smith said. “He felt victimized actually, other kids bullied him because he was so shy, and an easy target. It was awful.”
She took him for therapy at the University of B.C.; it didn’t help.
LATE ENTRY IN NUTTALL’S LIFE
Stepdad Taggart came into Smith’s life when Nuttall was 15.
“I was too immature, caught up in my own thing,” Taggart conceded. “He was a young fellow with a strong will and unfortunately I wasn’t mature enough to be able to give him what he needed.”
Taggart once had a contracting firm and employed Nuttall: “He was inventive and a great talker, a musician and throughout the years he developed a very close relationship with his brother and his sister. Musically, he inspired his brother Adam to play guitar.”
A six-foot-four mixed martial arts practitioner who looks a lot like his stepbrother, Adam nodded enthusiastically.
“My brother was amazing,” he said. “He was always so giving to me, always nurturing, always telling me to do the right thing. I grew up in a skate-park and I’ve always got in a little bit of trouble like a lot of young boys do. But he was always there to help guide me, be real with me, he would never lie to me.”
Step-dad Taggart recalled his last encounter with Nuttall, who was “standing on Douglas Street here at seven o’clock in the morning with his electric guitar dripping with sweat because he was in withdrawal.
“I gave him $40 cash, gave him a hug and he took off for Vancouver.”
Taggart, too, is the product of being knocked around as a kid; he was victimized in a foster home and became a heroin addict for seven years.
“A functioning addict,” he insisted, “but an addict nonetheless. So I can empathize with John in many ways.”
After Nuttall’s arrest, Taggart boasted of educating himself about Islam. But his learning manifests itself in an incendiary denunciation of the faith, blasphemous descriptions of The Prophet and use of the pejorative “Mohammedans,” to refer to Muslims.
Taggart was ordered off the property of a local mosque after demanding believers engage him in religious debate.
“Understand something, I’m a Bible-believing Christian,” he stressed.
“People say, ‘you’re a fundamentalist.’ Yes, I am ... There are numerous guilty parties in this, one is Islam, another is the police, the third is John and maybe the fourth is his family who didn’t give him the nurturing that he needed.”
HEROIN, HEALTH ISSUES
Nuttall was not stupid — his mom said he did very well in his college computer program.
“But he was doing heroin at the time,” she acknowledged.
In his 20s, Nuttall contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome and spent two years unable to walk.
Smith thought that made him more vulnerable.
“Just because of the way he stumbles,” she said. “He’s been an easy target for bullying, even in Victoria, cops would pull him over and think he’s drunk.”
He never fully recovered. But that didn’t make him a gentle giant.
Nuttall lived on the street and had a record for violence.
“The only thing that shocked me,” Smith said, “the only thing I disapproved of, was when he hit that guy over the head. … But that was because he was on cocaine. … And then there is that one the Crown likes to say, he beat up that guy so badly the guy had to get a kidney removed … but you know why he did that, the guy was beating the hell out of this young prostitute.”
Nuttall met 31-year-old Korody, who had hitchhiked from Toronto, almost seven years ago.
“I tried to call (her parents), but they don’t want to talk to me,” his mom added.
“They figure it was John who forced her into it. It wasn’t; it was the police. John didn’t want her involved.”
FAMILY BEDROCK
Nuttall’s 92-year-old grandmother Lorene Smith is the bedrock of the family — the frail, yet feisty woman was living with Nuttall and Korody but moved out shortly after the start of the undercover operation.
“John has kept in touch with me at least every week, most times twice a week,” she said.
“He has never been anything but a very caring, sweet, loving individual. He loves Anna, his little darling. They love each other as much today as they loved each other six years ago.”
Smith’s life, too, has been a gravel road.
Her parents died when she was 10 and she was reared on a relative’s farm in Alberta with little schooling until the age of 16, when she moved to Calgary to join William Aberhart’s Bible crusade.
She moved to B.C. in the 1930s and made a good living as a waitress, she said, before moving back to Calgary in 1939 where she attended business school and landed a job with an insurance company.
Married in 1946, Lorene had a son and five years later, Maureen. She is estranged from her son.
These days her world revolves around Nuttall.
“I only live on a pension, but I say to John I will see to it I always be able to send you a few dollars every week so you can buy something, a little bit extra, to keep you healthy,” his granny said. Nuttall’s arrest devastated her. “It’s just so sad, sad, and seemingly unnecessary and terrible,” she said, “the best years of their life taken from them.”
“And they are going to be damaged,” his mom added.
“I actually think this could prove to be good for them,” his stepdad contributed. “John is now, one thing I know about him being in jail, he’s lean, clean and healthy. Amanda, too. Getting the medical attention they need and time to think things through.”
“My family, like we are all going to support John and Amanda in any way we can,” his mom said. “But he doesn’t want to come here (to Victoria) because he thinks everyone knows who he is.”
“He’s afraid,” his stepdad said, “and because he’s afraid he won’t come here and stay with granny and have the rest of us for support. I don’t believe he is a threat. I believe he has learned from this circumstance, but again, we haven’t had a private conversation with him.
“We need to speak privately with him,” he continued. “We don’t know what’s truly in John’s mind. We don’t know his present view on Islam. I kind of suspect he’s had a belly full of it now.”
“They’re afraid to even mention if they stop,” mom explained. “He doesn’t want anyone to know. … They cut your head off (for apostasy).”
“What it is basically is a fear of being retaliated against in jail by other fundamentalist Muslims,” stepdad Taggart said. “It’s very real. The best thing to say is say nothing.”
“Oh!” granny exclaimed, clapping her hands together, “we just can’t wait to put our arms around him and hug him and kiss him and we just won’t want to let him go.”