No parole for triple murderer for 75 years

CALGARY — Triple murderer Douglas Garland will spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime the judge says was carried out with meticulous planning and precision.

Justice David Gates on Friday imposed a sentence on Garland that prevents the 57-year-old from seeking parole for at least 75 years from the time of his arrest, meaning he would have to live to the age of 129.

Gates said Garland’s degree of moral blameworthiness in the deaths of Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their grandson Nathan O’Brien in June 2014 is very high.

“It’s hard to imagine a more cunning, cruel or horrific set of circumstances,” Gates told the courtroom, which earlier heard impact statements from the victims’ family members.

Garland simply said “no” when asked if he wanted to address the court.

Gates said he accepted the Crown’s theory that the Likneses and five-year-old Nathan were still alive after Garland attacked them at the couple’s Calgary home. He then took them in the back of his pickup truck to his farm, where he killed and dismembered them and burned their bodies.

The judge said the usual automatic life sentence with a minimum of 25 years before parole eligibility needed to be increased because of aggravating factors that included Nathan’s young age and Garland not expressing remorse or regret.

“Nathan was in so many ways an accidental victim,” Gates said.

A jury convicted Garland of three counts of first-degree murder on Thursday after hearing four weeks of testimony that included disturbing descriptions of what the judge called “tools of his gruesome and barbarian acts.”