Garland trial hears final arguments
Defence lawyer says there is no evidence linking suspect to triple murder
There is no evidence to link triplemurder suspect Douglas Garland to the crime, his lawyer said Monday, in urging a Calgary jury to find he didn’t kill a city couple and their young grandchild.
Defence counsel Kim Ross, in his final submissions to the 13-member jury, said without that link, they could disregard evidence found on Garland’s Airdrie farm the Crown says shows he is guilty of the slayings of Alvin and Kathy Liknes, and their five-year-old grandson, Nathan O’Brien.
“What happened on the farm, that does not prove to you that Douglas Garland caused the deaths of Alvin Liknes, Kathy Liknes and Nathan O’Brien,” Ross said.
The lawyer said despite a violent crime scene at the Liknes home, in which the blood of all three victims was found, there was no evidence which placed Garland there.
“They cannot forensically, or scientifically put Douglas Garland in that address,” he said of the Likneses’ 38A Avenue S.W. home.
Ross said the theory of the Crown, that the trio was kidnapped from the residence and taken to the Garland property and then killed, wasn’t supported by the evidence. “It’s just not what happened.” But Crown prosecutor Shane Parker said Garland carried out a meticulously planned kidnapping of the Likneses, adding Nathan to his plot when he found the boy in the home, before killing them on the farm he shared with his elderly parents.
Parker, in his final submissions before the Court of Queen’s Bench jury, outlined the evidence he says shows Garland is guilty of three counts of first-degree murder.
Parker took jurors through months of computer searches found on a hard drive hidden in the basement rafters of the farmhouse.
On the hard drive police found disturbing images of women in adult diapers, many of them bound, and dismembered female bodies.
Parker said aerial photographs of the Garland property taken the morning after the victims disappeared from the grandparents’ Calgary home show the two adults, face down in the grass, clad only in adult diapers.
“This is as close as you get, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to an autopsy photo in this case.”
The aerial photographs, discovered by fluke months after the killings, were taken the morning after the three victims disappeared.
Parker said Garland went from “fantasy to reality” in carrying out his deadly plot.
Garland, 57, is charged with murder in the June 30, 2014, disappearance of Alvin, 66, and Kathy, 53, and Nathan.
The trio was discovered missing that morning by Nathan’s mom, Jennifer, who returned to her parents’ home after leaving the boy the night before for a sleepover.
Their bodies have never been found.
Parker suggested that’s because Garland dissected his victims before cremating them in a burn barrel on his farm.
He said a small piece of charred remains found in the barrel was Alvin’s, while Kathy’s DNA was found on fragments of cloth discovered nearby.
Along with the bodies, the aerial photos show the burn barrel smoking, Parker said.
The prosecutor added Garland’s behaviour the morning of his arrest two weeks after the trio went missing was further proof of his guilt.
Garland was arrested by police monitoring his movements trying to get back onto the farm.
“Garland was caught running and crawling through grass and trees ... determined to get back on the farm.”
Parker said while the prosecution’s case is circumstantial, it’s overwhelming.
Jurors will return to court Wednesday when Justice David Gates gives them final instructions on the law before they begin deliberations.