The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Man, 71, charged in Kingsport woman’s death
RCMP in Kings County have charged a 71-year-old Kingsport man with seconddegree murder in the death of a 72-year-old woman on the weekend.
Cpl. Chris Marshal said the man went to the RCMP office in New Minas Sunday. Once there, he reported the woman’s death in a home on Pleasant Street in Kingsport and surrendered himself. He was arrested and police went to the home, where they found the woman’s body.
Douglas Andrew Smith, 71, appeared in Kentville provincial court Monday for arraignment. He will remain in custody and return to court June 2.
Court documents identified the victim as Iris Dodd. Marshall wouldn’t comment on her relationship to Smith.
Kingsport is a quiet community of about 100 homes, seasonal cottages and a couple of farms on the shore of the Minas Basin east of Canning. On Tuesday morning, neighbours were walking children, working in their gardens and hauling large items curbside for spring cleanup garbage collection. Mourning doves, song birds and cows drowned out any traffic noise from the occasional vehicle.
Some people were just hearing the news of Dodd’s death after the RCMP issued a release Tuesday morning. Others had known since police knocked on their doors Sunday and Monday while investigating
But no one had much they could share about Smith and Dodd, who moved into the rental home between four and six years ago, depending on who you talk to. A few described them as husband and wife, but at least one didn’t even know a woman lived in the house until police were canvassing the neighbourhood, and others had never seen her. Most had only spoken to Smith once or twice.
Neighbours – none of whom wanted to be identified — described the pair as reclusive and quiet. Smith was seldom seen outside, and Dodd never. The grass in the yard would sometimes grow a couple feet high before it was cut. In winter, the van mostly left the yard only when any snowfall had melted or was packed down to the point that it could be driven over, because it never seemed to be shoveled out.
“I don’t know how they got groceries,” one neighbour said.
“There were things that were… different,” he said, trying to find the right word. “Not criminally, it was just odd. He never did anything to make you think something bad was going to happen.”
The neighbour said all the blinds on the house were always closed.
On Monday that was still the case at the small home that looked like it has been added on to through renovations. Both doors and all of the more than a dozen windows had curtains, blinds or some other kind of covering, and sometimes two. There was a deck on the back of the house with no furniture, barbecue or any other sign that it was ever used. Some wildflowers dotted the front lawn, with a large rhododendron near the front ditch.
Along the edge of the driveway was a small plastic garbage bin with a bag of mulch on it and broken-open bags of topsoil in front. Grass grew out of one of the bags, which appeared to have been there for some time. The outside light above the front porch was on.
Like Smith and Dodd, the home was isolated from immediate neighbours. A seasonal cottage was across the street. A public park was on one side and the large back yard of a neighbour on the other, meaning the neighbour’s home was a fair distance away. A church was the only other building nearby on that block of Pleasant Street, but Smith and Dodd’s home was visible from several homes on nearby streets.
Another neighbour said the public park resulted in the only interaction he had ever had with Smith: when it was being prepared in 2019, the neighbour said, Smith said that he didn’t want it to be fixed up because he didn’t want people there.
No one in the neighbourhood knew anything about Smith and Dodd’s past, where they came from, if they are originally from Nova Scotia or if they have any family.
“I never saw anyone else there,” said the first neighbour.
Dodd was ill, some neighbours say, and just came home from hospital last week.
Police arrived shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday morning and left Monday afternoon.
Another neighbour was out for a walk when he saw one RCMP car parked on the road Sunday morning, and another arrived and backed into the driveway.
“Next thing you know, she got out of the car and disappeared into the house,” he said. “As she was going in I gave her a (wave) and kept walking, and said good day to the other guy, and then came (home).”
He said a neighbour called him Tuesday morning to say what had happened.
“I don’t even have an idea who they are,” he said, adding that he didn’t even know they have been there for at least five years.
Another woman said she didn’t have many dealings with Smith, but when she did “he was a real gentleman.”
The woman said when hurricane Dorian knocked out power to the community for several days in 2019, Smith came to the community centre for coffee or tea, and at the end of the week left $20 for the centre as a thank you. She said he came across as a “nice man.”
But outside those and a couple other times such as community emails, she had no contact with Smith.
“As a small community, you feel responsible for the people in the community, but at the same time you have to recognize their privacy, and we respected that.”
Marshall said police got search warrants for the home, a hotel, and the van in which the man drove to the office.
He said he didn’t know how the hotel is involved in the investigation.