Welcome to the first Macabre Monday where we take a break from horror movies and horror news and jump into real life horror. I'm a huge true crime buff and always wanted to try and write some of my own. So you are subjected to my attempt:
This is a story of selfish revenge. Revenge
taken out in the most disgusting, life destroying kind of way. Revenge taken
out by a man obsessed with what he couldn’t have. A man who let vengeance
envelop his whole being, and let nothing get in his way – including an innocent
5 year old boy.
June 29th, 2014 is the last day
that Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents, Alvin and Kathy Liknes were seen
alive. Alvin and Kathy were moving soon and so the family held an estate sale.
About 30 people filtered in and out all day, shopping and chatting. In the
evening the family packed up, ordered Chinese food, and then sat down to enjoy a
movie. After the movie ended, Nathan’s Mom Jennifer took her youngest son, and
Nathan’s brother home, leaving Nathan with his grandparents for a sleepover.
The last time she saw him, he was curled up in bed beside Kathy, fast asleep.
At 10am on June 30th, Jennifer
returned to her parents home to pick up Nathan, but instead found what began a
province-wide search for Nathan, Alvin, and Kathy. “Throughout the whole house
it was just like a bloody scene,” Jennifer testified. “There were pools of
blood on the side of the bed and on the wall and all throughout the kitchen.”
Jennifer called the police and an Amber alert was issued immediately:
AMBER Alert issued for missing
five-year-old from Calgary.
Calgary police are investigating the
disappearance of a five-year-old child and his grandparents from a home in the
southwest and issued an AMBER alert on Monday afternoon.
Police were called to a home on the 100
block of 38A Avenue SW at about 10:00am Monday morning by a mother who went to the home
to pick up her son, who was staying with his grandparents.
The three were not at the residence, and
have not been located despite efforts by the police.
Investigators say evidence at the scene
suggests their disappearance may be suspicious.
Detective Lee Treit took swift charge of
the investigation, that was dubbed Operation Amber. But this Amber Alert broke a
horrible record. It became the longest-running Amber Alert in Alberta’s
history.
An entire province held their breath as
police began to search. Newspapers showed Nathan’s young face and the kind
faces of Alvin and Kathy. The news reporters pleaded for information, and
despite the amount of blood found around the home, hope was held. What we
didn’t know at the time was that police, by the end of the first day, had a
list of six persons of interest. One was a local sex offender, the second was a
man who had shot Alvin’s daughter years ago, the third and fourth were former
disgruntled employees of Alvin’s, the fifth was a former house guest and the
sixth was Douglas Garland.
So why Douglas Garland so quickly? The
police released security camera footage to the public of a green Ford F150,
asking if anyone had information about the owner. Garland’s sister (Patti) and
brother-in-law (Allen, Alvin’s son) recognized the truck and contacted the
police. They were quick to point the finger.
Once the finger was pointed, police moved
in quickly. Garland lived on a farm near Airdrie and on July 4th the
police swept in without a warrant, in hopes of finding the trio alive. Canadian
law allows a search without a warrant under “exigent circumstances”.
Simultaneously, Garland was nabbed at a traffic stop nearby. Const. Jamie Parhar
handcuffed him and said, “he was very calm and collected.”
When officers arrived at the home of
Garland they found a burn barrel still smoldering and hope began to fade. One
detective found a duffle bag that contained handcuffs, a large knife and a
billy cub. A warrant was finally drafted and so began another search – this
time for the bodies of the trio, and the collection of evidence.
Overall 1,400 pieces of evidence was taken,
but only 89 were presented in court and around 250 – 300 police officers were
involved. One officer alone spent 10 months sifting through the ashes found on
the Garland farm. Two weeks after the trio was reported missing, Douglas
Garland, 57 years old, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
So who was Garland and why had this
happened?
Douglas Garland, who allegedly suffers from
ADD, attended medical school in Alberta when he was younger for one year before
suffering a breakdown. Later on he started to work for Alvin Liknes, but when
that business faltered, the working relationship ended. Those in the know say
that it didn’t end on a bad note. According to Alvin’s son Allen, Alvin and
Garland hadn’t spoken in about 7 years. The last time they even saw each other
was Thanksgiving the year previous, but neither had spoken.
Many describe Garland as a loner, including
his sister Patti. His parents agreed, Doreen Garland, his mother, also
described her son as intelligent, handy and well read.
So why did this happen? Allegedly, Garland and
Alvin disagreed over a failed patent for an oilfield pump over a decade ago.
And although Alvin never made any money from it, he did make money from his
other business ventures with his wife Kathy. Garland saw this happening. and it
angered him. Perhaps he felt he was entitled to the same kind of success. He
also developed an unhealthy fascination with Kathy, and when Garland found out
that Kathy and Alvin were going to be leaving Calgary, he decided to act.
Although we currently do not know exactly
the events that happened on July 29th, and the days following,
investigators put together a close enough picture by digging through the
mountains of evidence.
The keypad lock to the Liknes’ home had
been disabled using a power drill, the same lock that Garland had been
researching online a few days before the kidnapping. Kathy and Alvin were most
likely struck near the floor in separate bedrooms in their Calgary home based
on bloodstain pattern analyst. The three bodies were then put into the back of
Garland’s truck, alive. Evidence was found in two outbuildings on Garland’s
property, in and around the burn barrel, and in the basement of Garland’s parents
home. There were also two meat hooks, a large hacksaw, and an array of knives
found. They also found a child sized pair of handcuffs and 50 adult diapers.
DNA was found on rubber boots, a hacksaw, and one meat hook. Alvin’s DNA was
found on a charred fragment inside the burn barrel, and Kathy’s DNA was found on
small pieces of cloth near the incinerator. Inside the ashes that the officer
spent 10 months looking through, he found bones, a small tooth and a pair of
glasses.
A neighbour of Garland’s says he awoke early
between 2am and 3am on July 2nd to see a light on his neighbor’s
greenhouse and when he awoke properly in the morning he saw a large fire
burning on the acreage.
In the basement joists of Garland’s home,
they found a hidden hard drive that contained perhaps the most shocking
evidence. Photographs of dead and dismembered bodies, women
wearing adult diapers, many bound with handcuffs and restraints, documents
about killing and photos of Kathy Liknes. In Garland’s search history was more
damning evidence including "most painful torture", "autopsy scalpel blades", "amputation", "lack of oxygen brain damage in minutes" and "what happens to the
brain without oxygen." There were also manuals found about becoming an
“effective assassin.”
Garland spent weeks researching this
horrific kidnapping and murder. And until he speaks, if he ever does, we can only
imagine in horror the kind of terrible things Alvin, Kathy, and young Nathan
went through.
The final nails in Garland’s coffin were
aerial photographs captured by an aerial surveying company doing work for the
City of Aidrie. The photos show two adults face down in the grass of the farm
wearing what are believed to be adult diapers, and nearby a smaller figure,
believed to be Nathan.
Over the past four weeks Garland has been
on trial, and on February 16th a jury found Garland guilty of three
counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Nathan O’Brien, Alvin and Kathy
Liknes. In court, it was reported that Garland was agitated throughout the trial.
The jury listened and saw all of the disturbing evidence listed above, and much
more. Within 8 ½ hours of debate, and although the bodies of the trio were
never found, the jury came to their verdict of guilty.
Garland is now facing a life sentence with
no chance of parole for 75 years. Although, to be realistic, Garland won’t see
75 years. He’ll be long dead by then, at an impossible 132 years old. He is tied, with only two other murderers,
for the longest time in prison in Canada without a chance of parole.
Reported over this past weekend, after
being sentenced this past Friday and put in jail, Garland was assaulted by
several other inmates. At around 10:30pm EMS was called to the Calgary Remand
Center to attend to a 57-year-old man with serious injuries. He was transported
to hospital in stable condition with “soft-tissue injuries”. Garland was moved
back to the Remand Center on Saturday.
The public now feel relieved, a psychopath
bent on revenge, no matter the logic or the cost of life, has been locked away
forever. But the family of the trio must now begin to deal with the loss of
three incredibly important people. They have to grieve. The Crown Prosecutor,
Shane Parker, said last week of the family, “I
think they’re numb; they’re still processing”. Garland and his farm of horrors will forever be a scary story we bring up over the years. The family
will forever feel that empty space and wonder exactly what Nathan could’ve
grown up to be. A young boy who had nothing to do with this one-sided grudge. A
young boy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, whose
life has been violently cut short. And Alvin and Kathy – they were moving to
Edmonton to retire and spend a lot of their time in Mexico. They still had so
much more life to live and love to give. But a disturbed man took that all way.
This is a story of revenge. But more
importantly it is a story of a mad, egotistical man, who felt it was his right
to kill a lovely couple over something that he believed he was owed. And most
importantly, this is a story of three beautiful lives drastically and violently
cut short.
