Jurors heard more evidence Wednesday about the hundreds of items police seized from Douglas Garland’s property, including a half-empty bottle of chloroform. \u00a0Const. Ian Oxton, in his second day on the witness stand, told the three-woman, 11-man jury he also found a pair of child-sized handcuffs and about 50 adult diapers, among the pieces of evidence seized from the sprawling acreage Garland shared with his elderly parents.<\/p>\n
“I believe these to be handcuffs that we generally use to restrain children, youths and small adults,” Oxton said, holding up a pair of cuffs for the jury to view.<\/p>\n
Garland, 56, faces three charges of first-degree murder in connection with the disappearance of a Calgary couple and their grandson.<\/p>\n
Alvin, 66, and Kathy Liknes, 53, and grandson Nathan O’Brien, 5, disappeared June 30, 2014, from the couple’s Parkhill home in southwest Calgary.<\/p>\n
Their bodies have never been found.<\/p>\n
It’s the Crown’s theory Garland violently kidnapped the trio from the grandparents home and took them to his farm and murdered them.<\/p>\n
Oxton, who on Tuesday detailed items found in and around three outbuildings and the basement of the Garland home, said he spent hundreds of hours going through ashes found in a burn pit on the property.<\/p>\n
He said six barrels of ashes were taken from the scene and carefully sifted through to find potential evidence in the case.<\/p>\n
Oxton spent about 550 hours over 10 months removing items of interest from the ashes “included in that material was 17 fragments that could be teeth,” he said.<\/p>\n
He also found “items of jewelry,” an earring, a small bracelet and “buttons for clothing.”<\/p>\n
The two-car garage was jam packed with “a very large amount of chemicals and chemical apparatus,” said Oxton.<\/p>\n
“A wide-range of chemicals and chemical compounds,” he told Crown prosecutor Shane Parker.<\/p>\n
“Was insulin found?” Parker asked.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I believe it was in the southwest corner,” he said, as jurors viewed photographs of the garage.<\/p>\n
“A bottle of chloroform was found roughly in the centre of the garage,” Oxton said.<\/p>\n
The 950 ml bottle “was approximately half empty.”<\/p>\n
Oxton said police removed 83 pairs of shoes from the residence, concentrating on sizes 12 and 13, but none matched bloody footprints found in the Liknes home.<\/p>\n
Inside a bedroom in the main level of the Garland bungalow the forensic crime scenes unit officer also found other items of interest.<\/p>\n
Oxton seized two Tyvek suits, the kind police use when searching crime scenes to avoid contamination, rubber gloves and chemical gloves and a rain suit from the room.<\/p>\n
He also found a booklet in the room titled Handbook of Poisoning.<\/p>\n
In an outbuilding at the south end of the 40-acre farm was a bag containing about 50 adult diapers from the Foothills hospital, a bag of mixed male and female clothing and a box containing leather restraints and handcuffs.<\/p>\n
Oxton testified Tuesday about finding similar items in another building on the property, along with a hacksaw and two blades, two meat hooks, knives, firearms components and ammunition.<\/p>\n
His testimony continues on Thursday when he will be cross-examined by the defence.<\/p>\n
By:\u00a0KEVIN MARTIN<\/p>\n
Source: \u00a0cnews.canoe.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"