The retired Saint John police officer who was originally appointed the lead investigator in Richard Oland’s death testifying at the second-degree murder trial of Dennis Oland that his role was to determine the “speed, flow and direction of the investigation.”
Retired constable Rick Russell testifying he was on vacation the day Richard Oland’s bludgeoned body was discovered in his office located at 52 Canterbury Street. He received a call and then came in, arriving at 52 Canterbury Street between 1pm and 1:30pm. Russell testified he looked in the office, but didn’t go past the carpeted area in the foyer into the crime scene itself. He says Sergeant Mark Smith was forensically processing the scene at that point and there was no point for him to go in at that time as an investigator. He says he was there between 10-15 minutes.
Russell then went back to police headquarters to “prepare for a wave of information.” He says at that point they didn’t know a lot so the first thing is to speak with witnesses on the scene and they also wanted to establish a family history. He says he assigned people to conduct various interviews.
Russell says that there was a briefing after Dennis Oland left the police station on that day following his interview with Constable Stephen Davidson, who took over as lead investigator in the case when Russell retired. Crown prosecutor PJ Veniot asking him if he was involved in any decision regarding the surveillance of Dennis Oland with Russell saying that decision was made by then Sgt David Brooker and then Inspector Glen McCloskey prior to him being made aware of it.
The trial has heard that Dennis Oland was placed under surveillance after leaving the police station on or about 11:01pm on July 7, 2011 until a week later.
Russell also testifying about police searches conducted following the discovery of the body. Russell speaking about the search of Dennis Oland’s home. He assigned two person teams to each room to do a systematic search of the room and if they found anything they were to stop and tell him. The trial has heard of a brown jacket seized from Dennis Oland’s home on that day that had four areas of blood on it and according to the prosecution the DNA matched that of Richard Oland.
Russell also saying there was another search at 52 Canterbury Street to search storm drains and crawl space under the elevator shaft but nothing was found. There was a search of a boat at the Royal Kennebecasis Yacht Club called Loki and a dive team also worked in conjuction with that search. There were some items seized and swabs taken but Russell says as far as he is aware, there is no evidence relating to the murder of Richard Oland found on that boat.
CHSJ News reporter Laura Lyall is covering the trial and is live-tweeting from the courtroom. To follow along go to the CHSJ News Twitter page or the Wave News Twitter page.
