Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The disappearance of Nathan O’Brien, Kathryn Liknes and Alvin Liknes occurred on June 29, 2014. Five-year-old Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents, Kathryn and Alvin Liknes, disappeared from the grandparents’ Calgary, Alberta home after what police called a “violent incident.”An amber alert was issued. This alert was lifted on July 14, 2014 after the arrest of a person in relation to the disappearance.Later on July 14, 2014, police state that they believe O’Brien and the Likneses were murdered, but they did not recover their bodies. Douglas Garland was charged with two counts of first degree murder in the deaths of the Likneses and a second-degree murder charge for allegedly killing O’Brien.The second degree charge for Nathan O’Brien was upgraded by the court to a first degree charge in May 2015
A murder case that gripped the nation ,the entire country reacted with horror ,headlines around the world
The seemlingly ordinary suburban home becomes the house of horror. A chilling tripple homicide
Blood all over the walls.
There was a little handprint as if a little boy was being kind of dragged along.
A five year old boy sleeping over at his grandparents. Alsl three are savagely murdered.
The evidence , Grotesque adult diapers, two long blond womens wigs,prosthetic breasts.
night wision video shot from a helicopter as cops track down a very dangerous suspect hiding in the thick brush. Hwo is he?
Let´s rewinds to the start.
Jennifer o´brian a busy mom with three young boys ,went tto pick up her 5 year old son nathan from hid grandparents house.
But when jennifer arrives she stumbles upon an odd scene. the front door is already open as she walks in she´s hit first with a smell of death and then pools of blood ,everywhere
Cops burst into the gruesome scene and feverishly search the house.
but no bodies are found.
The grandparents and little nathan are missing
At the scene there is no shred of DNA found
not one fingerprints from a pontential killer.
Cops immediately issue an Amber Alert in hopess of locating the family
Police searched relentlessly but with no sign of nathan and his grandparents.
They eventually circled back to the scene of the massacre holding on to any sliver of hope to locate the fyve- year- old alive.
they hoped that maybe he saw the violence and had hidden somewhere. They went through all the closets under the beds anywhere that anyone could hide… He wasn´t there.
Alvin and kathy were about to start a new chapter in their lives ,retirement on the day they disappeared they were having an estate sale downsizing after buying a new home in Edmonton
they were planing on moving the next week . they were getting rid of all their extra belonings.
But the vision of the couple enjoying their golden years basking in the warm mexican sun ….quckly turned cold and dark.
Calgary police investigators have completed their search of the home where five-year-old Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents Alvin and Kathryn Liknes disappeared. PHOTO BY JEFF MCINTOSH /THE CANADIAN PRESS
The police went on for couple of weeks where they were still hoping that they might find them held somewhere and that perhaps the injuries they´d sustained in the home werent fatal .
But as the days ticked by, that hope dwindled
They searched for a couple of weeks looking for them and never found any bodies and it beame very obvious, this was no obduction more like a triple murder with a violant killer still on the loose.
police had a number of news conferences,finally told that a violent assault had happened in the home.
Cops go on the hund and soon discover chilling clues at a rural farm
pictures of men and women being restrained ,perhaps , killed wearing adult diapers
macabre details straight out of a horror movie.
Will the scary stash lead cops to the bodies of nathan and his grandparents….?
An Amber Alert doesn´t yield results but witihin days over 13 000 tips pour in ,so many that crashed the police departement´s computer system.
cops analyze hundreds of hours of surveillance tape, then something suspicious catches their eye.
They went to all these homes in the neighborhood
and they found this green like mid 70 s ford F-150 truck. very distrinctive looking
police release a flyer with a green pick-up….
….spotted on the grandparents street the night they disappeared. and it wasn´t long before cops got a call from a woman who said she recognizedt the truck.it belonged to her brother.
The owner of that truck is a man named doug Garland and police want to talk to him . They NAB him at a traffic stop and hold him in jail on a previous false identity charge
Meanwhile Canadian mounties stormed the 40 -acre farm where garland lives with his elderly parents on an emergency hostage rescue. but no one was found. either alive or dead.
But there was something…….one of the first things they noticed.
a burn barrel smoldering near the greenhouse inside the tank nothing but ash. ,there is no blood, there´s no sign of any evidence
Back at police Headquarters Garland is released on bail and given strict instructions NOT to go back to the farm.
In the meantime cops secure a warrant and scour every inch of the sprawling property
what they find is bone chilling.
Hidden away in basement rafters, police find a computer hard drive and that when all the house of horror stuff starts coming out .
On that hard drive reams of painstaking research on gruesome and violent topics.. Garland downloaded a bun ch o f things,things like attack your victims at three clock in the morning
– the element of suprise –Painful ways to torture.
Cops say the hard drive was also littered with images of his alleged sexual obsessions
and what´s the fetish part …?
well.. he had quite a fetish about adult diapers and there were a number of pictures of men and women being restrained,perhaps killed wearing adult diapers
Every inch of the place was s searched …
including the basement office with a library of the macabre.
Garland also had some books ….
One was a book on how to poison people , another one was called the joy of killing
and also in the basement across dressers fantasy. the set of prosthetic breasts
the two long blond women´s wigs,that were on these mannquin heads.
racks of women´s clothing in garland´s size and a vast collection of choes, 89 pairs. men and women and in his size.
and curiously in the closet an empty shoe box but missing from that box….
a pair of the size 13 Dr Scholl tennis choes .
then ,cops seized boxes filled with weapons.
Handcuffs….
some in a child´s size.
Hacksaw blades ….
leather straps ….
Bone saws….
Knives…
Guns…
and a strap jacket .
But what investigators dont find….bodies!
Police went on their hands and knees elbow to elbow , going through the grass through that entire acreage…
but of all the disturbing clues one stood out. the smoldering burn barrel. cops had noticed it during the first search of the farm, this time investigators take a closer look
They went through everything sifting, sifting,sifting.kind of like gold mining almost where they go layer by layer.
panning and sifting through the ashes they find a baby tooth, the found the burnt flesh sheet a lot of the bone fragments in embers of the burning barrel.
was doug Garland a sadistic killer and why would he want to murder a child and his grandparents?
because of their past history .
not long after collecting evidence, cops soon learn that Garland is no stranger to alvin and kathy liknes.they acctually had a layered a nd complex relationschip that went back years .
Garland´s sister patty( the one hwo reported the truck) is married to liknes´s son .
but the detail that sparked cops interest , alvin a successful entrepreneur employed Garland years before ,patty´s husband had suggested that alvin liknes was looking for someone to work with that doug would be possibly be a good choice because he had education and he was fairly handy .
the two men worked on a pump invention together but the project never went anywhere and liknes eventually fired Garland.it never made a penny.never got used but apparently doug was assngry and bitter over for years.
Bitter enough for murder?
While mountains of incriminating evidence are piling up an d more intel on Garlands history with the couple cops are keeping a close eye on the 57 year old following his every moive.
Here he is caught on surveillance camera at an auto parts store buying what looks like circular saw blades . police are specially interested in what he´s wearing.
look closely on his feet the same dr scholl´s missing from he shoebox.
do they match the blood -soaked prints found at the grand parents home .
they have actuallly a shoe databasw federally in Canada. they matched it to a Dr sholl´s running shoes and they were able to trace it to a certain style.
A mysterius triple murder of an angelic five year old boy and his grandparents leads cops a rural farm where sickening clues point in the direction of a depraved madman
Even though no bodies ever found. with 14oo pieces of the most grotesque evidence imaginable .cops have enough to make their move but so did the alleged killer. inestigators had doug garland nder surveillance after their first search of his property then two weeks after nathan and his grandparents disapppear .
cops catch garland
trying to sneak back on the farm where he lived belief was he was trying to get rid of maybe a little more evidence
The sadist didn´t sget far . as you can see on the police infrared camera, they cornered him because the helicopter could see him and he finally surrendered.
The man who police believed brutallys murdered kathy and alvin liknes ann their beloved grandson nathan finally gets what´s coming to him .
Despite that Garland pleaded not Guilty to three murder charges. the sensational five-week long trial transfixed a spell-bound nation .
In opening statements prosecutors told, the thre women and nine -man jury that Garland held a year long groudge over a patentfor a pump.
On the day they disappeared alvin and kathryn were having a state stale since they were planning to move and wanted to downsize, so Garland put his sordid plan into action
the first step beaking into the couple´s home.
it appeared mr Garland had drilled a hole in one of the locks.
The murders timeline unfolded from there….once in the house Garland preyed on his victims
According to his meticulous and obsessive research,3 am was the best time to attack.
Mr Garland went into Alvin liknes bedroom and bludgeoned him then he went to the next room where kathlyn liknes was sleeping with her grandson.
Was Nathan the five- year -old collateral damage or was he also a target?
he wasnt a target but mr Garland decided that he didn´t want to leave any wittnesses
Forensic experts believe the family was alive when Garland dragged them from the home and throw them in the truck.
they got pictures of what appeared to be a white sheet going in the back of the truck and police believe that´s where the bodies of the three were.
schockingly even with all the bloodshed none of Garland´s DNA was found ever detected at the house.
How it´s possible that doug Garland was able to do so much damage in that house yet not leave a shred of DNA?
well ,he did a lot of research on how to not leave DNA evidence there were a number of these white suits that forensic people wear when you see them on TV show they believed he was wearing those.
Then Garland drove about 20 miles to his parents rural farm where unspeakable horrors awaited
nathan and his grandparents DNA were found on instruments of torture.
like meat hooks…
bone saws…
and knives.
They found kathryn´s liknes DNA on the meat hooks
They found Alvin liknes and nat han O´Brien´s DNA on the meat saw .
and they found DNA from all three victims on the ouside of a pair of rubber boots.
But even of mountains of blood and fragment evidence no bodies ws ever found
Nobody saw doug Garland kill them and they don´t even have a cause of death on these people.
Garland´s mother took the stand against her son testifying that she didn´t hear him leave home the morning the three disappeared.she actually had foun d out they were missing, mentioned it to him he said ” i don´t want to talk about that ” he allready knew .
Perhaps one of the most disturbing images preesented at trial, picture captured completely by chance. by a mapping plane, which flew over Garlands property, the day after the family disappeared.
The fellow who took the photos he can see what apears to be two headless torsos of adults looks like they´re laying face down wearing diapers.
and a small figure in the grass next to them, which they believe was nathan O´brien right by the burning barrel.
But in this case the dead speak volumes.
There were no bodies.only tiny little pieces
the Only proof of their existence on the planet buried in ashes left behind in the burn barrel
that is where they found one small piece of flesh ,which could have belonged to alvin liknes
Bone fragments were from a fice year old boy .
he burned everybody , apparently chopped them up and burned the bodies , just cremated them.
while the gruesom details of the heinous crimes unfolded in court doug garland apears unfazed.
He sat through the first round of hearing and the second taking notes .
they never heard a denial , never heard ” i´m sorry”
none of the victims family took the stand , but nathan´s dad written´s words rever berated through the courtroom.
Rod O ´brien ´s victim impact statement
Rod” i didn´t even have enough of my son to bury . there was not enough left of them….”
After weeks of traumatizing testsimony and abou t 10 hours of deliberation Doug Garland is convicted of first degree and all three deaths.
Garland received three consecutive life terms for his heinous crimes
TRIAL
The murder trial for Garland began on January 16, 2017. The trial drew to a close on February 16, 2017, and it took the jurors just over nine hours to reach a verdict of guilty on all three counts of first degree murder.
The following morning, Garland was sentenced, with only the minimum sentence being determined, as first degree murder carries an automatic life sentence. After 10 of the 12 jurors recommended that Garland receive consecutive minimum sentences, Judge David Gates ordered Garland be required to serve 75 years before being eligible for parole. As Garland would have to live to 129 years of age to finish the term, this means he will, effectively, be incarcerated for the rest of his life. Throughout the trial, Garland never showed any remorse or emotion. Hours after being sentenced, Garland was sent to the Calgary Remand Centre located in the city’s Northwest where he was physically assaulted by multiple inmates. EMS said the victim of the assault was transported to hospital in stable, non-life-threatening condition with soft tissue injuries.