November 20, 2025 • 30 mins
On a warm summer morning in Calgary, a family home sat strangely still—a sense of unease settling over the quiet suburban street. Five-year-old Nathan O’Brien had spent the night at his grandparents’ house, a place that had always been a sanctuary of comfort and routine. But when his mother arrived the next day, nothing was as it should have been. What began as a welfare check quickly spiraled into one of the most haunting mysteries the city had ever faced. In this episode, we unravel the timeline, the community’s desperate search, and the unsettling trail of clues that left investigators scrambling for answers. This is the story of a night that changed everything.
SOURCES:
1) Calgary triple-murder trial hears DNA from three victims found at suspect’s farm
2) Appeal Court upholds sentence for man convicted of killing Calgary couple, grandson
3) Wikipedia Page for Murders of Nathan O'Brien, Kathryn Liknes and Alvin Liknes
4) Timeline of events in the case of the missing 5-year-old and his grandparents
5) Douglas Garland triple-murder trial: medical examiner says victims ‘may still have been alive’
6) The Nathan O'Brien Foundation
7) Family of Nathan O’Brien launches children’s foundation with $1 million donation
8) Douglas Garland killed Calgary couple and grandson over 'petty grudge,' court hears
9) ‘He neither forgave nor forgot’: Crown says Garland planned triple murder
10) How the Man Who Committed One of Canada’s Most Gruesome Murders Was Caught
SOURCES:
1) Calgary triple-murder trial hears DNA from three victims found at suspect’s farm
2) Appeal Court upholds sentence for man convicted of killing Calgary couple, grandson
3) Wikipedia Page for Murders of Nathan O'Brien, Kathryn Liknes and Alvin Liknes
4) Timeline of events in the case of the missing 5-year-old and his grandparents
5) Douglas Garland triple-murder trial: medical examiner says victims ‘may still have been alive’
6) The Nathan O'Brien Foundation
7) Family of Nathan O’Brien launches children’s foundation with $1 million donation
8) Douglas Garland killed Calgary couple and grandson over 'petty grudge,' court hears
9) ‘He neither forgave nor forgot’: Crown says Garland planned triple murder
10) How the Man Who Committed One of Canada’s Most Gruesome Murders Was Caught
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
This episode maintain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Listener discretion is advised. Hi, this is Tanya.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hi this is Shannon, and we are.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Crimes and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hey Shannon, Hey Tanya, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I am doing well today?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How are you good? Good? Not too shabby?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
That's awesome, you know, just kind of cruising.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
We're in November now, yes, daylight savings time. Yeah. Oh
it's been dark since gosh, what five five thirty, So
I have no idea what time it is.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I know it could be ten pm, it could be six,
could be two ways. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I have zero idea. So it's all been good.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
It's so hard to get used to.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know. It's like I've been feeling a little bit
of like lead jackety, you know, it was just like drainy.
Still feel a little congested just all around. I don't
have a bug. I'm not sick, thank god, but I'm
not feeling not feeling Shannon. Yeah, you know, it's more
like Shannon, I'm tired. Yeah, I have to sleep immediately,
(01:44):
and I have no energy. You know what it's the sun.
I gotta add vitamin D.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, yeah, it makes me a lot of people, they say,
a large population in Michigan we suffer from vitamin D deficiency.
So yes, kelcapri.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Cal's sapriz money. But what she got? Where is this week? Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I have a terrible story that comes out of Canada.
It's not very old. It's from twenty fourteen, so this century.
And before I start, I would just like to remind
everyone to hit the subscriber follow on whatever app you're
listening to. So are you ready?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I'm ready? Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
At first, there was only quiet. It was the kind
of silence that doesn't belong in a house where a
five year old has just spent the night. The kitchen
clock ticked softly in the background. The air felt still.
The hallway smelled faintly of metal and something sour. Jennifer
O'Brien stood at the threshold of her parents' home and felt,
(02:47):
before she understood, that something was terribly wrong. She'd come
early that Monday morning, June thirtieth, twenty fourteen, to pick
up her son, Nathan. The long weekend had been full.
Her parents, Elvin and Catherine Likeness, were preparing to move,
sorting through boxes and memories, and they had held an
(03:09):
estate sale that drew neighbor's friends and the curious. Nathan
had begged to stay overnight. He loved his grandparents fiercely,
the pancakes in the morning, the stories at bedtime, the
special attention that only grandparents can give. Jennifer relented. One night,
she said, I'll see you in the morning. Now it
(03:31):
was morning and they were gone. She took a few
steps inside. A chair was overturned, A framed photograph lay
face down on the floor. In the guest room, she
noticed a sheet twisted at the corner of the mattress,
a patch of carpet discolored by something she couldn't name.
Her mind raced through possibilities, a medical emergency, a break in,
(03:55):
but the front door hadn't been forced, and the keys
still hung on the hook by the entrance. When she
called nine one one, her voice shook. My parents and
my son are missing, she said, there's blood in the house.
Within an hour, Calgary police were unseen. By mid morning,
yellow tape fluttered in the suburban breeze, and neighbors stood
(04:16):
on lawns, whispering and disbelief. By afternoon, an amber alert
went out across Alberta, the longest one ever issued in
the province's history. Billboards, television crawls, radio stations, and cell
phones repeated the same message, missing Nathan O'Brien, five years old,
(04:36):
last scene with grandparents Alvin and Catherine likeness. The news
spread with the velocity of panic. Parents double checked their doors.
Grandparents clutched their grandchildren tighter. Calgary, a city that prided
itself on safety, prosperity, and community, found itself staring into
a void. By the first week of July twenty fourteen,
(05:00):
Ulgrey's collective anxiety had curled into dread. The amber alert,
still active, still unanswered, had entered its fifth day. Police
had received more than one thousand tips from across Alberta
and neighboring provinces, but nothing led to the missing family.
In the city's southwest quadrant, a home on thirty eight
(05:22):
A Avenue had become a monument to absence. Reporters lingered
outside the air, heavy with questions. Volunteers taped missing posters
to lamp posts. Their corners curling in the dry prairie wind,
each bore the same smiling faces, A bright eyed little
boy and his grandparents, the kind of image that gnaweded
(05:45):
even the most stoic viewer, and then came the name
Douglas Garland, the first solid lead since the disappearance. On
July first, Canada Day, detectives arrived at a modest acreage
near Airdrie, Alberta, about twenty five miles north of Calgary.
(06:05):
The property, hemmed in by willows and rusting machinery, belonged
to the Garland family. Duglin Garland lived there with his
elderly parents, Arthur and Gwendolen. The family kept largely to
themselves to neighbors. Douglas was ad but harmless, a middle
aged man who tinkered with engines and electronics. He was
(06:26):
known to make late night runs into Calgary for supplies,
but rarely stayed long enough to speak. What few remembered
was his past, the aliases, the fraud, the failed life
experiments that had accumulated like junk around the farm. In
nineteen ninety two, Garland had vanished for nearly seven years
(06:47):
after a drug related arrest, living under a false identity
in British Columbia. Before being caught. He had studied science
and university but never completed his degree. People described him
as intelligent, mechanical minded, but emotionally stunted, and he carried
grudges like Talismans. Years earlier, Garland had collaborated with Alvin
(07:12):
Likeness on a pump design for oil and gas extraction.
When Likeness filed for his own patent in two thousand
and seven, Garland felt robbed. Family members would later testify
that he'd spoken bitterly about Alvin for years, referring to
him with disdain. That resentment had festered long enough to
(07:33):
become obsession. The first time officers visited the Garland farm,
Douglas was polite, cooperative even He told them he hadn't
seen the Likenesses in years, but detectives noticed small inconsistencies
in his story. He referred to the Likeness's estate sale
before police had made that information public. He stammered when
(07:58):
asked about his whereabouts the night of June twenty ninth.
Police returned the next day with a search warrant. What
they found deepened their knees, tire tracks matching those seen
outside the Likeness home, shoes with a tread pattern resembling
one found in blood at the crime scene, a burn
barrel filled with partially melted plastic and unrecognizable debris. In
(08:23):
Garland's workshop, investigators discovered a trove of comical containers, cutting tools,
and a small homemade incinerator behind the house. In an
overgrown patch of grass, searchers found what appeared to be
drag marks, as if something heavy had been pulled across
the soil. It was enough to detain Garland for questioning.
(08:45):
The breakthrough came from what the forensic team called trace
persistence in Layman's terms, no one cleans perfectly. When specialists
combed through Garland's garbage, they found faint, reddish smea on
the edge of a tool chest. They swabbed it. The
DNA matched Nathan O'Brien. Further testing identified Alvin and Catherine
(09:09):
in separate samples throughout the property, on a saw, a
pair of rubber boots, and inside a truck bed. The
evidence suggested a night of methodical brutality. Forensic testimony later
described the sequence as quote abduction, transport, homicide, disposal end quote.
(09:32):
It was a kind of language meant to strip away emotion,
but everyone in the room knew what it meant. Police
returned to the likeness home. With new eyes, they reconstructed
the scene from blood spatter and scuff marks. The evidence
told a grim story. Garland entered after midnight, subdued the likenesses,
and abducted all three, taking Nathan because he was a witness.
(09:57):
He loaded them into his pickup drove norm and brought
them to his property, where the killings occurred within hours.
The bodies were never found. On July fourteenth, twenty fourteen,
Calgary Police announced that Douglas Garland had been charged with
three counts of first degree murder. At the press conference,
Chief Rick Hanson spoke slowly, visibly worn by the investigation.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
We believe we have the evidence to support that these
individuals are deceased, he said, and we believe we have
the same person responsible in custody end quote. The words
landed like thunder. For two weeks, Calgary had held out hope, fragile,
irrational hope that Nathan and his grandparents might still be alive,
(10:45):
that maybe somehow there'd been a ransom, a misunderstanding, a
miracle waiting to unfold. That hope died with Hanson's statement,
Jennifer O'Brien wept publicly that day. Her grief, raw and
defiant quote. I know my son is with my parents.
I know they're together. End quote. In the weeks that followed,
(11:08):
the city became a kind of memorial. Children left toy
cars and teddy bears outside the Likeness home. Sidewalk chalks
spelled love for Nathan. Churches held vigils, candles burned on porches.
Strangers embraced it intersections. It wasn't just grief, It was
disbelief that such a thing could happen here, to people
(11:30):
like this, in a neighborhood that it always seemed immune
to tragedy. Reporters wrote of the Calgary stillness, a collective
quiet that hung over the city that summer. Even after
Garland's arrest, the missing bodies left a hollow space in
every headline. No one wanted to believe that a little
boy's sleepover, that simplest, sweetest act of family, could end
(11:53):
in such horror, but the evidence was undeniable. The monsters,
it turned out, didn't always live from home. The Garland
farm sat at the edge of a gravel road that
dusted out towards the prairie horizon, an ordinary Alberta acreage
until police began to dig. In July twenty fourteen, the
(12:14):
Calgary Police Service transformed the Quiet Air Dree property into
one of the largest crime scenes in Canadian history. For
eight weeks, investigators sifted through soil, ash and metal scraps.
They cataloged every fragment, every burn pile, every stain. What
they found was a geography of horror. Detectives called it
(12:37):
the search of a lifetime. More than one hundred officers,
forensic technicians, and evidence recovery experts rotated through twelve hour shifts.
They combed through barns, sheds and fields. Specialized anthropologists from
the University of Alberta were brought in to identify bone fragments,
(12:58):
while fire andats mapped burn patterns across the site. They
unearthed thousands of items, a child's toothbrush, scorched fabric, and
the remains of power tools modified in disturbing ways. At
the center of the property was the clearing where Garland
had built what he called a burn barrel, a makeshift
(13:21):
incinerator fashioned from an old oil drum. Within it, police
found the remains of a small chain, a button from
children's pajamas, and traces of blood. Just beyond the main yard,
a second burn site stretched into the treeline. The ground
had been disturbed, the ash layer thick with melted plastic
(13:42):
and metal shards. When sifted through fine screens, the soil
revealed microscopic bone fragments, calcigned by fire and impossible to
identify through DNA. By the end of the eighth week,
searchers had recovered more than six hundred bone fragments, none
larger than a fingertip. If the farm was the final chapter,
(14:06):
the basement of the Garland homed was the prologue. The
scene of confinement. In a locked room beneath the stairs,
police discovered a cot, zip ties and restraints. Nearby was
a small table holding chemical containers, latex gloves, and duct tape.
Forensic biologists later testified that they found DNA belonging to
(14:27):
all three victims in the room, particularly on the floor
and the bindings. One detective called it a chamber of control.
They also found medical books and online printouts about dismemberment
and incineration techniques. Garland had apparently researched bone ash disposal
and destroying DNA and fire. He wasn't impulsive, he was methodical.
(14:53):
By the time the trial began, in January twenty seventeen,
prosecutors had assembled a narrative built from fragments physical, digital,
and psychological. They called it a case without bodies. In
place of corpses, there were ashes in place of eyewitnesses.
There were traces the kind of forensic whispers that spoke
(15:13):
louder than any confession. One of the prosecution's most damning
exhibits was the GPS data from Garland's truck On the
night of June twenty ninth. His vehicle had left the
Airdree farm around nine forty five pm, traveled to the
Likeness neighborhood, remained there for two and a half hours,
(15:34):
then returned home just before three am. At four fifteen am,
the truck's movement sensor detected activity again, the beginning of
what police believed was the destruction of evidence. Even Garland's
Internet history was a confession of sorts. He had searched
for terms like how to erase blood evidence, forensic DNA
(15:55):
heat resistance, and how long bones burn. When officers seized
his computer, they found folders labeled Pumps, family, and Chillingly Likeness.
Inside that last folder were photographs taken years earlier of
Alvin's workshop, his patent documents, and his house. This wasn't
(16:17):
random violence. It was a vendetta executed with surgical precision.
The Crown called it a slow burn of resentment. Prosecutors
traced the feedback to the early two thousands, when Garland
had worked briefly with Alvin Likeness on an oil field
pump prototype. When the patent was later filed under Likeness's
(16:39):
name alone, Garland felt erased. In his mind, Alvid had
taken not only his idea but his dignity. Family members
testified that Garland nursed that wound for nearly a decade,
replaying the perceived betrayal like a looped recording. And so
when Garland learned through a relative but that the Likenesses
(17:01):
were holding in a state sale, a detail that made
the news, he saw an opening, a public event, an
unlocked door. Investigators believed he planned the attack for weeks.
The presence of Nathan didn't deter him. It simply became
part of the logistics. When the trial opened it in
January twenty seventeen, the courtroom in Calgary's Court of Queen's
(17:23):
Bench was silent except for the hum of reporters, recorders,
Douglas Garland sat motionless, his expression unreadable. The Crown's case
unfolded with clinical precision, blood pattern analysis, DNA charts, photographs
of scorched debris. But behind each piece of evidence was
the quiet presence of Jennifer and Rod O'Brien, who attended
(17:47):
every session. They sat through it, all, the photographs, the testimony,
the unimaginable details. Prosecutor Shane Parker's closing words cut through
the air like glass quote. This was not spontaneous. This
was planned, delibered, and fueled by hate. Three people lost
their lives because of one man's bitterness. After just seven
(18:11):
hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict guilty
on all three counts of first degree murder. Justice David
Gates sent in Scarland to three concurrent life sentences with
no possibility of parole for seventy five years, effectively a
death sentence. By time, your actions are the most despicable
(18:33):
the Court has ever encountered, Justice Gates said. In the
public gallery, Jennifer O'Brien wept silently, clutching a photo of
her son outside a crowd gathered in the winter air.
People hugged strangers, others simply stood had bowed. The verdict
didn't bring closure, how could it, the bodies were never found.
(18:54):
But it brought something closer to peace, the certainty of guilt,
the acknowledgment of truth. In the months that followed, Calgary
built a small memorial garden in Nathan's name, the O'Brien
in likeness. Families withdrew from public view, tending to private grief,
while the community learned to live with the absence. The
(19:15):
case remained a benchmark in Canadian criminal history, not only
for its brutality, but for its endurance. The O'Brien's public
grace became a symbol of resilience in the face of
unspeakable loss. As one columnist wrote in the Calgary Herald, quote,
this was not a story about monsters hiding in the dark.
It was about one man who let hatred become his
(19:36):
purpose and a city that refused to let him have
the last word. For most people in Calgary, the summer
of twenty fourteen remains divided into before and after. Before
June thirtieth, when Nathan O'Brien's sleepover was a small, joyful
moment in an ordinary family's life, and after, when that
(19:57):
same night became a wound that would change the city forever.
Years later, the Likeness home on thirty eight A Avenue remains,
but the house is quieter now. The estate sale sign longne,
the walls repainted, the curtains replaced, But those who lived
through that time still drive past slowly. Some leave flowers,
(20:18):
others avert their eyes. The murders of Nathan, Alvin and
Catherine were not only a family tragedy. They became a
collective trauma, a test of civic compassion, in a case
that reshaped how Canada thinks about justice, vengeance, and forgiveness.
For months after Garland's conviction, Jennifer O'Brien continued to make
(20:40):
quiet appeals for information about the location of her family's remains.
She said it wasn't closure she sought, but truth. Quote.
You can't vary grief, she told CBC's The National. But
you can ground it, you can give it somewhere to
rest end quote. In private, she worked with police on
Kadet Ever, dog searches and aerial surveys around the Garland property,
(21:04):
hoping for even a small recovery. None came. The Royal
Canadian Mounted Police eventually declared it improbable that identifiable remains
would ever be found. Forensic experts testified that the bone
fragments collected had been reduced to calcium dust. Victims of
both violence and fire, the absence of bodies left a
(21:28):
peculiar ache, one that rippled through every conversation about the case.
The idea of disappearance became as heavy as the murder themselves.
Garland's sentence, life without parole for seventy five years, was
one of the harshest ever handed down in Canadian legal history,
but even that felt inadequate to many. Canada, a nation
(21:52):
without the death penalty, had little language for crimes of
such premeditated cruelty. Legal scholars debated whether the scents represented
deterrence or symbolism, a judicial declaration that some acts sit
beyond redemption. For the O'Brien's, it was enough that Garland
would never walk free. Quote. He doesn't get to erase them.
(22:13):
Jennifer sat outside the courthouse. He doesn't get to go home.
End quote. The judges words lingered to quote. In thirty
five years on the bench, I have never encountered such
depravity end quote. The courtroom was silent, then, not because
justice was complete, but because there was nothing left to say.
(22:33):
In twenty nineteen, the O'Brien family, joined by hundreds of Calgarians,
unveiled the Nathan O'Brien Children's Foundation field House, a bright,
open space filled with the sounds of laughter and play.
This is what healing sounds like, Jennifer said at the opening.
Her voice trembled, but her resolve did not. For those
(22:54):
who covered the story, the emotional imprint was permanent. Reporters
spoke of how the case blurred the lines between professional
detachment and shared grief. Police officers cried in their cars
after long shifts at the Garland farm. Volunteers who searched
the field said they still dream of the prairie wind
rustling through empty grass. Calgary, a city often defined by
(23:17):
oil and optimism, found itself defined for a time by mourning.
Yet that morning built something like unity. Churches opened their
doors around the clock, neighbors held vigils and parks. When
Garland's trial ended, one local columnist wrote quote, we came
to understand that evil doesn't need a reason, it only
(23:39):
needs space. But we also learned that community is stronger
than cruelty. In twenty twenty, three. Nearly a decade after
the murders, Jennifer O'Brien told The Globe and Mail she
no longer drives past her parents' old home. It's just
a house, she said, quietly. They're not there. What remained
(24:00):
instead is a memory and the quiet determination to fill
that memory with light rather than darkness. Quote. I want
people to remember Nathan's laugh. I don't want him to
be defined by what was taken, she said. In Kilary's
southwest suburbs, just beyond the bustle of Glenmore Trail, the
nights are peaceful again, but for money, the image remains.
(24:23):
A small boy's pajamas folded neatly in a bag, his
favorite game left on the floor, a promise to call
in the morning. He never got the chance. The sleepover
never ended, but neither did the love that refused to
forget him. And that, my friend, is.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
That is an incredible story. It's so deep and tragic
and oh just heavy. I have so many emotions about it.
About this guy Douglas, the planning how you said it
was years of the pictures of the house. He had
a folder. He looked up stuff, this is this is
(25:04):
terrible And then he plans it for the twenty ninth
and just how nothing's an accident kind of thing. That's
when Nathan's like, that could have been a deterrent for
him the grandchild, Like you did that to the child,
because it made me think, this is two thousand you
said fourteen was giving law abiding citizen vibes. Have you
(25:27):
ever seen that movie?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Oh, who's in that?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Who's the guy who played in three hundred? Girard?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh, Gerard Butler?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yes, yes, that's all but and Jamie Fox, but he
avenges the death of his It's very energetic in the beginning,
and his wife and daughter are killed by these two guys,
and Jamie Fox gets the guys off, and now, of course,
now Girard is going to take the law into his
own hands, and he does this methodical way he gets
(25:57):
the guy and he records it and it's just like
I've never seen the Saw movies, but I'd imagine it's
something just morbid and decrepit and horrible. And you know,
if he's sick enough to do that, then he had
them listen to each other, go, he had them, you know,
because that's a deep abysal hate.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, I think, like, did he who did he kill first?
I'm thinking he killed Nathan first. He probably killed Jefron
act to make Alvin suffer the most emotionally.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
But even like, yes, that is wow, that's just it
blew me away, that is I can't even believe how horrible.
And then as a grandmother, you know, it's just like yeah,
you know, as a grandparent you can be all like, oh,
of course your baby's safe with Grandma and Papa, you know,
and that's like the furthest place you would think harm
(26:53):
would come to your child. And then Jennifer just doing
what a hero? I mean, how do you even say
a hero? What a phenomenal person.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
She's just incredibly strong. I've thought about something happening to
my child and I would be destroyed, and her, she
is destroyed. And it's always amazing to see someone get
on with their lives, you know, yes, when such tragedy happens.
So I hope Jennifer is somewhere and she is okay.
(27:26):
Having the foundation in Nathan's name probably helps a lot,
I would think, you know, psychologically, it helps her, gives
her a purpose and you know, doesn't allow Nathan's memory
to die. And you know, she lost her parents.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I'm surprised the house still stands. Honestly, it was such
a benchmark case.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I know I'm surprised too.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
But this guy, that's just terrible and it's so heinous.
I don't even know how I feel about having this
thought thought when you were explaining how Canada, because I
do have that view of Canada where I'm like, oh,
the Canadians are so nice. Oh hey, yeah, yeah, the
little yeah, and so to hear something so awful, I
(28:15):
would think, gosh, that sounds more America. Isn't that terrible
to think? Like, I'm like, how is it? You know,
so have that mark crime that unfortunately we've heard a
little bit more of here. To touch something as the
you know, Alberta and Calgary who knows, who've known nothing
of this depth of depravity is something to heal from.
(28:38):
So yeah, the whole area for sure. But thank you. Gosh,
I was I was on the edge of my seat.
I could barely make any of my inappropriate jokes.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I know, I know you're like, oh, I'm like, what right,
So it was a good it was, yes, thank yeah,
It's just that.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Is yeah, wow, that's just well, thank you for enduring it.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Miss Shannon, and thank you everyone.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
For listen to endure you. Of course, thank.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
You everyone for listening to this week's episode. And if
you haven't already, please hit the subscribe or follow button
on whatever you're listening to, and please go to our
website Crimes Andconsequences dot com. Also, we have a Patreon,
so if you are enjoying the episodes that you get
to listen to for free, you could join our Patreon
(29:31):
and get an additional episode every week, or you can
join through Apple podcast app. So I think that's everything,
all the business, all.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
The business and grabbing those extra stories.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, and to learn the best episode. My dear, I
will see you later.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I love you girl, I'll love you.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Bye bye
This episode maintain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Listener discretion is advised. Hi, this is Tanya.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hi this is Shannon, and we are.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Crimes and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hey Shannon, Hey Tanya, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I am doing well today?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How are you good? Good? Not too shabby?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
That's awesome, you know, just kind of cruising.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
We're in November now, yes, daylight savings time. Yeah. Oh
it's been dark since gosh, what five five thirty, So
I have no idea what time it is.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I know it could be ten pm, it could be six,
could be two ways. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I have zero idea. So it's all been good.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
It's so hard to get used to.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know. It's like I've been feeling a little bit
of like lead jackety, you know, it was just like drainy.
Still feel a little congested just all around. I don't
have a bug. I'm not sick, thank god, but I'm
not feeling not feeling Shannon. Yeah, you know, it's more
like Shannon, I'm tired. Yeah, I have to sleep immediately,
(01:44):
and I have no energy. You know what it's the sun.
I gotta add vitamin D.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, yeah, it makes me a lot of people, they say,
a large population in Michigan we suffer from vitamin D deficiency.
So yes, kelcapri.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Cal's sapriz money. But what she got? Where is this week? Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I have a terrible story that comes out of Canada.
It's not very old. It's from twenty fourteen, so this century.
And before I start, I would just like to remind
everyone to hit the subscriber follow on whatever app you're
listening to. So are you ready?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I'm ready? Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
At first, there was only quiet. It was the kind
of silence that doesn't belong in a house where a
five year old has just spent the night. The kitchen
clock ticked softly in the background. The air felt still.
The hallway smelled faintly of metal and something sour. Jennifer
O'Brien stood at the threshold of her parents' home and felt,
(02:47):
before she understood, that something was terribly wrong. She'd come
early that Monday morning, June thirtieth, twenty fourteen, to pick
up her son, Nathan. The long weekend had been full.
Her parents, Elvin and Catherine Likeness, were preparing to move,
sorting through boxes and memories, and they had held an
(03:09):
estate sale that drew neighbor's friends and the curious. Nathan
had begged to stay overnight. He loved his grandparents fiercely,
the pancakes in the morning, the stories at bedtime, the
special attention that only grandparents can give. Jennifer relented. One night,
she said, I'll see you in the morning. Now it
(03:31):
was morning and they were gone. She took a few
steps inside. A chair was overturned, A framed photograph lay
face down on the floor. In the guest room, she
noticed a sheet twisted at the corner of the mattress,
a patch of carpet discolored by something she couldn't name.
Her mind raced through possibilities, a medical emergency, a break in,
(03:55):
but the front door hadn't been forced, and the keys
still hung on the hook by the entrance. When she
called nine one one, her voice shook. My parents and
my son are missing, she said, there's blood in the house.
Within an hour, Calgary police were unseen. By mid morning,
yellow tape fluttered in the suburban breeze, and neighbors stood
(04:16):
on lawns, whispering and disbelief. By afternoon, an amber alert
went out across Alberta, the longest one ever issued in
the province's history. Billboards, television crawls, radio stations, and cell
phones repeated the same message, missing Nathan O'Brien, five years old,
(04:36):
last scene with grandparents Alvin and Catherine likeness. The news
spread with the velocity of panic. Parents double checked their doors.
Grandparents clutched their grandchildren tighter. Calgary, a city that prided
itself on safety, prosperity, and community, found itself staring into
a void. By the first week of July twenty fourteen,
(05:00):
Ulgrey's collective anxiety had curled into dread. The amber alert,
still active, still unanswered, had entered its fifth day. Police
had received more than one thousand tips from across Alberta
and neighboring provinces, but nothing led to the missing family.
In the city's southwest quadrant, a home on thirty eight
(05:22):
A Avenue had become a monument to absence. Reporters lingered
outside the air, heavy with questions. Volunteers taped missing posters
to lamp posts. Their corners curling in the dry prairie wind,
each bore the same smiling faces, A bright eyed little
boy and his grandparents, the kind of image that gnaweded
(05:45):
even the most stoic viewer, and then came the name
Douglas Garland, the first solid lead since the disappearance. On
July first, Canada Day, detectives arrived at a modest acreage
near Airdrie, Alberta, about twenty five miles north of Calgary.
(06:05):
The property, hemmed in by willows and rusting machinery, belonged
to the Garland family. Duglin Garland lived there with his
elderly parents, Arthur and Gwendolen. The family kept largely to
themselves to neighbors. Douglas was ad but harmless, a middle
aged man who tinkered with engines and electronics. He was
(06:26):
known to make late night runs into Calgary for supplies,
but rarely stayed long enough to speak. What few remembered
was his past, the aliases, the fraud, the failed life
experiments that had accumulated like junk around the farm. In
nineteen ninety two, Garland had vanished for nearly seven years
(06:47):
after a drug related arrest, living under a false identity
in British Columbia. Before being caught. He had studied science
and university but never completed his degree. People described him
as intelligent, mechanical minded, but emotionally stunted, and he carried
grudges like Talismans. Years earlier, Garland had collaborated with Alvin
(07:12):
Likeness on a pump design for oil and gas extraction.
When Likeness filed for his own patent in two thousand
and seven, Garland felt robbed. Family members would later testify
that he'd spoken bitterly about Alvin for years, referring to
him with disdain. That resentment had festered long enough to
(07:33):
become obsession. The first time officers visited the Garland farm,
Douglas was polite, cooperative even He told them he hadn't
seen the Likenesses in years, but detectives noticed small inconsistencies
in his story. He referred to the Likeness's estate sale
before police had made that information public. He stammered when
(07:58):
asked about his whereabouts the night of June twenty ninth.
Police returned the next day with a search warrant. What
they found deepened their knees, tire tracks matching those seen
outside the Likeness home, shoes with a tread pattern resembling
one found in blood at the crime scene, a burn
barrel filled with partially melted plastic and unrecognizable debris. In
(08:23):
Garland's workshop, investigators discovered a trove of comical containers, cutting tools,
and a small homemade incinerator behind the house. In an
overgrown patch of grass, searchers found what appeared to be
drag marks, as if something heavy had been pulled across
the soil. It was enough to detain Garland for questioning.
(08:45):
The breakthrough came from what the forensic team called trace
persistence in Layman's terms, no one cleans perfectly. When specialists
combed through Garland's garbage, they found faint, reddish smea on
the edge of a tool chest. They swabbed it. The
DNA matched Nathan O'Brien. Further testing identified Alvin and Catherine
(09:09):
in separate samples throughout the property, on a saw, a
pair of rubber boots, and inside a truck bed. The
evidence suggested a night of methodical brutality. Forensic testimony later
described the sequence as quote abduction, transport, homicide, disposal end quote.
(09:32):
It was a kind of language meant to strip away emotion,
but everyone in the room knew what it meant. Police
returned to the likeness home. With new eyes, they reconstructed
the scene from blood spatter and scuff marks. The evidence
told a grim story. Garland entered after midnight, subdued the likenesses,
and abducted all three, taking Nathan because he was a witness.
(09:57):
He loaded them into his pickup drove norm and brought
them to his property, where the killings occurred within hours.
The bodies were never found. On July fourteenth, twenty fourteen,
Calgary Police announced that Douglas Garland had been charged with
three counts of first degree murder. At the press conference,
Chief Rick Hanson spoke slowly, visibly worn by the investigation.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
We believe we have the evidence to support that these
individuals are deceased, he said, and we believe we have
the same person responsible in custody end quote. The words
landed like thunder. For two weeks, Calgary had held out hope, fragile,
irrational hope that Nathan and his grandparents might still be alive,
(10:45):
that maybe somehow there'd been a ransom, a misunderstanding, a
miracle waiting to unfold. That hope died with Hanson's statement,
Jennifer O'Brien wept publicly that day. Her grief, raw and
defiant quote. I know my son is with my parents.
I know they're together. End quote. In the weeks that followed,
(11:08):
the city became a kind of memorial. Children left toy
cars and teddy bears outside the Likeness home. Sidewalk chalks
spelled love for Nathan. Churches held vigils, candles burned on porches.
Strangers embraced it intersections. It wasn't just grief, It was
disbelief that such a thing could happen here, to people
(11:30):
like this, in a neighborhood that it always seemed immune
to tragedy. Reporters wrote of the Calgary stillness, a collective
quiet that hung over the city that summer. Even after
Garland's arrest, the missing bodies left a hollow space in
every headline. No one wanted to believe that a little
boy's sleepover, that simplest, sweetest act of family, could end
(11:53):
in such horror, but the evidence was undeniable. The monsters,
it turned out, didn't always live from home. The Garland
farm sat at the edge of a gravel road that
dusted out towards the prairie horizon, an ordinary Alberta acreage
until police began to dig. In July twenty fourteen, the
(12:14):
Calgary Police Service transformed the Quiet Air Dree property into
one of the largest crime scenes in Canadian history. For
eight weeks, investigators sifted through soil, ash and metal scraps.
They cataloged every fragment, every burn pile, every stain. What
they found was a geography of horror. Detectives called it
(12:37):
the search of a lifetime. More than one hundred officers,
forensic technicians, and evidence recovery experts rotated through twelve hour shifts.
They combed through barns, sheds and fields. Specialized anthropologists from
the University of Alberta were brought in to identify bone fragments,
(12:58):
while fire andats mapped burn patterns across the site. They
unearthed thousands of items, a child's toothbrush, scorched fabric, and
the remains of power tools modified in disturbing ways. At
the center of the property was the clearing where Garland
had built what he called a burn barrel, a makeshift
(13:21):
incinerator fashioned from an old oil drum. Within it, police
found the remains of a small chain, a button from
children's pajamas, and traces of blood. Just beyond the main yard,
a second burn site stretched into the treeline. The ground
had been disturbed, the ash layer thick with melted plastic
(13:42):
and metal shards. When sifted through fine screens, the soil
revealed microscopic bone fragments, calcigned by fire and impossible to
identify through DNA. By the end of the eighth week,
searchers had recovered more than six hundred bone fragments, none
larger than a fingertip. If the farm was the final chapter,
(14:06):
the basement of the Garland homed was the prologue. The
scene of confinement. In a locked room beneath the stairs,
police discovered a cot, zip ties and restraints. Nearby was
a small table holding chemical containers, latex gloves, and duct tape.
Forensic biologists later testified that they found DNA belonging to
(14:27):
all three victims in the room, particularly on the floor
and the bindings. One detective called it a chamber of control.
They also found medical books and online printouts about dismemberment
and incineration techniques. Garland had apparently researched bone ash disposal
and destroying DNA and fire. He wasn't impulsive, he was methodical.
(14:53):
By the time the trial began, in January twenty seventeen,
prosecutors had assembled a narrative built from fragments physical, digital,
and psychological. They called it a case without bodies. In
place of corpses, there were ashes in place of eyewitnesses.
There were traces the kind of forensic whispers that spoke
(15:13):
louder than any confession. One of the prosecution's most damning
exhibits was the GPS data from Garland's truck On the
night of June twenty ninth. His vehicle had left the
Airdree farm around nine forty five pm, traveled to the
Likeness neighborhood, remained there for two and a half hours,
(15:34):
then returned home just before three am. At four fifteen am,
the truck's movement sensor detected activity again, the beginning of
what police believed was the destruction of evidence. Even Garland's
Internet history was a confession of sorts. He had searched
for terms like how to erase blood evidence, forensic DNA
(15:55):
heat resistance, and how long bones burn. When officers seized
his computer, they found folders labeled Pumps, family, and Chillingly Likeness.
Inside that last folder were photographs taken years earlier of
Alvin's workshop, his patent documents, and his house. This wasn't
(16:17):
random violence. It was a vendetta executed with surgical precision.
The Crown called it a slow burn of resentment. Prosecutors
traced the feedback to the early two thousands, when Garland
had worked briefly with Alvin Likeness on an oil field
pump prototype. When the patent was later filed under Likeness's
(16:39):
name alone, Garland felt erased. In his mind, Alvid had
taken not only his idea but his dignity. Family members
testified that Garland nursed that wound for nearly a decade,
replaying the perceived betrayal like a looped recording. And so
when Garland learned through a relative but that the Likenesses
(17:01):
were holding in a state sale, a detail that made
the news, he saw an opening, a public event, an
unlocked door. Investigators believed he planned the attack for weeks.
The presence of Nathan didn't deter him. It simply became
part of the logistics. When the trial opened it in
January twenty seventeen, the courtroom in Calgary's Court of Queen's
(17:23):
Bench was silent except for the hum of reporters, recorders,
Douglas Garland sat motionless, his expression unreadable. The Crown's case
unfolded with clinical precision, blood pattern analysis, DNA charts, photographs
of scorched debris. But behind each piece of evidence was
the quiet presence of Jennifer and Rod O'Brien, who attended
(17:47):
every session. They sat through it, all, the photographs, the testimony,
the unimaginable details. Prosecutor Shane Parker's closing words cut through
the air like glass quote. This was not spontaneous. This
was planned, delibered, and fueled by hate. Three people lost
their lives because of one man's bitterness. After just seven
(18:11):
hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict guilty
on all three counts of first degree murder. Justice David
Gates sent in Scarland to three concurrent life sentences with
no possibility of parole for seventy five years, effectively a
death sentence. By time, your actions are the most despicable
(18:33):
the Court has ever encountered, Justice Gates said. In the
public gallery, Jennifer O'Brien wept silently, clutching a photo of
her son outside a crowd gathered in the winter air.
People hugged strangers, others simply stood had bowed. The verdict
didn't bring closure, how could it, the bodies were never found.
(18:54):
But it brought something closer to peace, the certainty of guilt,
the acknowledgment of truth. In the months that followed, Calgary
built a small memorial garden in Nathan's name, the O'Brien
in likeness. Families withdrew from public view, tending to private grief,
while the community learned to live with the absence. The
(19:15):
case remained a benchmark in Canadian criminal history, not only
for its brutality, but for its endurance. The O'Brien's public
grace became a symbol of resilience in the face of
unspeakable loss. As one columnist wrote in the Calgary Herald, quote,
this was not a story about monsters hiding in the dark.
It was about one man who let hatred become his
(19:36):
purpose and a city that refused to let him have
the last word. For most people in Calgary, the summer
of twenty fourteen remains divided into before and after. Before
June thirtieth, when Nathan O'Brien's sleepover was a small, joyful
moment in an ordinary family's life, and after, when that
(19:57):
same night became a wound that would change the city forever.
Years later, the Likeness home on thirty eight A Avenue remains,
but the house is quieter now. The estate sale sign longne,
the walls repainted, the curtains replaced, But those who lived
through that time still drive past slowly. Some leave flowers,
(20:18):
others avert their eyes. The murders of Nathan, Alvin and
Catherine were not only a family tragedy. They became a
collective trauma, a test of civic compassion, in a case
that reshaped how Canada thinks about justice, vengeance, and forgiveness.
For months after Garland's conviction, Jennifer O'Brien continued to make
(20:40):
quiet appeals for information about the location of her family's remains.
She said it wasn't closure she sought, but truth. Quote.
You can't vary grief, she told CBC's The National. But
you can ground it, you can give it somewhere to
rest end quote. In private, she worked with police on
Kadet Ever, dog searches and aerial surveys around the Garland property,
(21:04):
hoping for even a small recovery. None came. The Royal
Canadian Mounted Police eventually declared it improbable that identifiable remains
would ever be found. Forensic experts testified that the bone
fragments collected had been reduced to calcium dust. Victims of
both violence and fire, the absence of bodies left a
(21:28):
peculiar ache, one that rippled through every conversation about the case.
The idea of disappearance became as heavy as the murder themselves.
Garland's sentence, life without parole for seventy five years, was
one of the harshest ever handed down in Canadian legal history,
but even that felt inadequate to many. Canada, a nation
(21:52):
without the death penalty, had little language for crimes of
such premeditated cruelty. Legal scholars debated whether the scents represented
deterrence or symbolism, a judicial declaration that some acts sit
beyond redemption. For the O'Brien's, it was enough that Garland
would never walk free. Quote. He doesn't get to erase them.
(22:13):
Jennifer sat outside the courthouse. He doesn't get to go home.
End quote. The judges words lingered to quote. In thirty
five years on the bench, I have never encountered such
depravity end quote. The courtroom was silent, then, not because
justice was complete, but because there was nothing left to say.
(22:33):
In twenty nineteen, the O'Brien family, joined by hundreds of Calgarians,
unveiled the Nathan O'Brien Children's Foundation field House, a bright,
open space filled with the sounds of laughter and play.
This is what healing sounds like, Jennifer said at the opening.
Her voice trembled, but her resolve did not. For those
(22:54):
who covered the story, the emotional imprint was permanent. Reporters
spoke of how the case blurred the lines between professional
detachment and shared grief. Police officers cried in their cars
after long shifts at the Garland farm. Volunteers who searched
the field said they still dream of the prairie wind
rustling through empty grass. Calgary, a city often defined by
(23:17):
oil and optimism, found itself defined for a time by mourning.
Yet that morning built something like unity. Churches opened their
doors around the clock, neighbors held vigils and parks. When
Garland's trial ended, one local columnist wrote quote, we came
to understand that evil doesn't need a reason, it only
(23:39):
needs space. But we also learned that community is stronger
than cruelty. In twenty twenty, three. Nearly a decade after
the murders, Jennifer O'Brien told The Globe and Mail she
no longer drives past her parents' old home. It's just
a house, she said, quietly. They're not there. What remained
(24:00):
instead is a memory and the quiet determination to fill
that memory with light rather than darkness. Quote. I want
people to remember Nathan's laugh. I don't want him to
be defined by what was taken, she said. In Kilary's
southwest suburbs, just beyond the bustle of Glenmore Trail, the
nights are peaceful again, but for money, the image remains.
(24:23):
A small boy's pajamas folded neatly in a bag, his
favorite game left on the floor, a promise to call
in the morning. He never got the chance. The sleepover
never ended, but neither did the love that refused to
forget him. And that, my friend, is.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
That is an incredible story. It's so deep and tragic
and oh just heavy. I have so many emotions about it.
About this guy Douglas, the planning how you said it
was years of the pictures of the house. He had
a folder. He looked up stuff, this is this is
(25:04):
terrible And then he plans it for the twenty ninth
and just how nothing's an accident kind of thing. That's
when Nathan's like, that could have been a deterrent for
him the grandchild, Like you did that to the child,
because it made me think, this is two thousand you
said fourteen was giving law abiding citizen vibes. Have you
(25:27):
ever seen that movie?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Oh, who's in that?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Who's the guy who played in three hundred? Girard?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh, Gerard Butler?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yes, yes, that's all but and Jamie Fox, but he
avenges the death of his It's very energetic in the beginning,
and his wife and daughter are killed by these two guys,
and Jamie Fox gets the guys off, and now, of course,
now Girard is going to take the law into his
own hands, and he does this methodical way he gets
(25:57):
the guy and he records it and it's just like
I've never seen the Saw movies, but I'd imagine it's
something just morbid and decrepit and horrible. And you know,
if he's sick enough to do that, then he had
them listen to each other, go, he had them, you know,
because that's a deep abysal hate.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, I think, like, did he who did he kill first?
I'm thinking he killed Nathan first. He probably killed Jefron
act to make Alvin suffer the most emotionally.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
But even like, yes, that is wow, that's just it
blew me away, that is I can't even believe how horrible.
And then as a grandmother, you know, it's just like yeah,
you know, as a grandparent you can be all like, oh,
of course your baby's safe with Grandma and Papa, you know,
and that's like the furthest place you would think harm
(26:53):
would come to your child. And then Jennifer just doing
what a hero? I mean, how do you even say
a hero? What a phenomenal person.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
She's just incredibly strong. I've thought about something happening to
my child and I would be destroyed, and her, she
is destroyed. And it's always amazing to see someone get
on with their lives, you know, yes, when such tragedy happens.
So I hope Jennifer is somewhere and she is okay.
(27:26):
Having the foundation in Nathan's name probably helps a lot,
I would think, you know, psychologically, it helps her, gives
her a purpose and you know, doesn't allow Nathan's memory
to die. And you know, she lost her parents.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I'm surprised the house still stands. Honestly, it was such
a benchmark case.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I know I'm surprised too.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
But this guy, that's just terrible and it's so heinous.
I don't even know how I feel about having this
thought thought when you were explaining how Canada, because I
do have that view of Canada where I'm like, oh,
the Canadians are so nice. Oh hey, yeah, yeah, the
little yeah, and so to hear something so awful, I
(28:15):
would think, gosh, that sounds more America. Isn't that terrible
to think? Like, I'm like, how is it? You know,
so have that mark crime that unfortunately we've heard a
little bit more of here. To touch something as the
you know, Alberta and Calgary who knows, who've known nothing
of this depth of depravity is something to heal from.
(28:38):
So yeah, the whole area for sure. But thank you. Gosh,
I was I was on the edge of my seat.
I could barely make any of my inappropriate jokes.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I know, I know you're like, oh, I'm like, what right,
So it was a good it was, yes, thank yeah,
It's just that.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Is yeah, wow, that's just well, thank you for enduring it.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Miss Shannon, and thank you everyone.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
For listen to endure you. Of course, thank.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
You everyone for listening to this week's episode. And if
you haven't already, please hit the subscribe or follow button
on whatever you're listening to, and please go to our
website Crimes Andconsequences dot com. Also, we have a Patreon,
so if you are enjoying the episodes that you get
to listen to for free, you could join our Patreon
(29:31):
and get an additional episode every week, or you can
join through Apple podcast app. So I think that's everything,
all the business, all.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
The business and grabbing those extra stories.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, and to learn the best episode. My dear, I
will see you later.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I love you girl, I'll love you.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Bye bye
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