Murderers In Our Midst

"It's extremely tragic. It's devastated them. I think it's safe to say even as the days went by there's always a glimmer of hope. Unfortunately with the laying of charges we have taken the hope away from the family."
"[This] has been an extremely challenging and heart-wrenching investigation. ... The preponderance of evidence is such that it has led our investigators to believe they are dead."
"Our efforts to locate the bodies of the three deceased is obviously a big part of what we're hopeful to, at some point in time, be able to address."
"We are asking for the assistance of anybody who is on an acreage, anybody who's a business person, oil companies that have access to land, to continue to be vigilant and look for anything that's unusual. We are not going to limit ourselves to [one small area]."
"It was clear at that point [cancellation of the Amber Alert] that this was no longer a missing persons investigation."
Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson

From a mysterious absence in the home of her parents when Jennifer O'Brien dropped by to pick up her son Nathan whom she had left overnight in the care of her father and mother, to a presumed abduction, then concern over the state of the home interior left in a violent shambles, to an Amber Alert at the absence of a child, to a concerted search for the whereabouts of the missing grandparents and grandchild, to the realization that they were no longer merely missing, but presumed dead.

It is not even remotely possible to imagine the anguish and desolation that must now occupy the bleak thoughts and emotions of the parents of Nathan O'Brien. His mother has lost her five-year-old child, she has at one fell stroke, lost her father and her mother. The couple is bereaved and there will be no relief for them in the knowledge that the murderer of their three family members has been charged and will no longer be at large.

Nathan O'Brien and his grandmother Kathy Liknes are shown in a Calgary Police Service handout photo. Photo: provided

A man known by the family, a 54-year-old resident of Airdrie, Alberta, arrested and charged with three counts of murder, first-degree for the adults and second-degree for Nathan. The family must have known that their hopes of finding their son and his grandparents alive might be a distant possibility. Police called in to investigate their absence were able to inform themselves through a search of their home that a violent confrontation had taken place, and evidence presented that one among them was severely wounded.

When such a crime takes place the psychopath undergoing a psychotic episode focusing on his victims is likelier to dispose of them rather than take the risk of their informing police of what had occurred. Their swift disposition destroys the probability of their testifying that this man committed a grave injury toward them. The graver injury of death to all of them disposed of that scenario, but in the process simply put off temporarily the reckoning.

Douglas Garland appears always to have had a troubled personality. Enough so to bring him to the attention on a number of occasions to police. A fruitless search of his parents' property, while not resulting in the unearthing of the bodies of the three family members, obviously divulged other kinds of evidence. No "smoking gun" led to his arrest, according to Chief Hanson, but enough evidence obviously surfaced to compel prosecutors with whom police shared the evidence, to instruct that charges be laid.

Bad blood appears to have existed between grandfather Alvin Liknes and the accused, relating to a business deal that had gone awry. It was Kathryn Liknes's misfortune to be home at the time that Douglas Garland entered their home to have it out with her husband. And worse tragedy that five-year-old Nathan was left in the overnight care of his doting grandparents who were looking to their future, not their abrupt end.