The Fifth Estate

Dead End: An Investigation Gone Wrong | Waiting For Justice: The Oland Murder (44x15)

: 07, 2019

In August 2012, two young men were on an ATV at a cottage near Haliburton, Ont., when it crashed into a steel gate, leaving one dead and the other unscathed. What happened that day has become the subject of an almost seven-year investigation by four different police forces. Now the father of the one who died is taking on the OPP — determined to expose what he believes is a bungled investigation and trying to clear his son’s name as having caused his own death. | In July 2011, Richard Oland was found bludgeoned to death at his office — a killing that shook New Brunswick to the core, given the family’s stature in the province. His son, Dennis, was eventually convicted of murder. But he won on appeal based on an error in the trial judge’s instructions to the jury. Now he’s being retried, and his fate is in the hands of one judge and no jury. Bob McKeown, who reported on the case in February 2016, revisits the story.