Shadow of Doubt by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon

Author:Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2016-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

twelve

MOTIVE

I was aware of her.”

Robert McFadden was speaking of Richard Oland’s mistress, Diana Sedlacek. Crown prosecutor P.J. Veniot, having suggested in his opening statement that the pair’s adulterous relationship played a role in the murder, had just asked McFadden what he knew about her. The jury had seen Dennis’s videotaped statement to police, in which he told Stephen Davidson he was worried “people might be finding out” about the affair and asked McFadden, his father’s “right-hand man” and “the guy who’s closest to him,” to talk to him.

McFadden confirmed the private conversation. He said it took place about a year and a half before the murder, when he was helping Dennis with his divorce. “He sort of said that he had a matter to talk to me about.” According to McFadden, Dennis said he had “become aware of Diana, and should I have the occasion to suggest to his father it was getting out and to cool it, to take that opportunity.” McFadden said he nodded in response but never passed along Dennis’s concerns. “The opportunity never came up,” he testified. “Richard was careful” and “never made me aware of [the affair] directly. There was never an opportunity I could say, ‘Your family knows about this,’ so I didn’t.”

But it was no secret Oland was having an affair, McFadden added. Airline tickets and texts on Oland’s iPhone proved Sedlacek was more than just “Dick’s friend.” It wasn’t difficult, he said, to “follow the money” and “figure out what was going on.” McFadden’s choice of words was particularly apt. The Crown was arguing that two factors comprised Dennis Oland’s motive for murder: one was his anger over his father’s adulterous relationship and his determination to see that relationship end before it became common knowledge, and the other was his mounting financial problems. As early as his police statement, Dennis Oland had suggested Sedlacek as a viable suspect in his father’s killing. His lawyers at one point floated this idea but later seemed to abandon it, implying instead that Sedlacek’s husband might have played a role. For the second, more substantial motive, the defence used the testimony of the Crown’s own witnesses to counter every assertion the prosecution made about Oland’s debts and his father’s responses to his financial difficulties, arguing that Oland’s precarious financial situation long preceded his father’s murder, and denying that Richard Oland had ever expressed concern or anger about Dennis’s difficulties.

The courtroom was full on November 10. Although prosecutors refused to divulge their list of witnesses or the order in which they would be called, word had gotten out: the mistress was set to testify. Sedlacek swept through the front doors of the courthouse looking like Jackie Onassis, a black, white, and grey shawl draped loosely around her head, large dark sunglasses hiding her eyes. In a tailored black pantsuit she sashayed past the extra chairs sheriff’s deputies had set at the back of the courtroom to accommodate the large crowd, and she perched herself in the witness box.

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