Empty shoebox helped match bloody footprints found at crime scene in Calgary triple murder

CALGARY – An empty shoebox at the home of a man charged in the deaths of an Alberta couple and their grandson helped investigators match bloody footprints discovered at the crime scene, a murder trial was told Friday.

Douglas Garland, 56, faces three counts of first-degree murder. He was charged after Alvin and Kathy Liknes and five-year-old Nathan O’Brien vanished from the couple’s Calgary home in June 2014. Their bodies have not been recovered.

Sgt. Lynn Gallen was in charge of a forensic team assigned to theLiknes home. But evidence collection initially had to wait, the police footwear expert told the jury.

“There was a sense of urgency that was put upon us in the briefing. We knew we were entering the residence without a warrant, but it was strictly to search for a person and then exit. They went searching for the sign of a child,” Gallen said.

Officers found no sign of the boy and, after the warrant was approved, Gallen quickly started looking at several bloody footprints found in the home.

“Footwear impressions that we were seeing appeared to be in blood and they can be quite delicate,” she said.

By spraying the footprints with a chemical, police were able to confirm the presence of blood, Gallen told court.

Copies of the footprints were sent to a national footwear database, which identified the shoe as a size 13W Dr. Scholls Delta 2 runner.

An empty shoebox matching that size and model was found inGarland’s house. A new pair of the same runners was purchased by another officer so investigators could test against the footprints at the Liknes home.

“We never did recover a pair of shoes at the suspect’s residence,” Gallen testified.

“Normally, when I’m asked to do a comparison, somebody would hand me a pair of suspect shoes and I’d be asked to compare those shoes.

“Because the box was located at the residence, with no shoes in it, I was asked to do a comparison to see if the shoes that were similar to that box could have made that impression.”

Gallen outlined several tests that were done to compare the new runners with the bloody footprints.

“The elements are the same design. They’re not a perfect fit. They do correspond in shape and size.”

She said another bloody footprint in the Liknes garage lined up “very nicely” with the shoe impressions.

The Crown alleges that Garland held a petty grudge against Alvin Liknes over a patent on a pump they had worked on for the oil and gas sector.

Police recovered bits of bone, human remains and a tooth in the ash of a burning barrel at the suspect’s residence.

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