#douglas garland

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Douglas Garland sentenced to 75 years in prison without parole for ‘meticulous’ triple murder

A jury convicted Garland of three counts of first-degree murder for the 2014 deaths of Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their five-year-old grandson Nathan O'Brien

Triple murderer Douglas Garland will spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime a judge says was carried out with meticulous planning and precision.

Justice David Gates on Friday imposed a sentence on Garland that prevents the 57-year-old from seeking parole for at least 75 years from the time of his arrest. That means he would have to live to the age of 129 before being eligible.

Gates said Garland’s degree of moral blameworthiness in the deaths of Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their grandson Nathan O’Brien in June 2014 is very high.

“It’s hard to imagine a more cunning, cruel or horrific set of circumstances,” Gates told the courtroom.

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[allthecanadianpolitics]

Jury finds Douglas Garland guilty of murdering Calgary boy and grandparents

A 1st-degree murder conviction comes with an automatic life sentence

A Calgary jury has found Douglas Garland guilty of three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of a five-year-old boy and his grandparents after deliberating for 8½ hours.

Garland, 57, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the 2014 deaths of five-year-old Nathan O'Brien and Alvin, 66, and Kathy Liknes, 53, of Calgary.

Family members of the victims cried when the verdicts were read out, but Garland showed no reaction.

Jurors began deliberating at 5:15 p.m. MT Wednesday evening and returned shortly after 2 p.m. on Thursday.

The bodies of Nathan and his grandparents have never been found, and prosecutors believe the three family members were taken from the Liknes's home alive on June 29, 2014, then killed on a farm near Airdrie, north of Calgary, where Garland lived with his parents. The Crown's theory is that Garland burned the bodies.

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