The judge and jury at the Garland triple murder trial is again reviewing reams of court exhibits documenting all the evidence police collected from the rural property owned by the accused's parents.
Douglas Garland is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in connection to the deaths of Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their grandson Nathan O’Brien.
** WARNING - GRAPHIC DETAILS FOLLOW **
Wednesday's testimony continued with Cst. Ian Oxton, the lead forensic investigator in the case.
Oxton told the court that a 'handbook of poisons' was found in an upstairs room, along with a Tyvek protective suit and long rubber gloves.
The garage at the home was packed wall-to-wall with boxes and miscellaneous items and, according to Oxton, there were chemicals such as insulin and chloroform found inside.
Nearly 100 pairs of shoes were taken from the Garland home but none of them matched the footprints at the Liknes' Parkhill home, Oxton told the court.
The exhaustive search also included other outbuildings and a fire pit at the south end of the property. Oxton said that bone fragments were found in the ashes of the pit.
He told the court that the outbuildings were of particular interest because they had received information that the victims had been in that area.
Police recovered a box filled with more leather straps, handcuffs with restraints as well as a pair of child-sized handcuffs, the same type used to restrain a young offender, Oxton said.
Investigators also found an empty bottle of a substance called Rnase, an agent used to destroy DNA, Oxton told the court.
Another one of the techniques police used to gather evidence from the home, Oxton said, was sifting through 120 gallons of ashes collected from the property.
Becoming a bit emotional, Oxton told the court that it took about 550 hours over 10 months to fully sift through the materials.
At the end of it, he told the court that they recovered 17 items that were believed to be tooth fragments, a piece of shackle, an earring, a bracelet and a button.
Oxton also told the court that forensics looked at Garland's truck extensively, spraying it with the same chemical agent used to expose bloodstains.
He told the court that blood was found on one of the rear tail lights and on the licence plate.
On Tuesday, the court first heard testimony from Oxton, who was in charge of the nine-day-long investigation of the home of Garland’s parents.
Oxton said that more than 1,400 pieces of evidence was collected, the most in any Calgary Police investigation in its history.
The items included hacksaw blades, daggers, handcuffs, restraints, firearms parts and ammunition.
In the basement of the home, Oxton told the court that they found a book titled ‘Be Your Own Undertaker – How to Dispose of a Dead Body’.
Crown prosecutors say that DNA evidence from all three victims was found on the property.
They allege that Garland killed them over a petty grudge.