Court sees items of Richard Oland’s blood stained clothing at trial on Friday

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SAINT JOHN – An expert in blood stain analysis was back on the stand in Saint John for a second day at the second degree murder trial of Dennis Oland.

The 47 year old is charged with killing his father, well known businessman Richard Oland in July of 2011.

Sergeant Brian Wentzell was back on the witness stand today as the trial finished it’s fifth week and 19th day of testimony. The now infamous brown sports jacket made its way to the jury before the end of the day.

Wentzell, the RCMP Sergeant based in Nova Scotia, was continuing his direct testimony related to his role in the Oland murder investigation.

Outside of the crime scene itself Wentzell was tasked with examining articles of clothing for evidence of blood. That included a brown sports jacket the Crown says was seized from the home of Dennis Oland about a week after Richard Oland’s body was found.

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The jacket was in an evidence bag in court, but there were also pictures taken of the garment as part of the investigation.

Wentzell said he examined the jacket on December 6th, 2011 looking for stains and how they were deposited. He described the stains as visible but difficult to see because of the jacket’s colour.

Wentzell went through the series of stains he identified on the jacket, most very small in size, some under three millimetres and tough to see even under heavy magnification.

The jacket was sent to another lab for analysis and then returned to Wentzell in October of 2012.

Results of the testing were not revealed today but the Crown stated at the beginning of the trial there were four areas of blood found on the jacket with DNA matching the profile of Richard Oland.

Wentzell also went through a series of photos of clothing removed from Oland’s body. They included a shirt almost completely saturated in blood, a bloody sweater along with pants and shoes which also contained blood spatter.

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His work at the murder scene included identifying hundreds of blood spatter stains and their origin. He also sprayed the area with a blood detecting substance and noted three transfer stains near the main pool of blood, two of which were consistent with footwear.

He said that because of deterioration he couldn’t say if the stains were there prior to, or after the presence of blood spatter.

Cross examination of Sergeant Wentzell begins on monday.