VANCOUVER, B.C. — There’s a BC connection in the case of the missing family in Alberta.
Federal Court records indicate a Douglas Garland has a criminal history in BC. In a 2005 judgment, Justice Miller says that Garland was charged for producing his own amphetamines in 1992, but moved away from Alberta to Vancouver, assuming the name of a dead person, Matthew Kemper Hartley. The next year, he applied for a social insurance number and driver’s license with the alias and, “conducted all his activities in Vancouver under the name Matthew Hartley,” wrote the judge.
Garland worked at Can Test Ltd. and the British Columbia Institute of Technology, until he was arrested in 1999. He pleaded guilty to all his drug offences and the charges in connection with his assumed identity, and served time in prison, according to the court documents.
BCIT media relations manager Dave Pinton confirms Garland worked at the institute on a part-time basis.
“It’s really tough because this individual worked at BCIT in 1999 on a part-time basis,” says Pinton. “The employment record, because it was inactive after that, was destroyed (according to our document retention policy) in 2007. So we have very few details.”
Garland was arrested near Airdrie on Monday morning, as the search for five-year-old Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents, Alvin and Kathryn Liknes, turned into a homicide investigation.
–With files from Rumina Daya and Sarah Offin
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