A long-time business associate of Richard Oland has told the second-degree murder trial of Oland’s son that the elder Oland didn’t appear dissatisfied over lingering financial issues between the two in the years preceding his death.
Robert McFadden concluded his testimony Friday at the retrial of Dennis Oland, charged in the July 2011 bludgeoning death of his father, well known Saint John businessman Richard Oland. Oland has pleaded not guilty.
The Crown has suggested Oland was “on the edge financially” and has begun to bring his financial situation into the trial. McFadden told the court Oland had “cash flow” issues in late 2008 into the spring of 2009.
He was going through a costly divorce, one his father would bankroll to the tune of $538,000. The trial would hear there were conditions to this arrangement including a $500,000 mortgage on Oland’s Rothesay home. Dennis Oland was to make interest-only payments on the loan of more than $1,600 per month, some of which were missed McFadden testified.
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“He(Richard) viewed it as a loan,” McFadden told the court Thursday. “He just wasn’t worried about collecting it.” There was a suggestion made that anything unpaid would be eventually deducted from Dennis’s part of the estate.
Watch: recent highlights from the trial
Under cross-examination Friday by defence lawyer Michael, Lacy McFadden said it had been six months to a year prior to his death that Richard Oland had made mention of the documents related to his son’s divorce. McFadden told the court “I don’t recall him saying, ‘Why hasn’t this been done?'”
The defence also brought up a $10,000 loan from Richard to Dennis Oland in May of 2008, repaid by Dennis in June with an accompanying handwritten note saying “Thank you for helping me in my time of need.”
Lacy also raised missed mortgage payments by Dennis Oland to his father on a property adjacent to his Gondola Point Road home dating back to 2002. McFadden would agree to Lacy’s suggestion that ‘It got worked out later on”.
The Crown says more evidence of a financial nature will be presented when the trial resumes Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m.