Warning: The details of this story are disturbing
The man who killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in April 2020 had a history of violence in the decades leading up to his final attack, inflicting assaults and harassment on strangers, employees and patients alike.
New documents released by the Mass Victims Commission leading the public investigation examining the April 18 and 19, 2020 murders show that Gabriel Wortman had a pattern of intimidation, beating, harassment, and reprimanding anyone who offended.
In interviews with police after the shootings, dozens of people tracing a woman he dated briefly after high school in 1986 describe him in terms such as “creepy,” “violent,” “revengeful,” and ” obsessive “.
Women who worked for him, or were patients at his prosthesis clinic, repeatedly told researchers it made them uncomfortable, and men cited his dangerous temperament and extreme anger as intimidating enough to prevent him from they denounce physical violence.
Patients with dentures were assaulted, abused
“It scared me of the king,” a former patient told police.
The man, identified only as BK, lived near the gunman’s prosthesis clinic in Dartmouth and came across him from time to time as he put the rubbish in the shared container. Wortman offered to fix the man’s “steep” teeth and accepted a monthly payment plan.
But when BK was unable to pay his $ 50 payment in December 1999, Wortman confronted him in the container, knocked him to the ground, ripped his teeth out of his mouth, and shoved a handful of snow into him. in the mouth.
“He says,‘ Merry Christmas to you. ’And he left,” BK recalled.
BK didn’t back down to regain his dentures and did his best to make sure he didn’t cross paths with Wortman again. He moved out of the area in a month.
Former employees told police it was not an isolated incident.
Renée Karsten, a dentist who worked with Wortman at her Dartmouth clinic between 2001 and 2007, said she occasionally “broke up.” He described twice having seen him break patients ’dentures in half or crush them to the ground because patients complained about the fit.
Karsten also told police the day Wortman left the clinic, leaving a patient in the chair, to hit a man who had been sitting on the window sill of his smoking building.
“[He] I lost it and grabbed it, “Karsten told RCMP.” I just grabbed it from the window sill and pulled it away from the window and just took the shit out of it. “
Karsten said he tried to intervene, but Wortman called him back inside. He said he soon re-entered, washed his hands and returned the patient to the chair.
The prosthesis board found a pattern of inappropriate behavior
Wortman’s interactions with patients were the subject of an investigation by the Denturist Licensing Board of Nova Scotia. The board received at least eight complaints about Wortman between 1998 and 2020. Three of these, filed in 2004, were from women who described Wortman’s abusive behavior and, in one case, sexually explicit comments during treatment.
Board registrar Maureen Hope told board chairman Robert MacKean in September 2004 that when patients tried to solve the problem of misaligned dentures, Wortman “went on the defensive and situation is going from bad to worse … from what patients have told me, at the moment, it is certainly limiting professional misconduct. “
Wortman wrote to Hope in October 2004 in response to the complaints, saying the women were “fed by bitterness” or to take revenge.
However, the board initiated an investigation into the three allegations and a fourth filed in February 2005.
Gunman described investigation as “witch hunt”
At one point in this investigation, Wortman contacted a consulting dentist hired by the board, and asked him to change his conclusions about the quality of Wortman’s work. After the investigation, he contacted a researcher at his workplace to tell him it was all a “witch hunt.”
In February 2007, Wortman signed an agreement to avoid a formal hearing, accepting allegations of professional misconduct and one of interfering in the board’s investigation.
He was suspended for a month and ordered to undergo counseling. Although he completed some counseling, the investigation documents note that he continued to “deny responsibility or harm in responding to patients’ subsequent complaints.”
Documents show Wortman wrote to the board to defend himself at least three more times against complaints in 2011, 2016 and 2019, each time saying patients were going to look for him or had mental health issues.
No other board investigation or sanction was mentioned against Wortman related to post-2007 complaints.
Repeated sexual harassment of several women
Although Wortman denied making sexual comments to the patient who filed the complaint in 2004, several women described the sexual harassment and aggressive advances.
A woman identified only as a BB in the investigation documents said she worked as a receptionist at Wortman clinics shortly after finishing high school, but that she dropped out after less than six months because he repeatedly exposed her. his penis and asked her for sexual favors.
Another woman, identified as SS, applied for work at the Dartmouth clinic. After an initial interview in 2004, Wortman invited her for a second, to her Portapique country house.
She left, only for Wortman to pressure her to drink and stay the night in her bedroom. She refused, but continued to work at her Halifax clinic. He said that one day they were walking through a hospital to see a patient when he broke the silence by making a sexual comment “out of nowhere”.
Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from above: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)
“I think in her head, she thought it was a gift from God for women and that all women should love her,” SS told the RCMP.
A dental sales representative who visited Wortman’s clinic in 1999 said he invited her to a meeting at his Lawrencetown cottage. The woman, identified as OO, arrived to find Wortman and another woman, his girlfriend at the time, with whom he broke up immediately in front of OO.
When that woman left, OO told police the gunman became “aggressive” and told OO he “wanted to fool himself.” She left and Wortman chased her with his Jeep.
“I accelerated and he accelerated. And he tried to get me off the road. And I said, what the hell is wrong with you?” she said
OO told police she only stopped when someone called her from the street, and then called her “continuously” to apologize.
Others said they wanted to report the fake police car and the strange behavior of the gunman, but they felt too intimidated to take that step.
Incident in the garage of a gunman
The summer before the mass shooting, a group was partying in the gunman’s garage, including a Portapique neighbor named EE in the transcripts; his daughter, who is baptized DD; and his friend, II.
Later, both younger women told police that the gunman’s fully marked RCMP car and uniforms scared them away and convinced them that he was an agent or organizing parties with “dirty cops”.
The gunman also played against II all night, he said, and at one point grabbed his chest.
Employers who interacted with Wortman said he was confrontational, condescending and would be unreasonably agitated for minor infractions.
The replica of the gunman’s RCMP cruiser that was used in the NS mass shooting was created with a 2017 Ford Taurus out of service. (Mass Victims Commission)
Allison MacDonald, a representative of the Yellow Pages, said Wortman locked her out of her office in November 2019 when she arrived at a meeting two minutes late. During a follow-up meeting, she described him as “happy” and said he walked around the office “blowing and blowing,” and interrupted her to count the time before her next meeting.
MacDonald said a male colleague who renewed Wortman’s account in 2020 described him as “good as a cake.”
In March 2020, Wortman contacted local CIBC officials to withdraw large amounts of cash from their accounts, citing fears that banks would close in the midst of the pandemic. As bank officials tried to follow the necessary protocols for such a large withdrawal ($ 475,000 in total), Wortman became increasingly irritated and enraged.
After a local branch manager filed an internal complaint about Wortman, CIBC’s vice president of marketing for Nova Scotia and PEI told police he held a half-hour conversation with Wortman. Dean Branton described the gunman as “very annoying” and “very damn.”
“He wanted his money to come to hell or water,” Branton told RCMP. “I said okay … then we have to do it in a way that keeps you safe. Isn’t it? And then that’s when he said, ‘Well, let me worry about my safety , friend “.
Wortman was known to law enforcement
Halifax Regional Police had dozens of pages of records about Wortman due to the numerous altercations and assaults in which he participated over the years.
One incident that led to charges was Wortman’s assault on a 15-year-old boy at Tim Hortons, near his Dartmouth clinic. Police records indicate that Wortman confronted the teen in October 2001, although it is unclear why, and a verbal disagreement escalated. The gunman punched the teenager in the head and kicked him in the ribs.
The police record notes that Wortman claimed he was acting in self-defense after the teen spit on him. Wortman pleaded guilty to assault in 2002 and received parole with parole. He was banned from carrying firearms during his parole and was ordered to attend to anger management and …