Commission counsel Roger Burrill presents information about the police paraphernalia used by Gabriel Wortman, at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18/19, 2020, in Halifax on April 25, 2022.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Among people who knew the gunman behind the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting, it was a well-known fact – Gabriel Wortman had built an identical-looking RCMP patrol car, which he claimed he intended to use in parades, as a movie prop and as a deterrent from break-ins.
But on the night he began his horrific attack that ultimately killed 22 people, the RCMP were skeptical of a series of 911 calls that accurately described the killer’s replica police car, a public inquiry into the mass shooting heard on Monday. Dressed as a police officer and driving his mock police car, the gunman committed the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, while the RCMP withheld for hours from the public critical information about the vehicle he was using.
The killer’s obsession with police memorabilia was well known to those around him, the inquiry heard. Among the people who described his fascination with the RCMP was one of his girlfriends, who told the Mounties days after his rampage that he used to dress her up in a police uniform and play sex games with her. The woman also told police she’d previously seen one of his fake patrol cars, and was “dancing on top of it” while drunk.
Using eBay and government auctions, the gunman assembled all the pieces he needed to make an authentic-looking RCMP patrol car, complete with lights, decals and a black push bar. But no one, the inquiry heard, knew how far he would take his fixation with the national force.
The first three RCMP officers who responded to the rural seaside community of Portapique, N.S., on April 18, 2020, testified they doubted the gunman could have a realistic police vehicle. Instead, they assumed witnesses were either mistaken or had seen an older model Ford Taurus that had been stripped of markings.
Half an hour into the attack, a senior RCMP supervisor was also telling other officers that witnesses were imagining things or confused about what they had seen.
“They’re saying someone in a police car is shooting people and we can’t nail it down. But we don’t think it’s a police car. I think somebody is mixed up,” said Staff Sergeant Brian Rehill, the RCMP’s on-duty risk manager, according to transcripts of police radio communication that night.
An hour after one of the gunman’s first victims described the killer’s vehicle as a “decked and labelled RCMP” patrol car, a 911 dispatcher working out of the Operational Communications Centre in Truro, N.S., was still expressing doubts about that report, saying, “We can’t still get to the bottom of that.”
Early confusion in those 911 calls was among the details released Monday that focused on missteps the RCMP made as investigators tried to identify the killer’s vehicle early in his 13-hour rampage.
The inquiry has heard that during a chaotic 40-minute span on the night of April 18, the perpetrator fatally shot 13 people and set fire to several homes in Portapique, before escaping the rural enclave at 10:45 p.m. as police closed in. The gunman killed another nine people the next day before he was shot dead by RCMP officers at a gas station north of Halifax.
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For the first time, the inquiry revealed Monday that early on the first night of the attack, a senior Mountie was told the suspect owned several decommissioned police cars.
During an interview with inquiry investigators, Staff Sgt. Rehill said operators at the Operational Communications Centre had “personal knowledge” about the perpetrator.
“Some of them live out in that rural area,” said Staff Sgt. Rehill, who at the time was the centre’s on-duty risk manager. “They said, ‘That’s the guy that collects those decommissioned cars.’ So then everybody said, ‘Okay, we’re looking for one of these white Ford Tauruses.’”
But that key information was slightly at odds with what police were being told: The killer wasn’t driving an old, unmarked police car but a fully marked cruiser.
Once the Mounties had confirmed that all of their patrol cars had been accounted for, the focus of the vehicle search turned to finding an old, unmarked police car, the inquiry has heard.
Previous evidence from the first three officers on the scene confirm they did not consider the possibility that the suspect could be driving what looked like a marked RCMP cruiser.
“At no point did I ever envision that it was an exact replica … of the cars we drive,” Constable Aaron Patton told inquiry investigators.
The inquiry heard many people were aware the gunman had built a replica patrol car, but there’s no evidence anyone reported it to the police before the attack. Among those who knew the killer had a look-alike RCMP car were his common-law wife and her family, friends, neighbours, a lawyer, the killer’s denture clients and contractors who worked on his properties.
Several of them asked him if it was legal to have such a vehicle. The gunman claimed he’d checked with authorities and was planning to use it in parades, rent it to movie productions or transform it into a memorial for fallen RCMP members, the inquiry heard.
“He wasn’t hiding it, I can tell you that,” said Max Liberatore, a manager at the federal surplus warehouse where the gunman bought his decommissioned RCMP cars, during an interview with inquiry investigators.
“Of course you don’t think he did what he did. That’s the last thing you would ever think.”
An oversight early in the investigation also led the Mounties to believe the killer owned only one Ford Taurus Interceptor. In reality, he owned four decommissioned police vehicles.
As the search for the killer continued through the first night, RCMP officers in Portapique found one Taurus at the killer’s summer residence, which had been set on fire before he left the village. Constable Patton told investigators he believed the car was the one they were looking for, and Staff Sgt. Rehill later suggested the suspect could have abandoned the car and fled in another vehicle.
At 7:22 a.m. the next morning, RCMP Staff Sergeant Bruce Briers – the risk manager who took over for Staff Sgt. Rehill – received word from Halifax Regional Police that they had obtained images of the killer’s replica vehicle, which showed it had emergency lights and authentic decals.
According to notes provided to the inquiry, by 7:55 a.m. RCMP Staff Sergeant Steve Halliday, the operations officer in the district, came to the conclusion that the gunman “could be on the run in a fully marked RCMP (vehicle).”
“This has to be communicated out to members … all municipal agencies, (police departments) and border crossings and we have to get it out to the public ASAP,” his notes say.
At 9:32 a.m., police received a call from April Dares, a resident of West Wentworth, N.S., who reported hearing gunshots and seeing a police car leave the area.
Investigators later learned that the car was the one they were looking for, but the public had yet to be alerted about the vehicle. The gunman, driving in his fake police car, killed three people in the area that morning before moving on to kill six others, including a pregnant woman and a nurse who were pulled over at the side of the road.
The photograph of the suspect’s vehicle was not shared with the public until 10:17 a.m., three hours after the photos were obtained by police.
With a report from The Canadian Press
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