Episode 195 - Nova Scotia Nightmare - Inside Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooting
47:24 Share

The opinions expressed in the following episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Minds of Madness podcast. Listener discretion is advised. On the cold spring morning of April 19th, 2020, a woman staggered from the woods outside Portapique, Nova Scotia.

Her bare feet were blackened from running through the woods, and she was covered in scrapes and bruises. She hammered on the door of a neighbor who let her inside and called 911. The woman had suffered fractures to her ribs and spine and was in excruciating pain after spending the night hiding under a tree.

She told police something had finally snapped in her abusive common-law partner. But by the time she'd made that phone call, he'd already murdered 13 people, and his rampage was far from over. Join me now as we examine the case of Gabriel Wartman, a rage-filled 51-year-old denturist who committed the worst mass shooting in Canadian history.

We'll look at how he used a replica police vehicle to confuse law enforcement, analyze the slow and uncoordinated police response that cost precious time, and remember the 22 individuals who paid the ultimate price for one man's vicious paranoia.

Portapique, Nova Scotia, that tiny rural community that has only around 100 permanent residents, par for the course in a province that represents about 2.5% of the Canadian population. It's the type of place you might imagine escaping to when urban problems mount and crime statistics creep higher.

A safe haven where everybody knows their neighbors, where you're surrounded by green on one side and the vast expanse of the Bay of Fundy on the other. Maybe some of the residents felt that way once too. But today, however, they're struggling to rebuild after a devastating blow. People like Tyler Blair, who was left to care for his younger siblings when his father Greg and stepmother Jamie were senselessly gunned down.

Like the children of Lisa McCauley, an elementary school teacher who left their family home to investigate a raging fire nearby and never made it back inside. Like the family of Jolene Oliver, Aaron Tuck, and Emily Tuck, forever haunted by the fact that their loved ones must have lain injured for hours before their bodies were found.

The events of April 18th and 19th, 2020 created a ripple of grief through an entire country, leaving behind physical and emotional scars that many will carry with them for the rest of their lives. And it all originated from one man, the middle-aged denturist Gabriel Wortmann.

Gabriel Wartman was over six feet tall and physically imposing, but in his white lab coat and a pair of rimless glasses, he could also project a mild-mannered image. Gabriel owned two denture clinics, one in the provincial capital of Halifax and another in the neighboring city of Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth location was decorated with an enormous pink smile and a massive set of dentures that jutted out over the parking lot. Gabriel himself projected a jokey, jovial exterior, for some of his patients at least, and he did his best to reinforce that impression with public displays of charity.

He once donated a free set of dentures to a cancer survivor who'd lost all her teeth due to medication, earning himself positive press with titles like "There's Angels Among Us", like from this CTV news clip from 2014. There's so many ways for people to get dentures, but it seems like the people that really need them are the people that are getting left behind.

But for other vulnerable women who turned to him, Gabriel's charity came with certain unsavory strings attached. When homeless or disadvantaged female clients couldn't afford to pay their bills, Gabriel sometimes offered to cover the difference in exchange for sex. Men weren't immune to Gabriel's moods either.

One former patient who was $50 behind on his payments recalled Gabriel tackling him to the ground, yanking the dentures out of his mouth and force-feeding him a fistful of snow.

Between 1998 and 2020, at least eight complaints were filed against Gabriel in his practice. Yet through it all, Gabriel hung on to his dentures license. He was a master of manipulating the power dynamic, hiding behind his wealth, and choosing victims he could accuse of mental illness.

His denture clinic provided convenient cover for that, but it hadn't been his first career choice. In his high school yearbook, Gabriel once wrote that he wanted to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Eventually, that same fascination with the RCMP would turn into an obsession as he worked his way up to his horrific final act.

Gabriel was raised as an only child in New Brunswick, the province west of Nova Scotia, where from a very young age, Gabriel learned to fear his father Paul's temper. The stories attributed to Paul Wartman are almost too sadistic to believe, like the time he was unimpressed by the way Gabriel looked after the family pet as a boy and forced him to shoot it. Gabriel would have been around 10 at the time.

Experts have noted that a traumatic upbringing is neither an excuse for nor a predictor of violent behavior, with many people going through similar traumatic childhood experiences without re-victimizing others. Gabriel, however, never found a way to master his rage, and in 2001, he assaulted a 15-year-old boy.

The teenager had just been waiting for the bus outside the Atlantic Denture Clinic when a furious Gabriel came out screaming that he was too close to his business.

The boy recalled being punched multiple times in the head before getting shoved against a newspaper box. Gabriel received a conditional discharge and a $50 fine, just one of the many red flags with a bewildering lack of consequences. Then in 2010, police were called after Gabriel threatened to kill his parents.

His own father confirmed Gabriel had a gun collection, but in the end, the investigation resulted in little more than a game of telephone tag until the heat died down. The following year, an anonymous tip came in claiming Gabriel had threatened to kill a cop.

Gabriel had been apparently seeking revenge for what he saw as a failure to investigate a break-in entry at one of his properties. But that went nowhere as well, despite a clear warning about a handgun in his nightstand, multiple rifles, and burgeoning mental health issues.

Anyone who knew Gabriel would eventually face his temper, and in the summer of 2013, his common-law partner, Lisa Banfield, fled to a neighbor's home, escaping an outburst of violence. Neighbors Brenda and George Forbes were ex-military and didn't scare easily, but were well aware of Gabriel's intensity from the time he bragged to them about his gun collection and asked if they could help him buy more.

The Forbes urged Lisa to report Gabriel's abuse to police, but she said she was afraid Gabriel would kill her. Despite the couple filing a report themselves, the RCMP said their hands were tied without hard evidence of illegal firearms or a statement from the victim herself.

So Gabriel turned his aggression on the Forbes instead. In her testimony to the Mass Casualty Commission, Brenda describes Gabriel's campaign of harassment while her husband George was away. I would hide my vehicle in the garage.

trees and stuff like that. So he couldn't, he wouldn't know that I was actually at home. I'd have to sneak in through the backwoods and come in through the back door. But he would stand outside my house and just stare at it and threatening me. And he didn't even know that I was home. He was like bad.

Eventually, the Forbes were forced to sell their home at a $100,000 loss. Gabriel, however, faced zero consequences. Although it wasn't fair, it would turn out to be a wise move in the end. Lisa, on the other hand, didn't manage to break free, and until the events of April 18th and 19th, probably no one suffered under Gabriel's rage worse than her.

As Lisa tells it, she met Gabriel at a bar in Halifax in 2001 when she was 31 years old. Like so many stories of abuse, the relationship began with a full-on charm offensive before the mask slipped. He came to my house and picked me up two dozen set of red roses and I thought that was over the top. I don't like that and...

We got in the car and he was driving to Halifax to a restaurant. And when we were at an intersection on, I believe, Spring Garden, there was a young girl that rear-ended us. And I thought, this is a good time to see what his demeanour, what kind of character he is. And he got out and he approached the two young girls in the vehicle and he was smiling. He said, "It's okay." He was very calm. And I thought, "Oh, he's a good guy."

That single act of compassion inspired Lisa to move into an apartment with Gabriel above his denture clinic within a few months. In 2003, they took a road trip and noticed a for sale sign. A cottage was available on Portapique Beach Road, just an hour and a half north of the city. Gabriel snapped it up and a little while later, another nearby property as well.

But that same year, the relationship between Gabriel and Lisa had already begun a steep descent into abusive territory. Gabriel physically assaulted Lisa during an argument over which one of them would be the designated driver to a party, at which time Lisa considered leaving him. But by that point, Gabriel already had his hooks in deep.

As abusers often do, Gabriel enhanced his control by offering Lisa a job at a stenture clinic, rendering her financially dependent on him. This apparent act of benevolence concealed its true purpose: maintaining control. If he was unsatisfied with her performance, Gabriel withheld her pay, ensuring his dominance, whether through physical or emotional abuse.

Through fear, intimidation, and exploiting Lisa's dependency, Gabriel maintained control over her for nearly two decades. And his apparent Teflon-like ability to avoid consequences didn't exactly encourage her to speak out either. Even when Gabriel amassed a collection of guns and police memorabilia, Lisa remained silent. Terrified of the man, she felt she could not safely escape.

Although Gabriel was violent towards his partner and made a lot of acquaintances nervous, he wasn't exactly a loner. One of his best friends was Tom Evans, a disgraced lawyer, infamous for drunkenly firing his rifles at a children's Bible camp and for sexually assaulting a teenage boy.

This was the closest thing to a mentor Gabriel had, and despite a 19-year age difference, they spent a lot of time together, some of it on Tom's sailboat, smuggling cigarettes and alcohol across the border into Canada. When Tom died in 2009, Gabriel was the one who showed up to empty out his apartment.

A lot of Tom's possessions went into the dumpster, but the Ruger Mini-14 rifle, Gabriel hung onto that. Tom had also been the one to introduce Gabriel to another source of guns in Maine. Those weapons were smuggled too, none of them legal, with Canadian law requiring gun owners to have a firearms license, which Gabriel never bothered to get.

But the guns weren't the only items with a dubious legal status in his collection. In a garage on his Portapique property, Gabriel also stockpiled a collection of police memorabilia roomy enough for a mock RCMP cruiser.

He'd also bought multiple decommissioned police vehicles legally from a federal auction. Although the cars are stripped of identifying marks before they're sold, Gabriel went to town on one in particular, carefully sourcing a replacement light bar for the top and getting custom decals printed until he covered every last detail.

In the end, Gabriel's work was so precise that the replica could only be distinguished by its unique vehicle number: 28B11.

Impersonating a police officer is a well-known crime. However, Gabriel had a slew of lies at the ready to ward off any suspicion. Telling people he intended on using the car in a parade to honor fallen officers or that he was hoping to get into filmmaking. Once again, he somehow managed to fly under the radar despite some highly alarming behavior.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Gabriel finally snapped. Like so many people, Gabriel's livelihood was affected by the pandemic when it forced his denture clinics to temporarily close. But instead of hunkering down like the rest of the world, Gabriel grew even more viciously paranoid, with his stockpiling going well beyond hoarding toilet paper.

He stockpiled things like large quantities of gasoline. He also liquidated some of his assets, withdrawing $475,000 in $100 bills from the bank. Gabriel was convinced the global situation would devolve into violence, so he got to prepping well before the pandemic even had a chance to drag on.

Lisa claims she tried to tune out his COVID conspiracy talk, hoping it was just stress-induced. On the night of April 18th, 2020, she and Gabriel were celebrating their 19th anniversary. They decided to have a few drinks in the garage near Gabriel's cottage and have a video chat with another couple down in the U.S.,

Lisa and Gabriel shared their plans to cement their relationship with a commitment ceremony the following year, and then one of their friends blurted out, "Don't do it!" Rattled by the exchange, Lisa stood up and walked away.

She hadn't gotten very far when she decided to turn back and apologize to Gabriel. At this point, she was actually offended on Gabriel's behalf, but when she got back, he was several beers deep and too angry to deal with, so Lisa went to bed in the cottage instead.

The next thing she knew, Gabriel had ripped the covers off of her, dragging her up by the hair, and kicked her savagely. He told Lisa to get dressed. He said it was done, and he clearly meant it, because he doused the cottage and all of his cars with gasoline and set them on fire.

With the flaming cottage behind them, Gabriel marched Lisa toward the garage at gunpoint. He then took her shoes so she couldn't run. During the struggle, Lisa attempted to make a barefoot breakaway, but tripped before she could get away. Gabriel then pulled Lisa to her feet by her hair and dragged her back into the garage.

Inside, Gabriel told Lisa he was going to handcuff her, but he only managed to get one cuff on her left wrist.

Rather than murder his longtime partner, Gabriel fired warning shots at the ground before throwing her onto the backseat of his replica RCMP cruiser. And just like a real police vehicle, the rear doors wouldn't open from the inside. Assuming it was safe to let Lisa out of sight, Gabriel left her unattended while he entered the loft apartment inside the garage.

Except he'd forgotten one thing. He'd left the plexiglass divider between the seats open. While Gabriel was out of sight, Lisa managed to wriggle through into the front seat of the cruiser and out the door into the woods. There, Lisa hid until daylight, shivering in the spring cold and aching from being beaten by Gabriel. But Gabriel didn't intend on going after her.

At least, not yet. Because Gabriel had bigger plans.

After Lisa's escape, Gabriel set fire to the garage where he kept his memorabilia. The twin fire seats set were visible above the trees as he searched for his next victim. At 10:01 p.m., the first 911 call came in. It's hard to make out what's going on, but moments before the call was made, Gabriel pulled up the driveway of Greg and Jamie Blair.

My neighbor. Yep. Do you think your husband's been shot? Yes. Okay. Do you have a home for a landline to that location? Where are you? Well, I don't. What's the civic address? 123 Orchard Beach Drive in Portabank. 123 Orchard Beach. Is your husband injured? I don't know. He's laying on the deck. I don't know what the fuck is going on. I think he's a police guard.

Jamie and Greg were loving parents of four, recently mortgage-free, and looking forward to enjoying their lives together. But they never got that chance due to their unfortunate proximity to Gabriel's properties.

On the call, Jamie managed to share two important details. The attacker's name was Gabriel, and he was driving a police vehicle. Moments after Gabriel pulled up, Greg was murdered.

The horrific part of the call you didn't hear was Jamie being shot to death as she held her back against a door, trying to keep Gabriel from entering. Inside, she'd been trying to protect her two young sons, ages 11 and 10. Miraculously, Gabriel hadn't seemed to notice them as they hid on the other side of the bed.

Once the children heard Gabriel leave, the boys snuck out and hid in the closet until they began to smell smoke. Gabriel had scattered logs from the wood stove and cranked up the propane range. Before the house went up into flames, the boys thankfully managed to flee to their neighbors, the McCullies, cutting their way through a path in the woods they'd made together with the same neighbor's children.

But the McCully kid's mom was missing too. She'd gone out to investigate the fires from Gabriel's property and never came back. The kids dialed 911, repeating key identifying details about Gabriel, including the fact he was driving a police car.

Okay. Okay. Where is she at? Is she still in the house? In her room. Okay. Okay. Where's the guy who did this? Okay.

Okay. Did you see anything else about the vehicle? You said it was a police car? It was? Okay.

The RCMP had jurisdiction over the Portapique area and four officers responded to the calls. One stayed behind as a coordinator while the other three proceeded on foot, afraid their vehicles would draw fire. But in the darkness and confusion, lit only by flashlights and burning buildings, they failed to locate Gabriel. - Okay, lots of gunshots in here, three gunshots. Two more gunshots. - We're hearing numerous gunshots.

Pat, be very careful bringing your car down here to avoid ambush. Except for I'm on foot. Just coming past the first bring-in now. Okay, we're just around that corner on foot.

Although the officers did eventually find the children, they advised them to hide in the basement as the killer was still at large. The Blair and McCully children would spend the next two harrowing hours huddled beside the foam together as they listened to sounds of gunshots outside. By the time the children were finally extracted from the building, Gabriel had turned the chaos to his murderous advantage, sneaking along footpaths.

and assassinating any innocent neighbors who emerged to investigate the fires. His victims included Peter and Joy Bond, Corey Elson, Jolene Oliver, Aaron and Emily Tuck, Don Madsen, Frank Galachian, Elizabeth Joan Thomas, John Zoll, and Lisa McCauley. Apart from the 13 blameless people Gabriel gunned down, there were even more near-misses.

Gabriel had set fire to a total of five structures, including the two that belonged to him. Two more neighbors, Kate and Andrew McDonald, were just getting ready for bed when they noticed flames outside their window. They weren't yet aware Gabriel was the cause of the fires, so they got into their car and drove towards his warehouse, hoping to help somehow.

At first, they were relieved to see a police cruiser parked in the driveway of one of the burning buildings. But just in time, Andrew recognized Gabriel's face as the beam of a laser sight was pointed at him.

Okay. Okay.

Is it safe for them to be on that road right now? Yeah. Hi. Hi.

Andrew took a bullet to the shoulder. Another winged him in the head, but he survived.

The McDonald's managed to speed off, but with Gabriel in pursuit. But luck was on their side that night, as soon after, they saw actual RCMP officers approaching, and Gabriel gave up the chase. But that wasn't the end, because he slipped away to cause more carnage. In an article with the CBC, Lisa described her harrowing experience hiding in the woods.

My caper had one of those horn things like police would use, like a microphone kind of thing. And I could hear this whistling, like this kind of whistling that just didn't sound normal to me.

And then I could hear somebody saying, "Oh, it's Colchester Police." But I'm thinking, "Is it or is it Gabriel saying that?" And at one point I thought to get up and then I thought, but it just lasted a minute. Like they only said it one time and they didn't say any more. So I thought, "Oh, maybe it's not." So I just stayed there because I was scared. And then from this angle,

After I don't know how long, I'm just staring up at the sky and I'm thinking, "Can't people see that things are on fire?" Because I'm thinking, you know, if I can hear ambulance or something or fire trucks then they'll come out, but I didn't hear anything and I'm like, "Why aren't people seeing this? What is going on?"

Hindsight is 20/20. Many of the details known to us now weren't available at that time. However, given the scale of Gabriel's attack, it's hard to see the RCMP's response as anything but poor. Even if you put aside the multitude of red flags that deserved investigation prior to the attacks, the RCMP failed on a basic level to communicate the risk to Nova Scotians.

At 11:32 p.m., after Gabriel had already massacred 13 people, the RCMP made a painfully understated tweet to the community. It said police were, quote, responding to a firearms complaint in the #Portapique area and advised residents to stay inside.

Note the crucial information missing here. Despite multiple reports, the suspect was wearing a police uniform and driving a convincing RCMP vehicle. There's no mention of it in the official warning. In fact, after determining that none of their own vehicles were missing, RCMP forces concluded that civilian reports were probably a mistake.

There would be no further public updates for over eight hours. Although the first responding officers did the best they could under the circumstances, they were hamstrung by the lack of a properly qualified scene commander at a time when specialized expertise and oversight were badly needed.

That person could have used the available intel or dispatch officers to canvass the neighborhood, so they were aware of all potential escape routes. A helicopter could have also been a literal lifesaver, but when one was finally requested, it turned out to be in the shop for scheduled maintenance. Without thorough intelligence, barricades, or air support, Gabriel was able to escape down a dirt track beside a blueberry field.

In the lull that followed, the RCMP made a disastrous assumption. They presumed the shooter was dead. But Gabriel was very much alive, spending the night just 24 kilometers away from the community of Debert.

Around 6:30 a.m. on April 19, 2020, Lisa staggered out of her hiding place in the woods. In a CBC article, Lisa explains: So come the morning, I thought, "Okay, I need it. Get out of the woods." So I started to get up and my back was killing me. So I started crawling and then it's like I got probably a couple feet and then it's like, you know what?

like I don't know if it's okay yet so then I went back to where I was laying and I'm thinking I can't be another day in the woods kind of thing I got to get out of here and it's like Lisa just do it so then I just kept crawling and crawling until I got out to where the gully is to the bank and I'm just looking through the woods and then I saw this and I seen this black truck flying down the road and I just got up on my feet and I just started running that way and I went to the first place I seen to

suffering from hypothermia. Barely able to walk due to a fractured spine and ribs, she eventually made it to a neighbor's house. The neighbor gave her a coat and a pair of shoes, and then they dialed 911. Lisa confirmed the details about Gabriel's weapons and replica cruiser.

But around the same time she left the woods, Gabriel was already making his next stop, the home of Corrections Canada officers Alanna Jenkins and Sean McLeod, where he murdered the couple in cold blood and set fire to their home. Nearby resident Tom Bagley, a retired firefighter and military vet, must have seen the smoke when he left his home to investigate.

Once again, Gabriel punished that kindness with death. His next victim was Lillian Campbell, who retired to the area a few years earlier and stayed active with morning walks. She dutifully wore a high-visibility vest for safety, but if anything, it only made her a clearer target for Gabriel. As he passed her on the highway, Gabriel shot her to death without leaving the car.

Next, Gabriel drove south toward the village of Wentworth, actually passing a real police cruiser en route. But by the time it had turned around, Gabriel had slipped out of sight into another innocent couple's driveway. Adam and Carol Fisher had heard about the shooter by that point and crouched in waiting with a shotgun at the ready. But Gabriel turned around and left.

By now, a significant police force had mobilized, including a helicopter. Yet Gabriel somehow slipped through the net once again. As he did, he crossed paths with Kristen Beaton, a nurse and mother. Kristen was on her way to meet her home care patients, but had just pulled over, likely to make a call or text. That's when Gabriel pulled up alongside her vehicle and shot her dead.

Heather O'Brien, another fellow nurse, had the misfortune of passing by as well. She was Gabriel's 19th victim. Cell phone records show some of that morning's victims were monitoring the situation in Portapique. The RCMP had issued a second tweet at 8:02 am and a third at 8:54. Finally, including a picture of Gabriel and a warning he was armed and dangerous.

We know that picture was helpful because the fishers used it to recognize Gabriel. That knowledge saved their lives when Gabriel knocked on their door. But incredibly, the social posts still failed to mention his replica cruiser and uniform. If they had, some of his victims might still be alive today.

That includes Constable Heidi Stevenson, an RCMP officer herself, who questioned the failure to communicate the full story. Has there been discussion about a media release in regard to that vehicle? Just for the public to be on the lookout for that and to also be aware that he may, we don't know if he's got a uniform or access to anything else, but just to keep an eye out for that car.

It wasn't until 10:17 a.m. that RCMP authorities finally authorized a tweet with a description and photo of the cruiser. By then, Gabriel was heading towards Shubenacadie, about 70 kilometers from Portapique, when he encountered RCMP Constable Chad Morrison, who was also participating in the manhunt.

Initially, when Constable Morrison saw the cruiser approaching, he mistook it for his colleague Constable Heidi Stevenson. But Constable Stevenson was mistaken. When Constable Morrison realized it was a man behind the wheel, he hit the gas, but not before being shot in the chest and arms.

I'm shot! I'm shot! Southbound number two! Southbound two, taking the shooting. I'm shot. Copy, dispatch copies. Turning southbound on highway two. Copy. I'm gonna head toward DHS. Copy, I'll get DHS to meet you somewhere. Fifteen brothers, six injuries? Yeah, I don't know what. I don't know what. I'm okay. What direction would he be heading? He continued south on highway two.

15-Rubble-6, what type of vehicle was SOC driving? This is suspect vehicle with him. Constable Morrison managed to escape with his life thanks to his bulletproof vest.

Constable Stevenson had actually been in close proximity to her colleague when she heard that Constable Morrison had been shot and accelerated towards his position. When Gabriel saw the incoming police cruiser, he swerved into Constable Stevenson's lane and collided with her head-on.

What happened next is unclear, but in the immediate aftermath, shots were fired by both Constable Stevenson and Gabriel. Gabriel sustained a head wound, but one of his shots connected to Constable Stevenson and killed the 23-year veteran of the force and mother of two. As Gabriel was stealing the constable's pistol and ammunition, his 21st victim was arriving to help.

Joey Weber was a father, outdoorsman, and Good Samaritan, and when he saw two damaged vehicles on the highway, he rushed to help. In return, Gabriel murdered him and abandoned his damaged fake cruiser for Joey's SUV. It was just before 11:00 AM on April 19th, 2020, and Gabriel still had one stop to make.

Gina Goulet also happened to be a denturist and knew Gabriel professionally. As she followed the news that morning, she confessed to her daughter in a text that she was afraid because the killer knew where she lived. Her daughter reassured her he could never get so far without being caught. A short while later, Gabriel smashed his way into her home.

After finding Gina hiding in the bathroom, he shot and killed his 22nd victim. On his way out, he once again swapped vehicles, exchanging the SUV for Gina's Mazda 3. It was that fateful decision that finally ended his reign of terror because Gina's Mazda needed gas. Gabriel decided to pull over at the Enfield Big Stop gas station.

It was a popular location, positioned alongside the province's busiest highway, not far from the largest airport. And it's where Gabriel's death was captured on video. As he drove in, he pulled up to pump number five. Moments later, an unmarked RCMP vehicle stopped on the other side of the fuel pump. Constables Craig Hubley and Ben McLeod had been driving around that morning visiting the crime scenes.

purely by chance, they'd chosen pump number 6 to refuel. Gabriel's picture had been seared into their memories earlier that day, and by that point, there was no mistaking the man sitting strangely slumped in the grey Mazda.

Enfield big stop, Enfield big stop. Come on me, get to me. Use your cover, back up, back up. Use your cover, no rush here now. Keep calm, keep calm. I don't know what you're doing. Let me see your hands.

Things happened quickly after that. Constable Hughbly shouted, it's him, and Gabriel raised his stolen pistol. The constables opened fire, but in one final attempt to have the last laugh, Gabriel shot himself in the head at the same time.

That's the sound of Alert Ready, an emergency broadcast system capable of reaching every phone on an LTE network. Nova Scotians never heard it, because the RCMP only requested an alert five minutes before Gabriel was shot dead. Yet in the aftermath, instead of facing the reckoning honestly, it appeared the RCMP consistently attempted to explain their actions.

One of their defenses was that reporting Gabriel's replica cruiser would result in too many false alarms, overwhelming the 911 service. Yet when the news finally did get out, dispatchers were able to cross-reference the known locations of legitimate cruisers. That fact suggests the false positive theory is deeply flawed.

A senior official also defended the failure to use alert ready by arguing reports of a fake cruiser would have placed real officers in harm's way as vigilantes might have attempted to take justice into their own hands. To the friends and families of the 22 people who did lose their lives, it was like a slap in the face from the very people charged with protecting them.

Instead, instances of incredible bravery had come from within the community, like the way Jamie Blair defended her children to her last breath, and the way those kids kept a level head as the world burned down around them, or the way Andrew and Kate McDonald set out to help the very man who would have

attempt to murder them. There are simply too many names and too many stories to give them all the credit they're due, but it's clear the community of Portapique held together despite the killer in their midst. It should be said that many of the officers on the ground also did the best they could with the incomplete information while enduring unimaginable stress.

On October 21st, 2020, the Mass Casualty Commission was established to conduct an independent investigation. Their inquiry would draw on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents. They also challenged some of the RCMP's statements. This is Leah Scanlon, head of RCMP communications during the shootings, being cross-examined about her alert-ready reasoning.

In your statement, did you mean that you had concern that Nova Scotians would take matters into their own hands and shoot police officers? I believe I said that, yes. And you stand by that this morning? Yeah, I'm picturing my grandfather, who's rural Nova Scotia, Hunter, access to guns, and I can tell you that he likely would have, so that's what I...

Beyond the anecdotal version of your grandfather and what he may or may not do, do you have any evidence this morning that Nova Scotians would have done that based on details, facts? I believe that exists, but I'm not going to speak to it. You don't have any evidence? I don't, no. After months of effort, the commission reached a damning conclusion.

The RCMP quote, "Did not have any idea how to handle the situation or how to talk to victims." Here's Commissioner Leanne Fitch speaking at the release of the Commission's final report. Leanne Fitch: While we acknowledge and commend the individual actions and courage of many first responders, the overarching approach and response by the RCMP as an institution had many shortcomings.

This must be addressed and responses must be improved. It is also important to note that community members played a critical role in responding to the mass casualty, often putting themselves in harm's way to help others. However, the information they shared concerning the perpetrator was often not properly recorded, shared or acted upon by the RCMP.

There were failures in communications with the public during and in the aftermath of the mass casualty. These must be addressed. That is why in the final report we call for a national review and redesign of the public alert system.

The commission had a few flaws of its own, but it was a small win for many of the survivors who fought hard for transparency even while the fallout from the massacre touched every aspect of their lives. Even simple things like telling someone where you live can be tricky when the answer is poor to pick. Yet the stakes couldn't be higher.

A breakdown of trust as serious as this one tears at the very fabric that holds communities and institutions together. And if the story of Portapique proves nothing else, it's the importance of clear communication and public trust. Today, there are glimmers of hope.

After Gabriel's rampage, Nova Scotia passed a law making possession of police-issued items illegal. The Mass Casualty Commission also produced a number of insightful reports on gender-based violence, gun control, and police policy that could help make the province safer.

The commission also provided a form to issue an apology, like this emotional confession from RCMP Chief Superintendent Darren Campbell. I know that there are very few family members that are in attendance, but I would imagine that many are watching or monitoring their proceedings. I want to express my sincere condolences and I apologize for failing. I haven't cried yet.

For at least some of the survivors, that was the first honest-sounding apology they'd heard. And though they'll carry the burden with them for the rest of their lives, we can only hope it makes the long, slow journey to finding peace again a little bit easier to bear.

Follow the Minds of Madness on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. To support the show and get access to ad-free episodes, extra content, and Patreon-exclusive episodes, go to patreon.com slash madnesspod. To find us on Instagram and Facebook, search The Minds of Madness, and on Twitter using the handle

at MadnessPod. And also, by checking out our sponsors and using our promo codes, you're also helping support the show. We've got all the links in our episode notes. So until next week, thanks for listening. ♪