Warning: The details in this story are disturbing
The man who killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in April 2020 had a history of violence in the decades before his latest rampage, assaulting and harassing strangers as well as staff and patients.
New documents released by the Mass Victims Commission, which is leading the public inquiry into the killings on 18 and 19 April 2020, show that Gabriel Wortman had a pattern of intimidating, beating, stalking and berating anyone who offended him.
In interviews with police after the shootings, dozens of people dating back as far as a woman he briefly dated after high school in 1986 described him with terms including “scary,” “violent,” “crazy” and “obsessed.” .
Women who worked for him or were patients at his denture clinic repeatedly told investigators that he made them feel uncomfortable, and men cited his dangerous temper and extreme rage as frightening enough to prevent them from reporting physical abuse.
Patients with prostheses were attacked, mistreated
“He scared the hell out of me,” a former patient told police.
The man, identified only as BK, lived near the shooter’s dentures clinic in Dartmouth and ran into him occasionally when he dumped trash in their communal dumpster. Wortman offered to fix the man’s “uneven” teeth and agreed to a monthly payment plan.
But when BK couldn’t pay his $50 in December 1999, Wortman confronted him on the dumpster, knocked him to the ground, ripped his dentures from his mouth and shoved a handful of snow into his mouth.
“He says, ‘Merry Christmas to you.’ And he left,” recalls B.K.
BK didn’t go back to get his prosthetics back and did his best to make sure his paths wouldn’t cross with Wortman again. He moved out of the area within a month.
Former employees told police this was not an isolated incident.
Rene Carsten, a dentist who worked with Wortman at his Dartmouth clinic from about 2001 to 2007, said he would “snap” from time to time. She described twice seeing him break patients’ dentures in half or smash them on the floor because patients complained about the fit.
Carsten also told police about the day Wortman stormed out of the clinic, leaving a patient on the chair, to beat a man who was sitting on the windowsill of his building smoking.
“[He] I just lost it and I just grabbed him,” Carsten told RCMP. “I just grabbed him from the window ledge and pulled him away from the window and just beat him up.”
Karsten said she tried to intervene, but Wortman yelled at her to come back inside. She said he soon returned, washed his hands and returned to the patient in the chair.
A prosthetics board has detected a pattern of inappropriate behavior
Wortman’s interactions with patients were the subject of an investigation by the Nova Scotia Board of Dental Licensing. The board received at least eight complaints against Wortman between 1998 and 2020. Three of them, filed in 2004, were from women who described abusive behavior by Wortman and, in one case, sexually explicit comments during the treatment.
Board registrar Maureen Hope told board chairman Robert McKean in September 2004 that when patients tried to resolve the issue of ill-fitting dentures, Wortman “went on the defensive and the situation got worse … from what I patients said, at this point it certainly borders on professional misconduct.”
Wortman wrote to Hope in October 2004 in response to the complaints, saying the women were “fueled by bitterness” or seeking revenge.
The board did, however, open an investigation into the three complaints and a fourth filed in February 2005.
Gunman calls probe ‘witch hunt’
At some point during this investigation, Wortman contacted a consultant dentist employed by the board, asking him to change his conclusions about the quality of Wortman’s work. After the investigation, he contacted an investigator at her workplace to tell her it was all a “witch hunt.”
In February 2007, Wortman signed a settlement agreement to avoid a formal hearing, accepting charges of professional misconduct and one count of interfering with the board’s investigation.
He was suspended for a month and ordered to counsel. Although he has undergone some counselling, inquiry documents note that he continues to “deny responsibility or wrongdoing when responding to subsequent patient complaints”.
The documents show Wortman wrote to the board to defend himself against complaints at least three more times in 2011, 2016 and 2019, each time saying patients either wanted to force him or had problems with mental health.
There is no mention of any other investigations or board sanctions against Wortman related to complaints after 2007.
Repeated sexual harassment of multiple women
Although Wortman denied making sexual comments to the patient who filed the complaint in 2004, many women described sexual harassment and aggressive advances.
A woman, identified only as BB in investigative documents, said she worked as a receptionist at Wortman’s clinics soon after graduating high school but quit after less than six months because he repeatedly exposed his penis to her and demanded sexual favors.
Another woman, identified as SS, applied for a job at the Dartmouth clinic. After an initial interview in 2004, Wortman invited her for a second – to his cottage in Portapeak.
She went, only to have Wortman make her drink and stay the night in his bedroom. She refused, but continued to work at his clinic in Halifax. She said they were walking through a hospital one day to see a patient when he broke the silence by making a sexual comment to her “out of the blue”.
Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchin, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchin, Shawn McLeod, Alana Jenkins. Second Row: John Zall, Lisa McCulley, Joey Weber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien, and Jamie Blair. Third row from top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joan Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corey Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)
“I think in his head he thought he was God’s gift to women and that all women should love him,” SS told the RCMP.
A dental sales representative who visited Wortman’s clinic in 1999 said he invited her to a gathering at his Lawrencetown cottage. The woman, identified as OO, arrived to find Wortman and another woman – his girlfriend at the time – who he promptly broke up with in front of OO.
When the woman left, OO told police the shooter became “aggressive” and told OO he “wanted to fool around.” She left and Wortman chased after her in his SUV.
“I sped up and he sped up. And he tried to run me off the road. And I was like, what the hell is wrong with you?” she said
OO told police he only stops when someone yells at him from the street and then calls her “constantly” to apologize.
Others said they wanted to report the shooter’s fake police car and strange behavior but felt too scared to take that step.
Incident in the shooter’s garage
The summer before the mass shooting, a group parties in the shooter’s garage, including a Portapeak neighbor called EE in the transcripts; her daughter, who is called DD; and her friend I.I.
Both younger women later told police the shooter’s fully marked car and RCMP uniforms scared them and convinced them he was either an officer or hosted parties with “dirty cops.”
The shooter was also pushing against I.I. all night, she said, and at one point he grabbed her chest.
Businessmen who interacted with Wortman said he was confrontational, condescending and would get unreasonably excited over minor infractions.
The shooter’s replica RCMP cruiser that was used in the NS mass shooting was created with a retired 2017 Ford Taurus (Mass Casualty Commission)
Alison McDonald, a Yellow Pages representative, said Wortman locked her out of his office in November 2019 when she arrived two minutes late for a meeting. During a follow-up meeting, she described him as “argumentative” and said he was pacing the office “huffing and puffing” and interrupted her to count down the time before their next meeting.
McDonald said a male colleague who renewed Wortman’s account in 2020 described him as “nice as pie.”
In March 2020, Wortman contacted local CIBC officials about withdrawing large amounts of cash from his accounts, citing concerns that banks would close amid the pandemic. As bank officials tried to follow the protocols required for such a large withdrawal — a total of $475,000 — Wortman grew increasingly agitated and angry.
After a local branch manager filed an internal complaint against Wortman, CIBC’s market vice president for Nova Scotia and PEI told police he had a half-hour conversation with Wortman. Dean Branton described the gunman as “quite upset” and “cursing a lot”.
“He wanted his money come hell or high water,” Branton told the RCMP. “I said OK … then we have to do it in a way that protects you. Right? And then that’s when he said, he said, “Okay, let me worry about my damn safety, buddy.”
Wortman was known to law enforcement
The Halifax Regional Police had dozens of pages of files on Wortman due to the numerous altercations and assaults he was involved in over the years.
One incident that led to charges was Wortman’s assault of a 15-year-old boy at a Tim Hortons near his Dartmouth clinic. Police records show Wortman confronted the teenager in October 2001 — though it’s unclear why — and the verbal disagreement escalated. The shooter punched the teenager in the head and kicked him in the ribs.
The police file notes that Wortman claimed he was acting in self-defense after the teenager spat on him. Wortman pleaded guilty to assault in 2002 and received a conditional discharge with probation. He was prohibited from possessing firearms for the duration of his probation and was ordered to attend anger management and…
Add Comment