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RCMP Const. Greg Wiley visited a killer at his home repeatedly over the years.
By the Mountie’s count, he stopped in at the Portapique house about 16 times in the years before Nova Scotia’s 2020 mass shooting, ironically under the impression that Gabriel Wortman might give him an insight into crime in the rural community.
On Tuesday, Wiley told the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry that after his first contact — a 2008 complaint over tools stolen from the gunman’s Portapique house — he came to the conclusion the killer would be a good source of information on what was going on in the neighbourhood.
“I know in retrospect, as everyone looks at this, sees he’s what he’s done, they’ll probably think I’m out of my mind,” Wiley told the commission.
“But at the time, the individual that I was dealing with was very level-headed, articulate, well-spoken, mannerly, seemed pro-police.”
That began a series of visits — Wiley estimated about 16 over the next three years — in which Wiley regularly popped in to visit the gunman. Sometimes he wasn’t home. Other times he was too busy to visit — Wiley recalls him coming out into the driveway in a woodworking apron at one point.
Some of the visits were five minutes in the driveway; other times Wiley came into the house for up to an hour and drank a soft drink in the kitchen or on the back deck.
They talked about the gunman’s projects around the house, about what was going on around Portapique and, at least on one occasion, the conflicts he had been having with his family.
It was, Wiley told the commission, a cordial, if not particularly productive relationship with a community contact.
In context, Wiley was the one RCMP officer who knew Wortman best at a time when red flags — death threats against family and police, and allegations of illegal weapons — were being raised to the Mounties about him.
Over 13 hours on April 18 and 19, 2020, Wortman, a 51-year-old denturist, killed 22 people, torched multiple homes and terrorized northern Nova Scotia before being spotted and killed by police at a gas station nearly 100 kilometres from where he started his rampage.
Wiley said he was “stunned” on April 19, by then living in Ontario, when he found out the man he’d visited multiple times was on a murderous rampage in northern Nova Scotia.
“This is the irony of it, I was going to a guy, him of all guys and asking, ‘Is there anything we should know about or anyone that should be on our radar?’” Wiley said in a May 2020 interview with the commission.
He emphatically resists the idea that Wortman was anything more than a community contact.
“I’m not disputing he was my friend. I’m stating categorically that he was not my friend,” Wiley told the commission.
Every time he went to see the gunman, Wiley said on multiple occasions in his testimony, he was “always in uniform, always in the car, always on the clock.”
On at least one of those occasions, in 2010, the visit was prompted by a report of illegal weapons at Wortman’s residence that stemmed from death threats against his parents. Wiley said he has no recollection of that visit.
Nor does he have a recollection, he said during his testimony, of a bulletin circulated to police forces in Nova Scotia, advising that the gunman “wants to kill a cop,” that he was in possession of one handgun and might possibly be in possession of “several long rifles.”
He does, however, maintain clear memories of some of the multiple visits he made to the Portapique house between 2008 — when, working out of the Bible Hill RCMP detachment, he first met Wortman — and August 2011, when he transferred to neighbouring Parrsboro.
He recalled that his first contact with the gunman in 2008 was “as a victim of a property crime,” when Wortman had tools stolen from his house.
He remembered drinking a Pepsi on a subsequent visit to the house and being impressed by the dock the gunman had built out back. He remembered there was no police paraphernalia in the house.
He recalled conversations he had with Wortman about his conflicts with his family.
He remembered, in 2017, pulling his police car over to urinate just before randomly meeting the gunman — his last contact with him — on an ATV trail.
After a full afternoon of questioning, MCC commissioner Leanne Fitch said she found that discrepancy troubling.
“Your recollection that you’ve shared with us has been fairly detailed in some of the encounters that you’ve had, with the perpetrator … but yet on this one particular officer safety-related bulletin, and also the uttering threats in 2010 and the firearms — and the information that we’ve obtained that suggests you were in fact involved with those — you have zero recollection.”
“And I’m struggling with that. I don’t know how there can be that gap,” she said.
“All I can say is that I’m sharing with you what I can recollect,” said Wiley.
In June 2010, Glynn Wortman called to tell police that the gunman had threatened to kill his parents, who were living in Moncton, and that he had illegal weapons in the house.
That call made its way to Sgt. Cordell Poirier, then of the Halifax Regional Police, since the call came from Dartmouth.
Noting that the gunman also had a home in Portapique, Poirier, according to his notes obtained by the commission, passed along the information to the Bible Hill RCMP detachment.
At some point shortly after June 8, 2010, Poirier said he spoke to Wiley and that Wiley told him he was “aware of the family situation of (the perpetrator) and the stress it has been causing him. Wiley said, according to Poirier’s notes, that he would try to meet with Wortman at his house and talk to him about the weapons complaint.
On June 18, Poirier noted that he still had not heard back from Wiley regarding the firearms.
On July 17 — almost a month later — Poirier noted that he spoke to Wiley and that “he has not spoken to (the perpetrator) to date” but would attempt to do so in the next two days.
Wiley never reported back to Poirier.
In a 2022 interview with the commission, Lisa Banfield, the common-law spouse of the gunman, testified that she recalled Wiley coming to the house and asking Wortman if he had guns and being shown some decorative guns mounted on the mantelpiece.
She said the visit only lasted 10 minutes, that Wiley didn’t talk to her nor did he take a statement.
Wiley maintained on Tuesday that he didn’t recollect any conversations with Poirier, nor did he remember going to check for weapons at the Portapique house. If Banfield’s account of his visit is correct, he told the commission, the conversation with Wortman about his weapons must have been coincidental.
The Mass Casualty Commission inquiry continues Wednesday, when it hosts a roundtable on contemporary community policing, community safety and well-being.
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