Who Gabriel Wortman didn’t kill

We know Gabriel Wortman had threatened to kill some of his own family : to be precise, his mother and father.

The RCMP had this on record, which is why heavily armed mounties were guarding the pair in the very early dark hours of Sunday April 19th, even before Gabe had resumed his killing spree.

He had also threatened to harm the family of his common law wife.

We know this because neighbour Brenda Forbes has spoken up, to the Halifax Examiner and now the Canadian Press.

She said it was just after Gabriel arrived in Portapique and just after he divorced his wife and began a new common law relationship with Lisa Banfield.

That places it at about 18 or 19 years ago.

Gabe’s common law partner ran to Brenda for help, after Gabe assaulted her. But she was afraid to make a formal complaint because he had already threatened to harm her and her family if she did.

We do not know what ended Gabriel’s marriage with his wife Corinna Kincaid and whether it involved threats against Corinna and her family.

But Gabe’s father is adamant : Gabe never ever had close friends, only buddies : drinking buddies, hunting buddies, boating buddies, motor-biking buddies, gun buddies, car restoration buddies, house restoration buddies.

Basically people (male people) that Gabe met and be-friended when he wanted to learn something new.

I disagree with Paul, Gabe’s father : I suspect Gabe had real friendships, which if they were not sustained for long, at least were left on friendly terms : with women.

I suspect all his buddies were men and all his friends were women.

(I also feel that aspects of The Bickersons can be applied to this story.)

So at around 9:30 PM on Saturday night, April 18th, Gabe had some choices to make - for at that point, the killing and burning had not yet begun.

Having tied up his common law partner, he could have killed her.

He did not.

He could have kept her tied up and driven to Moncton in a police car and killed not just his parents but scores of Wortman family members, undetected.

He did not.

He could have driven  that cop car to the Truro area and killed scores of his former in laws’ family.

He did not.

He could have driven mountie car  to the Beaverbank area and kill scores of his common law partner’s family.

He did not.

I firmly believe the impulse to kill behind one of the world’s most sustained spree murderers began deep inside a family —- but, on the hard evidence before us, people, it was not played out against his family, immediate or extended.

People, people, people, for God’s sake : look at the evidence and stop dragging out cliches about domestic abuse as the glib answer to everything. Examples of Gabe’s domestic abuse are piling up : but examples of his domestic killings are not.

I don't think these killings were at all adult - I think they were quite literally infantile : Gabe’s inner three year old child lashing out at the world - the entire world : humans, pets, cars, houses anything and everything.

I still firmly believe we must look hard at Gabriel Wortman’s *les sept ans perdu , the seven years lost from his timeline, for the answer.

*Those are the seven years lost that begin just after the summer of 1966, when new high school graduate Paul Wortman (Gabe’s father) is still living in his parents’ tiny home at 43 Edgett Ave in central downtown Moncton NB and is on the Canadian public record witnessing his eldest brother’s marriage.

Paul and his wife Evelyn are not to be found on the Canada wide voters lists for the elections of 1968 and 1972, only for the election of 1974.

For the youngsters, just let me say that in those years, the election voters lists were just like a public mini census - pretty accurate and very thorough. Nowhere in Canada on the public record can we find Gabe’s ma and pa, so far : ditto city directories and telephone books.

As I said, Paul and Evelyn are next found on the Canadian public record in the summer of 1974, living in the house in Bridgedale Riverview NB that was to be six year old Gabe’s first permanent home, a home he lived in until he left for university.

In between, Paul and Evelyn and Gabriel are seemingly invisible : for example, there is no record of their December 1967 marriage in the very thorough marriage statistics of New Brunswick.

But Paul speaks a fair deal about his life in the USA : constantly hearing gunfights while living in rough tough neighbourhoods of Cleveland and Phoenix and of being so poor in Fitchburg MA  in 1970 that the couple had to making the heart-breaking decision to give up their newborn second child for adoption. At times, Paul’s life in the States probably got a lot hairier than that.

I will not be surprised to find that Gabriel was born in America, maybe even conceived there and that he was living a horribly insecure, chaotic life there for all of his important early years - the time when a still plastic young mind buries those stresses deep into the basic structure of a child’s thought processes.

I suspect the return to New Brunswick and Canada was motivated by awkward questions and demands for real documents a child faces in America when they register for the first time for school.

Because after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, it was no longer free and easy for Canadians to emigrate to the US : there were quotas imposed, lots of paperwork, lots of skills and experiences required : hard for a nineteen year old to qualify.

Professional journalists (we know they are, because it says so on their pay cheques) can be left to answer the phone when people like Brenda Forbes call in, they can be trusted to take her account down accurately and then print it.

They can be relied upon to give us the W4 of the Portapique spree killings : who,what,where,when.

But for the fifth, the why, we need real diggers.

I’ve met Stephen Mahar and Roy McGregor : good diggers.

Never met Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan of the Toronto Star but they seem good diggers.

Andrew Douglas and Cliff Boutilier, woefully underfunded and overworked : but good diggers.

But perhaps I am on the wrong foot : what this story really cries out for is good diggers who were born, raised and worked in New Brunswick, combined with good diggers conversant with the American public records system.

I see Gabriel Wortman’s life dividing into four chunks.

From conception to starting school in New Brunswick : The American Years : 1966-1974. A complete blank. American diggers may need to do the do on this one.

From Grade One to University - currently better covered then most of the chunks :1974-1990.

His years as an employee : 1990-2001. A good deal of blanks and nothing on the public record, so far. New Brunswick, collectively, needs to man and woman up and fill in these blanks. Chuck Cosby anyone ?

His (violent) years after he became the boss, the capo of capos : 2001-2020. The years the professional journalists are fixated upon - we can safely leave it to them...