With new true crime docuseries debuting on a weekly basis, the differentiating factor between them is often less the freshness of their filmmaking than the quality of their mystery. In that regard, The Suspect proves a worthy addition to the ever-burgeoning subgenre, delivering a baffling Canadian whodunit that, like so many legal thrillers, ultimately hinges on the contentious question of reasonable doubt.
Director Deborah Wainwright’s four-part investigation (premiering Aug. 18 on Sundance Now, after airing earlier this year on CBC) concerns the murder of Richard Oland, a 69-year-old businessman who lived in Rothesay, New Brunswick, a tony, mansion-filled suburb of Saint John. Richard’s father was the chairman and CEO of Moosehead Breweries, and though control of that empire ultimately went to his brother Derek, Richard was nonetheless a success in his own right (he was president of the 1985 Canada Games), as well as a demanding and sometimes difficult man—and dad. On the evening of July 7, 2011, someone visited Richard in his Canterbury Street office and bludgeoned him to death, striking him 40 times in the skull. It was a gruesome scene and one where the excessive up-close-and-personal carnage—as well as the later determination that nothing valuable was stolen—suggested it was a crime of passion committed by an individual motivated by a personal grudge.
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Led by Chief Bill Reid, police immediately focused their attention on a single suspect: Richard’s son Dennis, who was the last known person to see his father that night, having visited him at the office—on three quick occasions—to discuss a family tree project they had been working on together. Traces of blood that matched Richard’s DNA were found on Dennis’ jacket (this after Dennis had initially said he was wearing a different jacket that day). Furthermore, Richard’s cellphone had been taken, and pinged off a tower that night in the same vicinity as the wharf that Dennis said he subsequently visited (to check on his kids). Since Dennis was in dire financial straits, law enforcement surmised that he had murdered Richard after being turned down for another loan. To them, it was a clear-cut instance of homicidal rage, with Dennis then taking the victim’s phone and dumping it in the water—presumably along with the murder weapon, which was never identified or recovered.
That circumstantial theory was enough for a jury to find Dennis guilty of second-degree murder. The Suspect, however, really kicks into gear ten months after that late 2015 decision, when Dennis successfully argued that improper instructions given to the jury by the judge should negate his conviction, thus setting the stage for a retrial. Director Wainwright relays her sordid saga through a combination of dramatic recreations, interviews (with journalists, experts and her story’s principals), trial testimony set to animated courtroom sequences, TV news reports and graphical timelines. Yet her trump card is access to post-prison-release Dennis, following him as he prepares—with wife Linda, lawyers Alan Gold, Gary Miller and Michael Lacy, and a three-person team of investigators—to definitively prove his innocence.
A scene from The Suspect of Dennis Oland’s defense team
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