Domestic violence went back generations in N.S. killer's family, inquiry hears

A 2010 threat to kill his parents was investigated by police after Glynn Wortman called the RCMP to report the killer’s intentions. The summary says Paul Wortman told investigating officers his son had guns. He repeated the allegation during another probe in 2011, when a police intelligence memo was circulating suggesting Gabriel Wortman posed a threat to police.

In the decade that followed, the killer decreased contact with his parents, rarely speaking to them, according to the summary.

According to the medical records released in the document, a doctor referred Gabriel Wortman to psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Maynes in 2000, who saw him four times and diagnosed him as a “narcissistic personality.”

In June 2009, Dr. Cynthia Forbes, a Halifax-area family doctor, wrote in her notes that the killer was reporting “that he drank 12 beers a day, five days a week,” yet he believed he could quit drinking over the summer months. She suggested he see a psychologist, “but he wasn’t interested at this point.”

According to the medical records obtained by the inquiry, the only medical treatment the killer received from June 2018 to January 2020 were seven visits with Dr. Forbes and a colleague for high blood pressure.

Wortman was shot dead by police at a gas station in Enfield, N.S., on April 19, 2020, ending one of the worst mass killings in modern Canadian history.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2022.