N.S. gunman could get angry, violent when drinking, ex-wife told police

The man who killed 22 people in rural Nova Scotia would become aggressive and could lash out violently when he drank, his ex-wife told RCMP in the days following the massacre.

RCMP tracked down Gabriel Wortman's former spouse and conducted an interview with her 10 days after the killings on April 18-19, 2020.

The interview is included in documents released by the commission investigating the mass shootings. It has redacted the woman's name from the transcript. Senior commission counsel Emily Hill said redactions may be required to protect private information, including information "that is potentially harmful to an individual's security and dignity."

During the interview, the woman told police that she and the gunman were university sweethearts in the early '90s, having met when they were both students at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

The pair got married in 1992, shortly before he completed a degree in psychology. She said he stayed at UNB to get a diploma in business while she completed her degree.

She said while they were living together in Fredericton, he showed her a large gun that had the number 47 in the name. The police officers conducting the interview said that was likely a reference to an AK-47 assault rifle.

The woman said the gun scared her.

She said the gunman worked for a time with youth in a group home, but he quickly concluded he wouldn't make enough money in that field, so he switched to funeral directing.

They moved to Kentville, N.S., while he took a funeral directing course at the local community college.

From there, he landed a job at Walker's funeral home in Dartmouth. When they first moved to the city, the couple lived in an apartment above the funeral home.

After about two years as a funeral director, the woman said the gunman switched careers again and studied to become a denturist.

By this time, the couple owned a small apartment building in Dartmouth and bought a building on Portland Street that would become their home and the gunman's main denture clinic.

The woman told RCMP that the gunman started drinking more, and when he drank, he was a different person.

"You know how some people drink and they're just not themselves," she said. "That's what he was like when he drank. Sometimes he would get weepy, cry, sometimes he would get angry, break things."