A mother and daughter and Gabriel Wortman
By Paul Palango
Cyndi Starratt has so much faith in God that she believes He has orchestrated her life for her to achieve some unknown greater purpose. Peruse her various Facebook pages for more than a decade and, for the most part, she comes across as a Bible pounder, a woman in her mid-50s who has careered from grace to alcoholism, with lots of sex throughout. She’s an anti-vax religious proselytizer who admires Paris Hilton. She credits the vapid U.S. heiress for helping her to think straight. She has suffered through more than her fair share of lying, violent, weird men in her life. Her ex-husband was into child porn and was abusive toward her. She ended up in jail for assaulting him. But if she ever thought that was the worst scourge her God could inflict upon her, she was undoubtedly disappointed. The Supreme Being had an even more difficult test planned for her – Gabriel Wortman, the Dartmouth denturist who killed 22 Nova Scotians in two separate rampages on April 18 and 19, 2020.
“Did you ever hear the story ‘I slept with an axe murderer? Well I slept with a mass murderer. That’s pretty fucked up,” Starratt said in her smoky and rumbling voice.
Starratt had known Wortman for almost seven years leading up to that weekend. They had a sexual relationship for at least three of those years after she moved into a cottage at Portapique.
She recently sat down for two hours for a remarkable interview with Jordan Bonaparte, host and producer of the Nigthtime Podcast. She was accompanied by her now 29-year-old daughter, Ocean-Mist. They were filmed by Bonaparte, although he has not released those images, just their spoken words.
This is not the first time Starratt has been interviewed by the media. Immediately after the massacres, she talked to the Globe and Mail which used a brooding photograph of her to help illustrate the sadness in the wider community. The anodyne story made everything about Portapique appear to be normal, idyllic and, yes, heartbreakingly tragic. Reporters Greg Mercer and Lindsay Jones quoted Starratt as saying: “There was a sense of freedom there because it was so private. It was beautiful. Every weekend, there would be some kind of get-together. That’s just how it was.”
The Globe reporters, like most others, congratulated themselves for a job well done and moved onto other bigger and better stories. Starratt then slipped back into the shadows, emerging every so often, oddly enough, to defend Wortman on the Little Grey Cells YouTube channel and elsewhere on social media. At one point she described Wortman as the kind of man no woman would complain about.
Listening to Bonaparte’s Nighttime Podcast was about as comfortable as a wool undershirt. Both Starratt and her daughter openly talked about Cyndi’s trips to rehab, her lapses, her sexcapades. It was as strange as strange can get. They each described their own bouts with psychological issues and treatment. Starratt, who also goes by the name Cyndi Roberts on Facebook, had obvious problems with her memory. Although she says she has given up alcohol, again, she appeared to have trouble both staying on track and articulating every nuance of her relationship with Wortman. She relied upon the eager-to-help Ocean-Mist to fill in some of the gaps.
The story they told to Bonaparte, as lurid and raw as it was, contained valuable insights about Wortman’s perverse psyche, including his shameless and never-ending pursuit of sex. The interviews also provided important information about the inner workings of Wortman’s life with long-time girlfriend Lisa Banfield. Much of what they had to say provided needed context that has been missing from the official narrative being promoted by the RCMP and its enablers in government.
Here are some highlights of what Starratt said, supplemented in places with comments she has made elsewhere on social media and with responses she has given me in questions I have previously asked her through an intermediary. Starratt has declined numerous requests for interviews from me because, as the intermediary put it, I “scare” her.
-Starratt said she met Wortman shortly after buying her property in May 2014 at the bottom of Orchard Beach Drive on Cobequid Court, just west of where five of Wortman’s victims lived: Aaron Tuck, Jolene Oliver, Emily Tuck, Peter Bond and his wife, Joy. Recently divorced, she thought Wortman was charming. Not long afterward, she found a note at her door saying “call me.” Thinking it was Wortman, she called and got the surprise of her life. Wortman had fobbed her off to one of his friends, Rob, a carpenter, who has been vaguely described in court documents and declared an incidental character in the massacre investigation. The identity of Rob and what he was doing with Wortman is a huge and important mystery in the case. Starratt described him as a scary, hardened criminal. (Others interviewed about him echo those thoughts). Cyndi said she complained to Wortman about Rob for about three years, but that Wortman did nothing about the situation. She suspected Rob (and Wortman) were stalking her, hiding in the bushes outside her cottage, drinking beer, smoking (Rob) and masturbating in the bushes. The Rob situation eventually cleared up after he was arrested in Bass River and imprisoned. The RCMP have refused to disclose anything more about Rob, the carpenter.
-The Wortman she described becoming friends with was always calm, funny and “loved women.” She described him as soft, even effeminate. She said he didn’t like to “neck” – he wasn’t a kisser, but rather a snuggler. They shared mutual stories about their own childhood horrors. Wortman complained that he walked with a bit of a limp after being beaten as a child by his father. He lamented to her that his father had made him shoot his own dog when he was a child, a tidbit that was also included in a story by Chronicle Herald reporter Andrew Rankin last December. For her part, Starratt said her father made her eat her pet rabbit. Eventually, they bonded over beer, Grey Goose vodka and lots of sex. At one point Starratt had worked in a sex shop and had provided Wortman
with bondage equipment and toys, including handcuffs, which unlike police handcuffs, have a safety mechanism to open them. This may well explain the handcuffs Lisa Banfield said Wortman put on her that night as he began his rampage and how Banfield managed to get free.
-Since her place had no running water, Starratt said that Wortman allowed her and her daughter to use his place to bathe and shower. Throughout this period, Starratt had little or no income, so Wortman helped her out by hiring her to clean the cottage and do odd jobs. He eventually had Ocean-Mist work for him, as well. Both Starratt and Ocean-Mist described Wortman as being creepy and aggressive at various times. Cyndi said she wasn’t comfortable with his insistence on masturbating into her hair. Ocean-Mist said that at one point in 2019, she was close to Wortman and said she was frightened by the look in his eyes which she described as psychopathic -- “like a serial killer.” Nevertheless, they each insisted that he was never violent toward either of them.
-The Starratt women confirmed what others have reported about Wortman’s life at Portapique. Although the official narrative has suggested that Wortman and Banfield had been a couple for 19 years, Wortman said that his relationship with Banfield was “bad.” Few at Portapique remember them being particularly close, although it should be noted that Banfield was the sole beneficiary in Wortman’s last will and testament. Cyndi said Banfield was rarely at Portapique and Wortman spent as little time as possible with her in Dartmouth. He typically slept at Portapique for four or five nights a week. Cyndi Starratt said that one of the oddest things she discovered while cleaning the cottage at 200 Portapique Beach Road was that there was very little evidence of Banfield’s presence. For example, she said, she found no female toiletries there.
-Wortman had Starratt dress up in a complete red serge RCMP uniform that he had acquired so that she could do a striptease for him. A slightly built woman, Starratt described the scene in near comical terms. She said the uniform was huge. The riding boots almost reached the bottom of the tunic and her arms were swallowed up by the sleeves. Nevertheless, she enthusiastically performed the striptease and in doing so ripped off the buttons, causing them to skitter across the floor. Wortman was somewhat peeved by this yet joked to her: “After you come up to the house, it’s like cleaning up a crime scene.” Wortman’s concern, it appeared, was that Banfield on one of her visits would likely spot the missing buttons and question what had happened. This confirms earlier rumours that Wortman liked to employ the uniform in role playing during sexual encounters.
-A few months before the massacres, Starratt danced on the roof of Wortman’s replica police car parked inside the warehouse. Ocean-Mist and an unnamed friend were there to witness the performance, along with Wortman. “I’m always looking for these unique stories for myself,” Starratt said. “I took my shoes off so that I wouldn’t scratch the paint. I was trying to glide over the lightbar right graceful.” On this occasion, Starratt said, she kept her clothes on, and that she and Wortman did not have sex that night. Her relationship with Wortman ended soon afterward on a sour note when she gave him the middle finger and stole a bottle of Grey Goose from him.
-Both Cyndi and Ocean-Mist said they were sometimes “creeped out” by Wortman whom they reiterated often made sexually suggestive comments. Ocean-Mist said he once came on to her while her boyfriend was out of the room. She also described a washroom inside a storage room/hallway behind the bar at the warehouse as particularly disturbing. There was a hidden, sliding door that Wortman opened for her and her friend. “That night we seen the fully marked cop car (that her mother had just danced on), me and my friend had asked for the bathroom. (There was) this long narrow, cement hallway and there was a toilet like … in the middle of it…. Like, this is not normal.” She described plastic crates filled with clothing and stuff stacked high along the walls. “I thought it was really weird… My friend … said she was scared, and all I can think about was a woman being cuffed up to that toilet for weeks on end. Why does he have these secret doors to the bathroom?”
-After seeing the replica police car, Ocean-Mist said she wanted to report it to the RCMP but was afraid to do so. She thought the police must know about the car and she wondered, at times, whether Wortman was actually a police officer because of the way he comported himself. The night of her mother’s dance, Ocean-Mist said she asked Wortman: “What are you doing with this thing? What’s going on here? I said: ‘Are you with the police or something?’ He said: ‘I have a whole platoon.” It’s not clear what Wortman might have meant by that and the notion was not followed up by Bonaparte or “Tony,” an unidentified Halifax-area man who was assisting him. Over the past 17 months unconfirmed stories have emerged suggesting that Wortman had many police and RCMP associates over the years, or that Wortman had a special relationship with the RCMP and may have been a confidential informant or agent. The Nova Scotia RCMP has denied all of this. For her part, Ocean-Mist said: “All I could think about is him posing as RCMP picking up runaway girls” – or boys.
-Cyndi told Bonaparte about how Wortman was obsessed with women’s underwear and his taste in women was determined by both the underwear they wore and their willingness to have sex with him for fun. Marriage and children were never his priorities. One story Cyndi told was about a woman who had been hired to decorate the outside of Wortman’s warehouse. Like many women who got near Wortman, she had a fling with him. Now she was at Wortman’s cottage, along with her two-year-old child. Wortman asked Cyndi to babysit the child, which Cyndi declined. “Can you please not leave us alone, so that I don’t have to be alone with her,” Wortman implored of Cyndi. When Cyndi asked him what the problem might be, he said: “She wears white cotton panties. I can’t stand them. And she wants to get married and I can’t handle the kid.” Although Wortman was supposedly in a long-term relationship with Banfield, this was not the first time Wortman and a possible marriage to another woman had come up in recent years, other sources confirm.
-Cyndi described how Wortman was constantly in pursuit of sexual partners, especially through his denturist practice. She said Wortman told her about how he would measure a patient’s mouth in order to assess whether a mouth would be suitable for him to have oral sex with him. The measuring was required because Wortman considered himself to
be above average in endowment. She said Wortman had contracts to provide dentures for homeless people and welfare recipients and he often targeted those clients for sex. Since airing the interview, Bonaparte reports that he has been told that Wortman also had a contract with Correctional Service Canada to tend to federal prisoners. She added that Wortman admitted to her that he was such a sex addict that he often masturbated between tending to different patients at his Dartmouth clinic.
-If you haven’t guessed by now, Wortman was a swinger, which helps to explain why he had so many “girlfriends” both in his own neighbourhood and around Nova Scotia and elsewhere. There was a significant swingers’ community, which no one really wants to talk about on the record. Cyndi said that she and Wortman had a threesome with one of his patients, which one would think would be against the rules, whatever they might, for a denturist in Nova Scotia. Sex with multiple partners seemed to be a theme in Wortman’s life. At one point, he wanted Cyndi to accompany him to Houlton, Maine where he wanted her to have sex with a doctor friend of his who lived there. Cyndi said there were a couple of reasons why she didn’t go to Maine with him. Something about the situation unnerved her. She was up on criminal charges for DUI and assaulting her former husband. And, she wasn’t the kind of girl who slept with just anyone. “I really talked to God about that,” she said. “He reminded me that I had a criminal record, and I wouldn’t be able to get across the border.” The suggestion was that afterward they would all have sex together. Wortman’s bisexuality has been confirmed by other sources, and also alluded to by the RCMP in court documents.
-Although she was more than 50 years old, Wortman thought that Cyndi, her slim build and easy disinhibition were perfectly suited for the stripper world. He suggested putting in a stripper pole in the warehouse, where she could perform for a gang of friends. Who were these friends that he talked about? Wortman was also a frequent flier at Angie’s Show Palace in the Moncton suburb of Dieppe, near where he grew up. Wortman said that she would be the only one in her age group to be stripping there and would have a niche market where both of them could make a lot of money. She quoted him as saying: “A lot of men would pay for your age just to pull the panties out of your ass.” Cyndi declined both offers. “I’m no stripper.”
-Much has been made by the RCMP about Wortman’s fixation on guns, but Cyndi and Ocean both said that they never saw him with guns, except once with an older “heritage” gun.
-Finally, we must return to Wortman’s relationship with Banfield. “I spent more Christmas’s with him than she did,” Cyndi said. “I spent every Christmas with him that I was here.” Cyndi liked to refer to Wortman as “the Mayor,” because he was the most important person at Portapique in her life. Together Cyndi and Ocean-Mist told a story about them receiving a fruit cake from a food bank at Christmas time. Neither of them liked fruit cake, so they paid a visit to Wortman and regifted the dessert to him. “He was so happy,” Ocean-Mist said, adding: “If he was in this committed relationship, why was he alone on Christmas Eve day?”
In the end Cyndi Starratt broke down describing her inability to come to terms with what happened. “This is my thing with Gabe. I love Gabe as a friend. If I hate Gabe, that’s going to put a wedge between me and my God. I didn’t want to be one of those people who used him. I didn’t want to be one of those people who mistreated him. I wanted to be a good friend and accept him for what he was, before adding this: “I still love him and miss him.”
No matter what you might think about Cyndi Starratt and Ocean-Mist, both had the courage to step forward to tell their stories so that we, the public, might better understand what happened in the days, months and years leading up to that terrible weekend. It’s all so important.
Unfortunately, the preprogrammed Calvinist mainstream and alternative media wouldn’t likely cover a story like this because it would be considered too salacious. The RCMP and many people on all side of this story – including some family members of the deceased – are happy with that. Far too many have used privacy, embarrassment for themselves and projected embarrassment for their late loved ones as shields to stifle any exploration of the tawdry underbelly of the Wortman story. We should be thankful that we have an energetic, courageous and committed citizen journalist like Jordan Bonaparte working hard to get to the bottom of this tangled mess.
It’s so important to know everything we can, no matter how uncomfortable it might make us. That’s the road to holding the police and governments accountable. We should all thank Cyndi and Ocean-Mist for trying to shed light on the deeper story. It took courage for them to speak out and be transparent about how they ended up in relationships with the Devil, as it were.
Speaking of transparency, the RCMP and its government enablers at the provincial and federal levels, have promised it, while doing everything possible to make everything opaque.
You have to wonder why.
Did they have their own deal with the charming Devil that was Gabriel Wortman, the seemingly soft-spoken wolf in sheep’s clothing -- and are they now too embarrassed to reveal what that was all about?
tips@frankmagazine.ca
or paulpalango@protonmail.com
A little more to add to the overall context on Paul Palango, Canadian author and glass art maker, was found today here at a Facebook comment:
Paul Palango - Home | Facebook
"Frank Magazine TODAY JUNE 1, 2021
Former colleague goes to bat for Palango
Dear Frank:
Cowardly and contemptible. As an anonymous critic, Ivana Smear immediately identifies himself as devious and deceitful (Letter, Attacking the messenger, May 11, frankmagazine.ca.)
Who could this concerned citizen be? A jealous journalist? Doubtful. Nobody worthy of the trade would sink so low, and never, ever, anonymously. Notably, Mlle Smear IDs himself, not as a journalist, but as a member of the “media”. That’s a ploy used to validate Ms. Smear’s tenuous overreach to inside-the-news-industry knowledge.
No, this is more likely some “communications” officer in one of the organisations supposedly mistreated by Paul Palango’s digging. Possibly a former aspiring journalist of the ilk we used to call “copsuckers” back in the day. And that is not in any way meant as a slight toward police; rather as descriptor of a grasping, wannabe colleague always ready to accept any authority’s word without digging a quarter-of-an-inch deeper. One who could be termed a journalistic hack prior to becoming a PR mouthpiece for any organization they had previously been ``reporting`` on. Hack to flack, as it were.
Here’s a thought. Might he/she be an RCMP flack? Mrs. Smear seems mightily familiar with the signature Mountie excuse lexicon: “not credible”, “has an axe to grind”, “mental health crisis”, “conjecture and speculation”. This is the classic distraction RCMP senior management likes to deploy whether it be regarding complaints of sexual harassment, mishandling of crises, accusations of racism or grievances from the lower ranks. There is no need to list examples; there have been plenty over the years.
Hinting at an upcoming libel case by Lisa Banfield against Palango is Mme Smear’s back-up distraction. He knows there is no libel in questioning a particular scenario offered by the RCMP. There are valid reasons for examining a version of events that cannot be substantiated by eyewitness testimony and medical records. Señorita Smear says his/her sources (located down the hall at HQ perhaps?) say RCMP “have nothing to suggest she [Lisa Banfield] is misaligned and very much is a victim.” So ... they laid a criminal charge against her because ...???
Don’t be distracted. This isn’t about Lisa Banfield. Her lawyer, James Lockyer, one of the best in the country, is probably focused more on getting her an acquittal rather than wasting time persecuting legitimate journalism. As a matter of fact Lockyer’s reputation was built on securing freedom for the wrongly convicted, and as such is an inspiration for investigative journalists following the same path. And that ain’t supporting shoddy police work. No, this is all about covering the brasses’ asses at the RCMP.
By the way, Señorita Smear, if you can’t divine what libel is and what is not, here’s a very quick test. You suggest Palango is suffering from mental illness, that he is viewed as “treacherous” by other journalists and that Maclean’s “cut him loose” because he produced RCMP internal
sources with “an axe to grind” who “were not credible”. All that and more. Now have the balls to sign your name so your lawyer can tell you what libel is.
For full disclosure, I have known Paul Palango for nearly fifty years. We were colleagues at the Hamilton Spectator and the Toronto Sun. We were friendly competitors when he worked at the Globe and Mail and I at the Toronto Star. I was his editor when he was a columnist-at- large at Eye Weekly magazine in the early ‘90s. It fell to me to re-examine and test his reporting whenever he ruffled feathers. Sometimes he ruffled so many feathers the bird was denuded. In every case I investigated, the veracity of his reporting was beyond reproach. He was relentless in pursuing dirty birds down winding paths until he got to the truth. I would trust him with my own eulogy. Your obfuscation and pathetic attempt at libel chill will not faze him.
There is something that needs to be emphasised, particularly for those who haven’t read his three authoritative books examining RCMP practices. Palango has nothing but respect for the cop on the street. As an investigative reporter and editor, he thinks like a cop. He could have been a cop himself, and a damn good one. He worked very effectively for a time as a fraud investigator for a large insurance firm. He loved it. His brother, daughter and son-in-law have all worked as corrections officers. It’s not cops he dislikes. It’s the nepotism, cronyism and stupidity of far too many in the RCMP’s senior ranks. The attitude that once you’re wearing the white-shirt, there’s little chance you will pay for your mistakes. There will always be plenty of constables, corporals and sergeants to take the fall.
Mrs. Smear claims Palango is taking us to dark places. Here are a few dark places he isn’t responsible for.
Fact: The RCMP was unable to stop a lone gunman from murdering 22 people, including one of their own. There are approximately 900 RCMP personnel in Nova Scotia paid for by provincial taxpayers. By their own public statements RCMP were hampered by the “dynamic and fluid” nature of the crimes. Isn’t that what all serious crimes are?
Fact: The RCMP failed to notify the public using the Alert Ready system specifically designed for such emergencies. By their own account they were “preparing a statement” for release more than 12 hours after the initial murders, when Gabriel Wortman was shot. Shamefully they claimed tweeting on Twitter was an effective substitute. Clearly it wasn’t.
Fact: Four children, two of whom had already seen Wortman gun down their parents, were left cowering in a basement for about three hours, comforted only by a police dispatcher on the phone, while armed RCMP waited near the scene. What were they waiting for? Who told them to wait?
Fact: Failure to use the Alert Ready system meant none of eight civilians murdered on Sunday morning had any warning whatsoever. Their blood is on the shameful hands of whoever decided to use Twitter rather than the much broader Alert Ready system.
Fact: RCMP Constable Heidi Stevenson was shot dead and Constable Chad Morrison seriously wounded while on routine patrol on Sunday morning. Were they ever warned they were driving into the path of a murderer?
Fact: RCMP failed to notify Truro police about a murderer driving through their town until after he had already done so. Who made that call?
Fact: Local RCMP were reportedly going off-shift while Wortman was snoozing in his replica police car mere kilometres away from the initial murders. Did they think their job was done? Who was in charge?
The fact is, Frau Smear, there appears to have occurred a monumental failure by the RCMP to do what it’s paid for, to protect the public, followed by a smoke screen to avoid having to `fess up about the screw-up. More recently, controversial police shootings in the United States have seen both cops and police chiefs being fired or resigning. Post Portapique it would seem no Mountie, at any level, has endured even a slap on the wrist for what can only be described as a shit show. And that, Dear Smear, is what makes guys like Palango commit good, old-fashioned reporting, digging out the answers to questions that ``power`` doesn’t want asked.
Meanwhile the RCMP is investigating itself and the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission grows and grows as commissions are wont to do. Three commissioners have now hired six new directors to lend a hand. No idea about the number of support staff. Its report is scheduled for November 2022, more than two-and-a-half years after the murders. So far it hasn’t held a (virtual) public meeting, more than a year after the murders. Is this to facilitate thoroughness or really just to slow down the process in hope that the hurt will go away? Unless everyone is working pro bono this is going to suck a lot of cash out of the Nova Scotia economy. It would have been quicker, cheaper and more productive to call in the OPP, the
Stephen Jarrett,
Toronto"
