Jewelry and a piece of a shackle found in burn barrel, Douglas Garland's triple murder trial hears

A forensic investigator teared up as he testified about sifting through ashes collected from a burn pit on the farm where prosecutors say Douglas Garland killed and then burned a Calgary boy and his grandparents.

Const. Ian Oxton spent 10 months using a "wet sifting" technique at the end of which he'd collected an earring, a bracelet, buttons, a piece of a shackle and more than two kilogramsof biological material including bones and 17 fragments believed to be teeth.

• PHOTOS | See photos of the evidence collected from the Garland farm at the bottom of this story

Nathan O'Brien, 5, AlvinLiknes, 66, and KathyLiknes, 53, were last seen when the boy was having a sleepover at the grandparents' homeon June 30, 2014. Theirbodies have never been found.

Garland is being triedin Calgary on three counts of first-degree murder.

In the burn pit ashes,Oxtonalso found a charredcircuitboard that was later found to be a keyless car-starter for a ToyotaTundra,the samevehicle parked in theLiknesdriveway.

Aside from sifting through the ashes,Oxtonwas alsoresponsible for thecollection ofabout 1,400 exhibits as part of Operation Amber, thelargest number of exhibits ever collected for a court case, according to the Calgary Police Service.

A pair of child-sized metal handcuffs, a bag of adult diapers, a chemical used to destroy DNA, a powder that causes blood to clot, two empty 50-litre canisters ofliquid nitrogen, and half a bottle of chloroform were among the items collected byOxtonduringsearches of the outbuildings and small sheds on the property.

On the grass beside a cluster of three small sheds, was a grassy area that wasnoticeably compressed and discoloured with burn marks.

On Tuesday, jurors heard about dozens of items seized by Oxton including a book about how to dispose of a dead body, more than a dozen pairs of handcuffs and other types of restraints, whips, a straitjacket, anesthetic, daggers and what appeared to be two pieces of burnt flesh.

In their opening statement, prosecutorstold jurors DNA from the missing family members wasfound on a saw and two meat hooks on the farm property where Garland lived with his parents.

The exhibits Oxton collected were sent to labs for further testing. Other witnesses will give evidence about DNAresults later in the trial.

Photos of several minor injuries covering four different parts of Garland's body were released by Justice David Gates earlier this week.They show that on July 5, 2014, Garland hadcuts on his head and upper lip, an abrasion on his thumb and a large bruise on his leg.

Garland was charged with murder on July 15, 2014, after amassive two-week search launched onJune 30, when Jennifer O'Brien arrived at her parents' home to pick up her son to find all three family members missing and bloodstains throughout the house.

Garland is connected to theLiknesfamily through his sister,Patti Garland, who was in a common-law relationship with AlvinLiknes'sson, Allen.

Patti Garland, her parents and AllenLiknes all testified earlier in the trial that Garland harboured a grudge against AlvinLiknesafter a business relationship soured years earlier.

DNA on farm

Inside theLikneshome, bloody footprints matchedthe shape and size of a pair of shoes missing from Garland's home, an expert testified last week.

On Monday, jurors heard evidence that a Calgary police cadaver dog gave signals he was onto the scent of human remains in several locations on the Garland farm.

• Trial hears cadaver dog indicated human remains found in several spots on farm

• Garland had book on how to dispose of dead bodies

• Bloody footprints 'correspond' with shoes missing from Garland's home, trial hears

WhenRCMPofficers were dispatched to the farm onJuly 5, after Garlandbecame a person of interest in the investigation, a burn barrel was stillsmoulderingon the property.

Through what prosecutors Vicki Faulkner and Shane Parker have described as "dumb luck," a mapping plane that flew over the Garland property on July 1 and 2, 2014,took photographs that show what the Crown believes to be the bodies of two adults and a child in the grass.

Those photos have not yet been presented as evidence to jurors.

Lawyers Kim Ross and Jim Lutz are representing Garland and willcross-examineOxtonon Thursday.

The trial is scheduled to last five weeks.

See the latest updates in live tweets from CBC reporters in the courtroom. On mobile?See theliveblog.