Clifford Olsen (Canada) (1 Viewer)

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Hellwig

Banned
Clifford Olson

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Clifford Robert Olson
Background information
Born January 1, 1940
Vancouver, British Columbia,Canada
Died September 30, 2011(aged 71)
Laval, Quebec, Canada
Cause of death Cancer
Conviction Murder
Sentence Life imprisonment
Killings
Number of victims 11
Country Canada
Date apprehended August 12, 1981
The First Victim
Monday, November 17th, 1980 Christine Anne Weller

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Christine Weller,
victim

It was a murky mid-November afternoon as 12-year-old Christine Weller quickly pedaled the 10-speed, making her way home to the Bonanza Motel in the sprawling, rainy hinterlands of Surrey, B.C., 15 miles from the city of Vancouver. It was not unusual for the blue-eyed, happy-go-lucky tomboy to be playing outside since she loved the wide-open spaces. She also liked going into the shops, especially Surrey Place Mall. A new section of the mall had opened and she was meeting a friend after school on that fateful rainy Monday afternoon.

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Bonanza Motel
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

She spent a couple of hours chatting with friends and wandering around the mall, something that the kids did for amusement. By 5 p.m., late for supper, Christine borrowed a friends bicycle to quickly make the three-minute, downhill ride to unit No. Two of the motel where she lived with her parents. She never got there.
Her parents assumed that she was staying at a friends house, as she had done several times before. It took the better part of a week before they filed a missing persons report. Even then, Christine was treated as a runaway. When the police found the bicycle behind an animal hospital on King George Highway, just a few blocks from the motel, they knew something was terribly wrong.
On Christmas Day, a man walking his dog along a dike found her ravaged body at the back of a dump, just north of River Road, along the Fraser River in nearby Richmond. Christine had multiple stab wounds in the chest and abdomen, and had been throttled with a belt.

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The Fraser River
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

Unbeknown to law enforcement, Christines death was the first in a series of brutal murders that would claim the lives of at least 10 more youngsters of both sexes, between the ages nine and 18, from the greater Vancouver area. The police would eventually identify her as the first victim.

Clifford Olson Jr.


Clifford Robert Olson Jr. made it into the newspapers the day he was born, January 1st, 1940. He was one of the celebrated New Years babies at St. Pauls Hospital, Vancouver, B.C. Born at 10:10 p.m. to Clifford and Leona Olson, they missed out on the big New Year baby prizes, a silver spoon and a case of canned milk, receiving instead the consolation prizes, a baby book and a dainty gift from Cunningham Drug Store.
An ordinary couple, Leona grew up in the Prairies before moving to Vancouver, getting work at a local fish cannery while Clifford Sr. delivered milk in one of the last of the areas horse-drawn wagons. They lived in a small house near the Pacific National Exhibition grounds on the East Side when Clifford was born.
The Olson family moved to Edmonton, Alberta, returning to the West Coast after the war when Clifford Jr. was five years old. Olson Sr. settled the family in a modest one-story house on Gilmore Crescent in the sprouting suburb of Richmond in an 80-home community built by the government for its servicemen after World War II. Little Clifford started school at Bridgeport Elementary.
Early on, Olson earned a reputation as a show-off. When I taught him, declared a former teacher, he deliberately misbehaved to be the center of attention. Sometimes it was almost as if he wanted to be caught. He was also skipping classes by the time he was 10 years old and by age 15 had failed his grade several times. He was jailed for the first time just after finishing Grade 8.
It was hard for anyone to get a word in edgewise when Olson was around. His compulsive talking was just one of the ways in which he controlled people. Forever the smart-alec, a loner, and a bully at heart, he never did have any close friends. Always in trouble, it was a lark for him to sell out-of-date lottery tickets door to door, steal milk money left on porches, and torment the local dogs and cats. It was rumored that he had smothered two local pet rabbits.
In 1956, he left Cambie Junior High School to work at the Landsdown Racetrack and by age 17, Olsons criminal career went into high gear. Over the next 24 years, he chalked up 83 convictions: obstructing justice; possession of stolen property; possession of firearms; forgery; false pretenses; fraud; parole violation; impaired driving; theft; break, enter and theft; armed robbery; escape from lawful custody.

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Mugshot of Clifford
Olson as a young
criminal

He was sentenced to the New Haven Borstal Correctional Center in Burnaby in July, 1957, for B&E and theft. He escaped just long enough to go back to Richmond and steal a power boat, get caught, and be sent to Haney Correctional Centre. In fact, while continually involved in burglary, fraud, and theft during his youth and into his adulthood, he managed to stay out of prison only a few months at a stretch.
By the time Olson was 41 years old, he had spent only four years of his adult life as a free man. A petty but chronic offender, prison became a revolving door for him. The Lower Mainland Regional Correctional Institute in Burnaby, known locally as Oakalla, was just one of the many prisons in which Olson spent a lot of time.
He escaped seven times between 1957 and 1968. When granted parole in 1959 and 1972, it would be continually revoked due to Olsons incessant criminal conduct.
Olson was stabbed seven times by a gang of prisoners while in Prince Albert Penitentiary for informing on two convicts planning to smuggle drugs, and managed to persuade the Saskatchewan Criminal Compensation Board to award him $3,500 because of his unusual degree of moral and physical courage.
Olsons siblings, two younger brothers and a sister, grew up to be law biding, middle-class citizens, but Clifford was always in some type of trouble with the law. No one could explain why Olson was the way he was, explains Ian Mulgrew in Final Payoff. Like many psychopaths, there was virtually no traumatic event in his childhood that could be identified as the trigger of his homicidal rage. His parents had simply become inured to the regular visits from police officers, the shame of the newspaper reports and the continued disruptions their sons behavior caused in their lives. They tried to help him out when they could, but they had long since given up hope of rehabilitating him. They aimed only to limit the damage he did to their lives.

Spring Break


The police probe of Christine Wellers murder continued when another young Surrey girl disappeared.
Thursday, April 16, 1981 Colleen Marian Daignault

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Colleen Daignault,
victim

Colleen Daignault wouldnt talk to just anybody, shy as she was. A shade over 5 feet, the 13-year-old girl, with her lovely long brown hair and fresh face, smiled sweetly in her missing persons photo. She had told her granny that she would be home about 4 oclock in the afternoon, returning from a girlfriends house after spending the night.
Dressed for a fine spring day, she wore a colorful red and white jacket, blue jeans, and white running shoes. Two buses would take her home to Old Yale Road in Surrey, near the Scott Road exit on the Surrey side of the Patullo Bridge that spanned the Fraser River.

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Patullo Bridge was a frequent Olson
travel route
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

Around 1 oclock, while waiting at the bus stop in nearby North Delta, a car pulled up. Clifford Olson called to her from the car window, catching her attention.
Three days later, Colleen was reported missing. The Mounties treated her case as a runaway. With about 300 missing persons reports filed in the Vancouver area every month, Colleen was just another statistic.
It wasnt until September 17th that the skull and skeletal remains of Colleen were found in an isolated Surrey forest, east of 144th Street near 26th Avenue, not far from the American border.
Years later, Colleens sister, Coreen, remembers her as always doing her homework and getting good grades. Just three days before Colleens birthday, Coreen was called to identify her clothes. There was only half a bra, but I recognized the red Adidas T-shirt that she borrowed from me.
Only five days after Colleens disappearance, a 16-year-old boy went missing.
Wednesday, April 22, 1981 Daryn Todd Johnsrude

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Daryn Johnsrude,
victim

Also on Easter school break 16-year-old, Daryn Johnsrude vanished. He had been in Vancouver for only two days. His mother flew him to the West Coast as a birthday gift. It was a much-anticipated visit to Coquitlam with her and his 9-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother. The easy going, 5-foot-5-inch, 90-pound boy had traveled from Saskatchewan where he lived with his father. He planned to finish his school year, and then come back to live with his mother and find work. Their home was only a half-block away from the Coquitlam housing complex where Olson moved.
Daryn was last seen in a drug store at the bustling Burquitlam Plaza buying a package of cigarettes. As his luck would have it that day, it was also one of the two shopping malls used as a hang out by several children living at Olsons complex.

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Burquitlam Plaza
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

There were many other younger boys and girls in the complex who didnt like Olson very much either, writes Jon Ferry and Damian Inwood in The Olson Murders. Behind his back, they called him `the creepy bogey man or `candy man. The tragedy was that there were so many more that could be taken in by him. With his easy smile and fierce brown eyes, no one would deny he had a certain animal magnetism. When he wasnt cruising around in his car for pickups, Olson hung around with the kids at the Burquitlam or Lougheed Mall shopping centers. He seemed to have a huge emotional and physical need for young children.
On May 2nd, Daryns bludgeoned body was found lying beside a lonely dike at Deroche, a small rural community east of Vancouver, seven miles east of Mission on the north bank of the Fraser River. His body lay crumpled at the bottom of a rocky embankment. The coroner said the boy died from repeated hammer blows to the head.
It was a confusing case. Olson varied both the sex and the age of his victims. This was one of the problems for investigators, given what was known about sex offenders in the 80s. Experts believed that predators targeted victims of one sex and age bracket. Consequently, the Mounties did not link Daryns case to the murdered girls.

Gotcha!


�I can well understand why those kids got into a car with him; he really had the gift of the gab.
An RCMP officer.
Hey lemme buy ya a beer after work, Olson would say to a youngster. It was just one of the verbal traps he used to get potential victims to a secluded location or talk them into going to a motel room. He plied them with alcohol and drugs, making them virtually helpless. Some he raped, and then released, but many of the victims he killed.
Even with Olsons small frame, at 5 feet 7 inches, 169 pounds, he would have found it easy to overpower the younger boys and girls. Posing as a construction contractor and handing out a Hale & Olson Construction business card, he impressed the youngsters, especially with the promise of work.
A compelling, anonymous story on the Internet, entitled I Survived Clifford Olson, reveals some of the other ways that Olson enticed the young people to trust him:
On a promise of $5.00 per hour for landscaping labor he hired several of us skinny kids while turning away what I thought to be stronger more suitable workers. Olson raped some of the boys by first singling out a person for special duties...and slowly gaining the confidence and respect of each individual by bragging about how bad he was and how he used to be. He used money or recreational rewards as bribes, even before the sexual activities occurred. Gift giving was one way of courting a child.
He would pick up victims at bus stops, walking on the street, riding a bicycle, or hitchhiking - often with promises of work, enticing the youngsters into his car. According to Dr. Kim Rossmo, geographical programming expert, Some he would drive home, some he would sexually assault, others he would murder. Olson himself doesnt seem to know why he killed those he did; on some occasions he has stated they were murdered so they would not report the assault to the police, and on others he has blamed his use of alcohol and pills.

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Ted Bundy And I
Hunt For The Green
River Killer

Olson describes how a serial killer selects his victims and crime sites. By doing this in the third person, profilers contend that the information will be more substantial and will reflect their crimes, as did serial killer Ted Bundy in his collaboration with profiler Dr. Robert Keppel Ted Bundy And I Hunt For The Green River Killer, published in 1995 with William Birnes.
In an unpublished manuscript that Olson wrote on serial killers, with numerous misspellings and grammatical errors, Olson talks in the third person about selecting victims:
�In cases a lot are just encountered by the serial killer who is hunting for the victim he needs. As for how are they stalked, approached, attacked, and trapped, each serial killers has his own personal mode and manner or form of current style and fashion ...the serial killer kills strangers 95 percent of the time because as the safest target in terms of avoiding detection.... Children: young boys and girls are frequently desirable victims by the serial killer for sex.... Most serial killers have selected there murder scenes by the place they take there victims to: as for the relevant geographic areas selected by the offender (serial killer) this depends on the seasons, and were the serial killer is killing. In fact, most of their victims are strangers although at times family members and acquaintances are slain.
Serial killer John Wayne Gacy killed young boys, claiming that he too found it easy to find victims anywhere: motels, clubs, parking lots, grocery stores, and if kids are the target, in schools, shopping malls, arcades or on the streets. He believed that he could drive anywhere, see what he wanted, and just get it.

Shadow Victims



Clifford Olson set his sights on Joan Hale at the popular Cariboo Hotel Lougheed Village pub, known locally as the Cariboo. In 1980, the Cariboos country and western d�cor, complete with wagon wheels mounted on the wall, muted lighting, and smoke-filled lounge atmosphere, attracted the locals from various middle class professions.
Joan did not know at first that Olson was just out of prison, but when she found out, it didnt bother her. She thought him charming and loved his beautiful brown eyes. Within an hour, she was smitten. Olson moved in with Joan three days later.
�It was something I thought I needed, Joan explained later in a courtroom defending a lawsuit against her. I needed that companionship, I thought, and I needed someone to protect me from my husband because he was coming around and bothering me. And Clifford seemed the perfect solution.
Joan became pregnant and they planned to marry. A month before the wedding, they had a son, Clifford Olson III. As his father before him, Olson also caused a ruckus just before his sons birth, getting into a shouting match at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. It was already a pattern. Early on, he bilked Joan of her $43,000 divorce settlement, and went on a two-month spending spree. He became violent, and even more so after the news of her pregnancy. He got drunk more often and began to beat her. In a dramatic escalation of violence, Olson had already killed three children, one five days after the birth of his son.
Incredibly, the night before the wedding, Olson babysat several children while his fianc�e went out to celebrate with her girlfriends. He sent the older ones to the store to buy bubble gum while he allegedly assaulted a 5-year-old girl. Olson was asked to go to the Coquitlam RCMP detachment because the mother had complained. He went to the station and denied the incident. The child was too young to testify and the police did not have enough evidence to charge him.
The couple was married on May 15, 1981, at the Peoples Full Gospel Church in Surrey. They had regularly attended a fundamentalist church, but changed to another branch when word got out that Olson had sexually abused several of the children. He had been caught sodomizing a young boy in a sauna. No complaints were filed.

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North Road & Cottonwood,
around Burquitlam Plaza
where Olson lived and
abducted children
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

The Mounties would eventually find out how he was incapacitating the youngsters. Late in May, Olson was arrested for impaired driving and for contributing to juvenile delinquency. He crashed his car with his 16-year-old female passenger in Agassiz, a farming hamlet in the Valley about an hour from Vancouver. Olson had picked her up in the Cottonwood Avenue and North Road area of Coquitlam, Daryn Johnsrude and Olsons neighborhood. Although the young girl could not be convinced that Olson was a sex offender, she did tell the police that he had offered her a job, had bought her drinks and given her pills. She palmed one of the tiny emerald knock-out pills, later giving it to the police. The laboratory identified it as chloral hydrate, commonly known as knock-out drops or a Mickey Finn.
Tuesday, May 19, 1981 Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner

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Sandra Wolfsteiner,
victim

Already on the hunt a mere four days after his wedding day, Olson picked up 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner, who lived with her sister in Langley. The pretty, hazel-eyed brunette went to visit her boyfriend to take him to lunch on the Fraser Highway in Surrey. After visiting with his mother for a while, around 11:30 a.m., she made her way to the highway to hitchhike to the auto body shop up the road.
A mere 50 yards from the farmhouse, the boyfriends mother watched Sandy get picked up by a man in a silver-gray, two-door medium-sized car, probably one of Olsons rental cars. He may have offered a job to her because Sandra was seen by a friend as she closed her account at the Royal Bank in Langley. She reportedly said that she had a good job cleaning windows for $13 an hour and that she would get to drive a Trans Am.
Olson persuaded Sandy to go to his cabin in the woods, up the Valley. He drove into the dense bush just off Chilliwack Lake Road. While walking into the woods, he smashed her head from behind. Olson later said he was enraged to find that she had less than $10 in her pockets. She told me she had $100.
The police considered her to be just another runaway. At the early stage, said an RCMP briefing document, it was felt she was simply a missing youth and there was no suspicion of foul play.
They couldnt have been further from the truth.

'I Drive 'em Nuts!'



�It was top of the line for Clifford Robert Olson when it came to office stationery and business cards. When he ordered, he ordered nothing but the best; trouble is, he never paid for them.
In his own words.
The B.C. Penitentiary, an imposing granite fortress along the main thoroughfare between Coquitlam and New Westminster, loomed over the industrial area of the Fraser River and the Patullo Bridge that crosses over to Surrey. The system provided a second home for Olson.
When the B.C. Pen was scheduled to be torn down in 1981, the draconian buildings were opened to the public, simply for curiosity. In Profile of a Serial Killer The Clifford Robert Olson Story, an unpublished manuscript written by Olson, he explained, taking third person perspective, why he too decided to take a last look:
Olson, in spite of his many years in prison, paid a sentimental visit to the Old B.C. Penitentiary when it was opened to the public before closing down in 1981. Unfortunately for Olson this one last look at one of his old homes cost him his freedom. Olson trooped into the 102-year-old building with thousands of other sightseers for a prison tour, unaware there was a Canada-wide warrant out for his arrest. So when he peeked into the cell which had been his home for several years, he was recognized by one of these former guards and was quickly arrested by the New Westminster city police. Olson had last been in the B.C. Pen serving four years and nine months for a variety of offenses including theft, forgery and false pretences. His nostalgic return to the Old B.C. Pen cost Olson another month in the Matsqui before his sentence finally expired.
He loved to play the system maintaining, I drive em nuts! In the words of several of his custodians, they couldnt agree more. He demanded constant attention and made life tough for everyone. He was universally loathed but somehow managed to survive. Some of the law officers at Matsqui Institution characterized him as a con man, not as a killer. He was seen as a thief, a false-pretense artist, a garrulous, extroverted, egotistical kind of person, but not as a sexual offender, said a former parole worker.
Olson was adept at playing the con game, knowing his way through the system. For many years, Olson reveled in petty crime. Initially, his record showed him to be a thief and fraud artist. His early years, 1957 to 1974, from the time he was an adolescent, were riddled with break-ins, escapes, and robberies. But, it did not stop there. Olsons deviant sexual side was also developing.
Olson started exhibiting more violent behavior in and out of the penitentiary. While in B.C. Pen in 1974, he repeatedly and persistently sexually attacked a 17-year-old fellow inmate. And in 1978, while on the outside, he indecently assaulted a seven-year-old girl in Sydney, Nova Scotia. When he actually began his murderous rampage, he was on bail for sex and firearms charges with pending child abuse charges in Nova Scotia, although the warrant could not be enforced outside of the province.
Back in prison once again in 1978, a deviant sexual side started to show while serving a two-year sentence for fraud, possession of stolen property, and possession of housebreaking instruments.The Olson Murders mention his reputation while incarcerated:
During those seven years Olsons prison style changed. To some he was known as Bobo, a man who viciously muscled or buggered young inmates. To others he became knows as The Senator. This was because he honed his cell-room lawyers skills, by writing incessantly to both federal and provincial politicians with a barrage of complaints about prison conditions. He was also a `stoolie, a person who would inform on anyone for any reason. This trait made him unpopular with both inmates and guards and he eventually needed protective custody.
Olson was moved to the Super Maximum Unit (SMU), commonly known as the Penthouse, the rat and rapo unit, where the most despised cons were housed. It was here that he met accused child-killer Gary Francis Marcoux.

The 'Penthouse'



Olson was an informer on the outside of the prison walls and a snitch on the inside. While in the Penthouse, he enticed rapist-murderer Gary Francis Marcoux to discuss the murder of a little girl, in written form, and eventually used it as evidence against him in a court of law. These letters and maps that were passed between Olson and Marcoux not only helped convict Marcoux, but taught Olson his own future method of operation.
Marcoux dumped the body of nine-year-old Jeanna Doove at Weaver Lake, a popular camping area in the coastal mountains overlooking the valley east of Vancouver. The letters between them described in graphic detail how Marcoux lured the little girl to his car from her trailer court in Mission, some 50 yards from the Genesis Halfway House where he was living, bought her ice cream, then raped, strangled, and mutilated her, leaving her tied to a large tree near Weaver Lake. He also described a nearby back road that connected to Pemberton and Whistler. He even provided maps on how to drive to the murder site. She was found on the July 1 Canadian holiday.
By January 1981, especially since Olsons release on mandatory supervision, a more sinister and frightening persona had emerged. He had charges in different jurisdictions. The Squamish charges included rape, buggery, and gross indecency; the Richmond charges consisted of buggery and indecent assault on a male; a May incident at Agassiz with a young girl; and a July indecent assault of another young girl.
Early in Olsons criminal career, after he had escaped from Shaughnessy Hospital, his parents made an appeal to the media: Id like him to give himself up, said Olson Sr., But he knows what hes facing. He might have to serve 10 years. If he doesnt give himself up, I hope they get him before he does something really bad. Hes done bad enough now.
�Hes a coward by himself, said his mother, knowing her Clifford to be a show off. Hes got to have a partner. Clifford never does anything alone.
In retrospect, Olsons mother was partially right. Olson in his prison partnership with Marcoux had developed a taste and a methodology for killing. Olson bragged in his unpublished manuscript that he started as a petty thief and graduated from the Canadian prison system as a prolific killer.

Ada Court




5th Sunday, June 21, 1981 Ada Court

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Ada Court, victim
Thirteen-year-old Ada Court of Burnaby had spent an uneventful Saturday night, babysitting at her brother and sister-in-laws Coquitlam apartment, the same family apartment complex where the Olsons lived and where Olson Sr. and Leona worked as caretakers. She babysat her brothers two toddlers so often that others often referred to the little ones as Adas babies.
On a sunny Sunday morning, Ada caught a bus to meet her boyfriend. Then, she simply vanished. Burnaby police were baffled. Nothing was missing from her locker at Cascade Heights Elementary School and there was no evidence that she packed any belongings from home.
Fifty-two-year-old Jim Parranto, a White Rock resident, believed he saw Olson disposing of Adas body. Interestingly, this was not the first time that someone saw Olson as he disposed of a body, but the people involved did not understand what they were witnessing. It would later be discovered that Olsons vehicle had been stuck in the mud at least twice while disposing of two bodies. In one case, he even called a tow truck.
The Olson Murders relates the events with Parranto: It was at about 8 p.m. on June 21 when the logging camp chef was driving through Weaver Lake, a popular picnic area. He turned a corner and saw a man beside a black pick-up truck, bending over the body of a young girl in a multi-colored sweater.
I thought he was in trouble and I pulled up. I got out of the car and spoke to him and he turned around and looked at me. He wouldnt answer me when I talked to him. He just stared at me and I could see something wasnt right. I got back in the car. I thought, `hey, Im getting out of here. After a harrowing chase by Olson, Parranto swerved onto a logging road leading to the Eagle River forestry camp where he worked, losing Olson on the road. A month or two later he reported what he saw to the White Rock RCMP.

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Entrance ot the White Rock RCMP
Detachment
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

Two months later, after Olsons arrest, dental charts confirmed that a skull and upper jawbone found by searchers near Weaver Lake in the Agassiz area belonged to Ada Court.
Parranto was asked if he was sure that he was looking at the serial murderer.
�It was Olson, he replied. I was staring him right in the face.
By the end of June, Olson had murdered five children but only two bodies had been recovered: Christine Weller in Richmond and Daryn Johnsrude at Deroche, near Mission. But Christine Wellers murder had not been connected to Daryn Johnsrudes and Olsons other victims had not yet been found.

Suspected




The Mounties already had Olson in their sights in early July as a prime suspect while they were probing the Ada Court disappearance. He was a suspect of the basis of his previous record of assaults and sex crimes, said Det. Dennis Tarr, Delta municipal police fraud investigator. He was a good suspect. The probabilities were certainly there.
6th Thursday, July 2, 1981 Simon Partington

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Simon Partington,
victim

It was the disappearance of a nine-year-old Surrey boy, Simon Partington that was the turning point in The Case of the Missing Lower Mainland Children. The police could hardly list him as a runaway, given his young age and angelic-looking face. Police were sure that the slight, 4-foot-2-inch, 80-pound boy had been abducted.
At about 10:30 a.m., after Simons usual big breakfast of cornflakes, he dressed in blue jeans and a blue T-shirt, hopped on his bike, with his brand new orange Snoopy book in the bikes basket, and headed for a friends house. He never arrived. He disappeared only a few blocks from where Christine Weller was last seen alive. One of his school projects, a story he wrote called The Hungry Tiger and the Gullible Duck, foreshadowed his untimely death.
An emotional public outcry spurred the police into high gear. The Mounties launched the biggest manhunt in Canadian history. At its height, as many as 200 officers worked on the case. The police had to admit that Simon was the victim of foul play, and the media began to note that news editors had underplayed the spate of earlier disappearances in Vancouvers suburbs. It was the tragic disappearance of this charming child that ultimately symbolized the horror of the series of child slayings.
Olson did not appear phased by all the media attention. Five days after killing the nine-year-old, he picked up a 16-year-old girl and her friend. After the usual offer of a window-washing job at $10 an hour, he persuaded one of the girls to go with him alone. Olson plied her with liquor and fondled her. When the girl resisted, Olson stopped. Later, when he was charged with indecent assault on this girl, the police still did not tie him to Partingtons disappearance or the murders of Johnsrude and Weller.
Still, the death of Simon Partington just didnt seem to fit a pattern. Crown prosecutor John Hall later remarked: It just doesnt fit, it doesnt fit still. I never could figure that one out.
The reticence of police departments to link cases of serial murder is very common. Several reasons are generally offered for this linkage blindness: over dependence on generalized patterns and profiles provided by experts, the tendency to assume that most missing children are runaways, and concern that recognizing that a serial killer is at work in the community will have serious negative affects on police department resources, budgets and media scrutiny. Linkage blindness has allowed serial killers to go on murdering months and sometimes years longer because it has delayed alerting the public to the danger of an active serial predator and the mobilization of police resources to catch the murderer.

The Beast of B.C.



�The beast can take over to complete an identity if you leave a hole in yourself. In other words, it seeks a vacuum. In a healthy person the vacuum doesnt exist. Theres a sense of identity that prevents a need for the dark awareness.
A homicide offender describes his experience of the development of this dark side of the human psyche
Children are easy prey. Well aware of this, Clifford Olson took advantage of their innocence. He later told police that he quickly figured out that teenagers were alike, that they will tell you just about anything if you look and talk like you were interested in hiring them. Most were eager to get a job. Being the classic hardened con enabled him to control many situations. The confidence game gave him the opportunity to shield his real motives. He was used to getting his way, one way or another.
He appeared pleasant, friendly, even charming, openly approaching the children. However, his goal, far from friendly, was to gain their confidence until he was in a position to overcome any resistance.
Olson picks up the kids and offers them a job, said Cpl. Les Forsythe, Burnaby RCMP. He tells them hes a construction contractor and takes them to building sites to show them the jobs. Thats the line. He gets their confidenceand remember hes good at that. Hes shrewd. Hes not dumb. Hes not a bad-looking individual. He could be somebodys dad. These kids would follow along and hed offer them drugs, or a drink, or a beer. This is after hes felt them out and knows that he can probably do it with a degree of safety.
Robert Shantz, who would serve as Olsons defense lawyer for the child slayings, intended to show that his client had adopted Marcoux personality. Some evidence supported this theory:
��������������������� Olson left five children in the same Weaver Lake-Mission area that Marcoux used for his victim.
��������������������� One of the children was found close to where Marcouxs victim, Jeanna Doove, died.
��������������������� Olson used the same type of ruse to pick up some of his victims.
��������������������� Olson killed one of the victims at Whistler, connected to Weaver Lake by the back road Marcoux had mapped.
��������������������� Like Marcoux, Olson used strangulation to dispatch some of his victims.
��������������������� After Olsons sessions with Marcoux, Olson showed an insatiable appetite for child pornography.
More likely, Olson wanted to experience what Marcoux did. He has gone from being essentially a nobody to being a somebody now, said forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Semrau. In his own eyes, he has celebrity status. He sees himself as the ultimate serial killer.
Peter Worthington, founding editor and a columnist of The Toronto Sun asked Olson after he was convicted how he compared himself with the famed fictional Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic killer of The Silence of the Lambs.
�Peter, there is no comparison, Olson replied. Hannibal Lecter is fiction, I'm real.

Addicted to Murder




�Clifford Olson some say had a Jekyll and Hyde personality who posed as a happy family man and a devout church goer, but in reality no one could see the monster ready to be let loose once he started drinking.
In his own words.
Thursday, July 9, 1981 Judy Kozma
Clifford Olson drove up North Road toward downtown New Westminster, passing the looming B.C. Penitentiary on the way, as he did many times before on this main thoroughfare through the quiet residential streets of Coquitlam. It also accessed one of his favorite haunts, the Cariboo, where he often purchased off-sale beer. He liked to drink and drive, and have his passengers drink as well.
It was not unusual to be traveling with younger people in the car as he cruised the streets. This time, 18-year-old Randy Ludlow was with him. Little did Ludlow know that only a week ago, Olson killed Simon Partington and two days before was charged with indecent assault on a 16-year-old girl. Ludlow rendered an eye-witness account of the last few hours of Judy Kozmas life.
�Between eleven and noon on July 9th I was with Olson, Ludlow confirmed. We were driving toward downtown New Westminster. Olson spotted a girl leaving a phone booth on Columbia Street in front of the Royal Columbian Hospital. He obviously knew her because he waved to her. She smiled and seemed to be happy to see him. He pulled over. She came across the street and talked with him.

11a.jpg
Phone Booth that Judy Kozma left
to join Olson
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

Judy Kozma was on her way to Richmond to see a friend and to apply for a job at Wendys restaurant. A shy, pretty brunette, she was desperately looking for a second job. She had met Olson at McDonalds where she already worked as a part-time cashier.

11b.jpg
Judy Kozma, victim
Hop in, Olson said. Well take you there.
Once in the car, Judy exclaimed, This is good. This will be faster than the bus. I would have had to go all through Vancouver to get there.
Olson offered the two youths the ever-present beer in his car as he drove to Richmond. They arrived long before it was time for Judys job interview and too early for her to meet her friend, so they stopped at the Richmond Inn to buy some more beer. At one point Olson handed Ludlow a big wad of money to impress Kozma, only to take it back while getting more liquor.
�When we returned to the car, Ludlow would later explain, Judy sat in the front passenger seat. I sat in back. Olson offered Judy a job cleaning windows at ten dollars an hour.
Leslie Holmes and Bruce Northorp in Where Shadows Linger tell what happened next: They returned to New Westminster where Olson bought a bottle of rum at the liquor store near the foot of 10th Street. He returned to the car with the rum, coke, and plastic glasses. On Olsons instructions, Randy mixed drinks for all three.
Olson encouraged Judy to have another drink, related Ludlow. She didnt want more.
Olson persisted. Give her another drink, give her another drink, he ordered.
Eventually Judy agreed to take a light one. Olson told me to mix it, said Randy. I gave her a glass of coke with no rum. I caught Judys eye and signaled it was only coke.
Judy took a sip and said, This is really strong.
Olson looked at me and nodded, indicating I had done well by giving her a stiff drink, Ludlow continued.
Olson then gave Judy some tiny green pills, saying, Here, take these, theyll straighten you out. They keep you from getting drunk. She took the pills.
Olson parked in the underground garage at the complex where he lived. Ludlow and Judy stayed in the car while he went to his apartment. Ludlow reflected, This was the only time I detected any anxiety on her part. She was nervous and upset. I put it down to the fact she was fifteen years old, she had been drinking, and she was going to miss her job interview. She was crying and I wiped the tears from her eyes. Olson returned shortly and she seemed her old self again.
Olson then dropped Ludlow off at the Lougheed Mall.
The next time I saw Olson he said he dropped her off at Richmond. I learned much later he killed Judy, then went on vacation the next day. Olson took Joan and little Clifford to Knotts Berry Farm near Los Angeles in the U.S. until July 21.

More Disappearances





A serial killer was on the loose and the people in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley region of British Columbia were gripped with fear. In the short time span, from November 1980 to July 1981, a number of children had gone missing, and were later found dead. Parents in suburban Vancouver complained that the police were not treating reports of the missing youths seriously enough. The 200 Mounties in the Surrey detachment processed roughly 2000 missing-person cases and investigated some 18,000 criminal code offenses in those two years. Many of the juveniles turned out to be runaways, congregating on the Granville Street area downtown, while some stayed with friends or out partying past their curfew, without informing their parents. The police figured, Theyd turn up and for the most part they did.

12a.jpg
Surrey RCMP Detachment building
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

When a child of ten or less is missing for more than a day, writes Derrick Murdoch inDisappearances, it is unlikely to be from the childs own choice. In the second half of childhood the reverse is true, particularly between the ages of eleven and fourteen when the child is dealing with emerging sexuality.... The combined totals for the next age group from fifteen up are not so high.... For the police, runaways who are over the age at which they are considered juveniles in their province (sixteen, seventeen or eighteen, as the case may be) must be treated as free agents.
The book Final Payoff explains what the policing was like then: There were roughly six thousand traffic cops, fraud investigators, homicide detectives, Indian special constables, political bodyguards, analysts and administrators in the provinces law enforcement system. Each force and detachment was a separate and distinct entity with its own internal bureaucracy, but they were expected to act in concert. That rarely happened and the problems of inter-detachment and inter-force communication was one of the reasons Cpl. Les Forsythe wanted everyone who had dealt with Olson or who might have an active missing-person file at a meeting.
Unfortunately the RCMP chain of command was undergoing dramatic upheaval in the spring and summer of 1981. The West Coast ranks were experiencing widespread staff shortages and low morale, which affected daily operations that coincided with Olsons killing spree.
July 15, 1981 Olsons name was first mentioned at a law enforcement conference
As the person responsible for Ada Courts case, Forsythe continued to build a case against Olson. In a more coordinated effort, a meeting was scheduled for RCMP officers and local police departments from Vancouver and the Lower Mainland communities of Richmond, New Westminster, Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Mission, Langley, Agassiz, and Maple Ridge. He prepared a five-page profile on Olson for the July 15 meeting with the Mission Detachment investigators: It outlined Olsons known and suspected recent criminal activities, his trait of offering his intended victims a job for ten dollars per hour, his penchant for borrowed or rented cars, and his known recent addresses in Surrey and Coquitlam.
This meeting, Les explained, is simply a brainstorming session of investigators from around the Lower Mainland who have a common interest in missing persons investigations. When the story aired, viewers took note of the polices growing concern about the missing children in the Greater Vancouver area.
The police decided to consider Olson as a suspect in The Case of the Missing Lower Mainland Children. An RCMP police-briefing document took up the story of the crucial July 15 meeting. It is stressed that at this juncture, although Olson was considered a possible suspect in the disappearances/murders, a considerable picture of uncertainty existed. It was not clear whether all the children reported missing were, in fact, genuinely missing or whether foul play had been involved. The matter of whether or not the disappearances themselves could be connected or whether they individually or collectively were connected to previous unsolved murders was also open to conjecture, although under active analysis at the time. It should be stressed here that Olson had earlier been considered as a possible suspect in the Christine Ann Weller homicide (body found in Richmond 12-25-80), and that of Mary Ellen (Marney) Jamieson homicide, which occurred in the Sechelt area on 8-7-80. He was later dropped from prominence in the Weller investigation when a stronger suspect surfaced, however Olson remained of interest to our serious crime unit in the Jamieson case.
Thursday, July 23, 1981 Raymond King Jr.

12b.jpg
Raymond King Jr.,
victim

Theres just no way he could have run away, Raymond Kings father had said. He was not a runaway. The slight, sandy haired Ray King Jr. was enjoying his summer holidays and looking for his first real job. He made his routine trip to the Canada Manpower Youth Employment Centre, chaining his bike behind the building. Keen to do any type of work, he had come to the center so often over the summer that the staff was getting to know him.
Young Ray met Olson that day. Lured by a promise of work, Olson drove them along a route he frequently traveled, along Highway No. 7 towards Harrison Mills and Weaver Lake. Turning off the highway, he headed for the popular camping area then took a rough, back-country road that led to a B.C. Forest Service campground beside the Alpine Lake. He staved the boys head with rocks and then dumped the youngsters body off the steep, hillside trail.
The police did not think that the 15-year-old boy would have abandoned his bike. Usually if a kid is going to run, hell do one of three things with his bike; leave it at home, use it to make his getaway, or sell it to a friend for a few bucks, said Ed Cadenhead, deputy police chief of New Westminster.
The night that Olson killed the young boy, he had logged 403 kilometers in the car he rented from Metro in Port Coquitlam. Forever on the lookout for potential victims, he spoke to the Metro rental clerk: He offered me a job shampooing carpets in his apartment complex he said he owned at Lougheed Mall, she said. He only came in to get a car on the days he knew I worked. The job he offered was $16.60-an-hour, more than I get here, and I was supposed to let him know. Thank God I never did.
Just two days later, July 25th, Judy Kozmas body was found near Weaver Lake. Then, the killer struck again.
...
 

Hellwig

Banned
Part 2:

Body Count Rises







�I had a dream of Terri Lyn being nude in the bush. I dreamt her left arm was up and her right leg was down. When the police found her, her right leg was up and her left arm was down. The exact opposite. So actually my dream was telling me she died. But I didnt want to believe it.
Terry Carson, mother of Terri Lyn, 15-year-old murder victim.
The plastic, canary-yellow Do Not Cross Police Line tape was strung from the trees near Weaver Lake, the rugged recreation area east of Vancouver. The forensic experts exhumed the remains of a 14-year-old girl. She had been repeatedly stabbed in the head, neck, thorax and abdomen and dumped not far from where Daryn Johnsrudes body was found and near where Marcoux had dumped his victim five years earlier. The young girl was a tourist, and at first nobody knew that she was missing.
Saturday, July 25, 1981 Sigrun Arnd

13a.jpg

Sigrun Arnd, victim

Sigrun Arnd, a visiting German student from Weinheim, a small Rhine Valley town, was spotted with the killer in a Coquitlam pub, and then later by a couple of passengers in a passing train, where she was crouched with a middle aged man who turned out to be Olson. It was only after he confessed that her name was added to the murder list.
Mr. & Mrs. Arnd received the devastating news by long distance. It was on August 28 when the telephone rang, Mrs. Arnd later told the Vancouver Sun. My sister in Vernon was on the line and told me that the police were there and she was now going to translate a very sad message. The police had found a dead girl who might be Sigrun. She was an intelligent, suspicious girl. We discussed frequently how she would never get into a strangers car, not to mention that she would never hitchhike. But obviously in Canada she did.
Sigrun left behind a diary. She raved about the trips by boat and horseback but, most of all, she fell for the friendliness, open-heartedness and eagerness to help of the local people, Irmgard Arnd said. Im sure it was because of this that she lost all her natural caution and timidness.
Her body was found in Richmond, partly buried in peat in a trench, some 400 yards from where Simon Partington had been unearthed the day before.
Two days later, another youth vanished.
Monday, July 27, 1981 Terri Lyn Carson

13b.jpg

Terri Lyn
Carson,victim

Terri Lyn Carsons mother would eventually sit in the courtroom as the wheels of justice turned. Grief-stricken, it was a sad sight to behold as she mourned her 15-year-olds murder. Terri had left the family home on Monday morning at about eight oclock. A slight girl, about 105 pounds, a little over 5 feet, she was no match for Olson who stopped and offered her a ride that included a drink, laced with drugs. She was just another student looking for a summer job so Olsons ruse worked well and the drink was a sort of celebration for having found a job. As he had done with a few of the others, Olson drove away from the city into the wilderness four miles east of Agassiz, out on the north shore of the Fraser River. He turned off at Rosedale, a rural area. In the forest, he strangled her, burned her clothes and threw her purse and shoes into the Fraser River.
Although Olson was a prime suspect and they watched him, they had nothing to charge him with in relation to the murders. On July 29th the police dropped surveillance because as the Mounties put it, it became obvious that Olson had detected the fact that it was in place. It would not be reinstated until August 6th when he returned from a trip to Alberta with Joan and the baby.
Meanwhile the Mounties were still trying to get their man.

Manhunt





�You have to be a little bit better than him. You have to be able to understand him a little better than he understands you. I think hes a sick man and he needs something. Hes got an ego that is as big as the stars and if you feed that ego, youre going to get what you want.
Cpl. Les Forsythe, Burnaby RCMP.
Only two of the childrens bodies that had been recovered so far had been connected by police: Daryn Johnsrude and Judy Kozma. Still, the police were convinced that Simon Partington and Ada Court had been murdered as well. Christine Weller was still not considered a relevant case and the other missing persons were just that missing.
As many as 200 police were involved in the manhunt. The Serious Crimes Unit had Staff Sergeant Arnie Nylund fielding press calls. Any detachment with a missing child should call us, make us aware of them so that we can assist in an overview capacity, he told reporters. We will look at all of them. Were looking to see if theres a connection but so far we havent seen one. Maybe one person is responsible for one, maybe another for two. We want parents to be concerned and beware for their kids. If someone did attempt to pick them up and didnt succeed, wed like to hear from them. There must be some that dont get in the car. Were still gathering and coordinating information and assisting the various detachments.
Thursday, July 30, 1981
Meanwhile Const. Fred Maile of the RCMP Serious Crimes Unit had a simple strategy. His idea was to surreptitiously tape a conversation with Olson insinuating some kind of a reward. The idea was, if Olson was the murderer, and he thought he could make some money from that fact, he might go back to the crime scenes in order to retrieve some physical evidence. If he was not the murderer or knew who the murderer was then maybe he would tell them.
Olson met Detective Tarr at a White Spot Restaurant, and then was joined by RCMPs Corporal Maile and Corporal Drozda. The hidden microphones transmitted the conversation to a Mountie in a car in the parking lot. Final Payoff describes this tense 30 minutes:
�Quite a few homicides around here, right? Maile began. And we understand that you might be able to help us. Were prepared to compensate you for whatever youre able to tell us or help us. But we have to know if you are able to help us.
He stopped and blew on his coffee. All eyes were on Olson. For a while he said nothing.
Finally, Olson said he wanted to be hired at a salary of $3,000 a month. In exchange, he claimed he would provide information about the disappearances.
Olsons eyes lit up at the idea that they were coming to him for information. He spent much of the time bragging about testifying in Marcouxs conviction of that Jeannie, promising to get back to them if he found out anything.
With a casual, Well, Ill get back to you if I find out anything, the officers watched the killer leave the restaurant and amble out into the sunshine. No one followed the man suspected of murdering several children.

Killer Highway




Thursday, July 30, 1981 Louise Chartrand

15a.jpg

Louise
Chartrand,victim

After meeting with the police earlier in the day, that evening Olson went to meet his lawyer, Bob Shatz. On the way, he spotted 17-year-old Louise Chartrand, who was described as very tiny and young-looking for her age. The youngest of seven children, she had migrated from Quebec with three of her sisters, settling in the Fraser Valley town of Maple Ridge, about 20 miles east of Vancouver.
In reconstructing the events, the police believed that Louise hitchhiked part of the way to her night-shift waitress job with a man. After she was dropped off, she headed for the store in downtown Mission to buy cigarettes. It was only a 10-minute walk from the restaurant where she worked. During this time Olson got her into his car, drugged her, and headed to Whistler. On the way, he even stopped with Chartrand in his car at the Squamish RCMP detachment to pick up a confiscated gun, but was turned away because the officer in charge of court exhibits was not available. Then, Olson headed for the treacherous Killer Highway, named by the locals because of the numerous fatal car crashes that followed the snow. It led to Whistler, another 45 minutes from Squamish.
Olson drove into a gravel pit, north of the ski resort, and then smashed the girls skull with repeated hammer blows, burying her in a shallow grave.
Louises fellow employees at Binos restaurant checked with her family when she did not arrive for her 8 p.m. shift. One of Louises sisters telephoned the RCMP detachment the next morning.
The RCMP took action, immediately suspecting foul play: We know she isnt a runaway, the fact that she is missing is inconsistent with her normal pattern of behavior, said Insp. Pat Wilson. And Sgt. George Nussbaumer had declared, Its not as if she is running away from an unhappy home.

Long Hot Summer of '81




�I still relive the horror of those events when I am forced to recall the summer of 1981. Supt. Bruce Northorp, head of the task force in The Case of the Missing Lower Mainland Children.
The summer heat wave did nothing to help the investigation. By the first week of August the panic was spreading. Newscasts and headlines fuelled the fright: Cunning Killer With Blazing Eyes and Hot Summer Helps Slayer Elude Police. The political pressure mounted daily.
Meanwhile a task force was in the works to handle the disappearances, directed by Superintendent Bruce Northorp, who was responsible and accountable for the Olson case. The coordinated investigation was begun in the hopes of quelling the brewing public panic. I felt strongly the families of the victims should not first hear any disturbing news through the media, explained Northorp. They deserved every consideration available and should know they were not forgotten in the rush of police work.
British Columbia was covered by a structure of separate police jurisdictions, with a dozen independent city forces, and over one hundred detachments staffed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The multifaceted organization comprises federal, provincial and municipal policing responsibilities.
Two of the problems affecting the Olson investigation, described in Where Shadows Linger, written in the year 2000, were transfers of key personnel and shortages of staff, which resulted in overtaxed police officers. Some left the province, others were transferred to new duties within District One.... Back in 1981 there were also problems of jurisdiction and second-guessing, with subordinates criticizing the men in charge. In major cases, an investigator may solicit a range of viewpoints from colleagues, but the overall investigation can rarely be run by consensus. There must be a decision-maker. This was evident from the fragmented efforts that occurred before Bruce Northorp was named coordinator of the 1981 task force.
It was when Northorp came aboard that the police began tailing Olson again.

The Watchers




Under surveillance, Olson was not easy to follow. The watchers claimed that he would stop in the middle of the street, make sudden inexplicable U-turns, and go down one-way alleys, stop, and reverse. He also had a habit of continually changing rental cars: a Pinto, a Mustang, a Bobcat, a Lynx, a Honda, a panel truck, a Citation, an Escort, an Omega, and an Acadian. Olson drove incessantly. At one point, he traveled over 20,000 kilometers in three months in 14 different rental cars. In mid-July he drove an Escort 5,569 kilometers in just two weeks.
Olson took the ferry over to the Vancouver Island and, after burglarizing two Victoria residences, made his way up north towards Nanaimo, an old coal-mining town. He pulled over to the side of the road to pick up two young women hitchhiking. Hitchhiking was a popular mode of travel for the young in 1981.
Roughly three hours later, writes Ian Mulgrew in Final Payoff, the car was weaving across the highway on the other, sparsely populated side of the massive island. Occasionally, it hit the soft shoulder. At the bottom of Hydro Hill, just before the turn-off for Long Beach, the car slowed. It turned onto a dirt-logging road, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel.
Moments later, two local RCMP squad cars pulled to a stop across the entrance to the road, blocking the cars retreat and disgorging the uniformed Mounties. They had been summoned by the helicopter crew.
Two police officers followed the cars path, picking their way through the Douglas fir and spruce that lined either side of the isolated track. In the distance, they could see three people standing outside the car passing a bottle, and they could hear Olson. They moved closer. He was telling one of the women to take a walk. He began to yell. The police decided it was time to move.
Olson spotted the police emerging from the undergrowth and sprinted back to the car. He threw the vehicle into gear and roared back the way he had come, but he was arrested at the roadblock. The women were confused, but safe. Olson said they had only stopped so he could relieve himself.
Police charged him with impaired and dangerous driving, impounded his car, and took him to local lock-up. The police searched his rented car and found a green address book with the name of the 14-year-old New Westminster girlJudy Kozma.
By now, Olson had killed 10 children in southern British Columbia and, by the time he was finished, 11 would be dead. It was not the largest body count in the occurrence of multiple murders in Canada - in 1949, all 23 passengers aboard a Dakota were killed by Montreal jeweler Joseph Guay, for the sole purpose of killing his wife - but the Olson murders caused the greatest terror and horror.
When he was arrested, only three bodies had been discovered and identified. The police did not yet know how many children had been murdered.

A Momentous Day




August 6, 1981
The 6th was a momentous day, Northorp declared. It was the beginning of the events that have probably taken Olson off the streets of Canada for the rest of his life. It was also the beginning of several days of methodical police work. The surveillance team went into high gear.
August 7 to 11, 1981
Solving a murder usually boils down to a lucky break. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was arrested by two vice cops concerned about license plates. He was driving a car with stolen plates, was arrested, and later confessed to 13 murders this after some 250 detectives had been deployed and almost $8 million dollars had been spent on the investigation. There was also evidence that Sutcliffe had been questioned nine times by the English police and was even arrested once with his hammer, his favorite weapon, but somehow happened to escape detection.
The extensive national coverage of the missing children was likened by some members of the media to the Yorkshire Ripper case in Great Britain and the Atlanta child killings. U.S. Human Resources Minister Grace McCarthy claimed: We have our own little Atlanta going on.
I feel the police, in total, did a tremendous job, Northrop concluded. All you have to do is compare the length of time it took the police in other jurisdictions to solve their serial killings. Twenty-nine blacks, twenty-seven male and two female, ranging in age from seven to twenty-eight years, were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia, from July 1979 until May 1981. In 1981 only two of the cases were close to being cleared when Wayne Williams was indicted for the two latest murders, both of adults.
Also in both jurisdictions all of the victims bodies had been found. Not so in the Olson case, eliminating the chance of securing leads or even knowing if one person was responsible. The fact that known and suspected victims were both male and female, said Northorp, was in itself most unusual and further complicated matters, ignoring the fact that the Atlanta child murders also involved victims of both sexes and a wide range of ages, including young adults.
We didnt interview Olson until his arrest on the 12th of August, said Maile, because we didnt have anything.
August 12, 1981
I had no idea this would be the day when the big break would come, declared Northorp, nor did Olson have any idea this would be his last day as a free man. The decision was made to arrest Olson on Vancouver Island, then commence intensive interrogation.
August 18, 1981
Olson was charged with the first-degree murder of Judy Kozma, which ultimately resulted in a full confession.
August 21, 1981
Supt. Bruce Northorp had been heading the task force for three weeks with no real guidelines to follow. He had to assemble some 150 officers who were at that time working the case, digest all the information accumulated before he took the assignment, plan strategy, deal with the media, and a myriad of other details. He was shocked at the turn of events. At 8:35 a.m. I got a real jolt, said Northorp. I learned for the first time of the $100,000 deal put forward by Olson.
The Cash-for-bodies Deal
Ill give you eleven bodies for $100,000. The first one will be a freebie, Olson offered the police.
�I felt the intense pressure over the ensuing hours, said Northorp. We were so close [to breaking the case]. But could Olson really be so stupid as to enter into an agreement that would likely result in his spending the balance of his days in prison? Still, there was no concrete evidence that the missing children and the murders were related.
The bodies of Weller, Johnsrude, King, and Kozma had been recovered. Olson proposed a schedule to recover the missing bodies of the dead children, one at a time, in a specific order and then money would be placed in an account:
1.����������������� Chartrand at Whistler
2.����������������� Daignault at Surrey
3.����������������� Carson at Chilliwack
4.����������������� Four locations where evidence would be found
5.����������������� Court at Agassiz
6.����������������� Wolfsteiner at Chilliwack
7.����������������� Partington at Richmond
8.����������������� German girl at an unspecified location Youll get statements with the bodies, said Olson. Ill give you all the evidence, the things only the killer would know.
�As Olson led police to further bodies, Northop said in his co-authored book Where Shadows Linger, I was convinced Olsons admission to two more murders was merely a ploy, bearing in mind his many escapes from custody, tight security was laid on. Olson was to be taken in a car with three unarmed police officers, with one handcuffed to him. The car was to be escorted by two other cars, with two officers in each, armed with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. District Two was alerted that Olson might be taken their way, and I arranged for the use of a police aircraft. If escape was on his mind, he would not succeed.
In the year 2000, in a Vancouver Sun article called Ex-Mounties Deny Olson Case was Botched, two retired RCMP officers, Fred Maile and Ed Drozda, among other disclaimers, said there is no truth to allegations in Where Shadows Linger: The Untold Story of the RCMPs Olson Murders Investigation, that flaws in the investigation may have allowed Olson to claim seven more victims before he was finally caught. Drozda said, Hindsight plays such a large part. It is so wonderful with all the information before you to say, `Oh wow, look at this. At the time you are putting together a puzzle and these pieces somewhere along the way have to fit. Its not only surfacing someone who is a suspect but also in putting the evidence together to take it to court and get a conviction.
�Mailes boss, Staff Sergeant Arnie Nylund, commented in Where Shadows Linger, Fred seemed to know what he was doing, and I had never seen anything to indicate otherwise. It is easy to view these things in hindsight and draw conclusions. We had other suspects that looked better than Olson. Dont forget, it was not apparent a serial killer was on the loose. Up until then the guys were busy working on a number of other homicides not related to these cases at all. After Olson was in jail we had all kinds of second-guessers. We did the best we could with what we had. I have nothing but respect for the guys and how they did it. It was terrible, just terrible for those members who accompanied Olson when they were recovering those bodies. It was so bad I had to send one man home. He just couldnt take it anymore.
Its not an investigation you like to talk about too much because of the nature of what he was doing. I mean he was killing children, Maile told the Vancouver Sun. To me, if there was ever an image of the devil, it was Clifford Olson.
The Deal Exposed
The secret deal had been cut in 1981, but was exposed to the media a year later.
Olson Was Paid to Locate Bodies was just one of the bold front-page headlines on January 14, 1982 in the Vancouver Sun. On January 15th the Sun headline read: Olson Deal Greeted by Disgust. The police had not disclosed the cash deal for fear of prejudicing Olsons right to a fair trial. At some point the Attorney General of British Columbia, the federal Solicitor General, the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of the RCMP in Ottawa, as well as the Prime Minister of Canada would be drawn into the controversy.
Many thought it repugnant that Olson was profiting from his crimes. I found it unthinkable he should be paid to provide evidence, said Supt. Bruce Northorp, the head of the task force. The proposition to pay Olsons wife was simply splitting hairs. She was not separated from him, and Olson stood to gain even if monies were paid to his wife. The situation may have been different if she were separated and were supplying information as to past criminal activity. That was not the case.
Northorp had to admit though that he felt a tremendous sense of relief that the killings were solved and no more children would die. When asked what evidence had been found, Northorp replied, I wont go into detail. Essentially, they were items, which could be established as belonging to each of the four victims, whose bodies had been found without Olsons assistance, thus establishing he was the killer. Only the killer would have knowledge of where these articles had been hidden.
The Attorney General of British Columbia, Allan Williams, also wondered how such an appalling deal had been made. Yet the good news was, in exchange for $100,000, the Attorney General could guarantee a first-degree murder conviction, ease the anxiety of the parents of the missing children, subdue the terror in British Columbia, and end an expensive police investigation. There was no hard evidence and Olson, an experienced criminal, was unlikely to talk without it. The day before Clifford Olson was charged with the death of Judy Kozma, he had a two-hour visit with his wife Joan and their infant son. I could not stop crying during those two hours, wrote Olson in a letter February 5th, 1982, to Genevieve Westcott, a CBC television reporter in Vancouver, as to why he pleaded guilty.
I told my wife that I was responsible for the deaths of the children and that I could not live with myself nor have any peace of mind until I confess to what I had done and give back the bodies to their families for a proper Christian burial.
My wife told me that if I told police (R.C.M.P.) what I did, they would lock me up in jail for the rest of my life and I would in all probability be killed in jail. She said what would she tell our son when he grew up and everyone was teasing him at school for what his father had done. I told her it will be up to me to tell my son what has happened. I knew in my heart that I must give up my wife and son for the rest of my life. . My son will have to [sic] father to call Daddy and he will grow up knowing his father for the sins he has done. And my wife will always bear my mistake for the rest of her life. She told me that I must do what is right and that she will always love me and that someday we would be n [sic] heaven together praising the Lord together.
Olson may have been trying to bolster his own image because he also was heard to say: If I gave a shit about the parents I wouldnt have killed the kid.

Olson's World





�We cant [sic] look into other serial killers minds as to what they do unless they allow to give there thoughts and views, You dont find many that have done this any place�
C. Olson
Clifford Olson is a classic case of the extreme psychopath. The extreme true psychopath is a thrill seeker with pathological glibness, antisocial pursuit of power and lack of guilt. It conjures up images of Anthony Perkins or Anthony Hopkins in their portrayals of the extreme psychopaths inPsycho, The Silence of the Lambs and its sequel Hannibal.
Chief psychiatrist at Penetangs Mental Health Centre, Dr. Russell Fleming, explains the nature of the extreme psychopath in a Toronto Sun article: an individual with a severe antisocial personality disorder that leads to criminal behavior. Although he never interviewed Olson, he speculated as to why Olson maintained composure and radiates serenity:
�Theres a core group of psychopaths, of whom Olson clearly seems one, who can be intriguing, charismatic, engaging, predictable and sinister, with the capacity to manipulate those around them. Recent studies indicate there may be a genetic component to psychopathy, a failure or `misfiring of the brain. At any rate, their brains are certainly different; its doubtful well ever fully understand the disorder.
Bottom line, the psychopath has deficient affective responses to people. Couple this with Olsons pedophilia and sadism, it is not surprising that he escalated to serial murder, of the most vulnerable kind of victim. The following examples of Olsons sadistic behavior further support the evidence of psychopathic behavior: he injected air bubbles into one victims arms, missed the vein, and ended up battering the victim to death with his hammer; he drove a nail into one victims head for no apparent reason since it was not the cause of death; he telephoned some of the victims families playing back a tape recording of one of the victims deaths, telephoned and wrote letters to others, relishing their pain; ran down one victim with his rental car; and, the violent treatment, control and manipulation of his wife.
In less than nine months Olson killed 11 times. There were also four other suspected murder victims for which he was not tried: Verna Bjerky, 17, was reported missing from Hope/Yale area and not located as of 7-30-81; Pamela Darlington, Kamloops, B.C.; Monica Jack, Quilchena, B.C.; Marney Jamieson, Gibsons, B.C.
The fact that he killed both girls and boys confused the investigation. In the 1980s the phenomenon of serial killers was poorly understood. Police relied too heavily on their prior experience with pedophiles, assuming that cases were not linked because the victims were of different sexes and ages. Pedophiles that prey on prepubescent children usually have no gender preference, while those preying on older children focus on one gender or the other, not both. While patterns of criminal behavior, whether based upon the experience of the police or expert opinions from criminal profilers, are very useful in understanding the criminal mind and leading police to the right suspect, police departments need to think outside the box. Because criminals do not feel confined to behave according to what other criminals have done in the past and what experts have profiled, police also must not constrain their investigations to these artificial limitations

Justice?




January 11- 14, 1982

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Mugshot of Olson

I dont have the words to describe the enormity of your crimes and the heartbreak and anguish you have caused so many people, declared Justice Harry McKay, Olsons trial judge. No punishment a civilized country could give you could come close to being adequate....You should never be granted parole for the remainder of your day. It would be foolhardy to let you at large. (Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976)
The trial came to a quick conclusion on the third day when Olson changed his plea to guilty within only a few hours of the court proceedings. Speculation was that with the tapes of Olson talking in his high-pitched whine, it was obvious even to him that he was coming off as a weak individual and not very bright. In any case, this did not meet up to his own illusions of being the big, powerful, elusive serial killer that was portrayed in the media.
Crown Prosecutor John Hall told reporters of the Vancouver Sun that it was the saddest and most bizarre case he had ever seen. When asked about Olsons motives, he answered, Who knows about these things? Its difficult to look into peoples minds. He is insane in the broad sense but not in the legal sense. He is an inadequate psychopath. He could go to church and beat his breast and say, `I love my wife and I love my kid. But he cant. He may believe he has some real feeling but its all surface. He doesnt have a conscience.
With Olson behind bars, the parents of the murdered children wrote to Federal Solicitor General Kaplan:
We are suffering further injury at present from the knowledge that Clifford Olson has benefited financially from the murder of our children. This is further aggravated by the fact that Mr. Olson may benefit yet again through publication of his disgusting, wicked, perverted story. Clifford Olson derives obvious personal delight at the publicity that has been given him and knows no moral boundary that will prevent him from collecting financially, either directly or indirectly, for the sale of his memoirs.
Although the plea was backed up with some one hundred thousand signatures, it did not make a difference. The bureaucratic wheels turned a blind eye to the families plight. The federal government even withheld family allowance checks, creating further hardship when the children were presumed missing.
Growing public support however bolstered the families. Roughly 60% of those surveyed, some 600 eligible voters chosen at random, agreed. After a long battle, unable to get satisfaction from the government, seven of the families decided to sue, naming Olson, his wife Joan, his lawyer Shantz, and McNeney, the lawyer looking after the cash deal. Two lawyers took the case, waiving their fees.
There was further outrage when on November 16, 1981, the RCMP secretly flew Olson back to B.C. which was arranged after Maile filed an affidavit in the B.C. Supreme Court that Olson would provide the whereabouts of more bodies. But he was escorted back to Kingston Pen empty-handed.
The fall of 1984
Finally after almost three years, while Joan Olson and lawyers forestalled the legal examination of their conduct, the Supreme Court of British Columbia examined the cash-for-bodies deal to make a decision about the $100,000.
No sympathy was shown to Joan Olson or to her baby. It was an ordeal for her and for her young son to be called names from horror movies Rosemarys Baby and Demon Seed. When the jeering went on in the courtroom, Mr. Justice William Trainor of the B.C. Supreme Court chided the spectators..
At one point Joan stated emphatically, trembling all the while: It floors me that anyone would think that I had anything to do with it. I cried, I cried a lot about it at first. I dont know how to explain it ... I really dont think too much about them now. Im glad the children are buried. She had nightmares about the ghost of Simon Partington begging for her help. Her life had been a living hell of alcoholic beatings and abuse: Oh, I hate him, she said. I hated him for the night he held a knife to my throat. He terrorized me, scared me, beat me. There was no one I could turn to.
However her feelings toward Olson were not all negative: Hes a real charmer. He has a way with words and Ive yet to see a woman that hasnt been attracted to him. I dont know what it is really. I like to say it was his brown eyes, but it couldnt have been that.
Although Justice Trainor ruled that Shantz, McNeney and the Olsons had to return the $100,000 plus interest, and that they should pay the legal costs, on March 11, 1996, the B.C. Court of Appeal reversed Trainors decision saying he had erred. A few months later, five and a half years after the first youngster was murdered, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to listen to the parents appeal.
Joan and her child could keep the money. I think that money was given to me in good faith, she once told the camera. I dont have any guilty conscience. I can look at myself in the mirror and say, `Youre a good person dont be ashamed.
When asked how it was for her three-year-old son, she said: Its really strange. He knows who his father is. He picked it up from the TV. I just cant believe it. I just explained it to him that his dad was a bad person and he has to spend the rest of his life in jail and that we are never going to see him and he accepted that. Whether he will later on I dont know.

Epilogue




�We were like moths around a flame, said McNeney, referring to that sultry day in August when he danced with the devil.
August, 1997

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Provincial Court of B.C. where
Olsons parole hearing was held
(Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

What the jury has to decide about me is my character, said Olson, beginning his case, in the high security courtroom in Surrey. Who is Clifford Olson? What has Clifford Olson done since he was sentenced? He finished his rambling, at times contradictory, opening statement.
After Olson served 16 years, he applied under Section 745 of the Criminal Code, the faint-hope clause. The parents were grief stricken, having to engage in a pointless exercise of the hearing.
At 57, Olson appeared even slighter than in 1981, when he was 41 years old. Wearing a tattered red T-shirt, with his legs shackled, behind a bulletproof partition, Olson leaned over the rail of the prisoners dock at times, for emphasis. Acting as his own attorney, he appealed to the six-man, six-woman jury hearing his bid for early parole, claiming that the had many unsolved crimes to confess, some murders that he committed alone, others with a friend. He said that they were involved in the unsolved string of Green River Murders. The Vancouver Province, a local newspaper, reported that the man in charge of the Green River investigation scoffed at such a claim, saying that he would have had to be a magician, able to tunnel his way from a prison somewhere in Canada and make his way to Seattle to have killed any of the women. According to Bruce Northrop, Nothing he has said, or will say, can be believed unless it can be substantiated by independent means.
Olsons own character witness, Dr. Tony Marcus, a court-appointed psychiatrist, claimed that Olson is still as devious and animated as he was when he was convicted in 1982 and shows no signs of burnout. This actually makes him more dangerous, having spent most of his life in prison. Olsons second character witness said almost the same thing: that there was no safe way that Olson could ever be released, believing that he was virtually unchanged
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Semrau called Olson completely untreatable, more dangerous than in 1981 because he thoroughly enjoys celebrity status, trying to claim the title as ultimate serial killer. He told the jury that Olson is addicted to murder and is the most extreme sexual deviant, the most disturbed, most pathological personality I have ever encountered.
�Ladies and gentlemen, said Olson in his summation to the jury, you have seen me before you. Do I look like a raving lunatic? Members of the jury remained calm, but the victims family members laughed uproariously, and a resounding Yeah! was heard throughout the courtroom.
At the end of the trial, amidst the clapping and yelling, some standing up, Justice Richard Low of the B.C. Supreme Court terminated the proceedings, Weve all had enough of this nasty businesswell adjourn. Olson was quickly becoming a paper tiger.
Although Olson had been sentenced to a minimum of 25 years without parole, he believed all along that he would make parole in 15 years. But, it took only 15 minutes for the jury to return a verdict rejecting Olsons bid for parole. His next opportunity will come in the year 2006. He is confined in a maximum-security institution in Quebec, probably until his death. Since his Section 745 hearing in 1997, he has not been allowed to harass the victims families with phone calls and cards.
The last time Maile saw Olson he asked him: What would you do if you got out, Cliff:
Olson grinned, Id take up where I left off.

Bibliography




Adams, Ian (1983). Bad Faith. NC Press Ltd. Toronto, Canada. [A fictionalizedversion using as a point of departure certain contemporary documented incidents.]
Anonymous (No Date). I Survived Clifford Olson. Unpublished manuscript.
Ferry, Jon & Damian Inwood (1982). The Olson Murders. Cameo Books. Langley, B.C. Canada.
Holmes, W. Leslie & Bruce L. Northrop (2000). Where Shadows Linger: The Untold Story of the RCMPs Olson Murder. Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd., Surrey: B.C., Canada.
Linedecker, Clifford L. (1988). The Vancouver Butcher: Clifford Robert Olson. (1980-1981) InThrill Killers: True Portrayals of Americas Most Vicious Murderers. (pp. 184-197). PaperJacks. New York: NY.
Michaud, Stephen G. & Roy Hazelwood (1998). The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwoods Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators. St. Martins Paperbacks. New York: NY.
Moss, Jason & Kottler, Jeffrey. The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey into the Mind of a Serial Killer. Warner Vision Books. 1999
Mulgrew, Ian (1990). Final Payoff: The True Price of Convicting Clifford Robert Olson. Seal Books. McClelland-Bantam Inc. Toronto, Canada.
Murdoch, Derrick (1983). Runaways, Ramblers and Rascals. In Disappearances: True Accounts of Canadians Who Have Vanished (pp. 44-53). Doubleday Canada Ltd., Toronto: Ontario. Canada.
Olson, Clifford, II. (June, 1989). Profile of a Serial Killer The Clifford Robert Olson Story. Unpublished manuscript.
Rossmo, D. Kim. (1995). Geographic Profiling: Target Patterns Of Serial Murderers, Ph.D. Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C.
Wood, Chris & Scott Steele (1997, August). A Killers Plea. Macleans. Vol. 110 �Issue 33, p12, 3p, 2c, 11bw.
Worthington, Peter (1997, August). Olsons World. Macleans. Vol. 110 Issue 33, p15, 1p, 1c.
Local Newspaper Articles:
The Vancouver Sun
The Province.
BY Jan Bouchard Kerr
 

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An artist's sketch of Clifford Olson at his faint-hope hearing in 1997.
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Clifford Olson Victims


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Colleen Daignault

Colleen Daignault wouldn’t talk to just anybody, shy as she was. A shade over 5 feet, the 13-year-old girl, with her lovely long brown hair and fresh face, smiled sweetly in her missing person’s photo.


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Daryn Johnsrude

Wednesday, April 22, 1981 -- Daryn Todd Johnsrude
He had been in Vancouver for only two days.



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Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner

Tuesday, May 19, 1981 -- Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner
Olson murdered 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner just 4 days after his wedding. Her boyfriend’s mother saw her get into a car with a man. Olson took Sandy to the bush just off Chilliwack Lake Road. Olson attacked and killed her by striking her in the head.

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Ada Court

5th Sunday, June 21, 1981 -- Ada Court
Thirteen-year-old Ada Court of Burnaby babysitting at her brother and sister-in-law’s Coquitlam apartment, the same family apartment complex where the Olsons lived and where Olson Sr. and Leona worked as caretakers. Sunday morning, Ada caught a bus to meet her boyfriend. Then, she simply vanished.

Fifty-two-year-old Jim Parranto, a White Rock resident, believed he saw Olson disposing of Ada’s body.


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Simon Partington

6th Thursday, July 2, 1981 – Simon Partington
It was the disappearance of a nine-year-old Surrey boy, Simon Partington that was the turning point in The Case of the Missing Lower Mainland Children. The police could hardly list him as a runaway, given his young age and angelic-looking face. Police were sure that the slight, 4-foot-2-inch, 80-pound boy had been abducted.

At about 10:30 a.m., after Simon’s usual big breakfast of cornflakes, he dressed in blue jeans and a blue T-shirt, hopped on his bike, with his brand new orange Snoopy book in the bike’s basket, and headed for a friend’s house. He never arrived. He disappeared only a few blocks from where Christine Weller was last seen alive. One of his school projects, a story he wrote called “The Hungry Tiger and the Gullible Duck,” foreshadowed his untimely death.


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Judy Kozma

Thursday, July 9, 1981 – Judy Kozma
It was not unusual to be traveling with younger people in the car as he cruised the streets. This time, 18-year-old Randy Ludlow was with him. Little did Ludlow know that only a week ago, Olson killed Simon Partington and two days before was charged with indecent assault on a 16-year-old girl. Ludlow rendered an eye-witness account of the last few hours of Judy Kozma’s life.

“Between eleven and noon on July 9th I was with Olson,” Ludlow confirmed. “We were driving toward downtown New Westminster. Olson spotted a girl leaving a phone booth on Columbia Street in front of the Royal Columbian Hospital. He obviously knew her because he waved to her. She smiled and seemed to be happy to see him. He pulled over. She came across the street and talked with him.”

Judy Kozma was on her way to Richmond to see a friend and to apply for a job at Wendy’s restaurant. A shy, pretty brunette, she was desperately looking for a second job. She had met Olson at McDonald’s where she already worked as a part-time cashier.


“Hop in,” Olson said. “We’ll take you there.”

Once in the car, Judy exclaimed, “This is good. This will be faster than the bus. I would have had to go all through Vancouver to get there.”

Olson offered the two youths the ever-present beer in his car as he drove to Richmond. They arrived long before it was time for Judy’s job interview and too early for her to meet her friend, so they stopped at the Richmond Inn to buy some more beer. At one point Olson handed Ludlow a big wad of money to impress Kozma, only to take it back while getting more liquor.

“When we returned to the car,” Ludlow would later explain, “Judy sat in the front passenger seat. I sat in back. Olson offered Judy a job cleaning windows at ten dollars an hour.”

Leslie Holmes and Bruce Northorp in Where Shadows Linger tell what happened next: They returned to New Westminster where Olson bought a bottle of rum at the liquor store near the foot of 10th Street. He returned to the car with the rum, coke, and plastic glasses. On Olson’s instructions, Randy mixed drinks for all three.

“Olson encouraged Judy to have another drink,” related Ludlow. “She didn’t want more.”

Olson persisted. “Give her another drink, give her another drink,” he ordered.

Eventually Judy agreed to take a light one. “Olson told me to mix it,” said Randy. “I gave her a glass of coke with no rum. I caught Judy’s eye and signaled it was only coke.”

Judy took a sip and said, “This is really strong.”

“Olson looked at me and nodded, indicating I had done well by giving her a stiff drink,” Ludlow continued.

Olson then gave Judy some tiny green pills, saying, “Here, take these, they’ll straighten you out. They keep you from getting drunk.” She took the pills.

Olson parked in the underground garage at the complex where he lived. Ludlow and Judy stayed in the car while he went to his apartment. Ludlow reflected, “This was the only time I detected any anxiety on her part. She was nervous and upset. I put it down to the fact she was fifteen years old, she had been drinking, and she was going to miss her job interview. She was crying and I wiped the tears from her eyes. Olson returned shortly and she seemed her old self again.”

Olson then dropped Ludlow off at the Lougheed Mall.

“The next time I saw Olson he said he dropped her off at Richmond. I learned much later he killed Judy, then went on vacation the next day.” Olson took Joan and little Clifford to Knotts Berry Farm near Los Angeles in the U.S. until July 21.


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Raymond King

Thursday, July 23, 1981 -- Raymond King Jr.
“There’s just no way he could have run away,” Raymond King’s father had said. He was not a runaway. The slight, sandy haired Ray King Jr. was enjoying his summer holidays and looking for his first real job. He made his routine trip to the Canada Manpower Youth Employment Centre, chaining his bike behind the building. Keen to do any type of work, he had come to the center so often over the summer that the staff was getting to know him.

Young Ray met Olson that day. Lured by a promise of work, Olson drove them along a route he frequently traveled, along Highway No. 7 towards Harrison Mills and Weaver Lake. Turning off the highway, he headed for the popular camping area then took a rough, back-country road that led to a B.C. Forest Service campground beside the Alpine Lake. He staved the boy’s head with rocks and then dumped the youngster’s body off the steep, hillside trail.

The police did not think that the 15-year-old boy would have abandoned his bike. “Usually if a kid is going to run, he’ll do one of three things with his bike; leave it at home, use it to make his ‘getaway,’ or sell it to a friend for a few bucks,” said Ed Cadenhead, deputy police chief of New Westminster.

The night that Olson killed the young boy, he had logged 403 kilometers in the car he rented from Metro in Port Coquitlam. Forever on the lookout for potential victims, he spoke to the Metro rental clerk: “He offered me a job shampooing carpets in his apartment complex he said he owned at Lougheed Mall,” she said. “He only came in to get a car on the days he knew I worked. The job he offered was $16.60-an-hour, more than I get here, and I was supposed to let him know. Thank God I never did.”


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Sigrun Arnd

Saturday, July 25, 1981-- Sigrun Arnd
Sigrun Arnd, a visiting German student from Weinheim, a small Rhine Valley town, was spotted with the killer in a Coquitlam pub, and then later by a couple of passengers in a passing train, where she was crouched with a middle aged man who turned out to be Olson. It was only after he confessed that her name was added to the murder list.

Mr. & Mrs. Arnd received the devastating news by long distance. “It was on August 28 when the telephone rang,” Mrs. Arnd later told the Vancouver Sun. “My sister in Vernon was on the line and told me that the police were there and she was now going to translate a very sad message. The police had found a dead girl who might be Sigrun. She was an intelligent, suspicious girl. We discussed frequently how she would never get into a stranger’s car, not to mention that she would never hitchhike. But obviously in Canada she did.”

Sigrun left behind a diary. “She raved about the trips by boat and horseback but, most of all, she fell for the friendliness, open-heartedness and eagerness to help of the local people,” Irmgard Arnd said. “I’m sure it was because of this that she lost all her natural caution and timidness.”

Her body was found in Richmond, partly buried in peat in a trench, some 400 yards from where Simon Partington had been unearthed the day before.
Victims of Clifford Olson


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Terri Lyn Carson

Monday, July 27, 1981 -- Terri Lyn Carson
Terri Lyn Carson’s mother would eventually sit in the courtroom as the wheels of justice turned. Grief-stricken, it was a sad sight to behold as she mourned her 15-year-old’s murder. Terri had left the family home on Monday morning at about eight o’clock. A slight girl, about 105 pounds, a little over 5 feet, she was no match for Olson who stopped and offered her a ride that included a drink, laced with drugs. She was just another student looking for a summer job so Olson’s ruse worked well and the drink was a sort of celebration for having found a job. As he had done with a few of the others, Olson drove away from the city into the wilderness four miles east of Agassiz, out on the north shore of the Fraser River. He turned off at Rosedale, a rural area. In the forest, he strangled her, burned her clothes and threw her purse and shoes into the Fraser River.

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Louise Chartrand

Thursday, July 30, 1981 -- Louise Chartrand
After meeting with the police earlier in the day, that evening Olson went to meet his lawyer, Bob Shatz. On the way, he spotted 17-year-old Louise Chartrand, who was described as “very tiny and young-looking for her age.” The youngest of seven children, she had migrated from Quebec with three of her sisters, settling in the Fraser Valley town of Maple Ridge, about 20 miles east of Vancouver.

In reconstructing the events, the police believed that Louise hitchhiked part of the way to her night-shift waitress job with a man. After she was dropped off, she headed for the store in downtown Mission to buy cigarettes. It was only a 10-minute walk from the restaurant where she worked. During this time Olson got her into his car, drugged her, and headed to Whistler. On the way, he even stopped with Chartrand in his car at the Squamish RCMP detachment to pick up a confiscated gun, but was turned away because the officer in charge of court exhibits was not available. Then, Olson headed for the treacherous Killer Highway, named by the locals because of the numerous fatal car crashes that followed the snow. It led to Whistler, another 45 minutes from Squamish.

Olson drove into a gravel pit, north of the ski resort, and then smashed the girl’s skull with repeated hammer blows, burying her in a shallow grave.

Louise’s fellow employees at Bino’s restaurant checked with her family when she did not arrive for her 8 p.m. shift. One of Louise’s sisters telephoned the RCMP detachment the next morning.
 

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He's one that should have been put to death the slowest way possible the day he was found guilty.
 
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