Clifford Robert OLSON
AKA "The Beast of British Columbia"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Rape - Mutilation
Number of victims: 11 +
Date of murders: 1980 - 1981
Date of arrest: August 12, 1981
Date of birth: January 1, 1940
Victims profile: Christine Weller, 12 / Colleen Daignault, 13 / Daryn Johnsrude, 16 / Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner, 16 / Ada Anita Court, 13 / Simon Patrick James Partington, 9 / July Kozma, 14 / Raymond Lawrence King Jr., 15 / Sigrun Charlotte Elisabeth Arnd, 18 / Terry Lyn Carson, 15 / Louise Simonne Marie Evelyn Chartrand, 17
Method of murder: Stabbing with knife / Hitting with a hammer / Strangulation
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Status: Sentenced to life in prison on January 1982. Died in prison on October 2, 2011
Clifford Olsen
Clifford Olsen's first victim was found on Christmas of 1980. Christine Weller, 12, was mutilated by Olsen and when Coleen Johnsrud, 16, was found dead that same spring, it became apparent that Vancouver police had a problem to deal with. May brought the disappearance of Sandra Wofsteiner, also 16, and in June thirteen-year-old Ada Court and nine-year-old Susan Parington also came up missing.
In July Judy Kozma, 14, and Raymond King also vanished. Kozma was found a month later but the missing children were becoming a blight on the Canadian city. Police finally focused on Olsen and he was put under heavy surveillance, which ceased after a short period of time when it appeared that the suspect had nothing to hide. It couldn't have been further from the truth and Olsen proved authorities wrong when he murdered three more youngsters in late July before being arrested attempting to pick up yet another pair of young girls.
Though Vancouver police had an exceptionally strong case, Olsen managed to manipulate them by getting a judge to condone $10,000 payments for each corpse he could locate. This went on for a time before police put an end to it, though Olsen offered them a last-ditch bargain deal of twenty more bodies for $100,000. They refused.
Once the shenanigans ended, Olsen pled guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to life for each of his eleven known kills.
Clifford Olson — Canada’s national monster — dead at 71
By Ian Mulgrew - Vancouver Sun
October 3, 2011
Canada's first true bogeyman, Clifford Robert Olson, is dead.
The country's pioneer serial killer, whose crimes terrorized the British Columbia's Lower Mainland, died Friday in Quebec.
Olson's death was confirmed by the Correctional Service of Canada in a release Friday afternoon. He was 71.
It was learned on Sept. 21 that Olson was apparently dying of cancer with only days or weeks to live, according to families of Olson's victims.
Maple Ridge resident Ray King, father of slain teen Ray King Jr. said: "It's over, that's all I can say about it.
"Time to get on with the business of living," King said. "For 30 years I haven't really had a chance to heal some wounds because of him. Now it's onwards and upwards."
Olson was a middle-aged habitual criminal and informant when from January 1980 until August 1981 he stalked, tortured and killed at least 11 youngsters. He sexually abused scores of others.
The heinous nature of his crimes ensured infamy. But more than that, Olson is reviled because he blackmailed authorities into paying his family $100,000 for the return of his victims' remains - a macabre cash-for-corpses deal that destroyed careers and tormented survivors.
Before kinky sex killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Holmolka, before the Pig Farm Butcher, there was the "Beast of B.C." a.k.a. "the Rent-a-car Killer" because of his penchant for hiring another new car for each slaying. He savoured kiddy porn, was a recognized sexual deviant and lived most of his life in a steel and concrete cage.
Back in 1980, however, Vancouver was a truly provincial city - Expo 86 was six years away and newspapers from other provinces or countries still could take days to arrive.
The Lower Mainland was a patchwork quilt of nascent municipalities and a hodgepodge of police jurisdictions. There was little coordination among the different RCMP detachments and autonomous civic police forces, and the computer revolution had yet to occur.
Before he was caught, Olson terrorized the province - neighbourhoods that once claimed to be so safe you could leave your door open, locked up; hitchhikers disappeared from the highways, and telephone poles were emblazoned with posters warning that nearly a dozen youngsters were missing and a killer was on the loose.
In every real way, his merciless savagery robbed British Columbians of their innocence and attendant faith that such monsters only lurked elsewhere.
There were many factors that allowed Olson to prey on children and adolescents across B.C. and elsewhere in Canada for 19 months before being arrested.
Born on Jan. 1, 1940 - a New Year's Day baby - Olson was a bad seed.
The eldest child of Clifford and Leona, Clifford Jr. grew up in a small house near the Pacific National Exhibition grounds.
His dad delivered milk in those days and was one of the last to drive a horse-drawn cart. Later Clifford Sr. worked in construction and as an apartment building manager; Leona was a housekeeper.
After the war, the family moved to the sprouting suburb of Richmond, into one of the many housing schemes for returning veterans. A short, stocky kid, Olson was always a problem.
"He was always getting into fights and getting beaten up," his father Clifford Olson Sr. remembered later. "One day he said, `Dad, I'm going to learn to be a boxer. As soon as he did, he began making the rounds of the boys who had beaten him up and started evening the score. Maybe that's his trouble - that chip on his shoulder."'
He began to skip class when he was only 10 years old, and after completing Grade 8 quit altogether to embrace a life of crime.
Leona bore two more sons, Richard and Dennis, and a daughter, Sharon. All grew up to be law-abiding middle-class people.
But if she could boast of their achievements, with Clifford, she was always making excuses.
He was a loner, a loser and a perennial failure who was jailed for the first time on July 19, 1957. He was 17.
Over the following 24 years, he chalked up nearly 100 convictions - obstructing justice, possession of stolen property, possession of firearms, forgery, false pretences, fraud, parole violation, impaired driving, theft, break and enter and theft, armed robbery, escape from lawful custody, rape, buggery, gross indecency ... and finally, first-degree murder.
He escaped from jail seven times.
In 1965, for instance, The Vancouver Sun reported the search for him on its front page.
Serving 3 1/2 years in the B.C. Penitentiary for break-and-enter theft, Olson fled three guards who had escorted him to Shaughnessy Hospital after he feigned illness.
The chase involved dozens of police and, at one point, the armed-and-dangerous Olson slipped through a closing net of investigators in Vancouver's east end by only seconds. He spent that night hiding under the Queensborough Bridge in New Westminster.
After a week on the loose, Olson was nabbed in Blaine, Wash. - sniffed out by Tiger the police dog.
Border patrol officers had called for assistance after Olson menaced two teens with a gun in a wooded area straddling the international boundary, about a quarter mile east of the Pacific Highway Crossing. Officers from four different forces were involved in the final moments of the chase for the 25-year-old fugitive.
"He must have lain there [in the leaves] three hours with 50 people crisscrossing right through there," said Chief Border Inspector A.D. Brandon at the time. "But the dog went straight to him."
It was the second time Olson had been caught by a police dog.
Roughly a year earlier, he was pinned in a thorny tangle of Richmond blackberry bushes by a police dog named Rinty.
Olson was freed under mandatory supervision five times in the 1970s and each time his behaviour landed him back behind bars.
Released in January of 1980, Olson picked up where he left off and continued his life-long crime spree. It was all he knew how to do.
A few months after getting out of prison, Olson seduced Joan Hale, a locally reared divorcee who had survived a violent, abusive marriage. They had a son, Stephen, in April 1981, in the midst of Olson's killing spree, and they married a month later.
Three days after the ceremony, Olson murdered another teenager.
Hale said she knew nothing of the crimes and presented herself at the time as "a victim."
Olson lived off her divorce settlement and abused her, too, she said.
Hale refused to return the money Olson extorted from then-attorney-general Allan Williams.
His handling of the Faustian pact ended Williams' career as a provincial politician.
The police investigation of Olson - one of Canada's first serial killer cases - was heavily criticized because he was able to kill again and again, even after detectives identified him as the prime suspect.
Olson was able to initially elude detection in part because of his reputation as a rat -the cops at first thought of him a resource, not a suspect. And they had some reason.
In 1976, inside Prince Albert Penitentiary, Olson was stabbed seven times by a gang of prisoners angry after he betrayed and identified for authorities prison drug couriers.
While incarcerated, Olson also provided police with enough information to ensure the conviction of a fellow inmate who raped, mutilated and strangled a nine-year-old girl.
Olson, who was always revved up on alcohol and pills, had a standard routine to lure adolescents.
He met them in video parlors and similar youth hangouts or he advertised for them on the bulletin board of the People's Full Gospel Church, a Baptist congregation where he and Joan worshipped.
Olson handed out a flashy, 3-D card that identified him as a construction contractor.
Under the guise of conducting a brief informal job interview, he identified his potential victims. He sought out the naive.
He'd hold out the prospect of a job, give them a ride to a fictitious construction site and, along the way, offer them a celebratory sip of a Mickey Finn - a pop or bottled cocktail spiked with chloral hydrate, a knock-out drug.
Once he overpowered the youngster, Olson engaged in sadistic experiments on the children. He drove a three-inch spike into one child's head, another he injected with an air embolism. He talked about them as science experiments and fantasized about fame under the name, "Silver Hammer Man," a reference to the Beatles' song.
Olson scattered their bodies from the bogs and cranberry fields of the Fraser River delta to the abandoned quarries and canyons of the Coastal Mountains.
He randomly picked his victims from a similarly large swath of the Lower Mainland so the lack of coordination among regional police departments and the RCMP worked to his advantage. The career criminal had honed his awareness of police procedures.
When distraught parents initially complained about police inaction and to speculate about the existence of a serial killer, investigators downplayed such fears. They insisted it was likely the missing teens had run away.
It took investigators an agonizingly long time to link disappearances that occurred in different jurisdictions. In the end, however, even the police were forced to acknowledge the obvious as the number of disappeared neared double digits.
At the investigation's peak, more than 200 officers were committed to the case. The pressure on police and politicians to find the children and the perpetrator was intense. It was fuelled by frenzied media coverage.
"Cunning killer with blazing eyes!" shouted one headline.
"Hot summer helps slayer elude police," trumpeted another.
A later inquiry identified many problems with the police response to the disappearances and killings. It recommended various independent police departments join in the use of the RCMP computer, the establishment of a central data bank and a review of RCMP procedures for handling multi-jurisdictional crimes.
Nevertheless, two decades later, the lack of integration among Lower Mainland police agencies would remain a problem and be blamed as a contributing factor in the Downtown Eastside missing women case.
When Olson was actually arrested in mid-August, 1981, the Beast turned out to be a banal, beefy rounder with cow orbs. He stood five-foot-seven, weighed maybe 160 pounds and sported a mop of brown hair.
Police, though, had scant evidence against him and only four bodies.
During his interrogation, Olson offered to lead police to the remains of the children who hadn't been found. He also said he would return some of their jewelry and clothing, which he had kept as souvenirs.
Tapes of the interrogation sessions, notes from investigators and later reminiscences provided a vivid if unsettling picture of what happened.
"I'll give you 11 bodies for $100,000," Olson told the interrogators.
"You want a $100,000 for 11 bodies," RCMP Corporal Fred Maile stammered incredulously.
"Yes," Olson continued, "and you will get statements with the bodies. I will give you all the evidence, the things only the killer would know."
"Well, just a minute," said the detective, who later went on to found one of B.C. most respected private investigation companies. "We would have to work something out. I wouldn't just pay you a $100,000. You could rip us off. Also, I have to have something to tell or show my bosses that, in fact, you are credible."
"Okay," Olson replied. "I'll give you a freebie. I will give you one body and a statement. You have the $100,000 in cash. When we are finished at a scene, I will phone or you will phone your man who will hand the money over to Joan. Then you can talk to your man and I will talk to Joan to make sure that she has the money. Then we'll go on to get the rest."
"What if your lawyer doesn't go along with it?" Maile asked.
"Like I told you before," Olson crowed, "he works for me."
The killer dictated his proposal and Maile wrote it down on a single page in a sloppy, longhand scrawl:
"This is an undertaking of an agreement between the RCMP and Clifford Robert Olson. The following will be paid by the RCMP to Mrs. Joan Olson for the following information: $10,000 cash for each body of missing persons up to seven bodies. $30,000 for information of four bodies which have already been recovered which relate to the above seven other missing persons. The agreement should be as undertaken shall be binding in law as to not disclose this information in this agreement to the Canadian Press. The following missing persons are covered in this agreement: Judy Kozma, Daryn Johnsrude, Raymond King, Simon Partington, Ada Court, Louise Chartrand, Christine Weller, Terri-Lyn Carson, Colleen Daignault and Sandra Wolfsteiner and one unidentified female (Sigrun Arnd, a German student tourist police weren't aware was missing). $10,000 will be paid to Mrs. Olson up to a total of the recovery of seven bodies."
Later, he called his wife Joan: "Honey, you're going to be rich."
As the minister responsible for the legal system, Williams was required to approve what most considered a very real deal with the devil. If Williams didn't agree to the terms, he was told there was a chance that Olson might slip back onto the street to kill again.
There wasn't a shred of evidence, the investigators said. The pact was the only way to ensure he was convicted.
It was an excruciating decision.
No one disputes that there is a "secret economy" to the Canadian judicial system, a subterranean marketplace where lawyers and prosecutors haggle over charges, plea bargains and guarantees of immunity. There is a cardinal rule, however, in all such bargains: the criminal should never be allowed to profit. Crime should not pay. Williams and the police could not allow Olson to directly receive the money. That would be too great an outrage.
Within days, Olson was escorted to an office high in the old verdigris-roofed Sun Tower.
He was not in handcuffs. He strutted around the 17th floor as if he were a celebrity, smoking a White Owl cigar and commanding a handful of lawyers, secretaries, his wife and police.
"Does your husband know what he is doing?" asked Joan's lawyer, Jim McNeney.
She was catatonic and could only nod mutely.
Olson put a hand on her shoulder and muttered: "What can I say, honey? I did it. It was the booze and the pills."
She wailed.
Olson told the lawyers how he wanted the money distributed - some would pay their fees, some would go to his parents and he wanted to ensure Joan and their baby son were looked after. He suggested his lawyer, Robert Shantz, write a book about the case called, "Kiss Daddy Goodbye."
After the legal paperwork was signed, RCMP Sergeant Jack Randall unzipped a black, softsided under-arm briefcase. He withdrew several bundles of wrinkled, old-issue bills bound with elastic bands. He handed them to McNeney's partner, lawyer Kevin Morrison, who counted the money onto the coffee table.
"One thousand, two thousand, three thousand..."
Olson, the ever-present stogie clamped between his teeth, could barely contain himself. His eyes gleamed. He jiggled Shantz's elbow.
"...Eight thousand, nine thousand, 10 thousand, 11..."
There were 99 rose-colored $1,000 bills and 10 maroon hundreds.
McNeney later said the scene was so bizarre he half expected a sulphurous explosion and Satan himself to appear. Imagine an honest-to-goodness blood-money deal for bodies.
Olson's family received the cash. In exchange, Williams was able to guarantee a first-degree murder conviction, ease the anxiety of the parents whose children remained officially "missing," dispel the terror that gripped British Columbia and end an enormously expensive police investigation.
If the deal-making scene had been surreal, the grisly caravan to recover the remains was something from the Twilight Zone.
Olson travelled in a car with four detectives followed by a dog car. Behind, there were usually three or four other vehicles carrying forensic specialists to handle the crime scenes.
Corporal Maile, holding a large tape-recorder, sat in the back seat with Olson, who held a microphone.
The killer wore a regulation RCMP hat as a disguise and dictated as they went, describing the locale and circumstances of each murder with the panache of a sports announcer. The hourly radio broadcasts about the search for more bodies provided a ghastly play-by-play.
Television newscasts featured scenes of excavation teams draining suburban wetlands.
Olson liked the forest-cloaked hills around Weaver Lake and the peaty bottomland north of River Road for disposing of his victims. One body was mummified by the time it was found. Others were so badly decomposed only pathologists could identify them.
He pantomimed a re-enactment of each murder, and then police would call McNeney and release the required amount of money. The lawyer deposited it first in the Bank of Montreal at Homer and Hastings in downtown Vancouver but later transferred it offshore to protect it from police seizure.
In between recovering his victims, Olson and the police dined at local steakhouses, where the murderer wolfed down thick sirloins and baked potatoes.
He kept scores of mementoes to remind himself of each child's suffering and death throes - trophies to validate his kills.
While he awaited trial, Olson was the topic of conversation in every courthouse, police station, jail and legal kaffeeklatsch in the province. He even called reporters to brag about the deal he struck and bitch about jail conditions.
"I can't stand the treatment," he complained.
The other prisoners tossed trash and lighted cigarettes at him. They shoved him when he passed. While his clothes were in storage, someone ripped the buttons off his suit and scrawled "babyf…er" on his shirt.
"That suit cost $200," he whined. "The shirt $60. I don't have to put up with that kind of s---. I think one should have fair treatment from the press. I want to be segregated from other inmates. I have to sleep on the floor. I have to live like a dog. I've got no running water. I've got no light in my cell. I'm locked up 22 hours a day. I get one hour exercise in the morning."
Olson's whinging generated front-page news, but no one in the B.C. media reported the deal.
The attorney-general had personally wooed publishers and broadcast executives not to reveal the pact. Even when questions about the payoff were raised in the House of Commons, they censored the information. What was front-page news in Edmonton, in B.C. was an enigmatic brief.
No one in B.C. wanted to be blamed for violating the serial killer's right to be presumed innocent before the verdict was pronounced.
In the end, the trial was aborted by Olson's guilty pleas. He dabbed away tears as he confessed publicly for the first time.
After the court clerk read each charge of first-degree murder, Olson replied hoarsely: "Guilty."
Tears streamed down his cheeks after the 11th and final first-degree murder charge was read.
Justice Harry McKay said no punishment a civilized country could impose was adequate.
"You should never be granted parole for the remainders of your days. It would be foolhardy to let you at large."
Indeed, as he was driven away to serve his sentence, Olson confided to the accompanying officer that if he ever regained his freedom, "I'd take up where I left off."
News of the pernicious cash-for-bodies deal broke like an angry squall over Williams.
Even Olson's lawyer, Shantz, denounced the unprecedented agreement as improper.
"I think it was politically insane and I do not approve of it.... We all know police pay informants, but I don't think they should pay the culprit."
Columnists and talk-show hosts condemned the police and vilified the attorney-general.
"I consider this case unique," Williams offered by way of explanation. "I do not expect it to occur again."
He could not backpedal fast enough.
"The decision was not an easy one for me or the RCMP to make," Williams said. "It is the practice for monies to be extended in a variety of ways to obtain information, to protect witnesses, sometimes to protect others who may be associated with crimes. This matter is an extension of that principle, one that I don't expect to see repeated. The crimes were so horrible they should not be revealed. It adds nothing to dwell on details of that kind."
Words could not disguise the reality - the government had paid for Olson's conviction. There was revulsion across Canada and the families of the victims were outraged.
Most never got over the shock that such an unseemly bargain had been struck on their behalf.
"There shouldn't be any money paid to that creep," fumed Siegmund Wolfsteiner. "The guy who killed my daughter takes $100,000 from the government. It's ridiculous. You call that justice?"
"That's salt in the wounds for us," said Raymond King, who lost his son.
Montreal criminal lawyer Frank Shoofey summed up the reaction of many in the legal community: "The biggest judicial scandal in years."
"Presumptively repugnant," sniffed Alan Borovoy, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
NDP MP Svend Robinson called for a public inquiry. Williams' career was finished. Police tried unsuccessfully to recover the money.
The families pleaded for redress in the courts, but were rebuffed.
"It floors me that anyone would think that I had anything to do with it," Joan Hale emphatically testified when the families attempted to legally compel her to return the money.
"I cried, I cried a lot at first. I don't know how to explain it.... I really don't think too much about them now. I'm glad the children are buried. Oh, I hate him. 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."
The court let her keep the money.
"I think that money was given to me in good faith," Hale said afterward. "I don't have a guilty conscience. I can look myself in the mirror and say, `You're a good person - don't be ashamed."'
When she looked back on why she got involved with Olson, she said: "He's a real charmer.
"He has a way with words and I've yet to see a woman that hasn't been attracted to him. I don't know what it is, really. I like to say it was his brown eyes, but it couldn't have been that. It was something I thought I needed. 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."
Of her then-three-year-old son, named after his father, she said: "It's really strange. He knows who his father is. He picked it on from the TV. I just can't 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 don't know."
Five-and-a-half years after Olson picked up Christine Weller and drove her to a dump by the Fraser River in Richmond, the Supreme Court of Canada refused an appeal from the parents to examine the deal.
Even after he was locked away for the rest of his days, Olson continued to plague police, his victims' families and the public.
He claimed to have murdered as many as 30 others, but he was never able to substantiate these boasts, despite leading investigators on an embarrassing wildgoose chase.
Olson sent venomous, vulgar greeting cards to parents crowing about his brutality to their children. He sent pornographic letters to members of Parliament.
No one has managed to explain why Olson was the way he was. And no matter how ill he might have been, he never turned himself in.
The man with the best insight was probably Stanley Semrau, a top forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Olson at length in prison.
"He can kill, not out of anger or bitterness, but in a light-hearted way, as a sport," Semrau testified at a judicial review when Olson applied for early parole.
"He doesn't even grasp the enormity or the horror of what he has done. His is a personality which is devoted to exploiting and harming other people in his own interests."
Semrau described Olson as an anti-social, narcissistic psychopath who boasted about his murders. He called him a "master manipulator" who exhibited homo- and heterosexual pedophilia, sexual necrophilia and sexual sadism.
Olson described with delight his sexual assaults of 30 to 40 children of both sexes aged five to 10, as well as up to 100 young people aged 16 to 18. Olson said he became "addicted" to murder and had an "incredibly morbid fascination" with how children went through the process of dying.
"Seeing the death process was something he took substantial pleasure in," said Semrau. "His claims of remorse are completely hollow. In fact, he says he deserves substantial credit from the families because of the fact he so magnanimously helped to locate bodies. He used World War II as an analogy. He said, `We're friendly with the Germans and the Japanese now. Let's get over this, too. Let's not make such a big deal out of this.'
"The killings have, in fact, been a plus in his life. He went, essentially, from a nobody to, in his own eyes, a somebody. It put him on the map. In his own eyes he has a celebrity status."
Olson scored 38 out of 40 on the Hare checklist, a clinical scale that rates psychopaths. It was the highest score Semrau had ever given any of the hundreds of murderers, psychopaths and sexual offenders he had studied: "I found his descriptions to be quite nauseating compared to other cases I've been involved in."
Semrau concluded Olson was untreatable: "He's very pleased with the way he is right now."
The jury at the judicial review took only 15 minutes to order Olson kept in jail.
As with many psychopaths, there was virtually no traumatic event in his childhood that could be identified as the trigger of Olson's homicidal rage.
His parents became inured to the regular visits from police, the shame of the newspaper reports and the continued disruptions their son's behaviour caused in their life.
They tried to help when they could, but had long given up hope of rehabilitating him. They only aimed to limit the damage he did in their lives.
Both his father and his mother remained supportive until they died in 1988 and 1989 respectively. His sister and two brothers said they cut off all contact with him in 1989, too.
"We were like moths around a flame," said McNeney, Joan's lawyer. "If there's an afterlife, I hope Olson's confined to the seventh level of hell. He could pick up every vibe, every tick and feed it back to you. Mirror you, exactly. The press has this image of Olson as dishevelled with beastly eyes. A monster. He was a personable, charming guy. When he walked into my office, it was the cops that looked bad."
Thankfully, he will do no more damage.
"Olson very fully appreciated the nature and quality of what he was doing," said his former lawyer Shantz. "That probably was the engine that drove him in terms of doing these murders."
He had been free exactly 1,501 days from the time he was 17.
Educated people have pored over his letters, analyzed his utterances and scrutinized his speech. Unlike other mental illnesses, his aberration does not manifest itself in his manipulation of language or information.
His reasoning was impeccable. There were no clues to indicate madness, as people understand it either in a legal or a normal medical sense of the word.
Olson could quote at length from ecclesiastical texts, engage in sophisticated verbal debates and cite chapter and verse of the Criminal Code.
But when you contemplate his actions instead of his rhetoric, when you review his deeds instead of his eloquence, he quite clearly appears mad.
Moral imperatives were devoid of meaning for him but he could perfectly enunciate them. He was aware of the rules, could repeat them parrot-like, but he held them in contempt.
No one can say what creates or motivates such people.
He seemed to suffer more from a condition akin to moral scurvy - it's what he didn't have, a conscience, that caused his pathology as near as the specialists can tell.
He may even have been born with a biological defect that left him unable to feel or appreciate what is truly important in life. He mimicked emotion as if he were a human chameleon.
The root of the trouble wasn't heredity, nor does it appear linked to upbringing. It remains an enigma.
Sharon Rosenfeldt, a prominent victims' rights advocate in the years following the tragedy of losing her son Daryn, lamented along with many of the other families that Canada had abandoned capital punishment and spared Olson execution.
She had one wish: "Let me pull the switch."
On his death, it is appalling we are reminded of him rather than those whose lives he stole - Judy Kozma (14), Daryn Johnsrude (16), Raymond King (15), Simon Partington (9), Ada Court (13), Louise Chartrand (17), Christine Weller (12), Terri-Lyn Carson (15), Colleen Daignault (13), Sandra Wolfsteiner (16) and Sigrun Arnd (18).
Clifford Robert Olsen
A native of Vancouver, British Columbia, born on New Years 1940, Olson spent most of his life in trouble with the police. Remembered as a bully in school, he logged 94 separate arrests in the quarter century between 1957 and 1981, serving time on charges that ranged from fraud to armed robbery and sexual assault.
In prison, Olson was known as a homosexual rapist and sometime informer, once coaching fellow inmate Gary Marcoux in writing a detailed confession to the rape and mutilation-murder of a nine-year-old girl, then surfacing as a prosecution witness at the trial where the letters were used to convict Marcoux. Back on the street, Olson kept up his role as a police stool pigeon, moving in with the mother of his illegitimate son.
In November 1980, 12-year-old Christine Weller was abducted from home in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, her mutilated body found in the woods, south of town, on Christmas Day. Colleen Daignault, age 13, vanished from Surrey on April 16, and 16-year-old Darren Johnsrud was abducted from a Vancouver shopping mall less than a week later, found dead on May 2, his skull shattered by heavy blows.
Olson finally got around to marrying his girlfriend on May 15, 1981, and 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner disappeared four days later, while hitchhiking through suburban Langley. On June 21, 13-year-old Ada Court was reported missing at Coquitlam, when she failed to return home from a babysitting job. Judy Kozma, 14, disappeared on July 9, her mutilated body recovered from Lake Weaver, near Agassiz in the Frazer Valley, on July 25.
By that time, Olson was already considered a suspect in the various deaths and disappearances, his name first mentioned at a law enforcement conference on July 15. Despite sporadic surveillance of their man, police were unable to prevent him from claiming four more victims in the last week of July. Fifteen-year-old Raymond King disappeared from New Westminster on July 23, his body recovered from the shore of Lake Weaver two weeks later. On July 25, 18-year-old Sigrun Arnd was abducted and killed while thumbing rides near Vancouver, her remains finally identified through dental charts. Terri Carson vanished from the same Surrey housing complex where Christine Weller had lived, her corpse joining the list of those recovered from Lake Weaver. On July 30, 17-year-old Louise Chartrand disappeared while hitchhiking at Maple Ridge.
Officers trailing Olson arrested him days later, after he picked up two female hitchhikers on Vancouver Island. The girls were unharmed, but a search of his van turned up an address book, containing the name of Judy Kozma. Formally charged with her murder six days later, Olson started dealing with the prosecution, striking a bargain that would net his wife and child $10,000 per victim, in return for information on four known murders and directions to the six outstanding bodies. Olson made good on his part of the controversial deal, and the money was paid on schedule. On January 11, 1982, he pled guilty to eleven counts of murder and was sentenced to eleven concurrent life terms.
In custody, Olson continuas to provoke controversy with media forays reminiscent of CHARLES MANSON in the United States. In August 1997, in a bid for early parole, Olson claimed that he had earned $1.3 million in advances for three unpublished books and a collection of videotapes; the money, he sald, would be placed in a trust fund for the benefit of his victims' families, should he be released. (At the same time, Olson also clalmed he was responsable for a total of 143 murders, spanning the the United States and Canada, a claim unlikely to win favor with parole boards.) Crown Prosecutor joe Bellows denounced Olson's statements as "fantastic lies," predictably opposing the killers bid for early release.
On August 23, Olson addressed the jury that would rule on his petition for parole, asking them, "Do I look like some kind of raving lunatic?" The gallery of spectators exploded with shouts in the affirmative, and jurors deliberated less than 15 minutes before rejecting Olson's parole bid.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Clifford Olson
"If I gave a shit about the parents I wouldn't have killed the kid"
Clifford shows his sensitive side
BORN : January 1, 1940
DIED :
VICTIMS : Convicted of 11
Clifford Olson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Once at school he became known as a bully. His life would continue this way. During the years 1957 to 1981 he managed to be arrested 94 different times. Charges ranged from fraud to armed robbery to sexual assault.
Olson spent quite a bit of time in prison during these years. Inside he had the reputation of being a violent homosexual rapist. When he became bored with the raping he would try his hand at informing. Once he talked a fellow convict, Gary Marcoux, to write down a confession to the murder of a nine-year-old girl. He then shoed up at Marcoux's trial as a witness for the prosecution, helping convict the man. When released from prison Olson continued to inform to police.
In November 1980, Christine Weller, 12, was abducted from her home in Vancouver. Her mutilated body was found in woods close by on Christmas Day.
On April 16, 1981, Colleen Daignault, 13, vanished from Surrey.
Less than a week later Darren Johnsrud, 16, was abducted from a Vancouver shopping mall. On May 2 his body was found. His skull had been shattered.
On May 15 Clifford Olson was married to his long-time girlfriend, and mother of his child.
Four days later Olson celebrated the Wedding with the murder of Sandra Wolfsteiner, 16.
On June 21, Ada Court, 13, never returned home following a night of baby sitting.
July 9, Judy Kozma, 14, disappeared. Her body was found on July 25. She had been violently mutilated and dumped in a nearby lake.
By this time Clifford Olson was already a suspect in the murders and disappearances. But despite the fact that police were keeping him under periodic surveillance he continued to carry on doing his vicious deeds.
On July 23, Fifteen-year-old Raymond King disappeared. His body was found two weeks later.
On July 25, 18-year-old Sigrun Arnd was abducted while hitchhiking. When found police required dental charts to identify the body.
A few days later Terri Carson went missing from the apartment complex where Christine Weller had lived. Her corpse was found in Lake Weaver.
On July 30, Louise Chartrand, 17, went missing while hitchhiking.
By this time police decided to move in. They watched olson pick up two female hitchhikers and decided to move in. After searching his car they found an address book belonging to Judy Kozma. He was arrested for this murder.
From this point on the case got really fucking strange. olson decided that he wanted to admit to the crimes, but only if the police agreed to pay his wife $10,000 for each victim that he admitted to. Unexplainably the cops agreed and once his wife had the cash he talked. He pled guilty, and was sentenced to life for eleven murders.
Interesting Bit
Following the states agreement that it would pay Olson $10,000 a corpse he realized he was on a good thing. He offered the cops a massive cut price deal - 20 more graves for $100,000. Unfortunately the state decided it was not worth it so we are left to wonder just how many more victims are out there.
PROFILE OF A SERIAL KILLER - THE CLIFFORD ROBERT OLSON STORY
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. New Westminster printer Victor Goodmurphy was left with hundreds of costly souvenirs and the memory of a man who looked more like a Kingsway car-lot dealer than a multiple murderer. Goodmurphy remembers Olson as a fast-talker who could be both charming and smooth tongued when trying to impress people. he would dress in loud custom suits set off with blue and pink silk shirts and would smoke only top of the line cigars. Olson, claiming he owned a construction firm ordered envelopes and letter heads on the best quality watermark paper that goodmurphy had in stock. He also bought $156.00 worth of plastic laminated three-dimensional goldleaf business cards touting two construction firms, Hale and Olson Construction and Hale and Olson Enterprise Ltd. As $45.00 per hundered the total charge was $635.00. Olson offered to put a deposit on the order and brought out his wallet which was stuffed with hundred dollar bills. "I never took a deposit from him," said Goodmurphy, "he said he was going to Richmond and would pick the order up later." Goodmurphy's shop was only a few doors away from the New Westmiinster Manpower office where fifteen year old Raymond King Jr. was last seen the previous week. Two days later on July 30, 1981 Olson coerced 17 year old Louise Chartrand from Maple Ridge, British Columbia into accompanying him to Whistler Mountain. On August 27, 1981 the R.C.M.P. with the help of Olson, unearthed Chartrand's decomposed body which had evidence of massive skull fractures.
Olson was a braggart, a liar and a thief. He was not a violent man nor had he a temper. He would never back down from a challenge and he would always stick up for the underdog in just about any situation. 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 fourty-two years of misspent life, Olson compiled a long list of crimes which kept him behind bars for the best part of nearly thirty years. To cap off his long record he exploded in one of the most shocking string of murders ever witnessed in Canadian history. Looking over his record one wonders why he was let out of jail so often for good behavior only to go straight back to crime. Why was his potential for murder not spotted during the many times he was interviewed by social workers, classification officers, medical officials and prison staff? Olson started as a petty thief and graduated from the Canadian prison system as a prolific killer.
One characteristic mentioned most by people who knew Olson was his compulsion to talk. He definitely had the gift to gab. His constant talking which he used most effectively usually got him his own way in most matters. One of the R.C.M.P. officers, Constable Jim Hunter of the Squamish detachment stated "I can well understand wy those kids got into a car with him, he really had the gift of the gab."
Olson received his first publicity the day he was born which was January the first 1940 at 10:10pm in St. Paul's Hospital to Clifford and Leona Olson. Young Clifford was not born early enough in the day to win the big prizes which consisted of a silver spoon and a case of canned milk but his parents were presented with a baby book and a dainty gift from Cunningham Drug Stores. At a later date Olson would rob from Cunningham's, the very store that presented him with the New Year's gifts. Olson was the first-born of a family which soon increased to give Clifford two brothers, Denis and Richard and a sister Sharon. In 1945 the family moved from Edmonton, Alberta to Richmond, British Columbia where Olson started elementary school. Olson senior with his growing family bought a small one-story house on 1029 Gilmore Crescent, in a 80 home community built by the government for its servicemen after World War II.
Growing up near the north arm of the Fraser River Olson quickly eared a repuation as a bit of a con artist, a trait that would stick with him for the rest of his life. According to the Cambie Junior High School, Olson left his studies in 1956 for six months to work at the Old Landsdown race track which today is a large shopping mall. While growing up in Richmond Olson boxed in his spare time and had some success at it. Olson quit school and at the young age of 17 entered another school for nine months, New Haven Borstal Correctional Cenre in Burnaby, for breaking and entering. Olson soon escaped from New Haven and stole a power boat from Richmond but he was soon recaptured and sent to Haney Correctional Centre. If someone at this point in Olson's life could have sent him down the right path and not to follow the path to prisonmaybe Olson could have ended up leading a different life. And maybe those eleven victims might not have ended up as Olson's victims.
While serving time at the Old B.C. Penitentiary for breaking and entering, Olson pulled a fast scam while working in the hospital. Olson put a little blood in his urinal which got him a trip to the hospital where he soon escaped custody. When he escaped this time his family were already giving up on him. During an interview with the local paper when Olson had escaped from Shaughnessy Hospital, they had appealed to him to give himself up. "He knows what he's facing, he might have to serve 10 years," said Olson Sr. who had just moved his family to a new home in Richmond. "If he doesn't give himself up, I hope they get him before he does somethign really bad. He's done bad enough now."
Looking back on Olson's long years spent in prison one notices that he was one inmate who was constantly brewing up a way to escape. In total Olson would escape 7 times, only to have more time tacked on his sentence. Olson's many years in prison were not all easy time, one time in particular he had to be put in protective custody for testifying against one Gary marcoux. Marcoux was a two time loser serving time on two rape charges when Olson testified against him on what he knew about the rape and murder of a nine year old girl named Jeanny Dove. Olson's testimony resulted in Marcoux receiving a lifew sentence for the murder of Jeanny Dove.
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 for a last look 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 his 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.
When Olson was once again free to walk the streets he headed immediately to his old stomping grounds, the outer municipalities of Richmond-Surrey. He rented an apartment at the New Surrey Village Apartments at 9835 King George Highway, only seven blocks from where one of his first victims, Christine Weller lived. According to Gwen Meister, manager of the Surrey Village, Olson was then living with Joan Hale the woman he later married. Meister said Olson rented at the Surrey Village from August 1980 until the latter part of January 1981. Meister said he gave no notice when he vacated the suite and she later heard he was in jail, she was right. Olson was in custody from January 8th to May on a charge of rape that was brought against him by a Surrey prostitute. The charge was later stayed because the girl was not a reliable witness and she failed to appear in court. This was the first time Olson has ever been charged with a sex crime. When Olson was let out he immediately went looking for the girl who had brought the phoney rape charge against him; and if he had found her she would surely be dead today.
Olson married Joan Hale at the People's Gospel in Surrey on May 15, 1981 and shortly after Joan gave birth to their son. Olson often attended church and he was more than an erudite scholar, being extremely learned of the Bible. After Olson was released from Oakalla prison the couple left Surrey and moved to 675 Whiting Way in Coquitlam. This two storey building is also where Olson's lived and managed. 675 Whiting Way being an adult only apartment was soon without Clifford and Joan when the baby was born. They moved around the corner into a modest apartment at 521 Foster Ave to set up household. Debbie Campbell who lived with her two youngsters in the apartment under the Olson's said, "He was good with all the little kids in the complex, giving them candy and things, some of the kids had not many toys but Olson would bring all new toys to the kids she said." One time a girl from the area was missing and he offered to drive around looking for her. Olson was constantly hustling the girls in the neighbourhood but he didn't appear to do anything.
On August 12, 1981 Olson's murderous escapades were uncovered. Olson was arrested while driving a rented car near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island by the R.C.M.P. for an alleged driving offenses. He was taken to the mainland on August 14 and appeared in Burnaby provincial court on two counts of breaking and entering. The R.C.M.P. started intense interrogation of Olson about a string of unsolved murders in the area with which they suspected he was in some way involved. It culminated in the most shocking murder spree in Canadian history.
During nine months Olson killed at least 11 youngsters of both sexes ranging in age from 9 to 18. His killing spree not only stands as the most shocking in Canadian history but also as the most sorrowful one because of the number of victims involved and their ages. In one month alone, July 1981, six children were abducted, drugged and believed sexually used and then murdered in the most brutal way. Scores of interviews and hours of research have shown that the R.C.M.P. had Olson marked down as a suspect as a very early stage. According to one R.C.M.P. officer they had Olson as a murder suspect in the abduction of his first victim, twelve year old Christine Weller well before her body was even found.
Olson with his average intelligence was able to outwit the best brains of the famed Royal Canadian Mounted Police for the better part of nine months. He never received any Psychiatric treatment of any kind behind bars during his many stays in various prisons and the drastic deterioration of his personality never seemed to disturb any of the staff. This was because the hardened criminal became extremely adept at manipulating the prison system, and also because the prison system wasn't set up to change people like Olson. Prison was simply a place to house him until his sentence expired, whereupon he could be released onto the unsuspecting public. One just has to read what the honourable David Daubney M.P. chairman of The Standing Committee on justice with regards to the prisons in Canada. He found them a disgusting depressing school for crime instead of places of rehabilitation; our prisons are regarded as warehouses. A psychiatric assessment of Olson in prison would likely have saved the eleven lives he snuffed out between 1980 to 1981.
The following is a list of Olson's victims including their profiles and causes of death:
Christine Weller - Twelve year old Christine was found murdered in Richmond on December 25, 1980. She was stabbed to death on November 19, 1980. Weller was driven to an area of Richmond where she was murdered by multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. She suffered 10 stab wounds to the chest and abdomen and two superficial slashes in the neck. She had a double perforation of the right ventricle of the heart, and four penetrating wounds in the liver.
Colleen Daignault - Thirteen year old Daignault was murdered on April 15, 1981 in South Surrey near 144th Street and 26th Avenue. The deceased was picked up in Surrey and driven to a remote area of South Surrey where she was attacked and murdered by repeated hammer blows to the head. Actual cause of death was two depressed fractures of the occipital region of the skull.
Daryn Johnsrude - Johnsrude was sixteen when he was murdered on April 21, 1981 in Deroche. The deceased waspicked up in New Westminster and driven to the Deroche where he was murdered by repeated hammer blows to the head. Cause of death was comminuted skull fracture with right subdural haemorrhage left haemothorax.
Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner - Sixteen year old Wolfsteiner was murdered May 19, 1981 in the Chilliwack Lake area. The deceased was picked up at the bos stop in Surrey and driven to a remote area on the Chilliwack Lake Road where she was murdered by repeated hammer blows to the head. Few skeletal remains were found and cause of death was determined to be head injuries.
Ada Anita Court - Ada was thirteen years old when she was murdered on June 21, 1981 at Weaver Lake Road. The deceased was picked up while walking on North Road in Coquitlam and driven to a remote area near Weaver Lake where she was murdered by repeated hammer blows to the head. Skeletal remains with several depressed skull fractures were found.
Simon Patrick James Partington - Partington was nine years old when he was murdered on July 2nd, 1981 on River Road-Nelson Avenue in Richmond. The deceased was picked up two blocks fromhis home in Surrey and given a ride. During the course of the ride he was taken to a remote area of Richmond, given a couple bottles of beer and then strangled.
July Kozma - Kozma was fourteen when she was murdered on July 9th, 1981 near Weaver Lake. The deceased was picked up in New Westminster and driven to a remote area near Weaver Lake where she was murdered by multiple stab wounds.
Raymond Lawrence King Jr. - King was fifteen when he was murdered on July 23, 1981 near Weaver Lake. The deceased was picked up at the bus depot after leaving the manpower office in New Westminster and driven to a remote area near Weaver Lake. He was thrown down an embankment and murdered while unconscious by rock blows to the head.
Sigrun Charlotte Elisabeth Arnd - Arnd was eighteen when she was murdered on July 24, 1981 at a remote area North of River Road in Richmond. The deceased was picked up in Coquitlam and driven to a remote area of Richmond where she was murdered by repeated hammer blows to the head and then thrown into a ditch with water to be buried. The cause of death was massive head injuries.
Terry Lyn Carson - Carson was fifteen when she was murdered on July 27, 1981 in a remote area east of Chilliwack. The deceased was picked up on 108th Avenue bus stop and driven to a remote area past Chilliwack where she was murdered by strangulation.
Louise Simonne Marie Evelyn Chartrand - Chartrand was seventeen when she was murdered on July 30, 1981 near Whistler B.C. The deceased was picked up walking to work in Maple Ridge B.C. and driven to the Whistler area where she was murdered by repeated hammer blows to the head. Her decomposed body was found with evidence of massive skull fractures.
The above facts show Olson preyed on the very young by gaining their friendship and then taking them to a remote part of B.C. where he murdered them by either strangulation, stabbing or bashing their heads open with a hammer.
Olson's crime sprees lasted from November 1980 to August 1981 until he was arrested in Ucluelet in the Vancouver Island area with two female hitch-hikers in his car. He was at the time under surveillance and arrested when it was thought the two female hitchhikers were in danger. In Olson's car at the time of his arrest was found a notebook with Judy Kozmas' name in it. He was held without bail in Burnaby on two charges of burglary, which he had committed while under surveillance by the R.C.M.P. between August 6th and the 12th, 1981.
Later Olson was charged with eleven counts of first degree murder to which he pled guilty. The recovery of the bodies from such remote and isolated areas would have been virtually impossible without the active free cooperation of Olson. The means used by the R.C.M.P. to gain the cooperation of Olson in recovering the eleven bodies was a cash for corpse deal whereby $100,000.00 was paid to a trust fund for the benefit of Olson's wife and son. Olson's Modus Operandi in all eleven murders was to entice the victims into his car with the spurious offer of work at ten dollars an hour, and included the use of alcohol and a drug called chloral hydrate which when mixed confused and overcame his victims.
Submitted with this profile is an affidavit of Robert D. Shantz, Olson's lawyer of what took place on or about the 16th day of August, 1981 in a telephone conversation with Inspector Larry Proke, O/C of the Serious Crime Section of the R.C.M.P. with regards to a deal whereby the R.C.M.P. was prepared to pay $100,000.00 for the recovery of the childrens bodies. The copies of the original trust deed for the $100,000.00 is also attached with letters dated February 5th, 1982 addressed to the then Honourable Robert Kaplan, M.P. Solicitor General of Canada and also the same letter dated February 5th, 1982 to the then Honourable Alan William, M.L.A. The Attorney General of British Columbia.
Locked up with Olson in that great limestone prison in Kingston are a whole series of unanswered questions. How many other children had Olson drugged and murdered? Is Olson keeping quiet about these other murders to use at a later date as a bargaining tool? Would Olson have shown the R.C.M.P. where more bodies were buried if they had been allowed to offer him more money? Both the Mounties and B.C. Attorney-General Williams admitted that Olson came up with another cash for bidies deal in the fall of 1981. The Mounties said the offer was rejected because they were acting under a policy directive from the attorney general, not to have any further cash talks with Olson. When assistant R.C.M.P. Commissioner Don Wilson was asked by the Vancouver Sun whether he believed Olson could provide them with more bodies, "the short answer is yes." said Wilson. They, the R.C.M.P., had factual evidence upon which such a matter could be considered. Did Olson kill more kids? The R.C.M.P. believe that Olson is responsible or has information on several of the Highway Murders, a gruesome series of unsolved sex slayings in British Columbia's Interior and and Alberta Rockies.
A young woman named Pamela in fact was listed amongst the victims of the Highway Murders. Her full name was Pamela Lorraine Darlington and her stripped, raped and sexually mutilated body was found floating face down November 1973 in the Thompson River at Kamloops, British Columbia. At least 14 young women were murdered between 1972 and 1981 on the Trans-Canada Yellowhead or roads feeding into these main highways over the beautiful Canadian Rockies. The body of a 15th victim, Monica Jack, a twelve year old Indian girl who was bicycling home on a country road when she went missing, was never found. All these women were fresh-faced, innocent looking girls with young petite bodies that appealed to Olson. Many were sexually used and all were hitch-hiking.
The R.C.M.P. believe that Olson has the knowledge of 17 women and 6 young girls who were murdered in between the highway of Kamloops and Banff. The R.C.M.P. believe they were all murdered while hitch-hiking. There were other murders, not included inthe Highway Murders which the R.C.m.P. believe bore the clear imprint of an Olson killing. The body of one of these girls, 17 year old Verna Bjerky from the tiny Fraser Canyon community of Yale, B.C. was never found. Verna was working the night-shift as a waitress at the Godfater, a steak and pizza restaurant in Hope, B.C. when she went missing. Yale is about 15 miles from Hope and Verna, who didn't have a car, often got off work very late. So instead of waking up her family when she came home she frequently stayed at a friends house. Verna disappeared on May 2, 1981 while hitch-hiking from Hope. Yale, being a close-knit community, Verna's mother and father were able to mount a massive community search.
On October 9, 1981 more than five months after Verna went missing, soem personal articles of Verna's were found in what police call an area of mountain, bust and river beside Highway 7, just three miles weast of Hope B.C. where Clifford liked to take many of his victims along this same highway before turning off into the bush and murdering them. Superintendent Larry Poke of R.C.M.P. believed the killing of Verna had all the trademarks of an Olson murder - a young attractive girl, hitch-hiking in one of Olson's favorite stopping off points, and it was just Olson's style to scatter his victim's personal effects in remote bush to confuse investigators.
Another slaying which the R.C.M.P. said had the stamp of Olson was that of Mary Ellen Jamieson who disappeared on August 7th, 1980 on the beautiful Sunshine Coast just north of Vancouver city. The pretty, blue eyed, blonde was last seen hitch-hiking on Highway 101 at Davis Bay on Vancouver Island. Mary was on her way home after having dinner with her boyfriend, 18 year old Adrian Dixon in Sechelt. She was hitch-hiking because there was no bus service and her only alternative would be a $15.00 cab fare or ride with family or friends. Her family knew something was terribly wrong when she did not return home by 11p.m. Her body was found nine days later by three family friends off a logging road near the bay, about 12 miles from her home. R.C.M.P. and searchers had been down the road before and there was nothing that could be seen from a car. But a 17 year old named Todd Redman had a feeling this was the spot. They stopped the car and he grabbed a shovel and started digging in the gravel alongside the road. Even though there were no signs that the ground had been disturbed, the youth was convinced that Marney was there. She was lying fully clothed with bruise marks around her neck where she had been strangled. Clifford Olson knew the Vancouver area like the back of his hand and threeof his known victims had been strangled. He also liked to leave his victims like Marney on backroads.
The horror never really ended for the parents of the eleven kids Olson murdered. They suffered through the anguish of waiting for their children to return and living with the truth that they never would. Most of the victims came from broken families where the parents had already been through ugly divorce proceedings or painful separations. The parents called for a full public inquiry and voiced their concerns to both the ex-Attorney General Allan Williams and to the British Columbia Chief Coroner Robert Galbraith. The parents said the R.C.M.P. was covering up and the facts as presently known raise so many questions, yet unanswered, that the parents feel can only be ascertained through a public inquest. Only through a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the nororious childrens deaths can recommendations be made to the police and others to try and prevent a similar even from ever happening in British Columbia. On June 4th, 1982 Coroner Alan Askey released his report on the murder of the eleven children. Despite a probe of more than three months, Askey appeared to do little more than simply reproduce the official R.C.M.P. version of events.
At first the families seemed stunned. But when they read more carefully the greater was their sense of betrayal. The families felt that everyone from the Federal Solicitor General Robert Kaplan to the then Attorney General Allan Williams to Coroner Askey himself was engaged in a coverup. Askey was billed as a tough and very outspoken veteran of the coroners service for the province of British Columbia. But his eight page Olson report was far from hard hitting. The parents called it whitewash. The parents charged that Askey gave the famed R.C.M.P. only a token slap on the wrist. Marguerite Partington, the mother of Olson's youngest victim said "There is no justice." For Brigitte Kozma, elder sister of murder victim Judy Kozma, she said "The only real justice would be the eye-for-an-eye of the Old Testament.
The families believe that the R.C.M.P. acted in a totally incompetent fashion throughout the whole investigation. As for the Askey investigation it was clear that it started out as on thing and ended up as quite another. Both Chief Coroner Galbraith and Askey promised that there would be an examination on whether any of the murders could have been prevented. It turned out the report virtually ignored what went wrong. It only talked about how to prevent furture murders and how to set things right in the future. The report said the cash for corpses deal was justified, but it failed to say why, other than, "The recovery of the bodies from such isolated and hidden locations would have been virtually impossible without the active cooperation of Clifford Olson, and the means used to gain cooperation were justified."
ive days before the release of the Askey report the victims families embarked on a press offensive. They realized they were not going to get satisfaction from the authorities without marshalling public support. They announced they would soon be starting legal action to retrieve the $100,000.00 bloodmoney from the trust fund set up as part of the R.C.M.P. cash for corpses deal with Olson. They demanded the resignation of Allan Williams and they planned to sue him along with Olson, his wife Joan and Jim McNeney, trustee of the fund and also Robert Shantz. They charged that Williams had offered but failed to provide free legal advice and had ignored their letters about their childrens deaths. The eight families also took legal action against Olson in the British Columbia Supreme Court.
In a writ filed April 19th, 1982 they sued Olson for damages in a seldom used provision of B.C.'s Family Compensation Act. The applications were heard on Thursday the 24th of March, 1983 before the Honourable Mr. Justice Paris of the B.C. Supreme Court. The court ordered the judgement be entered in default of the defence by Olson with damages to be assessed and also cost to be taxed. Too late, the families won but could not obtain any money because Olson had no money and didn't have any control over the trust fun, it existed completely independent of Olson. "Olson has never had, does not have, and will never have any direction over the trust fund" said Jim McNeney acting as trustee for the fund.
In the writ filed against Olson it turned out that Olson was prevented by the then Warden Andrew Graham of the Kingston Penitentiary from allowing Olson to use his personal money to file and mail documents to the B.C. Supreme Court in defence of the eight writs filed April 19th, 1982 against Olson by the eight families. After nine years Olson has now filed a federal court action in the city of Ottawa on February 20th, 1989 against the Correctional Service of Canada under the Canadian Charter of Freedoms, claiming they infringed or denied him his rights under a number of sections of the charter. Olson is claiming that the Correctional Service of Canada be ordered to pay the full amount of money that was ordered to be paid by Olson for the default judgements handed down by Justice Paris. This money would then be paid into the court to pay the parents that brought the legal action against Olson in the B.C. Supreme Court filed April 19th, 1982.
There were six families that were awarded the default judgement as two families withdrew their actions. The victims' parents awarded are Mr. and Mrs. Court damages of $20,685.45; Mr. and Mrs. Wolfsteiner damages of $13,944.45; Mr. and Mrs. Kozma damages of $13,537.46; Mr. and Mrs. Rosenfeldt damages of $14, 074.94; Mr. King damages of $24,293.13; and Mr. and Mrs. Partington damages of $13,738.87. The total amount of money claimed by Olson against the Correctional Service of Canada is $100,274.30. It should be pointed out that the six parents of Olsons victims that were awarded this money soon found out they could not collect from Olson because he had no money. They then filed another civil law suit against E.J. McNeney, Robert Shantz, and Joan and Clifford Olson. Mr. Justice Trainor of the B.C. Supreme Court pronounced judgement on December 7, 1984 in favor of the victims families. The judgement was as follows; "The fund (which came into existence on the 26th day of August, 1981) must be surrendered or delivered up to this court. By operation of law, it was, that day, impressed with a constructive trust to remove it from the wrongdoer and those collaborating with him. The defendants are accountable for the entire sum of $100,000.00 paid to McNeney by the R.C.M.P. and are liable for it.
If equitable tracing is necessary it would be an appropriate tool to assist in the collection process. I would not think Morrison would hesitate to return the money under his control to McNeney so that the latter could comply with this order. The reasons underlying the establishment of the fund were that it would likely result in the conviction of a mass murder, Olson, that it would bring to a conclusion a lengthy and expensive investigation, that there would be a lessening of public anxiety and that the finality would bring some solace to the parents of the murdered children. That describes the character of this fund and directs its future use. In equity, the parents of the children murdered by Clifford Olson must have a right to claim". The parents were happy that they won the case against Olson, but there were further unforseen court actions being taken to the local B.C. Court of Appeal by the defendants Joan Olson, E.J. McNeney, Robert Shantz and Clifford Olson. They appealed the Supreme Court of B.C.'s Justice Trainor. The B.C. Court of Appeal heard the case on March 11, 1986 and the court was fast in their reasons for judgement, the Honourable Justice Hinkson speaking for the Court of Appeal. In an eight page judgement the final outcome was that the judge fell in error in the way he dealt with the number of requirements to be satisfied before the principle of unjust enrichment would apply. In meeting that requirement, the families must show that they were deprived when the funds were paid to McNeney. The appeal Court went on to say on page 8, it is clear on the face of this case that the payment by the R.C.M.P. to McNeney was not made as compensation for the deaths of the children. As I have indicated it was authorized by the Attorney General primarily to obtain evidence to convict Olson of the murders of the children. The payment to McNeney did not result in any corresponding deprivation of the plaintiffs. Understood in this way it is clear that the plaintiffs have no claim to have the $100,000.00 restored to them. They had no right to claim the money from the R.C.M.P. and when that sum was paid to McNeney in trust they did not thereby become entitled to claim it upon the basis of unjust enrichment. For these reasons I would allow the appeal and dismiss the claims of the plaintiffs (families).
The money was returned from the court to McNeney but a further devastating judgement was yet coming to the parents of Olson's victims. They filed a motion for leave of appeal from the judgement of the Court of Appeal of B.C. dated March 12, 1986, this appeal motion was before the Supreme Court of Canada, the highest court in Canada. On June 23, 1986 the judgment was upheld. The court was quick to act, they delivered the final say on the $100,000.00 trust fund agreement. They dismissed the appeal of the families for leave to appeal the B.C. Court of Appeal Judgment. It may be asked of Olson what he thought of the court decision not to hear the parents appeal. Clifford Olson agrees with them fully.
Other murder Olson has knowledge of include the Green River Murders in the U.S. Olson has been given immunity from prosecution in Washington State in return for him offering to reveal the whereabouts of five bodies that were sexually raped then murdered. The U.S. authorities and the R.C.M.P. also know Olson can provide them with details of 23 more bodies in six U.S. states (Flordia, Louisiana, Oregon, California, Illinois, and New York). Olson claims he was on vacation in each of these states while on parole from the B.C. Penitentiary. This unprecedented immunity deal with Washington State Justice authorites was confirmed by Olson's trial lawyer Robert Shantz and the letter dated April 18, 1984 from lawyer Roonald Kessler attorney at law in Seattle, Washington. That letter is attached to this profile.
Olson didn't confess to the murders his lawyer stated, all he said was that he had information on the whereabouts of five murdered bodies in return for transactional immunity. Robert Shantz said Olson felt that such immnity was necessary because if he was ever extradited to face trial in the U.S. the convicted Olson could face possible execution. "Murderers can be hanged in Washington State and they have the sizzle chair down in Florida" Olson notes. Can Olson produce these bodies like he claims? Very high ranking officials believe he can, as seen by the letter of Robert Keppel, Chief Criminal Investigator of the Attorney Generals Office of the Seattle Criminal Division regarding to the Seattle Green River Murders.
An affidavit sworn and dated the 15th day of November 1988 is evidence of Olson's knowledge of murders in the U.S. and above all his knowledge of the identity of the Green River Murderer. A letter dated April 21, 1988 addressed to the Honourable Victor Atiyeh, Governor of Oregon with the attached affidavit dated April 10, 1984 seems to prove Olson does have the information he claims. Olson will not discuss the U.S. Green River killer or the murders unless he gets the deal he had tried to put together with different ambassadors evidenced by the enclosed letters to ambassadors to Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany. Special attention must be given to the report dated July 25, 1986 with regards to other murders Olson has knowledge of here in Canada. Unfortunately Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is backing away from any deal with Olson for political reasons. The Prime Minister thinks with regards to Olson that it is better to let people be killed or raped than make a deal with him.
Then Attorney General of Alberta the Honourable Neil Crawford received a letterdated March 25, 1983 from Olson claiming he had information pertaining to three young girls that were raped and murdered and that one of their bodies had already been recovered. Olson also sent letters to Peter Lougheed the Premier of the province of Alberta dated April 5th, 1983 concerning the three murder victims. Olson also swore an affidavit on June 29, 1983 stating that he had knowledge of the three murder victims. On instruction from the Attorney Generals office of Alberta, Corporal G.A. Gary Forbes, R.C.M.P. officer of the general investigation section of Edmonton visited Kingston Penitentiary to see Olson. Statements were written on April 14th, 1983and signed by Olson and G.A. Forbes of the R.C.M.P. pertaining to the three murdered girls. These statements cannont be made public by Olson because of the R.C.M.P.'s ongoing investigation in this matter. It can be noted, however, that one of the victims was Oahn Ngoc Ha a 19 years old Vietnamese who was then employed at the Baniff Hotel where Olson stayed.
Olson was to appear in the Vancouver City Court on a couple of charges in 1977 but as he was on parole he skipped court and left the night before for Alberta, leaving from the Vancouver Greyhound bus station with his girlfriend Evelyn. On February 28th the body of 19 year old Oahn Ngoc Ha was found on the Trans Canada Highway about 53 kilometres west of Golden B.C.
In the summer of 1978 on August 12th, 21 year old Deborah Silverman who lived in the apartment block building on Bathhurst Street in Toronto went missing. Her car was parked in the northwest corner of the lot behind the apartment block and her purse, lace trimmed panties and a broken gold necklace were found inside the back door. On Sunday Novermber 12th, 1978 her body was found in a lot on a farm at an intersection of Highway 7 at Durham Regional Road 13 in the Brock Township about 42 miles east of York. Her hands were tied behind her back with the sleeves of her blue and white shirt and her black halter top was around her neck. Her brassiere was still on but she had no shoes or underpanties on. Olson informed various people on his knowledge of Silverman's murder. He notified then Premier William Davis of Ontario by letter, Robert Rae, MPP of the N.D.P. Party of Ontario by letter dated May 9th, 1983 and David Peterson M.P.P. Liberal Leader of Ontario by letter dated May 4th, 1983. ON August 9th, 1982 Olson swore an affidavit with photos taken at the murder farm grave along with photos of Silverman being buried. In the following years up to 1988 a number of police officers interviewed Olson in Kingston Penitentiary on the Silverman case. On January 9th, 1987 in a letter to the Honourable Ian Scott, Attorney General of Ontario, Olson requested immunity from prosecution for the murder of Silverman. Olson says he was present and can name the killer and give photos. On December 9th, 1987 two detectives interviewed Olson regarding the letter he sent to Ian Scott and informed him there would be no deal. Olson now refuses to talk to any of them.
In 1988 Olson requested access to personal information under the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act 1987. Olson accessed four seperate departmens obtaining all the information held on him. Access was also granted to alld epartments with regards to all information held on Deborah Silverman. Olson will not identify the killer of Deborah Silverman because there is no deal which will benefit him.
A profile of a serial killer can only be written by the serial killer himself. He must be truthful with himself first, and then with the facts he writes about. In my own case, I will only try to make a short profile, a profile of myself. I have not gone into the reasons why I had pleaded guilty to the murder of the eleven children in British Columbia in 1980 and 1981 and I don't feel I have to; I will save that for a mroe trained individualin those particular fields. The purpose of this profile is to be no more than a short introduction ofmyself. I have taken the reader step by step through each and ever case as to what happened in each murder. I used what took place during the murders and what was said between the children and myself. I tried to tell the facts as I recall them and have added nothing of fiction to enhance them. I also had the foresight to tape all the interviews in 1981 and 1982 with the three top psychiatrists of Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. These tapes are for my personal use and are only avialable to myself and my lawyer Robert Shantz for my own writing and for study purposes for Criminology students.
I have been currently conducting research and analyzing the lives and crimes of over 150 serial killers. I believe that there has never been an academic, university lever text book that analyzes the lives and crimes of serial killers in the United States, Canada or any other country. In my own personal study I hope people will be able to get a clear understanding on violent behaviour. Each serial killer has their own reasons as to why they murdered, but the reasons that led to the killing are not to be compared with each other as would be done in other fields of study. Once the facts are seen and provided by the killer himself, will we then be able to fully understand why they kill.
I can only speak as to why I murdered as I did. I can only put my thoughts and reasons as to the whole matter to be looked at by the professional psychiatrist and by criminologists and other trained people. In my case I hope that I may be able to shed light on the workings of a serial killer. One must remember and ask themselves, like I did, why is there no material written by the serial killer himself. The reason is simple, no serial killer wants to give up that much of himself and in most cases they have appeals proceeding though th court system which they don't want to jeopardize. Even when they are given a death sentence they will not talk about the murders because of a future chance of parole. I have never in my life read a book written by a serial killer on his own exploits. All kinds of people write about various serial killers but they can never write what the serial killer knows.
In reading this short profile on myself I wish to inform the reader that not even our famed Royal Canadian Mounted Police know what happened to those eleven children in terms of how they were murdered. Only my lawyer and I know. Only one important aspect must be brought out and that is to do with the $100,000.00 trust fund I agreed to have set up. There was no deal that made me exchange the childrens bodies for the money that was agreed on. I would never have made the deal that I did had it not been for Joan. Joan had received 28 thousand dollars from her divorce settlement and I took it and spent it. I was just taking her for a ride, as we say. Also I would not have told about the bodies and pleaded guilty if I had not fallen in love with Joan and stole her money like I did. I would be free today as is said by the Crown John Hall, my lawyer Allan Williams, former Attorney General of British Columbia.
The reasons I'm serving a life sentence is because I pleaded guilty to the charges. Had the R.C.M.P. not known I stole the money from Joan as I did, I wouldn't have mentioned the deal to get Joan's money back. Joan never knew or had any idea of the trust fund that had been put together. had she known of the deal she would have never agreed to it. In closing my profile I stand by my letter of Friday, February 5th, 1982 which I wrote to Genevieve Westcott a CBC television reporter in Vancouver as to why I pleaded guilty. This letter ran on national television and the text ran full in both the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers as follows.
Friday, February 5th, 1982
Lower Mainland Correctional Institution,
Burnaby, B.C.
Dear Ms. Westcott:
CBC Reporter T.V. News.
Thanks you for your letter of February 2nd, 1982 that was brought in by my wife Joan on Wednesday on her visit with me. I don't give any interviews nor make any statements Genevieve, because the so-called professinal journalism reports can't put true facts together and print them as they should. I have such a volume of letters from all over the States and Canada wanting me to answer questions. I would expect of the media unequivocal, clear, chronological and unbiased reporting of true facts. Not the extreme degree of shallow, sensational, confused and biased reporting sadly typical of the new media, T.V., radio and newspapers that have been doing in my case. I am sure you Genevieve and all the true facts and trying to receive satisfactory explanations from all those involved. "I did not cause the unlawful deaths of eleven children by planned and deliberate killings." I had instructed my counsel, Robert Shantz, to ask special prosecutor John Hall if he would sign a letter starting that for my exchange of a plea of guilty, that he John Hall would not submit any evidence but the statement of facts, this Mr. Hall did, for the following reasons.
(1) I did not wish to put the parents of all the children to have to go through such emotional and physical strain and having to look at the photos of the remains and the state of their children's bodies were found.
(2) The mental and physical strain on my family and the families of the children would be extremely unbearable had I let the trial continue.
(3) The personal statements given to the R.C.M.P. by the parents of their lives would have been brought out and would have cause sor some embarrassment and disconcertion among some of the parents.
(4) The Justice McKay had the jury locked up so that they would not be able to communicate physically or by phone with their loved ones, wives, husbands, and children. This would have been for well over eight weeks.
(5) The complete exploration of the news media on all the victims families and my family and on the courts evidence would be exploited by the media for sensationalism.
(6) The whole cost of the trials and the enw trials that would be ordered by the various courts of appeal are unbelievable.
There are no words in the English language nor any other language that can express to the parents of my victims my deep emotional and sorrowful feelings of remorse I have for taking what are more precious to them, theif chilren. I know it is hard to do but I ask for forgiveness, I am terribly sorry for what I have done. What is not known is that the day before I was charged with the death of Judy Kozma, I had a two hour visit with my beloved wife Joan and my infant son Stephen. I could not stop crying during those two hours. 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. I had first asked the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive me my sins, which he did (If we confess our sins, he (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, (1 John 1:9).
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 ofmy life. My son will have to 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 heaven together praising the Lord together.
As to your professional integrity as a journalist, and to your fairness Genevieve, I nor Joan can make any comment on. But I'm willing and capable of accepting your word. You may read this letter on C.B.C. T.V. Genevieve on my behalf, only on the condition that you do not take one word or sentence of the content out of the letter in printing or publication or reading it on radio or T.V.
Yours Truly,
Clifford Robert Olson
The Olson profile is a personal profile, it contains two inches of documents that have never been released to the public nor any of the police forces in Canada nor the U.S. The letters are from a vast number of police organizations both in Canada and the U.S. There are vast amounts of legal documents that have been accessed under the Canadian Privact Act and there is a large number of letters to the present Federal members of Parliament, the Prime Minsiter of Canada and Ambassadors from 17 countries. There are the Coroner's reports on inquiries into the murders of the eleven children. There are reports from the correctional service Canada containing confidential information with regards to an attempt to force a political confrontation if Mr. Mulroney refuses to deal with Olson. See reports dated 86-07-28. There are the Canadian security intelligence services letters and the letter dated 03-15-88 from then Lt. Dan J. Nolan Operations Commander of the Green River Task Force in Seattle Washington which by letter of April 18, 1984 from Ronald Kessler on Olson being granted conditional immunity from prosecution by the Attorney General of Washington State in regards to numerous homcides in Washington State.
The two affidavits of Lawyers Robert Shantz and James McNeney are to be paid very special attention to. The two-inch file shold be read in complete conjunction with the profile. One can go on and on in this matter but the reader must remember that this is only a short profile of me. This is only a short insight as to who Clifford Olson is. I have not gone into what I'vebeen doing here since I came to the Kingston Penitentiary in February of 1982. In a short summation of my profile one must remember that it is my story, written by me alone.
Name: Clifford Robert Olson
Height: 5'7"
Astrological Sign: Capricorn
Weight: 159 pounds
Religion: Roman Catholic
Birthdate: January 1st, 1940
Birthplace: St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, V.C. at 10:10pm
Turn-on's: Being with someone I love, Jesus Christ, music, sexy women, champagne, sports, reading, philosophizing, writing, poetry, drawing, studying, learning law, being able to preach the message of God, having faith, hope and love, talking politics.
Turn-off's: Being hurt by people you love, lies and deceitfulness, swearing, obnoxious people, drugs, procrastination, people who are proud, selfish and rude, injustice, grudges.
Favorite Color: Red
Favorite Flower: Rose
Favorite Sports: Boxing, track and field, skiing, softball, hockey, swimming, skating, horse racing, tennis and soccer.
Favorite Games: Chess and bridge
Hobbies: Writing, poetry, drawing, model air-planes, reading, watching movies, going to the beach and writing personal reflections and essays.
Favorite Movies: American Graffiti, Doctor Zhivago, Jaws, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Exorcist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek, High Noon, Stalag 17, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai, I Want to Live, Ben-Hur, West Side Story, To Kill a Mockingbird, Airport, The French Connection, Kramer vs. Kramer, Chariots of Fire, Places in the Heart, The Killing Fields.
Favorite T.V. Programs: Highway to Heaven, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, 60 Minutes, Johnny Carson, Ed Sullivan, Super Bowl, Bob Hope, Dallas, ABC Sunday Night Movies, NHL Hockey, Deauty and the Beast, Smothers Brothers, National Journal, Equalizer, Austin City Limits, Mystery, Disney Movies.
Favorite Magazines: National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Time, Playboy, Club International, Life.
Favorite Records: Me and Bobby McGee/Janis Joplin, The Great Pretender/ The Platters, Chantilly Lace/ The Big Bopper, Johnny B. Goode/Chuck Berry, Green Onions/ Booker T. and the MG's, Proud Mary and all other Creedence Clearwater Revival songs, Blueberry Hill/Fats Domino, Like a Rolling Stone/ and most other Bob Dylan Songs, Wake Up Little Suzie/ Everly Brothers, Rock Around the Clock/ Bill Haley and the Comets, That'll Be the Day/ Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Stairway to Heaven/Led Zeppelin. Oh Pretty Woman/Roy Orbison, Stagger Lee/Lloyd Price, Satisfaction/ The Rolling Stones, Bridge Over Trouble Water/ Simon and Garfunkel, Your So Vain/Carley Simon, Maggie Mae/Rod Stewar, Be-Bob-A-Lula/Gene Vincent, Heart of Gold/Neil Young, Don't Be Cruel/and a few other Elvis songs.
Favorite Male Actors: Charles Broonson, Jack Palance, Donald Sutherland, Lee Marvin, Stacy Keach, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Lee Majors, James Corburn, Marlon Brando, Chuck Norris, David Carradine, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Favorite Female Actors: Suzanne Sommers, Pia Zadora, Heather Locklear, Angie Dickinson, Goldie Hawn, Sissy Spacek, Yvette Mimieux, Kim Basinger, Cheryl Tiegs, Cheryl Ladd, Cher, Sandra Dee, Brigitte Bardot, Tina Turner, Farrah Fawcett, Lindsay Wagner.
Favorite Comedy Actors: Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop, Rich Little, Buddy Hackett, Jay Leno, Gary Shandling, Johnny Carson, Billy Cosby.
Favorite Cars: Porsche-928-S, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Ford Mustang.
Favorite Basketball Team: Boston Celtics
Favorite National League Team: Los Angeles Dodgers
Favorite American League Team: California
Favorite Fruits: Bing cherries, bananas, strawberries, cantaloupe, peaches, blueberries, grapes.
Favorite Candies: Fudge, toffee, Crispy Crunch bars, pop corn.
Favorite Desserts: Banana cream pie, ice-cream, milk shakes, oatmeal cookies.
Favorite Sandwich: Lettuce and tomato, club house.
Favorite Breakfasts: Bacon and eggs turned over, cream of wheat, puff wheat.
Favorite Fish: Alaska black cod, salmon.
Favorite Foods: Filet mignon steak medium, pork chops, meat loaf, corn on the cob, cottage cheese, peas, I like all vegetables except asparagus and spinach, chocolate milk, coffee with cream and sugar.
Favorite Miscellaneous: Cream of corn soup, coca cola, jelly beans, candies of all kinds.
Favorite Drink: Dom Perigon, Chivas Regal Blended Scotch Whiskey with Seven-Up, Screwdrivers with Smirnoff Vodka, my favorite cocktails are, Singapore Slink: Gin, Lemon Juice, Orange Juice, Cherry Brandy, Grenadine. Marguerita: Salted rim, tequila, triple sec, lime juice. Tom Collins: Gin, Lemon Juice, soda. Black Forest: Vodka, Cherry Brandy, Seven-Up, whipped cream, Khalua.
My Favorite Perfume For The Lady: Opium, Joy, Obsession.
Favorite Places: Vancouver, Honolulu, Hawaii, Disneyland and Disneyworld.
Favorite Musicians: Rolling Stones, Bobby Gentry, Rita Coolidge, Loretta Lynn, Joan Baez, Patsy Cline, Connie Francis, Crystal Gayle, Keith Richards, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Frampton, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton.
Ideal Woman: Sensitive, to be treated with respect, as an equal. A Christian woman. To have truly a good woman you have to believe she is more precious than all the gems in the world. She has to be truthful and trustful and must be able to satisfy my needs. She has to be a very kind individual who is also sympathetic, tender, warm, gentle, tolerant, good tempered, confident, very charitable and a humanitarian and most of all have all the love of God.
Biggest Joy: The birth of my son, Stephen.
Favorite Pastime: Reminiscing on past experiences and events, listening to rock and roll and country music from the years 1955-1969 and reading and studying the bible.
Favorite Pets: My dog Penny, cats and horses.
Favorite Political Party: I have never voted in any Federal Election or in any Provincial Election.
The Best Thing About Sex Is: The whole joy of sex with love is that there are no rules, so long as you enjoy it, and the choice is practically unlimited. Uninhibited partners will tell each other about their fantasies (try free-associating just before orgasm if you are shy). Really communicting partners look for them and put them on the menu unannounced, there is no more complete communication. Women probably differ sexually more than men. Never assume that you don't need to relearn for each person. Planning and thinking about sex to come is part of love, so is lying together in complete luxury afterwards. You don't get high quality sex without love and feedback. Feedback means that perfect mixture of stop and go, tough and tender, exertion and affection.
There are only two guidelines in good sex. Don't do anything you don't really enjoy and find out your partners needs and don't balk them if you can help it. The bed is the right place to play all the games you ever will want to play. This is essential to a full, enterprising and healthy immature view of sex between committed people. Take off your shell along with your clothes. A womans greatest assest after her beauty is her natural perfume. It comes from her hair, skin, breats, armpits, and genitals. The smell and feel of a man's skin probably has more to do with sexual attraction than any other single feature. We must learn to use the whole of our skin surface, our feelings of identity, aggression and so on, and how to express them in bed. We must find out someone elses needs and your own will prove to be rewarding, interesting, and educational when it comes to finding out what love is all about. Sex should be wholly satisfying, like between two affectionate people from which they emerge unanxious, rewarded and ready for more.
Clifford Robert Olson
Kingston Penitentiary
June 1989
PO Box 22
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 4V7
Copyright (c) 1989
CANADA
All rights reserved, no part of this Profile of a Serial Killer by Clifford Robert Olson may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the writer Clifford Robert Olson.
Clifford Olson
The Olson case is one of the most significant cases in Canadian legal history. It raised questions not raised before, and helped to shape an ongoing movement regarding the rights of victims.
Where And When?: Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley regions of British Columbia. November 1980 - July 1981.
Who?: Clifford Robert Olson was born in Vancouver on New Year's Day 1940. Olson has been described as having dull-normal intelligence and the emotional maturity of a child. He was known to police and acquaintances as a habitual criminal from age 10. His crimes included theft, armed robbery, forgery, break and entry, auto theft and escaping custody. Although arrested on sexual offenses several times, Olson somehow managed to keep such crimes absent from his record. Olson's life consisted of prison sentences, starting at age 17. He was in and out of prison regularly for the next 25 years, until his arrest in 1981. He was a notorious inmate in the 1970s, known for manipulating the system, writing countless letters to politicians complaining of conditions and buggering young inmates against their will. Olson was also known as a 'rat' in prison. He would readily point the finger at fellow inmates if it would be beneficial to himself. Because of this, Olson was a marked man. He was regularly attacked by other inmates, and was even stabbed 7 times in 1976 by a fellow prisoner at Prince Albert's Saskatchewan Penitentiary. It was necessary for Olson to be moved from prison to prison in order to keep him from being murdered. During one such move, Olson met B.C. prisoner Gary Marcoux, who was being held for brutally raping and murdering a young girl. He befriended Marcoux and learned the grisly details of his crimes. Then, forever the con man, Olson 'ratted' out Marcoux, showing officials letters and drawings his new 'friend' had produced outlining his sordid deeds. Olson got what he wanted. He was recognized by authorities for his assistance in convicting Marcoux and even received a commendation. Olson gained something else too; a love for child pornography and violence. He spent thousands of hours pursuing his new interests, expounded by hearing of and visualizing Marcoux's crimes. As soon as he was released in 1978, Olson left British Columbia for a stint in the Maritimes. There he became wanted on charges of child pornography, but was never arrested on those counts. The reason was simple; by the time Olson was located, he was back in a B.C. jail. This time for rape. The east coast police dropped their charges, thinking Olson would receive justice on the west coast. They were wrong.
The rape charge stemmed from a New Year's Day incident in 1981. Olson was accused of sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl and arrested on January 8. His lawyer, along with self-proclaimed jailhouse lawyer Olson, fought until Olson was awarded bail on April 8, 1981. Little did they know that they had released a man who killed a 12 year old girl in the fall of the previous year. She was one of many to follow.
The Murders: Christine Weller disappeared on November 17, 1980. She was heading to the run-down motel in Surrey, B.C. that her family called home. Christine Weller was a street wise tomboy who did not have the benefit of expert parenting. She had run away before, and her parents disregarded her absence for over a week before police were contacted. When Christine's ravaged body was finally found on Christmas Day, it was revealed that she had been stabbed 19 times. Police interviewed many persons about the disappearance. Among them was the motel manager from where Christine lived. He was asked about three individuals that lived in the area. he could supply no information about any of them. On the list of names was Clifford Olson. The rape Olson was arrested for, only one week after Christine Weller's body was found made police more suspicious, yet Olson was not questioned about the deceased girl. Olson's second victim was murdered 8 days after his release from prison in April, 1981. Colleen Daignault, 13, was coerced into taking a ride in Olson's car. He used what was to become a common ploy with his victims. The killer offered the girl a job, promising substantial renumeration. He then offered her a drink containing some drug that rendered her unable to move effectively. Olson then drove Colleen to a secluded location, where he raped, then murdered her. Olson's victim was different. Daryn Johnsrude did not fit the pattern that Clifford Olson was establishing. He was 16, around the right age, but was male. Serial killers generally adhere to a routine or M.O.. Clifford Olson proved that he was not picky. No one was safe. This 'change' also made things more confusing for investigators, who didn't yet realize that they were dealing with a serial murderer. They were treating many of the cases as potential runaways. Olson's sixth victim changed all that. Simon Partington was only nine years old when he disappeared on July 2, 1981. This left no doubt as to the question of whether Lower Mainland children were being abducted. The case generated much publicity and brought it to the forefront with numerous media reports. Meanwhile, the police let their man slip through their fingers on two occasions. A week after Daryn Johnsrude's disappearance, Olson was arrested for shoplifting. On July 7, five days after the Partington kidnapping, Olson was charged with an indecent assault on a 16 year old girl, but was released. July was a prolific month for the killer. Olson claimed six victims during that time period. Among them was 14 year old Judy Kozma. Olson went to a new height of perversion and psychotic behaviour when he telephoned the home of the Kozma family landlord, then played a tape of Judy's cries and agony. He also called her closest friends, threatening that they would be next. By July 28, police were beginning to feel sure that they had their man. An officer set up a meeting with Olson, under the guise that he wanted to use him as an informant. By that time, three bodies had been discovered. Olson agreed to work with police and asked what they would like information on. When he was told that the officer wanted information about the Lower Mainland Missing Children case, Olson seemed eager to help. The officer would later recount that he believed Olson wanted to be caught when he offered to find the locations of nine victims. He also said that he would need to receive money for his efforts. This was the last time the two met. Olson now knew that he was likely under surveillance. Even though this was true; police were in fact watching Olson's movements, he managed to kill again only 2 days later. Louise Chartrand was coincidentally murdered on the same day that the R.C.M.P. finally set up a central task forth to deal with the Case Of The Lower Mainland Missing Children. July had been a busy month for Clifford Olson. He had driven over 10 000 km in rented cars cruising for his victims. Because of this, he had accrued huge debts with rental car companies. In an effort to raise funds to pay them the money owed, Olson broke into at least two homes in early August. Olson was finally arrested on August 12, 1981, when officers who had been followed his car trailed him to a deserted area. Olson had two young women in the vehicle with him. When he ordered one of them out of the car, and to leave the area, police, who had been listening from bushes nearby had seen enough. They arrested Clifford Olson for drunk driving and took him to jail.
Trial And Outcome: Clifford Olson's case started out with little physical evidence against him. Police had his address book, with Judy Kozma's address written by her own hand. This however, was not enough to convict him of multiple homicides. A break came when a witness, who had spent time socializing with Olson, put him with Judy on the night of her murder. Police charged Olson with her killing. Soon after, bodies began to appear. Olson was charged with ten counts of murder. In court, Olson entered a plea of 'not guilty' to all charges. The judge then broke the bad news to jurors that they would have to be sequestered for the duration of the trial because of the attention it was receiving in the press. Olson, forever the legal disturber, came to court the next day and reversed his pleas. A weepy Clifford Olson plead guilty to 10 charges of first-degree murder. At that time, the prosecutor introduced an eleventh charge, to which Olson also plead guilty. He received life in prison, with a recommendation from the judge that he never be granted parole in his lifetime. This however, was far from the end of the story. For months, there had been reports in the media of a 'cash for corpses' deal with Olson. This was confirmed after the trial. Olson had asked for $100 000 to reveal the locations of his victims' bodies, and to provide details of the crimes that 'only the killer would know'. Police accepted this deal in order to ensure proof that would convict the killer. The public was outraged, and cries of 'blood money' echoed across the world. In actuality, Olson was paid $90 000 for his admissions. The money went to a bank account in cash, presumably to Olson's wife. He said that his motivation was to ensure a future for his wife and son, Clifford Jr. The Olson case was important for inspiring a Canadian law, now in effect in many countries, that states 'criminals should not be able to profit from their crimes'. The thought that Olson may have received more money if only he had claimed more victims is a concept that is abhorrent in a civilized society. Olson's case also brought police methods into question. The fact that 4 victims died after Olson was put under surveillance stills haunts British Columbia law enforcement. Olson continues to be a legal thorn in the side of Canada. He continually writes letters complaining of his treatment in Kingston Pen, where he is currently housed. He has written a book, and for a while had his letters regularly published by newspapers. That 'affair' finally came to an end when editors, and the public tired of the sanctimonious moral and religious beliefs espoused by this sick individual. In all liklihood, if a fellow inmate doesn't get the chance to become a cellblock hero by dispatching Olson, his judge's recommendation to spend his life behind bars will likely become gospel.
Parole hearing set for Olson
June 21, 2006
The National Parole Board is preparing to hold a parole hearing next month for the most prolific serial killer in Canadian history -- Clifford Olson.
In August, Mr. Olson, the self-described Beast of B.C., completes the 25-year parole eligibility requirement of his life sentence for the murder of 11 children. His parole hearing will be held in the Quebec penitentiary where he is incarcerated.
Diane Bélisle, a parole board spokesperson, confirmed yesterday that since Mr. Olson, 66, has not signalled any intention to waive his hearing, it is being scheduled for next month. "When the exact date is set, all the persons who requested to be at the hearing will be notified," she said.
In marked contrast to a highly publicized hearing 10 years ago when Mr. Olson applied for early release under the Criminal Code's "faint hope" clause, his impending parole hearing has gone unnoticed.
Joe Bellows, a senior B.C. prosecutor who opposed Mr. Olson's 15-year review, expressed astonishment yesterday that Mr. Olson will soon be eligible to seek release.
"I hadn't thought of it at all," he said in an interview. "Suddenly, it's been 10 years -- and here it comes."
Mr. Olson's parole hearing is almost certain to cause echoes of the media and political anticipation that was evident before serial killer Karla Homolka was released last summer.
Mr. Olson stands alongside Ms. Homolka, Paul Bernardo and Marc Lepine among Canada's most notorious killers in the past 50 years.
Mr. Olson pleaded guilty in 1982 to 11 counts of murder as part of a deal with police and the B.C. Attorney-General.
In return for his plea and for helping police find the bodies and personal effects of 10 of his victims, $100,000 was placed in trust for his family.
Mr. Bellows said yesterday that he and his co-counsel, prosecutor Sandy Cunningham, took pains at the 15-year review to create a strong body of evidence for the parole board to use to assess Mr. Olson's dangerousness.
"We were mindful of the fact that Mr. Olson would eventually, as a matter of law, be entitled to his parole hearing," he said.
The jury at Mr. Olson's review denied him any form of early eligibility after just 15 minutes of deliberations.
Mr. Olson's chances of winning parole next month appear equally remote, given the decisive ruling his trial jury reached in 1982 and the parole board's primary mandate to protect the public.
Three board members will adjudicate at the hearing. They will hear a recommendation from Correctional Service Canada -- provided by his parole officer -- about what would be best for the public and Mr. Olson. Victims may also read impact statements.
The board will question Mr. Olson and consult voluminous reports about his crimes and his 25-year record as an inmate.
Unless Mr. Olson has changed, they can expect outrageous outbursts. Mr. Olson's right to correspond with the media from prison was cut off because of his attempts to taunt his victims' families.
"I've done lots of terrible cases, but that was probably the most intense professional experience of my life," said Mr. Bellows, who led the prosecution of two Sikh-Canadians accused in the Air-India bombings.
"I remember it vividly," Mr. Bellows said. "There were media there from all over the world. There were provincial and federal politicians and the families of the victims. From a professional point of view, I would describe it as an incredibly surreal four-day experience."
The courtroom where Mr. Olson's hearing was held was constructed to withstand explosions or bullets, and bristled with extra security personnel.
"They did everything except bring him out on a trolley," Mr. Bellows said.
In spite of an attempt to keep Mr. Olson far enough from spectators and jurors to prevent him annoying or harming them, Mr. Olson managed to wave a pornographic sketch of a child.
"He held it up for the people behind him to see -- and they were family members," Mr. Bellows recalled.
Mr. Bellows said that he and Ms. Cunningham spent months assembling psychiatric evidence indicating that Mr. Olson was highly disturbed and a permanent menace to society.
He said they also collected agonizingly graphic victim-impact statements from the families of the murdered children.
"It took me several days to read them in preparation, because of their emotional impact," Mr. Bellows recalled. "I would read a paragraph, put it down and come back several hours later to read another. . . When I read them to the jury, I maintained my composure -- but only just."
Members of the victims' families cheered as Mr. Olson was led away in leg shackles after his review hearing. He grinned widely.
Public displeasure that Mr. Olson could seek early parole was so great that the federal government amended the Criminal Code to prevent multiple killers from qualifying for 15-year reviews.
Serial child killer 'should die in prison'
22 june 2006
VICTORIA -- Serial child killer Clifford Olson should die behind bars, the family of one of his victims will tell the National Parole Board next month.
Olson, shown at left, who has served 25 years in prison after pleading guilty in 1982 to the murders of 11 children in B.C., is now eligible for parole as part of his life sentence. But representatives from the families of at least seven of Olson's victims will attend the parole hearing to oppose his release.
"He shouldn't be out," said Gary Rosenfeldt, whose son, Daryn, was murdered by Olson in April 1981.
"The bottom line is he murdered 11 children. If they let him out now, it's like he got two years for the murder of each child," he said.
"He should die in prison."
Olson, now 66, admitted killing eight boys and three girls ranging in age from nine to 18, but only after negotiating a cash-for-bodies deal with the Crown and RCMP, where his family got $100,000 in exchange for information about the deaths and location of the bodies.
In jail almost 25 years, Canada's most infamous serial killer is still finding ways to outrage the justice system
3 july 2006
Clifford Olson -- arguably Canada's most notorious serial killer -- comes up for parole this summer, but the country can relax: He ain't going to get it.
The likes of sadistic sex-killer Paul Bernardo and Robert Pickton, the B.C. pig farmer accused of killing up to 60 prostitutes, are current in memories. But Olson is more puzzling and heinous in many ways.
There's been nothing quite like him, anywhere, any time. The public knows little about him except that he murdered 11 young people, boys and girls, in 1980-81.
Heck, the police didn't even know they had a serial killer on the loose until he told them -- and negotiated $100,000 from the RCMP for leading them to the sites of 10 bodies. Then, as he tells it, he threw in an 11th body as a "freebie."
At his 1982 trial he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment, with no details of how or why he killed coming out. Just as well, as his penchant for detail was chilling.
PHONED RADIO HOST
Except for his lawyer, Bob Shantz of Maple Ridge, B.C., I suspect I've had more contact with Olson than anyone outside the prison system.
I got to know him around 1990 when he phoned Arlene Bynon, Toronto's "Queen of Talk" (Toronto Sun columnist Mike Strobel's description), who was knocking the ratings dead on CHFI, and who now broadcasts on 640.
I spent a summer visiting Olson in Kingston Penitentiary. I even brought famed U.S. tort lawyer Melvin Belli into Kingston Pen to see Olson and represent him when he claimed to know the identity of Seattle's Green River killer and wanted to make a deal for immunity if he told all to the police.
Despite being forbidden to contact me, Olson managed to regularly phone me when he was transferred to Prince Albert pen in Saskatchewan. He now phones from the Special Holding Unit of Ste. Anne-des-Plaines, Que.
Friends find it disquieting that I can have contact with someone like Olson and not be repelled. That misses the point. In journalism you deal with all sorts or people, and if you can't adjust, you don't last long.
In our relationship, I've never lied to Olson. When he was plotting an escape from Kingston, he said he intended to hide out at our place in Wellington. I told him he'd be in greater danger from me, than I from him. He found that amusing.
At his "faint hope" parole hearing 10 years ago, he wanted me to testify as a character witness. I told him if I was the best he could find, his was a "faint hope" indeed.
Olson is a rich study, and breaks conventions of what a serial killer is supposed to be. As a child he was not a bed-wetter, nor did he start fires and he didn't torture animals. He had a dysfunctional family life, but his sister and brother (whom I've interviewed) were normal. Olson's brother served in Cyprus with the Canadian army.
In prison, Olson is at home. After all, some 42 of his 66 years of life have been spent in prison. He likes to boast that he was the first baby born on New Year's Day in Vancouver, 1940. His father was a World War II soldier.
INTRIGUING STUDY
For each of the 11 young people he killed and raped, Olson wrote detailed, 50-page accounts -- with a foreword to each, that were to be given to his son when the boy reached 20 in 2000. What's the thinking of a father who'd bequeath such a legacy to his son?
I find Olson an intriguing study. Yes, he's a psychopath with full understanding of right and wrong, but just doesn't care. He's more shrewd than intelligent; cunning, perceptive, even funny. The empathy and remorse he expresses for his victims are learned responses, not emotional reaction.
In his candid moments he acknowledges that the death penalty should apply to him, and that if freed he'd likely kill again -- without knowing why he killed in the first place.
He went through a homosexual marriage in prison, but is not homosexual. Sex, to him, was sex; gender was unimportant. He chose his victims carefully -- most kids came from broken homes and were considered runaways. He even killed them in different ways -- sometimes bludgeoning, or stabbing, or throttling. Sometimes all three.
Out of curiosity more than malice, he once pounded a nail into the head of a drugged victim -- a Philips screwdriver into the skull of another. Then he questioned them on how it felt.
He was furious when one boy he raped told him he'd been sodomized before. Olson scolded him for not telling the police -- then killed him.
I consulted the FBI's great profiler of serial killers, John Douglas, about Olson. Douglas was curious, and said it was extremely unlikely that Olson would have started killing at age 40, and likely had started 20 years earlier.
Looking back to the 1960s, there were missing or murdered kids in B.C. that Olson claimed he'd killed.
I think this is true, and what saved him at the time was that he'd been arrested and jailed for something else, and was out of circulation during the hunt for murderers.
Olson has subsequently claimed murders throughout the U.S.
The RCMP even took him to Vancouver Island and the Arctic where he said he'd buried victims. It was phony. It was Olson conning a trip. He's tried the same trick for kids murdered in Hawaii and Ireland.
Olson has curious malapropisms, which in a different context would be comical. He once told me he'd killed two women in Florida who lived in a "condom." He said he raped another girl "when she unconscientious."
With another victim, he said he had "annual as well as vagina sex." He promised to send me documents from prison by "perculator." That sort of stuff.
PAPAL NUNCIO LETTER
After trying out several religions in prison, Olson finally decided he was a Catholic (he claimed he was once an altar boy). He received an encouraging letter from the papal nuncio when he wrote to the Pope about the remorse he felt for his crimes.
When I asked him about his revived Catholicism, he replied: "It's a great f---ing religion -- they'll forgive you for anything!"
When the movie Silence of the Lambs came out, I asked if he compared himself to Hannibal Lecter.
"There's no comparison," said Olson with a chuckle. "Hannibal Lecter's fiction -- I'm real." Clifford Olson is destined to die in prison. I think he knows it, but I also think he'll do what he can to irritate and exacerbate the system. That's how he gets his kicks these days.
Clifford Robert Olson Jr (born January 1, 1940 in Vancouver, Canada) is a serial killer who killed 11 children in the early 1980s.
Despite being raised in a reportedly stable home with no signs of abuse (unlike many other serial killers) he soon showed signs of delinquency. He skipped school frequently, and was first arrested for theft at the age of 13. He was known as a bully and a show-off, and was rumoured to torture and kill animals. In adulthood, he picked up dozens of convictions for crimes ranging from fraud, armed robbery and firearms offences, and he spent a great deal of time in prison, although he escaped on several occasions.
On November 17, 1980, Olson abducted 12-year-old Christine Weller in Surrey, British Columbia. She was found on Christmas day, strangled with a belt and stabbed repeatedly. On April 16, 1981, Colleen Marian Daignault, 13, vanished. It was five months before her body was found. By then, Olson had abducted Daryn Todd Johnsrude, 16, smashed the boy's head in with a hammer and tossed him into a ditch.
In May 1981, Olson got married. Around this time he was accused of molesting a local 5-year-old girl, although he was not charged, owing to lack of evidence.
Just four days after his wedding, on May 19, Olson abducted and murdered 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner. The following month he killed Ada Court, 13.
Olson claimed six victims in quick succession in July 1981: Simon Partington, 9, abducted and strangled on the second day of the month; Judy Kozma, 14, whom Olson raped and strangled a week later, taking her address book and calling her friends and threatening them with taunts such as "You're next"; Raymond King Jr., 15, whom Olson abducted on July 23 and bludgeoned to death; Sigrun Arnd, an 18-year old German tourist, whom Olson raped and battered to death with a hammer the following day; and Terry Carson, 15, whom Olson raped and strangled.
Olson had now killed 10 children. Because the victims were of both sexes and varying ages, and only three bodies had been found with the other seven missing children tentatively listed as probable runaways, the cases were not initially linked by authorities. By now, however, the police in British Columbia realized they had a serial killer on their hands, and a major investigation was soon under way. They were too late to save Louise Chartrand, 17, whom Olson battered to death with a hammer on July 30, burying her corpse in a shallow grave.
Because of his lengthy criminal record, Olson became the prime suspect. He was questioned, but there was not enough evidence to hold him. However, on August 12, Olson was arrested for attempting to abduct two girls.
Olson eventually came up with a controversial deal: he would confess to the 11 murders and show police where the bodies of those not recovered were buried, and in return he wanted $10,000 paid to his wife for each victim. The authorities were outraged at first, but, as they had little evidence to tie Olson to the killings and the families of the missing children were desperate to give their loved ones a decent burial, the agreement was eventually made. In January 1982, Olson pleaded guilty to 11 counts of murder and was given 11 life sentences; as of 2002, he is incarcerated in Canada's maximum-security Special Handling Unit. As agreed, $110,000 was paid to his wife.
In Canada, inmates are eligible for parole after a maximum of 25 years; as of June 2006 it is reported that a parole hearing is being planned for Olson to take place in August 2006, as a result of him meeting the eligibility requirements. Nevertheless, it is widely assumed that Clifford Olsen will never make parole due to the nature of his crimes.
Olsen, Clifford
It was to be a christmas day no-one would ever forget. It was 1980 in Vancouver when the body of 12 year old Christine Weller was found. Her body had been badly mutilated. A few months later in the spring another girl vanished. She was 13 year old Coleen Daignault. Almost at the same time the body of 16 year old Darren Johnsrud was found in some woodland, he had a fractured skull. The police were worried but seemed to have little to go on. What they did know is that they needed to catch this man soon before he killed again.
On 19 May 1981 16 year old Sandra Wolfsteiner was seen hitching a ride in a car and was never seen again. In June of the same year 13 year old Ada Court disapeared whilst walking home in Coquitlam. At the same time 9 year old Susan Partington disapeared after being seen talking to a man in a shopping centre in Surrey.
Raymond king went missing in early July and this was followed two days later when Judy Kozma went missing after being picked up by a man in the suburb of New Westminster, she was only 14 years old. Her body was found in late July in lake Weaver which is near Agassiz. She had been stabbed to death, the body of Raymond King was also found.
Although the murders had been fast and furious police had also been very busy and had been concentrating their efforts on the Weaver lake area. As is common in a case like this all known criminals are looked at and one such criminal was Clifford Raymond Olson.
Olson was a criminal with a varied past, he had a total of 94 previous convictions ranging from fraud to armed robbery and even rape. He was forty two years old and was married with a baby son. They lived on the outskirts of Vancouver and the police decided to keep an eye on him. Even so in late July he was responsible for the murder of Louise Chartrand and Terri Lynn. He also murdered a German tourist by the name of Sigrun Arnd.
Olson was apprehended whilst trying to pick up two girls in his van. A search was carried out on the vehicle and a notebook was found which contained the address of Judy Kozma, one of his earlier victims. Olson was taken into custody and charged with eleven murders although it was suspected that he may have been responsible for more than this. He eventually pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced by Justice Mckay to eleven concurrent life sentences.
