Clifford Olson killed 11 children and young people in and around Vancouver over eight and a half months, from November 1980 to the end of July 1981. The youngest was Simon Partington, who was nine. The oldest was Sigrun Arnd, a visitor from West Germany whom police identified as 18. Three were boys and eight were girls. Several were hitchhiking or looking for work, and Olson, then 41 and a stocky, bushy-haired house renovator from Coquitlam, offered rides, jobs and drink. He had been released from prison, on mandatory supervision, in September 1980.
He was arrested on August 12, 1981, on Vancouver Island, after police who were watching him saw him pick up two hitchhikers. In January 1982 he pleaded guilty to 11 counts of first-degree murder and received 11 concurrent life sentences. Days later the public learned that police and the British Columbia attorney general had agreed to pay $100,000, held in trust for his wife and infant son, for his help in finding the bodies. The payment, and the questions about how the police had handled the disappearances, made the case one of the most argued-over in Canadian legal history. For the next 30 years, until he died of cancer in a Quebec prison in 2011, Olson used court applications, letters and parole hearings to stay in the news, and the victims' families went to every hearing.
Olson was born in Vancouver on January 1, 1940, one of four children of a milkman, the Globe and Mail reported. The Boston Globe described his father as a milk truck driver. He grew up in Richmond, the suburb south of Vancouver. As a boy he was known as a bully and a petty thief. He also took up boxing, and his coach remembered him as a "good boy." He left school after Grade 8.
At 17 he was jailed for break and enter; the Canadian Press gives his first sentence, in 1957, as nine months for burglary. It was the start of a life spent mostly in custody. Over the next 25 years he was out of prison for only about four, the Globe and Mail found, and he collected more than 90 convictions. The Boston Globe put the number of his arrests at 83, from the age of 17 until his last arrest at 41, for burglary, theft, forgery and armed robbery among other offenses. He escaped at least six times, the Canadian Press reported; the Globe and Mail counted seven escapes. Herb Reynett, the last warden of the old B.C. Penitentiary, said Olson was so disliked by other prisoners that he was "protected against the protected." At times he worked as a police informant, and the Boston Globe reported that what he learned about policing helped him avoid capture once the federal police began to track him.
He was released from prison for the last time on September 7, 1980, on mandatory supervision. He presented himself as a churchgoer while working as a con man and thief, according to the Globe and Mail. In January 1980 he had met Joan Hale, who would bear his only child; she told a court years later that she had met him that month. They married on May 15, 1981, in the middle of the killings.
Christine Weller was 12. On November 17, 1980, she was riding her bicycle home in Surrey when she disappeared. Police did not at first treat her disappearance as suspicious, the Canadian Press reported. Her body was found on Christmas Day along the Fraser River dikes in Richmond. She had been stabbed and showed signs of strangulation. Olson later pleaded guilty to her murder; she was the first of the 11.
Nearly five months passed before the next child disappeared. When the killings resumed, they came quickly.
Colleen Daignault, 13, lived in Surrey. She disappeared on April 16, 1981. Her body was not found for about five months; in early September 1981 searchers were still looking for her, United Press International reported. The Globe and Mail gives her full name as Colleen Marian Daignault.
Daryn Todd Johnsrude was 16. He was from Saskatoon, in Saskatchewan, and had come to Vancouver for what was meant to be a two-day visit. He disappeared from a shopping mall in late April; the Canadian Press gives the date as April 21 in one account and April 22 in another. His body was found on May 2, 1981. Daryn's mother, Sharon Rosenfeldt, and his stepfather, Gary Rosenfeldt, became the most visible of the families in the years that followed. "Daryn was a real live person, a young boy who deserved to live," his mother said on CTV in 2010.
On May 19, 1981, four days after Olson's wedding, 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner of Langley was hitchhiking home from her boyfriend's house. Olson picked her up and offered her work cleaning windows, the Canadian Press reported. She was killed in nearby woods. Her remains lay in the Fraser Valley bush; she was still among the missing when UPI reported on the search in early September 1981.
Ada Anita Court was 13. On June 21, 1981, she had been babysitting in the apartment complex where Olson lived and was waiting for a bus when she disappeared, according to the Canadian Press and CTV British Columbia. Her body was found two months later. Her sister Trudy Court went on to face Olson at his parole hearings for 30 years.
Simon Partington was nine and lived in Surrey. On July 2, 1981, he was riding his bicycle to a friend's house when he disappeared. Until then police had classified the missing young people as runaways, the Canadian Press reported. Simon's disappearance was the first they acknowledged as foul play.
Five days later, on July 7, Olson was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl. That case was unrelated to the disappearances, and he was not linked to them at the time. The charge did not keep him in custody.
Judy Kozma was 14. She was abducted on July 9, 1981. Olson gave her liquor and drugs before killing her. He then left with his family on a vacation of nearly two weeks. Her body was found in a wooded area on July 25, 1981.
Her brother Peter was 16 when she disappeared. He said nothing publicly for 30 years. When he learned in 2011 that Olson was dying, he told CTV British Columbia that he and his sister had been close because both played sports, and that "she was kind of like me." Her murder, he said, "destroyed our family."
When Olson came back from the vacation, he killed four young people in eight days.
Raymond King Jr. was 15. On July 23, 1981, he was at a youth employment centre looking for work when Olson lured him away with the promise of a job. Olson beat him, and his body was left at a remote campground. His father, Raymond King of Maple Ridge, became one of the families' plainest speakers. "It will close some doors," he said in 2011, when he heard that Olson was dying. "At least he'll be out of our face."
Sigrun Charlotte Elisabeth Arnd was from Weinheim, in what was then West Germany, and was visiting Canada. Police gave her age as 18 when they identified her in September 1981, using dental charts sent by her dentist in Germany. She disappeared on July 25, 1981, and her absence was not noticed until Olson confessed, the Canadian Press reported. Two days later Olson cashed her traveller's cheques at a bank in Hope, the same day he killed another teenage girl. Her body was found in late August in a cranberry bog in Richmond, near where two other victims had been found a day earlier, according to RCMP Inspector Larry Proke.
Terri Lyn Carson was 15. She disappeared on July 27, 1981. Olson strangled her and left her body in woods along the Fraser River.
Louise Marie Chartrand was 17. On July 30, 1981, she was on her way to her night job as a waitress when Olson abducted her. He drove her to an area near Whistler, killed her and buried her in a shallow grave. Hours earlier, according to the Canadian Press, RCMP investigators had met Olson and offered him money to act as an informant on unsolved murders.
The 11 killings took place in several police jurisdictions around Greater Vancouver, some policed by the RCMP and some by municipal forces. Ian Mulgrew, a columnist who wrote a book on the case, Final Payoff, has said that Olson moved between jurisdictions in choosing his victims and took advantage of poor communication between the RCMP and city police, the Boston Globe reported. Five of the young people were killed in the summer of 1981 while Olson was supposed to be under RCMP surveillance, the same paper said. The Canadian Press, in a 2011 review, noted that police had met him hours before one of the killings and that calls for an independent inquiry were ignored.
Police said years later that the frustration of the Olson investigation led to a new computer system for tracking violent offenders, the Canadian Press reported in 2011. CBC News also listed a police tracking system for violent crimes among the changes that came out of the case.
On August 12, 1981, police surveillance officers saw Olson pick up two young hitchhikers on Vancouver Island, and he was arrested. Maclean's later reported that he was drinking with them, and that they may have been his next victims. The Globe and Mail places the arrest near Port Alberni; Maclean's, in 2006, places the pickup near Nanaimo. At the time UPI reported that he had been arrested on impaired driving and breaking-and-entering charges.
Kozma's address book was found in his vehicle, the North Shore News reported. He was charged with her murder; the Canadian Press dates the charge to August 18, and the Globe and Mail says it came two days after the arrest. He was also charged with indecent assault in a separate, unrelated case.
Police had little hard evidence connecting him to the other missing young people, and most of them had not been found. According to the North Shore News, RCMP officer Fred Maile showed Olson posters of missing children during questioning, and Olson pointed to eight of the faces.
What happened next became the most controversial part of the case. The Canadian Encyclopedia records that the attorney general of British Columbia, Allan Williams, agreed to a proposal made by Olson himself: $100,000 would be held in trust for Olson's wife and infant son, and in return Olson would help find six bodies that were still missing and provide information on four that had already been found. Olson insisted that the money go to his wife, the Globe and Mail reported.
Sources differ on how the $100,000 was broken down. The Globe and Mail says the RCMP agreed to pay $30,000 for information on the four bodies recovered before his arrest and $10,000 for each further body or site he helped them find. United Press Canada, reporting in January 1982, said officials had paid $10,000 for each of seven bodies and $30,000 for information leading to the recovery of stolen goods. All accounts agree on the total and on the trust for his wife and son.
The arrangement worked as police had hoped. Olson led them to the remaining bodies. In the last days of August 1981, five bodies were recovered over three days, and police said that was the result of information they had received, UPI reported at the time. Inspector Proke denied a report that an underworld informant had tipped them off. Searchers were still combing the forest near Agassiz for the last two missing girls, Colleen Daignault and Sandra Wolfsteiner. The Crown prosecutor, John Hall, said wild animals might have carried off remains, and some might never be found. At the RCMP's request, FBI agents in Seattle checked records in Oregon, Washington and California for similar crimes.
By early September 1981 Olson faced nine counts of first-degree murder. Eight of them had been laid on a single day, 11 days after the Kozma charge. He was ordered to undergo a 30-day psychiatric assessment.
Olson's trial opened on January 11, 1982. He faced 10 counts of first-degree murder, and he pleaded not guilty to the charges read. Within three days he changed his plea and admitted all 11 killings, pleading guilty to 11 counts of first-degree murder, the Canadian Press and the Globe and Mail reported.
Justice H.C. McKay sentenced him to 11 concurrent life terms with no eligibility for parole for 25 years, and recommended that he never be released. Because there was no trial, much of the evidence and of the police investigation was never made public, the Canadian Press noted.
On January 14, 1982, days after the pleas, news reports revealed the "cash-for-bodies" arrangement. Attorney General Williams at first denied knowing of any payment, then acknowledged it and defended it as the best way to close the case, according to United Press Canada and the Canadian Press. In Ottawa, Walter Baker, a Conservative MP, said the payment was possibly illegal and should be investigated. "That a large sum of money be paid on a per unit basis for a confession to a violent criminal act is an odious precedent," he said.
The Canadian Encyclopedia describes a bitter national controversy over whether a criminal should benefit from his crimes and whether police should pay for information, with concern that such payments could create professional witnesses. The Supreme Court of Canada had held in R v Palmer and Palmer (1979) that paying for evidence was legal. The Olson case led to calls for attorneys general to set ethical guidelines for such payments.
In 1984 the families of seven of the victims sued, asking the courts to declare the trust fraudulent, the Globe and Mail reported. They argued that the trust had been set up to defeat their rightful claims for damages against Olson, whom they called the true owner of the money.
At the trial before Justice William Trainor of the B.C. Supreme Court, Joan Olson testified about her marriage. She said she had met Olson in January 1980 and married him in May 1981, and that about a week after the wedding he had attacked her with a knife in their apartment. She said he had spent her savings of $60,000 from a previous divorce. She described going to see him in jail after he was charged with Judy Kozma's death, and said she had known from his eyes that he had killed Simon Partington. The families' lawyer, David Gibbons, pointed to a television interview she gave in February 1982, a month after the pleas, in which she had described Olson as a "very kind" man who loved his baby. Former attorney general Williams testified that he had been shocked by the idea of paying for Olson's information and had agreed to the payment only because police told him a conviction was unlikely without it. The Castlegar News carried the testimony.
Justice Trainor ruled that the families could claim against the trust money. The British Columbia Court of Appeal reversed that decision in March 1986, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused leave to appeal, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia and the Globe and Mail. The money went to Olson's wife and son, the Boston Globe reported.
Olson was sent to Kingston Penitentiary in February 1982 and held in segregation. He spent much of his time on letters, phone calls and legal applications. In January 1989 the Supreme Court of Canada heard and dismissed his appeal in a case challenging how he was held and seeking a transfer to a British Columbia prison. The Supreme Court of Ontario had dismissed his application in March 1987, and the Ontario Court of Appeal had dismissed his appeal that September. At the Supreme Court hearing, a federal prison spokesman said Olson shared a cell block with about 30 other prisoners kept apart for their own safety and confined to their cells 23 hours a day. Sharon Rosenfeldt stood up in tears during the hearing. "You're talking about sanity! You want to know what a lifetime of this is like?" she said.
In 1992 guards found a stolen handcuff key hidden on his body during what authorities treated as an escape attempt, the Globe and Mail and the Canadian Press reported. He was moved to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and in 1997 to the Special Handling Unit near Montreal, the super-maximum unit at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines. Plexiglas was installed in his cell.
He brought many challenges under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, some described as frivolous, including a claim that the Plexiglas was cruel and unusual punishment, the Globe and Mail reported. He took university correspondence courses, earning marks in the 80s and 90s, and submitted poems and stories to contests; Maclean's reported that he was a finalist in a United States poetry contest with a plagiarized entry. He wrote to more than 100 correspondents. He sent obscene drawings and harassing letters to victims' families, according to the journalist Peter Worthington, and offered police information on unsolved crimes in exchange for privileges. A 1993 magazine story by Worthington led Corrections Canada to bar Olson from contact with the media.
His conditions became a political issue. In the House of Commons in March 1997, a Reform MP, Myron Thompson, complained that Olson had an electronic typewriter, a colour television and movie channels while his victims had nothing. The government's House leader, Herb Gray, answered that the idea that Olson lived in luxury was wrong and accused Reform of playing into Olson's hands.
Under Section 745 of the Criminal Code, the "faint hope" clause added in 1976 when capital punishment was abolished, a person serving life for murder could ask a jury after 15 years to reduce the time before parole eligibility. In January 1997 Parliament amended the clause to bar people convicted of multiple murders after that date, to require a judge to screen applications, and to require unanimous jury approval. The changes could not apply to Olson retroactively, federal lawyers concluded, so his application went ahead under the old rules, which needed only eight of 12 jurors.
The hearing opened in August 1997 in Surrey, B.C. Olson was flown from Quebec on an RCMP jet. A wall of bullet- and bomb-resistant glass separated him from the public gallery. The victims' families paid their own travel and lodging. Gary Rosenfeldt called the proceeding "insanity, a circus" and said he believed Olson wanted to smirk at the families. Olson represented himself. He made claims about other bodies and said he knew he would never be paroled. Two psychologists assessed him, and one testified that there was "no safe way" he could be released, Maclean's reported. The Crown prosecutor, Joe Bellows, read the families' victim impact statements and needed a recess to compose himself.
The hearing lasted four days. The jury took about 15 minutes to reject the application, according to CBC News and the Canadian Press. The families cheered, and Olson waved and grinned at them through the glass, Maclean's reported. CBC News later reported that public outrage over the hearing led Ottawa to change the Criminal Code so that serial killers no longer had an automatic right to a review after 15 years. The faint-hope clause itself was repealed in 2011, CBC reported.
Olson became eligible to apply for full parole after 25 years. His first National Parole Board hearing was held on July 18, 2006, at the federal prison at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, north of Montreal. Members of at least seven victims' families planned to attend. Olson told the three-member panel that he was not asking for parole and that the board had no jurisdiction over him, and he left for his cell before the decision was announced. The board deliberated for about half an hour and denied parole. Panel member Jacques Letendre said Olson was a sexual sadist and a narcissist who presented "a high risk and a psychopathic risk." He added, "If released, he will kill again."
Under the law Olson could apply again every two years. A later hearing was cancelled abruptly, CTV reported in 2010. He appeared before the board again on November 30, 2010, aged 70. He said he did not expect parole but wanted to use his right to a hearing, and he presented an affidavit as proof that he would not apply again. "This is the last one," he said. "Never again." A newspaper columnist who had come to assist him told the hearing he had nothing to say in Olson's defence. Parole was denied. Sharon Rosenfeldt, who had promised in 1982 to attend every proceeding involving Olson, was there. "I can't say it gets any easier," she said, "but it is a necessity for myself and my family to be here always to represent Daryn."
In March 2010 reports revealed that Olson had been collecting Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement payments since turning 65 in 2005, more than $1,100 a month, the Canadian Press reported. He had boasted about the payments to a Toronto columnist. On June 1, 2010, the federal government introduced legislation to suspend such benefits for prisoners until their release, and the change took effect early in 2011. The Globe and Mail identifies the law as Bill C-31.
On September 21, 2011, the commissioner of Corrections Canada told Sharon Rosenfeldt that Olson's cancer had spread through his body and that he was not expected to live to the end of the month. He had been moved from the maximum-security prison to a hospital in Laval, Quebec, CTV British Columbia reported. "There's no blueprint for how I'm supposed to be feeling," she said.
Olson died on September 30, 2011, aged 71. Serge Abergel, the Correctional Service of Canada's spokesman for Quebec, said he died in the health care centre attached to the Regional Reception Centre, a federal penitentiary at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines; CBC News described the place as the Archambault hospital centre, part of the same prison complex. He died of cancer that had spread. The Correctional Service said he would be buried at an undisclosed location, and CTV British Columbia reported that he would be buried rather than cremated so that his DNA would be preserved.
The families spoke the same day. "I don't have to think about it anymore," Raymond King said. Trudy Court called her tears "tears of happiness," and said that the justice system could not deliver justice for the children but life had. "We can finally get some peace," she told CTV. Sharon Rosenfeldt said she felt relief but was unsure whether it would really be over. Despite the changes in the law, she told CBC, there was "no closure," and the loss remained "an open wound that goes on and on."
The parents of Olson's victims formed a lobby group that helped pass federal victims' rights laws in the 1980s, giving victims a voice in court and adding victim services units to many police departments, the Boston Globe reported. Gary and Sharon Rosenfeldt helped found Victims of Violence, which worked on missing children and parole law; Gary Rosenfeldt had died by 2011.
The Globe and Mail and CBC News list the changes the case helped bring about: support for victims' representation at trials and parole hearings, a missing children's registry, the 1997 amendment barring multiple murderers from the faint-hope process and the clause's later repeal, longer gaps between parole hearings for multiple murderers, a police tracking system for violent crimes, and the end of old-age benefits for federal prisoners. The criminologist Neil Boyd of Simon Fraser University said in 2011 that Olson's crimes were unusual even among first-degree murders. John Hill, Olson's lawyer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said Olson was largely responsible for ending most lifers' chances of early release under the 15-year clause. The case also renewed debate over the death penalty, less than a decade after Parliament abolished it.
Proven by final judgment: the first-degree murders of the 11 children and young people, by Olson's guilty pleas in January 1982.
Claimed, never proven: Olson repeatedly said he had killed many more people. He told Peter Worthington that he had killed 69 people in the United States, mostly teenage runaways, and later raised the number to 97. He claimed three killings in Saskatchewan; in August 1996 the RCMP took him to eastern Saskatchewan to find the graves, but he could not orient himself and no bodies were found. At the 1997 hearing he claimed between 143 and 168 killings in Canada and the United States, which police investigated and largely dismissed, Maclean's reported. In 2010 he spoke of 80 to 100 killings and claimed advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He also told a parole panel that he had a deal with the United States attorney general over information related to those attacks. None of these claims has been confirmed.
Dangerous offender: CBC News reported in 2011 that he had been declared a dangerous offender. Other reports do not mention such a designation; his sentence was the life term imposed in 1982.
Details that vary between sources: Sigrun Arnd's age (18 in UPI's 1981 report and the Canadian Press sketches; 14 in the Canadian Press timeline); Daryn Johnsrude's age (16 in most reports; 15 in one Canadian Press timeline) and the day he disappeared (April 21 or 22); where Olson was arrested (near Port Alberni or near Nanaimo); when he was charged with Judy Kozma's murder (two days after his arrest, or August 18); what Ada Court was doing when she disappeared (waiting for a bus after babysitting, or going to see a friend); and how the $100,000 was broken down. Some reports describe the life sentences as consecutive; the court imposed them concurrently.
January 1, 1940: Clifford Robert Olson is born in Vancouver; he grows up in Richmond, B.C.
1957: first jail sentence, nine months for burglary.
1957 to 1980: in custody for all but about four years; more than 90 convictions and at least six escapes.
January 1980: meets Joan Hale.
September 7, 1980: released from prison on mandatory supervision.
November 17, 1980: Christine Weller, 12, disappears in Surrey; she is found on Christmas Day.
April 16, 1981: Colleen Daignault, 13, disappears in Surrey.
April 21 or 22, 1981: Daryn Johnsrude, 16, disappears; he is found on May 2.
May 15, 1981: Olson marries Joan Hale.
May 19, 1981: Sandra Wolfsteiner, 16, disappears.
June 21, 1981: Ada Court, 13, disappears.
July 2, 1981: Simon Partington, 9, disappears in Surrey.
July 7, 1981: Olson is charged in an unrelated sexual assault case.
July 9, 1981: Judy Kozma, 14, is abducted; she is found on July 25.
July 23, 1981: Raymond King Jr., 15, is lured from a youth employment centre.
July 25, 1981: Sigrun Arnd disappears.
July 27, 1981: Terri Lyn Carson, 15, disappears.
July 30, 1981: Louise Chartrand, 17, is abducted on her way to work.
August 12, 1981: Olson is arrested on Vancouver Island.
August 1981: charged with Judy Kozma's murder; agreement for $100,000 in trust for his wife and son; he leads police to the remaining bodies.
Early September 1981: faces nine counts of first-degree murder; Sigrun Arnd is identified.
January 11, 1982: trial opens on 10 counts; within three days he pleads guilty to 11 counts of first-degree murder and receives 11 concurrent life terms.
January 14, 1982: the payment is reported.
February 1982: sent to Kingston Penitentiary.
1984: families of seven victims sue over the trust.
March 1986: the B.C. Court of Appeal rules against the families; the Supreme Court of Canada later refuses leave.
January 24, 1989: the Supreme Court of Canada dismisses his appeal over his prison conditions.
1992: a handcuff key is found on him; he is later moved to Prince Albert.
August 1996: RCMP take him to Saskatchewan to look for graves he claimed; none are found.
January 1997: Parliament amends the faint-hope clause; the change does not apply to him.
August 1997: faint-hope hearing in Surrey; the jury rejects his application in about 15 minutes. He is moved to the Special Handling Unit in Quebec.
July 18, 2006: parole denied at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines.
March 2010: his old-age benefits are reported; on June 1 legislation is introduced to suspend them.
November 30, 2010: parole denied; he says he will never apply again.
September 21, 2011: families are told he is dying of cancer in a hospital in Laval.
September 30, 2011: Olson dies, aged 71, in the health care centre of the federal prison complex at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec.