CLIFFORD OLSON
By the age of 17, Clifford Olson (b. 1940) had amassed 83 convictions including possession of stolen property, possession of firearms, forgery, obtaining property by false pretences, fraud, parole violation, theft, burglary, robbery and escaping from lawful custody. By the age of 41, he had spent only four years of his adult life as a free man. He was a petty but persistent offender.
It was late afternoon on 17 November 1980 when 12-year-old Christine Weller was out cycling in one of the outer suburbs of Vancouver. She had been with friends in a local shopping centre and was on her way home. Sadly, she never arrived. On Christmas Day, a man walking his dog along a dike found her brutalised body at the back of a refuse dump. Christine had multiple stab wounds in the chest and abdomen and had been throttled with a belt. Christine’s death would turn out to be the first in a series of murders of at least 10 more youngsters of both sexes between the ages nine and 18, all from the same area.
Thursday, 16 April 1981 was the date of the second murder. Colleen Marian Daignault, a 13-year-old girl, had told her grandmother that she would be home about 4pm, after spending the night at a girlfriend’s house. Around 1pm, while she waited at a bus stop, a car pulled up beside her. She was abducted and was never seen alive again. For some reason, the police treated her as a runaway until 17 September, when her skull and skeletal remains were found in a forest near the American border. Just five days after Colleen’s disappearance, a 16-year-old boy went missing.
Daryn Todd Johnsrude disappeared from a shopping centre on Wednesday, 22 April 1981. On 2 May, Daryn’s battered body was found crumpled at the bottom of a rocky embankment. He had died from repeated hammer blows to the head. The police were at this point unsure whether the three murders were connected as the ages and sexes of the victims had varied.
On Tuesday, 19 May 1981, Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner, a pretty, hazel-eyed brunette, went to visit her boyfriend for lunch. The sixteen-year-old made her way to the highway to hitchhike to where her boyfriend worked. She was seen getting into a silver-grey, two-door car driven by a male. Her body was later found hidden in dense bush. She had been hit over the head and her skull crushed. But again, the police were left with no major clues to work with.
On the morning of Sunday, 21 June 1981, Ada Court became the next victim. Ada caught a bus to meet her boyfriend but never reached her destination. That night, a witness saw a man with a pick-up truck bending over a female who was slumped on the floor. The witness went over and, on speaking to the male, realised something was wrong and decided to flee. However, Olson knew he had been seen and chased after the witness, who managed to elude him. Olson then disposed of the body deep in the forest. It would later come to light that the killer’s vehicle had been stuck in the mud at least twice while disposing of two bodies. In one case, he even called a tow truck. For some reason, though, the witness didn’t report this incident to the police for almost two months.
The turning point in the case came with the disappearance of nine-year-old Simon Partington on Thursday, 2 July 1981. He disappeared only a short distance from where the first victim, Christine Weller, had last been seen alive. Sadly, he was to be the sixth victim of the killer: he was strangled. By now, there was a public outcry with the disappearance of so many young children. However, all the media attention did not deter the killer, and on Thursday, 9 July 1981, Judy Kozma, a 15-year-old girl, became his next victim. She disappeared on the way to an interview.
On Thursday, 23 July 1981, Raymond King became another victim of the killer. Two days later, on 25 July, Judy Kozma’s body was found. She had been raped and strangled. The frequency of the killings had now increased. On that same day, Sigrun Arnd, a young German student, disappeared. She was battered to death with a hammer. Two days later, on Monday, 27 July 1981, 15-year-old Terri Lyn Carson also went missing. She was raped and strangled.
During the enquiries the police conducted, one name kept being mentioned – Clifford Olson – but at the time he was just one of many names the police had been given. They did at one point put Olson under surveillance, but lifted this when they believed he knew he was being watched, and they did not have any evidence against him. The police then came up with a simple plan – to speak to Olson informally as part of the overall enquiry. This conversation would be secretly recorded and an offer of a reward mentioned for any information about the murders or disappearances. If Olson was the murderer, and he thought he could make some money from that fact, it was possible that he might go back to the crime scenes in order to retrieve some physical evidence. Or, if he was not the murderer or knew who the murderer was, then maybe he would tell the police. Out of the blue, Olson said he wanted to be paid $3,000 a month. In exchange, he claimed he would provide information about the disappearances.
On 30 July, the killer struck again, abducting and murdering 17-year-old Louise Chartrand. Her body was later found in a shallow grave. She had died from multiple head injuries caused by her skull being smashed with a blunt object. The police began following Olson yet again. This was not easy, as he appeared to adopt anti-surveillance techniques. However, they persisted and were soon rewarded. They followed Olson, who took the ferry over to Vancouver Island and, after burgling two houses, pulled over to the side of the road to pick up two young women hitchhiking. The police continued to follow the car, which turned onto a dirt road, and decided to make their move. Police cars pulled across the entrance to the road to block the car’s retreat. Further down the road, into open country, they could see three people standing beside the car passing a bottle around, and they could hear Olson. They moved closer. Olson was heard telling one of the women to take a walk. Olson spotted the police emerging from the undergrowth, sprinted back to the car, and roared back the way he had come, but he was arrested at the roadblock. The women were confused, but safe. Olson claimed they had only stopped so he could relieve himself.
The police could only charge Olson with impaired and dangerous driving, but they impounded his rental car and searched it. They found a green address book with the name of one of the victims, Judy Kozma.
A decision was then taken to arrest Olson for the murders. When he was arrested, only three bodies had been discovered and identified. The police did not yet know exactly how many children had been murdered. He was later charged with the murder of Judy Kozma and he made a full confession to this murder. He then shocked police by wanting to make a financial deal with them, which he called ‘Cash for Bodies’, involving the other disappearances and murders. He offered to give officers the details and locations of 11 bodies in return for a payment of $100,000. The first body he would give up as a show of good faith. The police agreed to this but it was not made public at the time in order not to prejudice his right to a fair trial. This deal was met with a mixed reaction among the police.
In a period of nine months, Olson killed 11 times. There were also four other murders for which he was suspected but not tried. The fact that he killed both girls and boys hindered the investigation. In the 1980s, the phenomenon of serial killers was poorly understood. Police relied too heavily on their experience in dealing with paedophiles, wrongly assuming that cases were not linked because the victims were of different sexes and ages. It is now known that paedophiles who prey on pre-pubescent children usually have no gender preference, while those preying on older children focus on one gender or the other, not both.
Clifford Olson was brought to trial on 11 January 1982. He initially pleaded not guilty but after three days changed his plea to guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be granted parole. The families of the victims took legal steps to try to recover the $100,000, which had gone to Olson’s wife, whom he had married in May 1981 and who had also fathered his child. After lengthy legal arguments, she was allowed to keep the money.
In Canada, people convicted of first-degree murder are eligible for parole after a maximum of 25 years. Olson reached this limit and applied for parole
on 18 July 2006, but was denied it. Under Canadian law, Olson is now entitled to make a case for parole every two years. However, parole was not to be, and he died of cancer in September 2011 aged 71.
ROBERT WILLIAM PICKTON, AKA THE PIG FARM KILLER
Between 1983 and 2001, almost 60 women disappeared from a drug-ridden neighbourhood of Vancouver. It is believed that most were either addicts or prostitutes. During that period of time, Robert Pickton (b. 1949) lured these women to his pig farm in Port Coquitlam, near Vancouver. There it is alleged that he killed them, butchered the bodies and then disposed of the remains both on the farm and at an animal waste rendering plants to which he had access. The police were not to discover the extent of his killings until much later, as many of the women who disappeared had no families and most were never officially reported as missing. Vancouver police began their review of missing women by going even further back to 40 unsolved disappearances of local women, dating from 1971. They came from all walks of life and all parts of Vancouver, but the search for a pattern narrowed the area of disappearances to the same part of Vancouver.
Throughout the enquiry, many names came to the notice of the police. Among these were the Pickton brothers. The pig farm where they lived had been used for illegal raves and parties frequented by local prostitutes. Robert Pickton also had a conviction for attacking a woman with a knife at his farm and was known to visit the area where prostitutes plied their trade. Despite this, police chose not to keep him under closer scrutiny. The worrying factor for the police was that if these missing women had been murdered, where were the bodies, as none had come to light?
On 7 February 2002, the police finally got the break they were looking for. Robert Pickton had been arrested on a charge of possessing illegal firearms and his farm was searched thoroughly by a forensic team. As a result of DNA evidence they found at the farm, he was re-arrested on 22 February, this time facing two counts of first-degree murder of two missing persons, Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson, who had vanished three years previously. Syringes linked by DNA to Abotsway were located in the trailer, as were inhalers with her name on in a rubbish bin outside the trailer. The heads, hands and feet of Abotsway were found in April 2002 in buckets that were inside a freezer in a workshop. Wilson’s skull, hands and feet were found on 5 May 2002.
Pickton had made no admissions and further DNA evidence from the farm identified three more missing women, Jacqueline McDonell, Heather Bottomley and Dianne Rock, adding three more murder charges to the list. A sixth murder charge for another woman, Andrea Joesbury, was filed against Pickton six days later when her head, hands and feet were found in April 2002 in buckets inside a freezer in a workshop.
In the adjacent pig slaughterhouse, jewellery was found in the outbuilding and identified as belonging to Joesbury. A tool mark expert examined various reciprocating saws and blades seized from the building, but he was unable to say conclusively that the blades had been used to cut three bisected human skulls identified as Joesbury, Abotsway and Wilson. A seventh murder charge was filed against Pickton when the jawbone of Brenda Wolfe was found on his farm.
In a motor home on the property, a blood spatter expert deduced that a mattress found inside had been the scene of a major blood-letting event and that marks indicated that something had been dragged from the rear of the vehicle to the front. Forensic experts tested 235,000 items taken from the property, in an effort to collect and identify human DNA.
The public were by now asking difficult questions about the actions of the police. Why had the searches of Pickton’s property in 1997 and 1998 failed to uncover any evidence? More to the point, how could he have abducted and murdered additional victims between 1999 and 2001, when he should have been under police surveillance?
Pickton was charged with four more murders on Wednesday, 2 October 2002, making a total of 15. He indicated his intention to plead not guilty to all charges and a trial date was set for November 2002, but detectives and forensic experts were not finished with their search of the farm. They indicated that it could take up to another year for the full examination to be completed, and the trial date was put back to 2005. As the examination continued, more female victims were linked to Pickton’s farm, making a total of 30 women whose remains have been found there. Some have not been possible to identify. Police found human body parts in freezers used to store unsold meat. They also discovered remains in a wood chipper, with the victims’ bodies turned into pig feed. It was suggested that there was a possibility that the human remains from some of Pickton’s victims may have been mixed with pork meat and processed for human consumption.
The trial of Robert Pickton finally opened in Vancouver on 22 January 2007 when he pleaded not guilty to murdering 26 women. These charges were later reduced from 26 to six by the judge to assist the jury and with regard to the intended length of trial. All 26 women Pickton was charged with killing were on a list of 65 women missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside between 1978 and 2001. The remaining six charges related to the following victims:
Sereena Abotsway, 29, who was reported missing by her stepmother on 22 August 2001. Forensic evidence showed she had been shot with a .22 calibre handgun. Her dismembered head, hands and feet were found in a freezer on 4 April 2002 inside Pickton’s workshop.
Mona Wilson, 26, who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside in November 2001. Her partial remains were found on 4 June 2002 during the Pickton farm search. Her blood was also found in Pickton’s motor home, parked behind his workshop. She also had been shot.
Andrea Joesbury, 22, who was reported missing by her doctor on 5 June 2001. Her dismembered head, hands and feet were found in the same freezer as Abotsway’s remains on 4 April 2002.
Brenda Wolfe, 32, who was last seen on 1 February 1999, but wasn’t reported missing until 25 April 2000. Police found skeletal remains – her jawbone – and five of her teeth in the soil and debris beside the slaughterhouse where Pickton killed and butchered pigs.
Georgina Papin was last seen in March 1999, aged 34. Police found several of her hand bones in the slaughterhouse. DNA testing matched the bones to Papin. A witness would also testify that her body was hanging on a meat hook at the farm and that Pickton was seen skinning the body.
Marnie Frey, aged 25, was reported missing on 30 August 1997. Her partial remains, including a jawbone, were found buried outside the slaughterhouse on 23 August 2002.
It is alleged that all the victims were murdered at Pickton’s pig farm, which came to be known as ‘Piggy Palace’. At the opening of the trial, the jury were told they would hear evidence about what was found on Pickton’s property, including skulls cut in half with hands and feet stuffed inside. The remains of another victim were stuffed in a refuse sack in the bottom of a rubbish bin, and her bloodstained clothing was found in the trailer in which Pickton lived. Part of one victim’s jawbone and teeth were found in the ground beside the slaughterhouse, and a .22 calibre revolver and dildo containing both his and a victim’s DNA were in his laundry room. In a videotaped recording played for the jury, Pickton claimed to have attached the dildo to his weapon as a makeshift silencer. Other items found were boxes of .357 Magnum handgun ammunition, night-vision goggles, two pairs of fox-fur-lined handcuffs, a syringe with blue liquid inside, (later identified as screenwash) and ‘Spanish Fly’, an aphrodisiac.
In addition, the police had videotape of Pickton’s friend Scott Chubb saying that Pickton had told him a good way to kill a female heroin addict was to inject her with screenwash. During interviews, a second tape was played for Pickton, in which an associate named Andrew Bellwood said Pickton mentioned killing prostitutes by handcuffing and strangling them, then bleeding and gutting them before feeding them to pigs. However, defence lawyer Peter Ritchie said the jury should be sceptical of Chubb and Bellwood’s credibility as witnesses.
By this time, the police had obtained witness statements from a friend of Pickton, who stated that he saw Pickton skinning the body of Georgina Papin, who was han
ging on a meat hook at the farm. Other damning testimony came from an undercover police officer who had been put in a cell with Pickton. The officer, who cannot be identified under a court order, told the 12-member jury that he had posed as a man who was facing attempted murder charges and had gained the trust of Robert Pickton during their incarceration in February 2002. Pickton had told the undercover officer that he had killed 49 women and was caught before he could reach his goal of 50. The cell, which they shared, was set up for audio and video recording.
The defence case was formulated around the premise that the prosecution witnesses were not credible – all were drug addicts with previous criminal convictions. The defence also went to great lengths to suggest to the jury that another person had planted the remains of the victims.
The jury retired on 30 November to deliberate on all the charges against Pickton after hearing evidence from 128 witnesses over a 10-month period. On 9 December 2007, the jury returned to court to deliver its verdict. When the foreman of the jury announced the first verdict of not guilty on the charge of the first-degree murder of Sereena Abotsway there were gasps and screams from within the public gallery from relatives of the victims, but these quickly subsided when the foreman then announced they found Pickton guilty of second-degree murder. The jury foreman also announced that Pickton was guilty of second-degree murder for the killings of the five other women: Georgina Papin, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe and Mona Wilson. The verdict reflected the fact that the jury believed Pickton intended to kill the women but that the murders were not planned. A conviction for first-degree murder requires the jury to find that the murders were planned and deliberate.
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 8
