Clifford Olson Victims

Case background and investigation

Between November 1980 and July 1981, eleven children and young people were abducted and killed in the Greater Vancouver area and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. According to the Globe and Mail, the victims were Christine Weller, 12; Colleen Daignault, 13; Daryn Johnsrude, 16; Sandra Wolfsteiner, 16; Ada Court, 13; Simon Partington, 9; Judy Kozma, 14; Raymond King, 15; Sigrun Arnd, 18, a visitor from Germany; Terri Lyn Carson, 15; and Louise Chartrand, 17.

A Canadian Press summary published by Global News records that Christine Weller disappeared on November 17, 1980, while riding her bicycle home in Surrey, and that her body was found in Richmond on Christmas Day. No further victims are recorded until April 1981, when Colleen Daignault and Daryn Johnsrude disappeared within days of each other. Six of the eleven were taken in July 1981, the last of them, Louise Chartrand, on July 30. CBC News reported that several victims were lured with the offer of a job.

Families later said that early reports were not taken seriously. The Globe and Mail reported that Daryn Johnsrude's parents were told he was probably a runaway, and the Canadian Press noted that police had classed earlier disappearances as runaways before acknowledging foul play in the case of nine-year-old Simon Partington.

Clifford Olson, a Coquitlam resident who had spent most of his adult life in prison, was already under suspicion. According to CTV News, he was arrested on August 12, 1981, on Vancouver Island after a surveillance team saw him pick up two young hitchhikers. He was charged with the murder of Judy Kozma. He then reached an agreement with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police under which $100,000 was paid into a trust for his wife and son in return for his leading investigators to the remains of victims, CBC News reported. The Globe and Mail reported that families learned of the arrangement only after the court case, when the prosecutor disclosed it.

In January 1982 Olson pleaded guilty to eleven counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Because the trial ended with the plea, much of the evidence was never made public, according to CTV News. A jury rejected his application for early parole eligibility in 1997, and the National Parole Board refused him parole in July 2006, stating that he presented a high risk. He was refused again in 2010.

The case had lasting effects on Canadian law and practice. Relatives of Daryn Johnsrude founded the group Victims of Violence, and the case contributed to restrictions on, and later repeal of, the so-called faint hope clause. Olson died of cancer on September 30, 2011, aged 71, in a Quebec hospital while still in custody.