Clifford Robert Olson

Clifford Robert Olson (born January 1, 1940 in Vancouver , British Columbia , † September 30, 2011 in Québec , Province of Québec ) was a Canadian serial killer .

biography

Early life

Olson was one of four children of Clifford and Leona Olson. He grew the first five years of life in Edmonton ( Alberta on) before the family in 1945 moved back to the West Coast. He was a bed-wetter in his childhood and was therefore mocked, which Olson compensated early on by torturing and killing animals.

In 1956, after graduating from school, which Olson barely achieved, he began training with a truck driver company . In 1957, at the age of 17, he was arrested for the first time for burglary . Over the next 24 years, 94 further arrests followed, among other things for possession of stolen property, possession of a handgun, forgery of documents , tax evasion , driving under the influence of alcohol, armed robbery and escape from prison. In 1980, just before the start of his series of murders, 40-year-old Olson had spent no more than four years of his adult life. He had escaped prisons seven times and continued his actions.

Deeds

On November 17, 1980, 12-year-old Christine Anne Weller disappeared in Surrey . She had run away from home, so her parents did not file a missing person report with the police until a week after she disappeared. This favored Olson's act, who picked up the girl in Vancouver and murdered her in the same way as his next victims: he offered Weller a well-paid job and wanted to seal the contract with a drink. But the drink contained chloral hydrate , so that Weller passed out quickly. He drove with her to a forest near Vancouver, raped her and killed her with 19 stab wounds. Her body was only discovered on December 25, 1980.

On April 16, 1981, five months after his first act, Olson struck again. He beat his victim, 13-year-old Colleen Marian Daignault, with a hammer after she was raped. Her body was only discovered on September 17, 1981 by a walker in a forest near Surrey.

Olson committed his first murder of a boy a few days later, on April 22, 1981. It was 16-year-old Daryn Todd Johnsrude, who spent the Easter weekend in Coquitlam with his mother and siblings . He had left the hotel briefly to buy cigarettes, but was never seen alive again. His body, also shattered by a hammer, was discovered on May 2, 1981 near a levee near Deroche, east of Vancouver. On May 19, 1981, 16-year-old Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner became Olson's victim, who got into the serial killer's car while trying to hitchhike from Surrey to Langley . She was killed near Chilliwack Lake .

A few weeks later, on June 21, 1981, Olson murdered 13-year-old Ada Anita Court near Burnaby . She is the only victim that Olson presumably selected purposefully and not randomly, as Court's older brother and sister-in-law lived in the same apartment building as Clifford Olson and one has to assume that the victim and the perpetrator ran into each other. Her body was only found two months later, in mid-August 1981, near Weaver Lake . Olson found his youngest victim in the 9-year-old Simon Patrick James Partington, whom he murdered on July 2, 1981. He had been kidnapped just a few blocks from Christine Weller's home.

Now the time intervals in which Olson committed his deeds were getting shorter and shorter. Just one week after Partington's murder, on July 9, 1981, he murdered 14-year-old Judy Kozma, whom he spoke to at a phone booth and lured into his car. On July 23, 1981, he met 15-year-old Raymond Lawrence King at a youth center, who was inquiring about a vacation job. Promising to get King a great job, he lured the boy into his car and hit him with a stone at a campsite. On July 25, 1981, Olson murdered the only victim who did not come from Canada: the 18-year-old German tourist Sigrun Arnd from Weinheim (Baden-Württemberg). On July 27, 1981, he murdered 15-year-old Terri-Lynn Carson and three days later 17-year-old Louise Simonne Marie Evelyn Chartrand.

In total, Clifford Robert Olson murdered eleven people between the ages of nine and eighteen in a period of eight months.

family

Olson led a double life all this time. On May 15, 1981, he married Joan Hale, a waitress in a pub, who was by then a three-time murderer. Just a month earlier, in April 1981, their son Clifford Olson III had been born. His wife had never heard of the murders. On the contrary, in order to hide them from his family, he had financed them a vacation near Los Angeles in July 1981 .

Arrest and investigation

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , which questioned Olson about one of the murders in early July 1981, but abandoned him for lack of evidence, followed him around the clock from then on. At times, up to 200 investigators worked to uncover the series of murders.

When Olson kidnapped two hitchhikers to Vancouver Island in early August 1981 , but they managed to escape at the last second, the police struck and arrested Olson on August 12, 1981 on Vancouver Island.

The case caused a stir in Canada in 1981 because of numerous aspects. At first it was about the crimes themselves, which couldn't be more terrible. On the other hand, it was about the police investigation work. The officers questioned Olson, but let him go again, after which Olson was able to murder at least six other people.

But the biggest stir attracted Olson's offer to the investigative authorities. Since many bodies had not yet been found at that time, Olson offered to lead the authorities to the respective places, but for a payment of CAD 10,000 per body. The money, a total of 100,000 Canadian dollars, was to be transferred to his wife and young son.

Despite protests and outrages from relatives of the victims, the attorney general agreed to the deal. The relatives later tried to claim the money back in lawsuits, but to this day without success. The civil court upheld the legality of the trade.

Clifford Olson's trial ended on January 11, 1982 in the Vancouver Supreme Court. The verdict, eleven life imprisonment, also caused outrage, as these should not be served one after the other, but in parallel. This meant that Olson was able to file an application for dismissal in 2007 after 25 years. Although Olson tried to reduce his sentence in court, he failed.

Shortly after the prison sentence began, Olson hit the headlines again after sending obscene letters and drawings to the dead children's parents.

literature

• Peter Murakami and Julia Murakami: Lexicon of Serial Killers. 450 case studies of a pathological type of killing. Ullstein Tb, Munich March 2000, 639 pages, ISBN 3-548-35935-3

Web links

• Crime Library (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Clifford Olson, Canadian Serial Killer, Is Dead at 71. In: The New York Times. October 4, 2011, accessed February 8, 2013 .