That’s Clifford Olson.
A few years ago he devised a way of changing one-cent stamps to look valid to send letters, and got a stern letter from Canada Post warning that this was a federal crime and if he kept it up he was liable to go to prison.
When criminologists and psychiatrists wanted to do research on his case, Olson also applied for funding so he could do research on what made him a serial killer.
Repeatedly, Corrections Canada has prohibited him from contacting relatives of his victims (he says he never has done so) and from contacting the media — a dictum he ignores or bypasses.
- Email Story
- Size A A A
- Report Typo
- Veteran journalist and Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington reveals his talks with infamous serial killer Clifford Olson. Hear from Worthington.
- Play Video
IN DEPTH
For the past 20 years, I’ve been in periodic contact with Clifford Olson, Canada’s most notorious serial killer of 11 young people (he claims over 100) in British Columbia, 1980 and 1981.
It’s been a curious relationship, dating back to around 1989 when he phoned Toronto radio talk show host Arlene Bynon (CHFI) where I used to broadcast commentaries. Arlene conducted several interviews with Olson.
Arlene and I collaborated on a proposed book about Olson, and negotiated a $300,000 advance from a U.S. publisher. The deal fell through because basically the publishers wanted a Ted Bundy-like chase story, while Olson’s story was one in which the police had no idea a serial killer was loose until he confessed, and was paid $10,000 by the RCMP for every body and murder site he took them to.
After getting $100,000, Olson claims the 11th body was a “freebie”.
I spent a summer in the early 1990s visiting and tape-recording interviews with Olson in Kingston Penitentiary. Arlene and I eventually signed over ownership of the manuscript to Bob Shantz, Olson’s lawyer in Maple Ridge, B.C., who later asked me to partner with him. And there the matter rests.
Since his Kingston Pen days, Olson has kept in regular phone contact with me. He has never forgiven Arlene for not visiting him in prison.
From Kingston he was transferred to the penitentiary at Prince Albert, Sask., and more recently to Ste-Anne-des-Plaines in Quebec.
This past January Olson turned 70. Of those 70 years of life, roughly 50 of them have been spent in one prison or another. He is perfectly adjusted to prison life, and functions well, writing poems, filing complaints, active with hordes of pen pals, writing letters to prime ministers and U.S. presidents, making extravagant claims about unsolved murders, and — right now — claiming advance knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
No comments:
Post a Comment