Clifford Olson
Victims
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Colleen Daignault wouldn’t talk to just anybody,
shy as she was. A shade over 5 feet, the 13-year-old
girl, with her lovely long brown hair and fresh
face, smiled sweetly in her missing person’s
photo.
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Daryn Johnsrude |
Wednesday, April 22, 1981 -- Daryn Todd
Johnsrude
He
had been in Vancouver for only two days.
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Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner |
Tuesday, May 19, 1981 -- Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner
Olson
murdered 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner just 4
days after his wedding. Her boyfriend’s mother
saw her get into a car with a man. Olson took
Sandy to the bush just off Chilliwack Lake Road.
Olson attacked and killed her by striking her in
the head. |
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Ada Court |
5th Sunday, June 21, 1981 -- Ada Court
Thirteen-year-old Ada Court of Burnaby
babysitting at her brother and sister-in-law’s
Coquitlam apartment, the same family apartment
complex where the Olsons lived and where Olson
Sr. and Leona worked as caretakers. Sunday
morning, Ada caught a bus to meet her boyfriend.
Then, she simply vanished.
Fifty-two-year-old Jim Parranto, a White Rock
resident, believed he saw Olson disposing of
Ada’s body.
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Simon Partington |
6th Thursday, July 2, 1981 – Simon Partington
It
was the disappearance of a nine-year-old Surrey
boy, Simon Partington that was the turning point
in The Case of the Missing Lower Mainland
Children. The police could hardly list him as a
runaway, given his young age and angelic-looking
face. Police were sure that the slight, 4-foot-2-inch,
80-pound boy had been abducted.
At about 10:30 a.m., after Simon’s usual big
breakfast of cornflakes, he dressed in blue
jeans and a blue T-shirt, hopped on his bike,
with his brand new orange Snoopy book in the
bike’s basket, and headed for a friend’s house.
He never arrived. He disappeared only a few
blocks from where Christine Weller was last seen
alive. One of his school projects, a story he
wrote called “The Hungry Tiger and the Gullible
Duck,” foreshadowed his untimely death. |
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Judy Kozma |
Thursday, July 9, 1981 – Judy Kozma
It
was not unusual to be traveling with younger
people in the car as he cruised the streets.
This time, 18-year-old Randy Ludlow was with him.
Little did Ludlow know that only a week ago,
Olson killed Simon Partington and two days
before was charged with indecent assault on a
16-year-old girl. Ludlow rendered an eye-witness
account of the last few hours of Judy Kozma’s
life.
“Between eleven and noon on July 9th I was with
Olson,” Ludlow confirmed. “We were driving
toward downtown New Westminster. Olson spotted a
girl leaving a phone booth on Columbia Street in
front of the Royal Columbian Hospital. He
obviously knew her because he waved to her. She
smiled and seemed to be happy to see him. He
pulled over. She came across the street and
talked with him.”
Judy Kozma was on her way to Richmond to see a
friend and to apply for a job at Wendy’s
restaurant. A shy, pretty brunette, she was
desperately looking for a second job. She had
met Olson at McDonald’s where she already worked
as a part-time cashier.
“Hop in,” Olson said. “We’ll take you there.”
Once in the car, Judy exclaimed, “This is good.
This will be faster than the bus. I would have
had to go all through Vancouver to get there.”
Olson offered the two youths the ever-present
beer in his car as he drove to Richmond. They
arrived long before it was time for Judy’s job
interview and too early for her to meet her
friend, so they stopped at the Richmond Inn to
buy some more beer. At one point Olson handed
Ludlow a big wad of money to impress Kozma, only
to take it back while getting more liquor.
“When we returned to the car,” Ludlow would
later explain, “Judy sat in the front passenger
seat. I sat in back. Olson offered Judy a job
cleaning windows at ten dollars an hour.”
Leslie Holmes and Bruce Northorp in Where
Shadows Linger tell what happened next: They
returned to New Westminster where Olson bought a
bottle of rum at the liquor store near the foot
of 10th Street. He returned to the car with the
rum, coke, and plastic glasses. On Olson’s
instructions, Randy mixed drinks for all three.
“Olson encouraged Judy to have another drink,”
related Ludlow. “She didn’t want more.”
Olson persisted. “Give her another drink, give
her another drink,” he ordered.
Eventually Judy agreed to take a light one.
“Olson told me to mix it,” said Randy. “I gave
her a glass of coke with no rum. I caught Judy’s
eye and signaled it was only coke.”
Judy took a sip and said, “This is really strong.”
“Olson looked at me and nodded, indicating I had
done well by giving her a stiff drink,” Ludlow
continued.
Olson then gave Judy some tiny green pills,
saying, “Here, take these, they’ll straighten
you out. They keep you from getting drunk.” She
took the pills.
Olson parked in the underground garage at the
complex where he lived. Ludlow and Judy stayed
in the car while he went to his apartment.
Ludlow reflected, “This was the only time I
detected any anxiety on her part. She was
nervous and upset. I put it down to the fact she
was fifteen years old, she had been drinking,
and she was going to miss her job interview. She
was crying and I wiped the tears from her eyes.
Olson returned shortly and she seemed her old
self again.”
Olson then dropped Ludlow off at the Lougheed
Mall.
“The next time I saw Olson he said he dropped
her off at Richmond. I learned much later he
killed Judy, then went on vacation the next day.”
Olson took Joan and little Clifford to Knotts
Berry Farm near Los Angeles in the U.S. until
July 21. |
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Raymond King |
Thursday, July 23, 1981 -- Raymond King Jr.
“There’s just no way he could have run away,”
Raymond King’s father had said. He was not a
runaway. The slight, sandy haired Ray King Jr.
was enjoying his summer holidays and looking for
his first real job. He made his routine trip to
the Canada Manpower Youth Employment Centre,
chaining his bike behind the building. Keen to
do any type of work, he had come to the center
so often over the summer that the staff was
getting to know him.
Young Ray met Olson that day. Lured by a promise
of work, Olson drove them along a route he
frequently traveled, along Highway No. 7 towards
Harrison Mills and Weaver Lake. Turning off the
highway, he headed for the popular camping area
then took a rough, back-country road that led to
a B.C. Forest Service campground beside the
Alpine Lake. He staved the boy’s head with rocks
and then dumped the youngster’s body off the
steep, hillside trail.
The police did not think that the 15-year-old
boy would have abandoned his bike. “Usually if a
kid is going to run, he’ll do one of three
things with his bike; leave it at home, use it
to make his ‘getaway,’ or sell it to a friend
for a few bucks,” said Ed Cadenhead, deputy
police chief of New Westminster.
The night that Olson killed the young boy, he
had logged 403 kilometers in the car he rented
from Metro in Port Coquitlam. Forever on the
lookout for potential victims, he spoke to the
Metro rental clerk: “He offered me a job
shampooing carpets in his apartment complex he
said he owned at Lougheed Mall,” she said. “He
only came in to get a car on the days he knew I
worked. The job he offered was $16.60-an-hour,
more than I get here, and I was supposed to let
him know. Thank God I never did.” |
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Sigrun Arnd |
Saturday, July 25, 1981-- Sigrun Arnd
Sigrun Arnd, a visiting German student from
Weinheim, a small Rhine Valley town, was spotted
with the killer in a Coquitlam pub, and then
later by a couple of passengers in a passing
train, where she was crouched with a middle aged
man who turned out to be Olson. It was only
after he confessed that her name was added to
the murder list.
Mr. & Mrs. Arnd received the devastating news by
long distance. “It was on August 28 when the
telephone rang,” Mrs. Arnd later told the
Vancouver Sun. “My sister in Vernon was on the
line and told me that the police were there and
she was now going to translate a very sad
message. The police had found a dead girl who
might be Sigrun. She was an intelligent,
suspicious girl. We discussed frequently how she
would never get into a stranger’s car, not to
mention that she would never hitchhike. But
obviously in Canada she did.”
Sigrun left behind a diary. “She raved about the
trips by boat and horseback but, most of all,
she fell for the friendliness, open-heartedness
and eagerness to help of the local people,”
Irmgard Arnd said. “I’m sure it was because of
this that she lost all her natural caution and
timidness.”
Her body was found in Richmond, partly buried in
peat in a trench, some 400 yards from where
Simon Partington had been unearthed the day
before.
Victims of Clifford Olson |
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Terri Lyn Carson |
Monday, July 27, 1981 -- Terri Lyn Carson
Terri Lyn Carson’s mother would eventually sit
in the courtroom as the wheels of justice turned.
Grief-stricken, it was a sad sight to behold as
she mourned her 15-year-old’s murder. Terri had
left the family home on Monday morning at about
eight o’clock. A slight girl, about 105 pounds,
a little over 5 feet, she was no match for Olson
who stopped and offered her a ride that included
a drink, laced with drugs. She was just another
student looking for a summer job so Olson’s ruse
worked well and the drink was a sort of
celebration for having found a job. As he had
done with a few of the others, Olson drove away
from the city into the wilderness four miles
east of Agassiz, out on the north shore of the
Fraser River. He turned off at Rosedale, a rural
area. In the forest, he strangled her, burned
her clothes and threw her purse and shoes into
the Fraser River.
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Louise Chartrand |
Thursday, July 30, 1981 -- Louise Chartrand
After meeting with the police earlier in the day,
that evening Olson went to meet his lawyer, Bob
Shatz. On the way, he spotted 17-year-old Louise
Chartrand, who was described as “very tiny and
young-looking for her age.” The youngest of
seven children, she had migrated from Quebec
with three of her sisters, settling in the
Fraser Valley town of Maple Ridge, about 20
miles east of Vancouver.
In reconstructing the events, the police
believed that Louise hitchhiked part of the way
to her night-shift waitress job with a man.
After she was dropped off, she headed for the
store in downtown Mission to buy cigarettes. It
was only a 10-minute walk from the restaurant
where she worked. During this time Olson got her
into his car, drugged her, and headed to
Whistler. On the way, he even stopped with
Chartrand in his car at the Squamish RCMP
detachment to pick up a confiscated gun, but was
turned away because the officer in charge of
court exhibits was not available. Then, Olson
headed for the treacherous Killer Highway, named
by the locals because of the numerous fatal car
crashes that followed the snow. It led to
Whistler, another 45 minutes from Squamish.
Olson drove into a gravel pit, north of the ski
resort, and then smashed the girl’s skull with
repeated hammer blows, burying her in a shallow
grave.
Louise’s fellow employees at Bino’s restaurant
checked with her family when she did not arrive
for her 8 p.m. shift. One of Louise’s sisters
telephoned the RCMP detachment the next morning. |
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