When I heard the news that Clifford Olson is nearly dead it almost brought tears to my eyes…
It’s true!
Sure, they were tears of joy, but they were tears nonetheless.
If the news reports are to be believed Clifford Olson, arguably Canada’s most notorious serial killer, will soon be dead from cancer.
Is it a sin to say that it couldn’t happen to a more worthy person? If it is I’m sure I’ll hear about it from my pastor. He occasionally reads my articles here (presumably because of his interest in the subject matter and not as some sort of gauge of my spiritual well-being!)
News that the man who murdered so many young people was dying of a horrible disease did make me smile. It reinforced my belief that God does indeed have an excellent sense of humour.
Why else give the man who caused so much terror such a terrifying disease?
Olson was the first case that I was aware of where the police agreed to pay a serial killer to learn where the bodies of his victims were. It is probably the most heinous deal ever made in that regard. The deal Karla Homoloka received seems so … ordinary…. in comparison.
He was paid $100,000 so police could learn the whereabouts of the bodies of 11 of his victims. It was the ultimate “deal with the devil” where we paid the man who killed our children to learn all the gory details, including where he buried their bodies after he was done with them.
That deal, of course, can be argued both ways: you should never make deals with killers, and parents need to know their children are really dead if they are to move on with their lives.
Clearly a terrible choice had to be made, and no matter which choice was made, it was terrible for someone other than the people making the choice. Do I agree or disagree with it? I guess that depends on how I’m feeling when you ask me.
What I’ll be doing the day this scumbag finally dies…
I can guarantee you this: I will NOT be mourning his passing.
I will be celebrating the lives of Colleen Marian Daignault…
Daryn Todd Johnsrude…
Sandra Lynn Wolfsteiner…
Ada Court…
Simon Partington…
Judy Kozma…
Raymond King…
Sigrun Arnd…
Terri Lyn Carson…
Louise Chartrand…
and Christine Weller.
These are the people whose names should be etched into our hearts, not the name of the murderous scum that raped, beat, tortured and finally killed them.
Excellent article…..
That bastard has been a thorn in our side for too long.
His troubles will begin the moment his heart stops beating….I would not wish to suffer the minutest sliver of the retribution that awaits him….The Dalai Lama speaks of having compassion for those whose monstrous acts in this world trigger the avalanche of karmic justice in the next…..and to that end, as hard as it is to say, I have a little compassion for Olson as what awaits him will be unspeakably horrific….
As for his victims…..they moved on long ago.
Regards, Don Laird
Edson, Alberta, Canada
Sharon Rosenfeldt is the person who should be remembered and celebrated for her dedication to the cause.
Sharon, along with her late husband, Gary, whose sixteen-year-old son Daryn was abducted and murdered in 1981 by serial killer Clifford Olson, worked tirelessly for 30 years to change Canadian laws with respect to Victims of Violence, an organization founded out of absolute necessity.
At the relevant time there were no support services to help families who did not know what to expect when confronted with these numbing tragedies.
Families of the victims were treated as nonentities.
The heartless system’s attitude was “we don’t need you; go home; this job is for professionals”, thus leaving families sidelined as outsiders who had no conduit to police information nor were they afforded a place within the complicated esoteric maze known as a justice system.
One thing quickly noted that definitely needed changing was that the victims of the crimes and their offenders were forced to share the same small holding room awaiting their turns in the courtroom. (Shades of northern communities where the police place both a rape victim and rapist in the back seat of a cruiser and drive them to the courthouse.)
Daryn was in many respects a typical teen-ager who liked to goof around sometimes. But he was a good kid. He was very much a protector of his two younger siblings, a brother and a little sister.
Daryn and his same-age cousin were excited about going down to Manpower where they had found window-washing jobs at a real estate developer’s apartment complex.
Gary himself was in the real estate business that took him into several provinces. The family had only been living in Vancouver a few months when Daryn went missing.
The RCMP shrugged off their report. A 16-year-old? Obviously a runaway.
Soon Sharon and Gary heard about other kids going missing. One, two, three…they were sitting at home connecting the dots; the RCMP, sitting in their office, weren’t.
The police’s stonewall attitude was ‘this is Canada, not Atlanta, Georgia, where current newsmaker Wayne Williams had been caught and accused of allegedly murdering some 29 people.’
Canada doesn’t have serial killings, the RCMP said.
Not long after Sharon and Gary had begun seeing a pattern, pictures of the missing children were flashed on a TV news broadcast. One picture was of Daryn. Yet the police had never contacted the family about this revelation.
Soon thereafter, when Clifford Olson, the serial-killer ‘which Canada doesn’t host’, was apprehended and determined to have left a few more children’s mutilated bodies in his wake, the police still had never contacted any of the families.
You get the picture. This is the kind of insensitive treatment that spurred Sharon and Gary into a 30-year crusade.
I won’t drone on about a subject of which I am no authority–the closest I came to this case was to be working with the Vancouver Chief Superintendent of Contract Policing on another matter at the time he was paying $10,000 a head for the location of each child.
Rather, I’m going to highly recommend that you listen to the articulate Sharon Rosenfeldt who was interviewed Monday, September 26, 2011 by Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC’s The Current.
The radio show is about 30 minutes.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/09/26/victims-rights-in-canada-sharon-rosenfeldt/
I hope his death brings some peace to all his victims families .
Olson should have gotten 275 years in jail (none of this “concurrent sentence” palaver, combined with faint hope clauses and parole applications), and he should have had to shut up and just do his time.
That said however, I’m against the death penalty because sometimes innocent people are wrongfully accused and convicted of murder (ie. David Milgaard, Donald Marshall and Guy-Paul Morin), as well as Ronald Dalton, Randy Druken and Gregory Parsons in Newfoundland.
It’s true that there are some cases (such as Olson’s) in which there is truly no doubt. However, the system (at least in the U.S. and Canada) doesn’t work that way. The system says that if you’re proven “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” then you’re convicted and sentenced. The 6 gentlemen to whom I have alluded were all found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt…and yet, they were innocent.
Anyway, hope Olson dies soon, so some tax money should be saved. His pension money should go to the victims’ families.