Dead Ends (14 page)

And the evil. The extremely rare people who stare at the courtroom with cunning and menace.

Clifford Olson might be the most evil of all.

Olson was a New Year's baby in 1940, born in Vancouver and raised in Richmond, then a distant suburb. His father was a milkman, and Olson was one of four children.

He was an unlikeable child. He stole, bullied, tormented the neighbourhood pets. When he kept getting into fights at school and losing, Olson took up boxing, and used his new skills to batter the boys who had beaten him.

He made it through grade eight and became a habitual, hapless criminal, spending most of his adult life behind bars on scores of charges. He was short, stocky, and dark-haired, with squinty eyes under dark brows. He seemed a typical smalltime, sleazy career criminal.

But Olson was cunning. He escaped custody seven times. He knew people's weaknesses, and the flaws in his captors' systems. He was a jailhouse lawyer, a snitch and, when he had the chance, a prison bully and sexual predator.

And he was a monster.

Christine Weller was twelve in 1980, with dark hair and a direct gaze. She was a tomboy with lots of friends. She liked hanging out in the local mall, roaming around the soon-to-be developed fields in Surrey.

But Clifford Olson knew she would be a good victim. He could always judge good victims.

When Christine didn't come back to the motel room where her family lived that rainy Monday afternoon, November 17, 1980, her parents assumed she was staying at a friend's house. They didn't report her missing for a week. There was no big police effort to find her.

On Christmas Day, a man walking his dog discovered her body near the Fraser River in Richmond. She had been stabbed repeatedly, and strangled with a belt.

It was the start of a time of terror. On April 16, Olson abducted and murdered thirteen-year-old Colleen Daignault of Surrey. Her body was found five months later. Less than a week later, Olson lured Daryn Johnsrude, sixteen, from a mall. His lifeless, beaten body was found less than two weeks later.

Olson paused to marry Joan Hale in a formal ceremony in the People's Full Gospel Chapel in Surrey, with their one-month-old son, Stephen, as a witness.

But just four days after the wedding, he spotted sixteen-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner trying to hitchhike home. He picked her up and killed in her a patch of woods.

The children kept disappearing, and dying. Ada Court, thirteen, disappeared June 21. Simon Partington, nine, disappeared July 2 while riding his bicycle to a friend's house. Judy Kozma, fourteen. Raymond King, fifteen, lured from an employment centre with a promise of work. Sigrun Arnd, eighteen, a student visiting from Germany. Terri Lyn Carson, fifteen, strangled and left in the woods along the Fraser River. Louise Chartrand, seventeen, buried in a shallow grave near Whistler. The children were raped, beaten, bludgeoned.

Eleven children killed in less than seven months. Olson knew how to charm, promise jobs, offer a ride. He preyed on weakness, exploited trust.

It was easy, at first, for police to ignore the crimes, to tell the parents that their children had run away and would probably show up.

That changed with Olson's fourth victim, nine-year-old Simon Partington. Nine-year-olds don't just run away and vanish.

But as parents kept their children close to home and headlines warned of a predator on the loose, police failed to come to grips with the menace. Olson roamed throughout the Lower Mainland, one large community, one hunting ground.

But there was a patchwork of police forces—municipal,
RCMP
—that didn't communicate with each other. They failed to act on reports of missing children. Olson showed up on suspect lists in different police departments, but they didn't share the information.
RCMP
officers were transferred in and out, and the case fell through the cracks.

Even when police knew Olson was a prime suspect, delays in setting up surveillance allowed him to kill his last three victims.

Finally, on August 12, their surveillance paid off. Olson was arrested near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island with two female hitchhikers in his car.

Once arrested, Olson used the system to inflict pain on the victims' families, their communities, the courts. On anyone he could hurt, or taunt.

It started with his trial. He pleaded not guilty. Three days after the trial began on January 11, 1982, he changed his plea to guilty. He had struck a deal. He would guide police to the bodies they had not yet discovered and provide details about the other crimes—if they paid $10,000 per killing, with the money going to his wife.

Police, prosecutors, and British Columbia Attorney General agreed. Olson revelled in the experience of guiding officers to the bodies, describing each one in gleeful detail. He collected $100,000. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Public outrage over the “cash for bodies” deal just brought him more attention.

Olson's manipulations to win attention, inflict pain, and taunt the families of his victims and the public had just begun.

Once in prison, Olson toyed with police, claiming to have information on dozens of additional murders. He wrote letters detailing the killings to the families of victims and to politicians until the prison system began censoring his outgoing
mail. He told anyone who would listen that he was writing his memoir, with detailed descriptions of the eleven murders, plus scores of other killings and sexual assaults.

He filed a string of lawsuits from inside his special cell, with its wall of Plexiglas in front of the bars to prevent other prisoners from attacking him.

And as soon as Olson was eligible for parole, he applied. He knew there was no chance of success; it was an opportunity to taunt the families and regain the spotlight at his public parole hearing.

No opportunity was missed. When he began receiving the old-age pension, he shared the news with a
Toronto Sun
reporter. He knew the news coverage would outrage the public and wanted the attention.

Clifford Olson died of cancer at seventy-one, in September 2011. No one mourned.

O
ne punch, four kicks to the head, and a lawyer lies dying on a bedroom floor as a rowdy house party goes on around him.

His wife and twin four-year-olds wait in a house down the street. But Bob McIntosh isn't coming home to rejoin the New Year's Eve celebrations.

Nothing good, surely, could be expected to come from that grim last night of 1997. But it did.

*
  
*
  
*

Bob and Katy McIntosh had moved to Squamish from Vancouver. He was a successful lawyer and, at forty, a world-class triathlete. She taught at a college, worked with local entrepreneurs, and raised the twins. She was attractive and stylish.

They had a beautiful home on Thunderbird Ridge with spectacular views, lots of friends, and active lives. It was, Katy recalls, a charmed life.

So they had lots to celebrate that New Year's Eve. Friends were visiting with their children. They made a bouillabaisse and looked forward to seeing in the New Year.

When another couple arrived, they mentioned a party at the Cudmore house down the street. Dr. Richard Cudmore was a neighbour and close friend. He had asked McIntosh to keep an eye on his house while he honeymooned in Mexico. McIntosh and the two men decided to check it out. He grabbed a beer, thinking he might fit in better.

Cudmore, it turned out, was right to be nervous.

Light and loud music poured into the street from the Cudmore house. A drunken New Year's Eve party was in full swing, with some 150 young people jammed into the house. Cudmore's nineteen-year-old son, Jamie, had thrown out the invitation, then left his own party.

Jamie, six foot six and powerful, had been picking up money as a collector for local drug dealers. The party attracted some tough people from that world. (Jamie, after a couple of assault convictions, turned his life around and became a stalwart of Canada's national rugby team and a European pro.)

McIntosh and the two friends decided to go in and try to find out what was going on. They quickly became separated. McIntosh headed for the master bedroom, where a group of young people had congregated.

What happened next took seconds. Someone bumped into McIntosh, and he bumped into Ryan MacMillan, a big, drunk twenty-year-old logger with a record for petty crimes. He threw one punch, McIntosh slumped to the floor, and MacMillan left the bedroom without a backward glance.

Then Ryan Aldridge, nineteen, stepped forward and kicked McIntosh. Four full, swinging kicks to the head.

*
  
*
  
*

Katy knew nothing, until the doorbell rang and a friend said Bob was hurt. A police car was waiting. The ten-minute ride to the Squamish Hospital emergency room seemed to take forever.

She rushed into the
ER
, where one of Bob's running friends was administering
CPR
. It is like that in towns of 14,000 people. Lives overlap.

It was too late. Bob was dead.

Katy called close friends and family from the hospital, then went home to wait for the twins to wake up. “All I could think about was Sam and Emma, how they had two hours of innocence left,” she recalled. “I watched them sleeping and thought, I hope they don't wake up till noon.”

And she decided the killing could not be allowed to become a nightmare that hung over their family. “I promised them and I promised myself that underneath the horror of what had just happened we would find a gift.”

*
  
*
  
*

Police started investigating. MacMillan soon admitted punching McIntosh. Five days after the killing, he was charged with manslaughter.

But the case was weak. Autopsy results indicated that a punch didn't kill McIntosh.

And the police investigation ran into a wall of silence. Eight to twelve young people were in the bedroom and witnessed the killing; scores more had information that could have helped police.

No one would talk. The people at the party, their friends, maybe even parents, chose to remain silent. They placed protecting one of their own—not being a rat—above bringing a killer to justice.

In September, the Crown stayed the charges against MacMillan. There wasn't enough evidence to make the case.

Squamish kept its secrets.

*
  
*
  
*

Bob's memorial service in the civic centre was attended by about 750 people. Friends, even strangers, wore blue ribbons—the colour of Bob's eyes—to show support. Katy delivered the eulogy.

But life in Squamish was difficult. Family friends didn't know what to say, or burst into tears when they met Katy on the street.

And as days and weeks went by without any progress in the case, Katy had to wonder if each person she passed knew who killed Bob. Once outgoing, enthusiastic, friendly, she now found meeting people exhausting, and groups of teens threatening.

In April, Katy moved to Victoria, where she grew up and where her mother and two brothers still lived. She decided to sue MacMillan and the Cudmores for her husband's death, a decision that angered some in Squamish.

A moustached, grey-haired Victoria lawyer, Mike Hutchison, was handling her lawsuit. By late summer, they were engaged.

It surprised many people. But Katy had a made a quick decision. She was not going to let her life—and her children's—be defined by Bob's death. She could see the temptations to embrace anger, hatred, or self-pity, to give up. She was determined to live every minute fully, as Bob had done.

And she believed that something good could come from the worst day of her life.

*
  
*
  
*

It took four years, but the wall of silence developed cracks. An eight-month
RCMP
undercover operation that started in late 2001 led to Aldridge, and the undercover officers elicited an admission of guilt in a Richmond hotel room.

But they wanted stronger evidence, and by June 2002, they were ready to bring Aldridge in to try and get a videotaped confession.

Katy Hutchison, who had stayed in close touch with the investigation, had a bold idea. She wanted to talk to Aldridge, to make a personal appeal. Confession, she believed, was important for him. And even more, a guilty plea was needed to spare the twins—now nine—the ordeal of a highly publicized trial.

The
RCMP
said no. But they let Katy make a videotape. She spoke directly to Aldridge, told him about Bob, and the twins, and how their life had changed since that New Year's Eve. She said they were linked forever, her family and Aldridge. She asked him just to tell the truth.

When the
RCMP
played the video and showed him pictures of the twins playing with Bob, Aldridge broke down in tears. He confessed.

Then he surprised officers. Could he speak with Katy?

For police, it was a chance to gather more evidence. For Katy Hutchison, it was much more. The next morning, June 21, the
RCMP
arranged a helicopter flight from Victoria to Squamish, where Katy walked into a bleak, tiny interview room to come face to face with the man who had killed her husband.

“He started to cry as soon as he got in the room. I said, ‘It's going to be okay.' As he sobbed it was all I could do not to hold him. Second to the day I gave birth, it was probably the most human moment of my life.”

Aldridge apologized, told Katy about his years of nightmares about the night. He gave her letters he had written, one for her and one for the twins. When she left the room, she could see him, sitting alone, sobbing.

“I wanted to make it okay for him. He seemed genuinely remorseful.”

Aldridge pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years in prison. Katy Hutchison was in court, and read a victim impact statement that brought many to tears.