Face to Face with a Serial Killer

Clifford Olson murdered 11 boys and girls in Canada in the early 1980s. Last Tuesday, he requested that I join him at his latest parole hearing.

A week before serial killer Clifford Olson’s parole hearing last Tuesday, I was phoned from the federal prison at Ste.-Anne-des-Plaines, 30 minutes north of Montreal, to tell me I’d been approved to join the media to watch the hearing on TV.

Then, on Friday, I was phoned again to say that instead of a lawyer with him at the hearing, Olson wanted me.

“You have a choice,” said Talal Dakalaba at the prison. “To attend as a journalist and watch on TV, or to be at the parole hearing and not write about the verdict. The choice is yours.”

I agreed to write nothing for the next day’s paper, but made it clear that once the hearing was concluded I’d be back to being a journalist. I felt being a witness inside the hearing was more useful than watching TV with 20 colleagues.

I spent close to an hour with Olson prior to the hearing, at which a dozen kinfolk of the 11 boys and girls he murdered in lower British Columbia in 1980-81, were seated along the wall, 10 feet from Olson who was in a steel cage, sitting on a stool riveted to the floor.

I sat at a table outside the cage, next to Olson.

My only function was to hand Olson a letter he submitted, saying, in his semi-literate way: “I . . . not being request any more of my requesting any more reviews for any parole of any other kind of reviews by the National Parole Board . .  . I must relinquish my right to any national parole.”

I felt required to correct the Parole Board spokesman who depicted me as Olson’s “adviser” and/or “assistant.” I said I was neither, and that I was there at Olson’s request, and that I had no intention of speaking on his behalf. My opinion, regardless of whatever danger he posed to the public if released, was that he should never get parole. In fact, he should have been executed nearly 28 years ago.

Olson himself regarded the parole hearing as a charade. He knows he’ll never be freed, no matter how remorseful he might be, or what he might do to atone.

It took the two board members less than three minutes to consult, and decide that Olson should not be freed – that he was too big a risk to public safety. No surprise there.

It is worth remembering that the RCMP (who act as provincial police in British Columbia) had no idea a serial killer was loose when Olson confessed. They paid $10,000 for each of 10 bodies he led them to – and then he threw in a third body he said was “a freebie.” The money went to his wife and newborn son.

At the hearing, relatives of victims gave a couple of briefs about the misery Olson had caused and the evil he represents. Prior to the hearing, Olson told me he intended to offer each of the parents of murdered victims $50,000.

“You’ve got that much money?” I wondered.

“I got plenty,” said Olson.  He said he was still getting Old Age Security payments, and that his poems, autographs and memorabilia were selling well in Australia. A website, for example, is selling an autographed photo of Olson sitting on a laundry machine for $35, and a calligraphy kit box signed by Olson for $99.99.

The hearing chairman wouldn’t let Olson make his pitch to the families.

Prior to the hearing – and blurted out during the hearing before the moderator shut him down – Olson said that on Monday he’d had a phone conversation with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder who wanted him extradited to the U.S. on murder charges and for information he says he had about 9/1l three years before it happened – all in sworn affidavits at the time.

This is Olson’s theme of the moment – that Canada’s Correctional Service and government wouldn’t act on information he says he got from Middle East pen pals attending U.S. schools. The big mystery is how he gets pre-dated sworn affidavits about his claims.

By being inside the small, carpeted parole hearing room with the steel cage, and eight overhead microphones, and a half-moon arrangement of desks facing the cage, I had access to various psychiatric and psychological assessments of Olson over the years. (I hadn’t realized that as well as a son, Olson has two daughters from previous relationships).

Olson waived any privacy concerns and, in fact, relishes notoriety.

In brief, he is assessed as “anti-social with narcissistic disorders, a psychopathic personality, (prone to) sexual sadism, pedophilia and possibly necrophilia.” He is addicted to notoriety and wallows in the reputation of being “the worst of the worst.”

While he is a “low risk” unlikely to escape, and generally cooperative in prison, there is “a very, very high probability that he would re-offend (75%) if ever released.”

Personally, I was surprised at the physical changes in Olson from the last time I visited him in Kingston Pen in the early 1990s. He’s now 71, balding, well tanned, but seems to be shrinking. I hadn’t known he has cancer – in remission, but still cancer.

He looks frail, but is as animated as ever, given to bursts of invective at issues or individuals who annoy him, switching to ingratiating humor at some of the antics he indulges in. He seems to like most of the custodial staff at Ste.-Anne-des-Plaines.

So why did he want me at his parole hearing -- doomed to be rejected -- instead of a lawyer?

I suspect it was partly to tweak authorities who are instinctively wary of the media, and partly because he hopes I will take his 9/11 allegations seriously (I don’t) and argue his case in print. More manipulation.

Why I accepted this role, and why I have continued 20-plus years of talking with Olson, is easy. It was a chance to get a jump on journalistic colleagues who were trapped in another room watching events on TV.

Also, keeping in touch with Olson was a chance to get greater insight into the thinking of a serial killer whose actions have never been fully examined. When he pleaded guilty of murder in 1982, the trial ended. No examination of the whys and wherefores.

Ironically, with something like 50 of his 71 years being in prison, Olson has never been convicted of a sexual crime – an unforgivable oversight, and something he tried to exploit at his latest parole hearing, but was cut off.

Have we seen – or heard – the last of Clifford Olson now that he has abandoned future parole hearings every two years? Doubtful. He’s a sociopath and ever-inventive.

He says he is now drawing up a will, so maybe he sees the end of the line approaching. But his bag of tricks is far from empty.