‘Thank God he’s gone’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/10/2011 (5335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the call came, Sharon Rosenfeldt felt a moment of dislocation. It took a few seconds for her to find her voice.

“Is it real?” she asked. Is he finally dead?

“Yes,” said the Correctional Service of Canada official who called Rosenfeldt’s home Friday evening with the news that Clifford Olson, one of the nation’s most monstrous serial murderers — the man who killed her son — was dead.

“I feel I haven’t been able to put him to rest, and maybe our little boy can have some peace now,” said Rosenfeldt, her voice trembling with emotion. “It’s like a grieving session 30 years later, like we have to let go of Daryn all over again.”

Olson’s death was confirmed by the Correctional Service of Canada in a news release Friday afternoon.

“On September 30, 2011, Clifford Olson, an inmate from the Regional Reception Centre… died of apparent natural causes,” the release read. “At the time of his death, Olson was at the institutional Health Care Centre of the Archambault Institution in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines.”

It was revealed on Sept. 21 that Olson, 71, was dying of cancer with only days or weeks to live, according to families of Olson’s victims, who were given the news by Correctional Service of Canada officials.

In 1981, Olson was arrested and eventually confessed to killing 11 children in British Columbia. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Rosenfeldt said that for the first time since she learned that her 16-year-old son Daryn was one of Olson’s victims, she felt a sense of relief, “a heaviness lifting.”

Her words were echoed by Terry Bizeau, mother of 15-year-old Terri Lyn Carson, another of Olson’s victims.

“There’s a weight lifted off of my shoulders, a 30-year weight,” said Bizeau on Friday. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’ve had it. I don’t care. I’m finished. That’s it.”

Olson had been serving time in a maximum-security prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Que., but the mother of one of his victims said Sept. 21 she had been told he was transferred to a Montreal-area hospital.

Ray King, whose only son Raymond was 15 when Olson murdered him, said Olson’s death is a chance to find peace now that he won’t have to be constantly reminded of his son’s killer.

“Thank God he’s gone,” he said. “I’m done with it. It’s over. I won’t have to deal with him anymore… and let’s hope there’s not another one out there like him.”

King said he hopes to finally have “a chance to heal some parts that haven’t been able to heal in 30 years because of him.”

“It’s like having a toothache for a week, and then after it goes away, you don’t think about it anymore,” said King. “It’s just gone.”

Olson lured his victims — eight girls and three boys between the ages of nine and 18 — with the promise of a job, then drugged, tortured and sexually assaulted them before killing them and dumping their bodies.

Olson’s sixth and youngest victim, Simon Partington, who was abducted, raped and strangled, was just nine years old.

Arrested on Aug. 12, 1981, Olson pleaded guilty the following year, making a controversial deal with the RCMP that saw his wife and son paid $100,000 in return for him leading investigators to the bodies.

In August 1997, after serving 15 years of his sentence, Olson requested early parole under the “faint hope clause.”

At the time, prison psychiatrists stated Olson showed no remorse for the murders, had since claimed to have committed anywhere from 80 to 200 murders, and would be likely to kill again.

Until 2010, Olson re-applied several times for early parole and was repeatedly denied. Last year, Olson said he would never apply for parole again.

During his time in prison, Olson wrote book manuscripts and was permitted to make a video series, which he titled Motivational Sexual Homicide Patterns of Serial Child Killer Clifford Robert Olson. In the videotapes, of which there are about a dozen, Olson describes the perverse criminal acts he performed on his victims.

Rosenfeldt said she requested an official letter of his death notice from Corrections Canada, which she will place in her box of newspaper clippings she collected over the years about Daryn, Olson’s trial and his many parole hearings.

“He’s been so intertwined in our lives,” she said. “What he did to Daryn and to our family will always be a part of our lives but at least he won’t be an active part anymore, and that’s why I feel lighter.”

One of Olson’s legacies will be the extent to which he created a “fear of crime,” said Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University.

He came along when the television media were expanding and viewers were subjected to a “barrage” of coverage they had never experienced before, he said.

Because his crimes were so hideous, he created an appetite for longer sentences, Boyd said. His case also led to the scrapping of the faint-hope clause, which allowed offenders sentenced to life to be considered for parole after serving 15 years.

Even though he had no hope of parole, Olson appeared at these hearings at every opportunity in a “showcase of self-indulgence,” Boyd said.

However, Boyd called the dismantling of the faint-hope clause “lamentable” because not all first-degree murderers are “walking time bombs” or present a danger in terms of public safety.

Along with her husband Gary, Rosenfeldt founded Victims of Violence, a group aiming to offer guidance to victims of violent crime and their families, in response to the lack of help that existed at the time of Daryn’s disappearance for families in search of missing children.

Police had initially brushed Daryn off as a teenage runaway along with many of the other victims, leaving the Rosenfeldts with nowhere to turn.

When Daryn’s body was found, police also never provided the details of how he had died, which Sharon said she had to learn through a newspaper article.

Now three decades later, being the first to be notified of Olson’s death was news Rosenfeldt said she was grateful to hear.

“Years ago, we weren’t even informed when Olson was arrested,” she said. “We’ve come a long way. That part feels really good.”

 

— Postmedia News