The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases (16 page)

Shortly after midnight on 4 January 1974, Bundy gained access to the basement bedroom of an 18-year-old student at the University of Washington. He took a metal rod from her bed frame, bludgeoned her as she slept and sexually assaulted her. Discovered by her roommates the next morning, she survived the attack, but suffered permanent brain damage.

On the evening of 31 January, he broke into the room of another University of Washington student, 19-year-old Lynda Ann Healy. She was knocked unconscious, dressed, wrapped in a bed sheet, and carried away, her body eventually discovered a year later. On 12 March, Bundy kidnapped and murdered Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. On April 17, 18-year-old Susan Rancourt disappeared from the campus of Central Washington State College in Ellensburg. Having procured victims from three different Washington state institutions of higher learning, Bundy moved his operation south to Oregon State University in Covalis, from which he abducted a 22-year-old student named Kathy Parks on May 6. In June, two more women were abducted by Bundy, never to be seen again.

Many of his abductions were performed with the aid of a false plaster-cast on his arm. His method was to approach young women and ask them whether they could help him to carry some books or a briefcase.

His most audacious and daring abductions occurred in broad daylight on 14 July in Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Washington. Five women told police that a man with his left arm in a sling, calling himself ‘Ted’, had asked whether they could help unload a sailboat from his Volkswagen Beetle.

That day two women went missing: 19-year-old Denise Naslund and 23-year-old Janice Ott; the latter was last seen in his company. Police circulated descriptions of ‘Ted’ and his Beetle throughout the Seattle area, receiving thousands of responses. Among those who reported Bundy as a possible suspect were one of his former psychology professors, his girlfriend and Ann Rule. Their warnings were ignored.

By early September, the remains of Bundy’s victims began to turn up around the area of Issaquah. By this point he had already killed two more women and had moved to Utah, where he enrolled at the University of Utah’s College of Law.

During that first term, he killed a total of four Utah girls, aged 16 and 17, including the daughter of a police chief. He also saw the escape of one of his intended victims, Carol DaRonch. Bundy lured her into his car on the pretence that he was a police officer. When he attempted to handcuff and beat her with a crowbar she fought back and managed to escape, later providing the authorities with an accurate description of Bundy.

In his second term, beginning in January 1975, he claimed four more victims. The first three, females in their 20s, were each killed in Colorado. The fourth, a 13-year-old named Lynette Culver, Bundy abducted from a school playground in Pocatello, Idaho. He then took her to his room at a nearby Holiday Inn, where she was raped and drowned in the bath. Another young girl, 15-year-old Susan Curtis, was killed during his summer break from law school.

On 16 August 1975, Bundy was arrested when he failed to stop for a police officer. In searching his Beetle police discovered an ice pick, a crowbar, handcuffs and other items that they believed might be burglary tools. Further investigation revealed a more sinister purpose. On 1 March 1976, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his kidnapping of Carol DaRonch.

Authorities in Colorado, meanwhile, were pursuing murder charges and by 1977 had enough evidence to charge him with the murder of a woman who had disappeared while on a ski trip with her fiancé. Brought to the Pitkin County courthouse in Aspen on 7 June 1977, Bundy was given permission to visit the courthouse library. From there, he managed to escape by jumping from a second-storey window. He ran, then strolled through the streets of Aspen, making his way to the top of Aspen Mountain. He became lost and disoriented. Six days later, Bundy came upon a car, which he stole. As he drove back to Aspen, two patrol men pulled him over for having dimmed headlights. He was recognized immediately and arrested.

He was imprisoned in a jail in nearby Glenwood Springs, where he was to remain until his murder trial. At some point during the months that followed, he somehow acquired $500 and a hacksaw blade. On the evening of 30 December 1977, ten days before the trial was scheduled to begin, he managed to escape through a crawl space. Seventeen hours passed before Bundy’s jailers discovered he’d escaped – though they didn’t know it, by that point their famous prisoner had made it all the way to Chicago.

Bundy spent much of the New Year’s first week on the road. There is some evidence to suggest that he was considering educational institutions at which he might commit his next assaults. He spent some time at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and travelled to Atlanta, before settling in Tallahassee, Florida on 8 January. There, Bundy managed to support himself through shoplifting and purse snatching. On 15 January 1978, two and a half years after his last murder, Bundy killed again. His victims were 20-year-old Lisa Levy and 21-year-old Margaret Bowman, two Florida State University students. At approximately three in the morning, Bundy broke into their sorority house and bludgeoned, strangled, and sexually assaulted the two women. Two other members of the sorority were also beaten. Though severely injured, both survived. Eight blocks away, he invaded another house and beat a fifth student – she, too, survived.

On 9 February, Bundy travelled to Lake City, Florida, where he abducted a 12-year-old named Kimberly Leach from her junior high school. After raping and murdering the girl, he hid her body in an abandoned hog shed. Although he returned to Tallahassee, three days later he stole a car and began a journey across the Florida panhandle. Early on the morning of 15 February, he was stopped by a Pensacola police officer and arrested for driving a stolen vehicle. It wasn’t long before he was identified and linked to the sorority girl murders.

He received two death sentences – the first for the murders of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, the second for that of Kimberly Leach. During the second trial, Bundy married Carole Ann Boone, a former co-worker, as he was questioning her under oath. A daughter, Tina, was born in October 1982.

Bundy spent much of the 1980s fighting his death sentence. However, as the decade was drawing to a close, it appeared all his legal options had been exhausted. Bundy then began to confess to a number of murders, some unknown to authorities. He promised that more would be revealed if he were given extra time. It was a transparent ploy, and did not work.

On the morning of 24 January 1989, Bundy was executed. He was strapped to an electric chair and for nearly two minutes electricity was sent through his body. His last words were, ‘I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.’

CLIFFORD OLSON

As the media in America focused increasingly on the gruesome acts of psychopaths like Jerry Brudos and Ted Bundy, the situation north of the border seemed markedly different. True, Canada had had its own serial killer – Peter Woodcock, a teenager who had been declared legally insane after murdering three children in the mid-1950s – but his crimes were largely forgotten.

Then, on 17 November 1980, Christine Wheeler, a 12-year-old who lived with her mother and father in a suburban Vancouver motel, went missing. At first, there was no suspicion of foul play; indeed her parents waited several days before filing a missing person’s report. Even then, the police treated the case as that of a runaway. It was only after the discovery of her abandoned bicycle behind a nearby animal hospital that the serious nature of the disappearance became apparent. On Christmas Day, her body was discovered in a dump by a man walking his dog. She’d been raped, strangled with a belt, and stabbed multiple times in the chest and abdomen.

Christine Wheeler’s murder was the first in a series of savage, sex-related murders that would lay to rest the idea among some Canadians that the serial killer was an American phenomenon.

It was some time, though, before the authorities realized that they were dealing with a serial killer. Indeed, after the Wheeler murder, the murderer lay low for five months. On 16 April 1981, he abducted and murdered a 13-year-old girl, Colleen Daignault. Five days later, he used hammer blows to the head in murdering his first male victim, 16-year-old Daryn Johnsrude, a Saskatchewan native who was visiting the Vancouver area during his school’s Easter break.

As experts then believed that serial killers limited their victims to only one gender, authorities did not initially link the murder of Daryn Johnsrude with those of Christine Wheeler and Colleen Daignault. They did, however, have a suspect in the killings of the two girls: Clifford Olson. In what is certainly the most tragic aspect of the case, the authorities then came upon an even stronger suspect and made him the focus of their investigation. As it turned out, Olson was their man.

The son of a milkman and a cannery worker, Clifford Olson was born in a downtown Vancouver hospital on New Year’s Day, 1940. He spent most his youth in the suburb of Richmond. A poor student, it wasn’t long before he began skipping classes and committing petty crimes. He was jailed for the first time at the age of 14. Three years later he left school for good, getting a job at a racetrack. It didn’t last long. At 17 he was convicted of breaking, entering and theft, and was sentenced to a nearby correctional facility. It would be the first of 83 convictions, ranging from parole violation to armed robbery, before his killing spree began.

Olson’s first murder, that of Christine Wheeler, coincided with the news of his live-in girlfriend’s pregnancy. The second and third murders occurred during the month in which his only child, Clifford Olson III, was born. The couple married the following month, on May 15 1981, the day after he allegedly assaulted a five-year-old girl, and four days before his fourth murder.

That day, as her boyfriend’s mother looked on, Sandra Wolfsteiner was picked up by Olson while hitch-hiking. She was never to be seen again. A month later, a 13-year-old girl vanished after taking the bus to meet a friend. Both mysteries were added to a file that had become known as ‘The Case of the Missing Lower Mainland Children’.

It was the disappearance of a sixth child, on 2 July, that propelled the case on to the national stage. At 9 years of age, Simon Partington was unlikely to be a child runaway; this, combined with photographs of his innocent-looking face and descriptions of the Snoopy book he’d had with him when last seen, provoked an emotional public response. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) began what would become the largest manhunt in their history.

The heightened profile of the case had little effect on the killer. In fact, it may well have stimulated his desire to kill. On 9 July, he was driving with a male companion through the city of New Westminster when he spotted 15-year-old Judy Kozma, whom he recognized as a McDonald’s cashier. Accepting Olson’s offer to drive her to nearby Richmond, where she had a job interview, Kozma joined the pair. Along the way, Olson encouraged the girl to drink, then gave her pills claiming they would help kill the effects of the alcohol. Olson then dropped off his male companion at a suburban shopping mall, and drove out into the country, where he raped and killed Kozma.

Though they hadn’t made contact, by this point Olson was once again in the sights of the authorities – and yet the killing continued. Beginning on 23 July Olson murdered a 15-year-old boy, followed by an 18-year-old female German tourist, a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old waitress – all within the space of a week.

The end of Olson’s killing came when a police surveillance team followed their suspect to Vancouver Island. There they watched as he burgled two Victoria homes, then picked up two young female hitch-hikers. The trio headed into the bush, Olson’s driving becoming increasingly erratic. The authorities finally moved in and arrested him for impaired and dangerous driving. In Olson’s rented car they discovered an address book belonging to Judy Kozma, which, it was later claimed, he’d used to make threatening phone calls to the dead girl’s friends.

Olson was released but remained under surveillance. On 12 August, he was again arrested. Under questioning, he confessed to the murder of Judy Kozma. Though the RCMP officers were convinced that he was involved in other child murders, they had no idea as to the number; few bodies had been found, and several of Olson’s victims were still thought of as runaways.

It was while Olson was under questioning that the case took a controversial turn. He offered to lead police to his victims’ bodies, and to provide a detailed account of each murder. In exchange he wanted his wife to be given $10,000–$100,000 per body. ‘The first one will be a freebie’, he is reported as having said.

The proposal was accepted by the police, Olson did as he’d promised, and the money was delivered. When exposed the following year, the deal was met with public outrage.

Why exactly the RCMP paid Olson can perhaps best be judged by what they had known at the time. The force had a confession for one murder, and suspected Olson of many more. But how many? The high number came as a surprise. Furthermore, only four bodies had been discovered. The money was justified as a small price to pay in order to develop air-tight cases and bring closure to the families of the missing children.

The subsequent trial was swift. After three days Olson was handed down 11 consecutive life sentences.

For his brutal crimes, Olson earned the moniker ‘The Beast of BC’. Several books were written, most focusing not on the brutal murders, but on the controversial deal made by the RCMP. Olson served as the inspiration for John Grinell, the serial killer in the 1983 Ian Adams novel Bad Faith. Even Olson wrote a book,
Profile of a Serial Killer: The Clifford Olson Story,
in which he refers to himself in the third person. It remains unpublished.

Though Olson took his place in the nation’s psyche, he remained out of the news – gone, but not forgotten. However, he was never one to turn down the opportunity to call attention to himself. In 1991, he applied for release under Canada’s ‘faint hope clause’, a section of legislation intended to release those judged truly reformed. The application was turned down. In 2006, having served 25 years of his sentences, he applied for parole, and was again turned down. During the hearing Olson claimed that the three-member panel had no jurisdiction as he’d been granted clemency by the United States government for information he had provided concerning the attacks of 11 September 2001. Olson was refused parole in 2008 and 2010 and died of cancer in Quebec at the age of 71.