During the early 1980’s BC’s lower mainland region was in
the grip of fear.
Children were going missing, too many of them to be of
coincidence.
Police forces in the area appeared first to make no
connections, everyone was baffled.
More and more reports of missing kids came in, media
interest grew, but answers to what was going on did not exist.
This went on for many months, another name being added to a
list of the missing no longer seemed to be a surprise. Some bodies had been
found, others were still missing.
If the police knew early what was really going on, they did not
share that with the media. Reporters were left to try to figure this out on
their own.
I have often commented to my police contacts that left in an
information vacuum, media will find and chase sources other than the police.
This can potentially harm a police investigation, so it’s better for the law to
offer media some information (if they can) rather than leaving media out in the
cold.
Media do owe a duty to inform the public, but we also owe a
duty to society to not impede policing and justice. It’s a fine line to tread
and has to be done with great care.
In the newsroom of CKVU TV in Vancouver we were as perplexed
as other local media about what was going on. Bits of information came in,
including where these kids had lived and where they were last seen. That is all
we had to go on.
There did not seem to be a pattern, nothing the dead and missing
seemed to have in common, they were male and female, and they had disappeared from
several different areas and municipalities.
As the case went on as News Director I decided to assign a
single reporter to the story, rather than sharing it around among other
reporters. I thought it better that one person have this in all their head, it
was less likely we would miss something or get something wrong.
I gave the assignment to reporter Wayne Williams. I had
hired Wayne right after he completed his broadcast news training at BCIT. He was a bit green and inexperienced then, but he was also mature for his young age, and was great
for grinding out detail and chasing leads.
We set up a white board in my office. On it we posted
everything we knew about the victims, which at this stage, to the best of my
recollection, had reached nine youngsters.
On the white board we posted everything we knew about each
of the dead and missing. Every day we reviewed what was on the board, added new
info, and removed stuff that did not seem to fit.
Weeks went by. Wayne
and I stared at that damn board for hours, and hours, and hours. After a while
the whole thing blinds you, and you’re not seeing anything at all. Better to
walk away for a while.
One morning I came in to work with my coffee and was thinking it was
probably time to pack the white board away and be done with it, but that would
be giving up. When Wayne started his shift that day there we were staring at
this slab of information, again. What were we missing?
Maybe we had to come at this from a totally different angle.
How about not looking so much at the actual locations the kids disappeared from,
and rather look at what was nearby. Bus stops, schools, recreation centers –
anything?
One by one we eliminated possible connections until only one
remained. In almost every case the locations were near what we called “garden
apartment” complexes, walk up low rise apartment buildings surrounded by lawns
and flower gardens. The kinds of places where families with children lived.
We called in the police.
They came to my office and listened while Wayne and I walked
them through our findings. We told them we intended to broadcast a story that
night that suggested the person taking the children probably had a connection
to the apartment buildings. He could work for a property management company or
have some other connection.
We shot our whole encounter with the police on video tape,
asked them to comment, and to warn us if we were about to botch things up for
them.
They had little to say, other than this was interesting and
they had nothing to add. Importantly they did not indicate what we were about
to publish might be harmful.
We ran the story that night. A few short days later police
announced they had arrested Clifford Robert Olson, and charged him with the disappearance
and murder of several of the children. Olson had worked part time for his
father, cutting the lawns and tending the gardens of apartment buildings across
the region. It’s believed that during that work he stalked his victims.
I am reasonably convinced the police had been on to him for a
little while before our broadcast, we learned later he had been under
surveillance, but was slippery, they may already have had him or were just grabbing
him when we aired our story
Later a “cash for bodies” deal was revealed in which Olson’s
wife would be paid by the government of BC for information about the locations
of the missing bodies, one by one, as Clifford revealed where they were. That
touched off a political storm, but the families got closure.
Serial killer Clifford Robert Olson was the gardener. Olson died
in prison in 2011.
Reporter Wayne Williams went on to a very successful career
with CBC Television News in Vancouver.
I still feel a bit strange every time I see a garden
apartment complex.
