METRO EXCLUSIVE A LOOK AT THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER 25 YEARS LATER {page 10} FALL IN LOVE WITH AUTUMN COOKING TRY PORK WITH FRUIT COMPOTE {page 32}
LONDON CALLING FASHION WEEK’S BIGGEST HITS STYLE {page 26}
VANCOUVER
Thursday, September 22, 2011 www.metronews.ca News worth sharing.
Clifford Olson dying, say victims’ families
Vancouver. Aquarium
Loved ones of slain youth have been told serial killer’s cancer is terminal
NICK DIDLICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Vancouver Aquarium staff release one of 10 recovered harbour seals into Deep Cove yesterday. The seals’ stories, and those of other injured marine wildlife, are being told at the aquarium’s new Rescue Stories exhibit. Story, page 6. CHELSEA ALTICE/FOR METRO
Rehabbed seals free to go home
Clifford Olson, Canada’s most reviled serial killer, is just days from death, families of his child victims say. They say Olson’s last breath will bring some closure decades after his murderous crime spree ended with a controversial cash-forbodies deal with police. Sharon Rosenfeldt, the mother of one of Olson’s 11 victims, said Olson has been moved to a hospital in Quebec with just days to live. “There’s no blueprint for how I’m supposed to be feeling,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “At first, it was very much shock, then I became emotional, not necessarily over Olson but I became emotional over my son, his little face flashed before me, my children, my family, my parents who were so devastated by this years ago.” Rosenfeldt said she was told by the commissioner for Corrections Canada that the 71-year-old killer’s cancer has spread through his body. “I felt, ‘My God Sharon, I should be feeling yippee.’ But I’ve been conditioned, I guess. I was raised in a Christian belief that I just don’t get yippee over anybody’s death.” Sixteen-year-old Daryn John-
Clifford Olson, left, leaves Chilliwack provincial court in 1981.
srude, one of Olson’s first victims, was Rosenfeldt’s son. Raymond King, the father of another victim, said he wanted to see Olson dead 30 years ago. The killer’s terminal condition will never bring complete closure for the horror his family went through when Raymond Jr. died, but King said at least it means the families won’t have to continue confronting Olson at every parole hearing. Olson, once dubbed “the Beast of B.C.” in media reports, had been serving a life sentence at a maximum-security prison. He was handed 11 concurrent life terms in 1982 after pleading guilty to the murders, which occurred in and around the Vancouver area in 1981. THE CANADIAN PRESS