Serial killer Clifford Olson dead at 71

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Serial killer Clifford Olson has died, just a week after the news broke he had terminal cancer.

He died at a hospital in Quebec at the age of 71. Families of some of the victims received a call from Corrections Canada today, delivering the news.

Olson pleaded guilty to murdering 11 children across BC in 1982. Ray King’s 15-year-old son Ray Junior was one of them.

“Finally, it’s over,” King tells News1130. “Just relief. It’s like having a toothache and having it go away and you don’t even think about it anymore. It’s just gone.”

Olson taunted his victims’ family members for years and made bizarre claims, including repeated requests for parole.

“He’s never going to be in my face again,” King says. “After this weekend he’s going to be forgotten and we can get on with our lives. And then when it’s over, it’s over. We can go back to being anonymous again.”

King says he knew Olson was dead when he checked his voice mail and had 10 messages.

Trudy Court’s sister Ada was 13 when she was killed by Olson. The teen disappeared on her way home from babysitting.

“She was a champion of the underdog,” Court recalls. “If she saw someone being bullied on the playground at school she would go and help them.

“She was just a wonderful person and I just wish that I could have had the opportunity to watch her grow and see what kind of a woman she would have grown into.”

Court says she wishes her mother had lived to experience the news of Olson’s death.

George Orr is a journalist who worked in the ’80s for what is now CityTV, and spoke to many of the families of Olson’s victims. He says the killings instilled fear throughout BC and are the reason parents now walk their kids to school.

“As a reporter and as a news editor, you’d be dealing with moms and dads whose children were missing,” Orr recalls. “They’re pretty sure their kids are dead, they’re not really sure. The police will give them no comfort, no information, and it was devastating emotionally.”

After Olson confessed to killing 11 children in 1982, his wife was eventually paid for more details.

“The reason parents give their kids cell phones to keep a sense of where they are [is] Clifford Olson,” Orr says. “So the fear that Olson put into our community never went away.”

He says one of the hardest parts was listening to parents of missing children who couldn’t get help from police.

“They turned to the media and would sort of throw themselves at us saying ‘help us find information.'”

Word of Olson’s illness sparked outrage last week. Online commenters wished him a difficult death, with many saying he would have been gone long ago had the death penalty been brought back.

Serge Abergel with the Correctional Service of Canada says there will be nothing at Olson’s burial to disrespect his victims.

“In a case that is notorious like this, there will come a point where the funeral will happen and it will be at an undisclosed location, so the public will not be made aware of the whereabouts,” he says.

Abergel also stresses that nothing will be done which does not respect the victims.

-With files from The Canadian Press