Wednesday. Augus! 29, 1990 - North Shore News ~ 23

books

A horrific tale of blood money

4d QC) N FEBRUARY 13, 1976, inside Prince Albert

the project. In fact they, too, have
a stake in Final Payortt.

They have never accepted the
morality of necessity of the pact,
fighting it all the way to the
Supreme Court of Canada.

They have outstanding concerns
about police handling of the case
and the failure of law enforcement

with missing children,

And they fear that Olson may, as
he was before, be released from
prison by gullible officials.

If that indeed happened, if
Olson was to leave behind his
isolatea Kingston cell “deco-
sated’ with pictures of children,

reformed man?

Corporal Fred Maile, the RCMP
officer who tirelessly pursued
Olson even though hampered by
his superiors, wondered much the
same thing.

The last time he saw Olson,
Maile asked him: ‘What would

Penitentiary, a gang of prisoners stabbed (him}

seven times. He had betrayed a group of their
friends who were smuggling drugs into a B.C. prison. The
Saskatchewan criminal injuries board investigated the at-
tempted assassination and awarded (him) $3,500 because
of his ‘unusual degree of moral and physical courage.’ ”’

2
.

The tragedy here is not that a
gang of prison thugs attacked this
individual but that they failed. For
the intended murder victim would
shortly begin a rampage of sexual
violence that would take the in-
nocent lives of at least 11

MIKE
STEELE

book review

youngsters in B.C. and possibly 20
or 30 others across North America.

His name is Clifford Robert
Olson.

Final Payoff (Seal/Contemporary
Communications; 221 pp.; $24.95)
is the horrific story of a monster
and the families he destroyed, the
investigations of B.C. police who
tracked him and the gut-wren-
ching details of his grisly preda-
tions.

But it is also the tale, now told
for the first time in its entirety, of
the blood money paid to Olsan’s
wife in return for information on
the child victims.

It is, states author lan Mulgrew,
“a deal that will live in infamy.”

Mulgrew traces the events that
led to the cash-for-bodies bargain
between the RCMP and the serial
killer in 1981. He pulls no pun-
ches as he reveals the flawed
police efforts that forced
authorities to sanction the
$160,000 agreement that shocked
Canadians and outraged the vic-
tims’ families.

Inevitably, people will question
both the propriety and necessity of
a new book on the Olson case.
They will certainly wonder about
the effects this title may have on
the murdered children’s families
who, without a doubt, have suf-
fered immeasurably as a result of
Olson's diabolical offences.

It should be pointed out that
Mulgrew spoke at length with all
of the families concerned and that
no one, he stated, was averse to

Mulgrew on Olson

(AN MULGREW was, until recent-
ly, the assistant city editor of the
Province newspaper in Van-
couver. Previously he was the
West Coast bureau chief for the
Globe & Mail.

He is the author of several
books, including The Expo Story,
Unholy Terror: The Sikhs and In-
ternational Terrorism and is the
co-author of the soon-to-be-
released Webster!

Books Now: lan, { suspect
that you’re going to come
under fire for Final Payoff.
Many people are going to ask
why you wrote it. What made
you decide to tackle this sub-
ject?

Mulgrew: As you know, |
covered this (the Olson case).
There were questions that weren't
answered at the time. One of the
reasons was to exorcise some of
those ghosts and clear my mind of
some of the questions raised then.

Books Now: The police han-
dling of Olson plays a major

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part in your book, especially
the fact that the RCMP’s
budget concerns were an im-
portant factor in the
surveillance problem. What are
your own feelings about this?

Mulgrew: The police take their
priorities from the politicians.
Drugs were a priority at the time
and a major bust was in the works.
They just don’t have enough peo-
ple available. They’re writing tick-
ets, investigating other things.

There are a hundred guys (cur-
rently, he explained, according to
police) in Vancouver alone who
are capable of sexually attacking
and abusing kids.

Books Now: in your book
you refer to Olson figuring
he'll get out on parole in
something like 15 years. Surely
that’s impossible?

Mulgrew: | wish { could say that
was true. We get a lot of bleeding
hearts in Canada, people who
could take up his cause.

2 Neeseesevce

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bodies to adequately revise
policies and methods of dealing

would he still pose a threat to
society? Has he renounced and
repented his atrocities? Is he a

you do if you got out, Cliff?” ’”’
Olson grinned: ‘‘I’d take up
where | left off.’

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