Final Payoff: The True Price of Convicting Clifford Robert Olson

Christopher English is a history lecturer at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland and a recent law-school graduate.

The moral outrage Mulgrew voices at the deal by which Clifford Olson
negotiated a $100,000 payment from the rcmp in 1981 in exchange for
leading police to the remains of 11 of his youthful victims is widely
shared. The bungled investigation of this sociopath—early identified
as a prime suspect—was salvaged only by what the author called “a
diabolical agreement” that provincial and federal politicians, lawyers
for the parties, the police, and the local media conspired to keep
secret. In so doing they treated the victims’ parents callously and
sacrificed justice to cynicism and expediency. Even the courts failed:
the civil suit brought in 1984 by the victims’ parents to recover the
payment from the trustees for Olson’s family, though rightly decided
(if for the wrong reasons) at trial, was denied on appeal in “a
convoluted piece of legal gobbledygook,” and, in “a classic example
of judicial cowardice” by the Supreme Court of Canada, denied a final
appeal.

Strong words, but they are not entirely consistent with this author’s
grudging admission that the issues were not black and white. Paying
informants is indeed a feature of the “underground economy” of the
criminal justice system. The B.C. Attorney General also had to weigh
political issues: the lack of evidence tying Olson to his crimes, public
fear of a serial murderer at large, the parents’ anxiety and the costs
of an investigation (more per day than the payment that would win a
guilty plea from Olson, imprisoning him forever). Politicians seeking a
quick fix, lawyers skirting the boundaries of conflict of interest or
greed, even the author (who admits to stealing an rcmp briefing
document): all found their actions and motives tarred in retrospect by
moral ambiguity, despite genuinely having thought they were acting in
the public interest.

Finally, though the journalistic tradition of muckraking is to be
defended, Mulgrew is a more reliable guide to what happened than the law
and legal reasoning that proved a blunt, albeit perhaps inadequate,
instrument for resolving this heartwrenching affair. As so often with
the legal system, there are inadequate answers and no winners. Only
losers.