Canadian True Crime - 24 The Murder of Lynne Harper

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

Steven Truscott was a 14 year old boy in Ontario, Canada, and in 1959 he was linked to a tragedy that ended the life of a 12 year old girl. This would turn into the longest legal drama in Canadian history.Recommended reading: Steven Truscott: Decades of Injustice, by Nate Hendley Amazon.ca Amazon.comSupport my sponsors! Here's where the discount codes are:www.canadiantruecrime.ca/sponsorsPodcast recomendations:Felon True CrimeMurder was the Case1995Social media and contact information: Visit: www.canadiantruecrime.ca Facebook page:  www.facebook.com/canadiantruecrime/ Facebook group: /www.facebook.com/groups/478462932506209/ Twitter:  twitter.com/CanadianTCpod Instagram: www.instagram.com/canadiantruecrimepod/ Email: [e-mail] my patreon to get early, ad-free episodes and more: www.patreon.com/canadiantruecrime  Credits:Primary research, writing: Nate HendleyNarration and music arrangement: Kristi LeeAudio production: Erik KrosbyMain information sources:Listed on the episode page at www.canadiantruecrime.caMusic credits:Music below is used under an Attribution License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Podcast theme music: Space Trip.  http://www.dl-sounds.com/royalty-free/space-trip/Kai Engel - HeadwayKai Engel - TumultSergey Cheremisinov - Mothers HandsKai Engel - Brand New WorldKai Engel - RunROZKOL - If theseKevin McLeod - Shadowlands 1 - HorizonKai Engel - DenouementChris Zabriskie - Cylinders 7Kai Engel - Warm of Mechanical HeartChris Zabriskie - I don't see the branches, I see the leavesSupport the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast may contain coarse language, adult themes, and content of a violent and disturbing nature. Listener discretion is advised. Before I begin, I wanted to say a big thank you to acclaimed Toronto true crime author Nate Henley for being the primary writer of this episode, which is based on his 2012 book Stephen Truscott Decades of Injustice. Injustice All of the cases I've covered have had elements of it.

Injustice because an innocent victim lost their life in a horrific way. Injustice because of systemic racism, bias, and intolerance. Injustice because of people who didn't do their jobs properly. Injustice because of poor medical and psychological treatment, on and on it goes. And this story is no different. In fact, it's one of those cases that is ingrained in the Canadian psyche, an important tale with two separate injustices that have endured for decades. The story begins with a tragedy that ended the life of a 12-year-old girl, and in the

blink of an eye, a 14-year-old boy would find himself merged into the story and their lives would be forever inextricably linked. But this story would take on a whole new life of its own, going off in a new direction, morphing from the devastating loss of a 12-year-old girl to being completely overshadowed by what would become the longest legal drama in Canadian history. So much so, that many would actually forget her name. Her name was Lynn Harper. It was 1959 in Huron County, within the province of Ontario.

Clinton is a small conservative community located along Ontario's West Coast, where Lake Huron provides one of the separating lines between Ontario and the state of Michigan in the US. The town of Clinton was known for having a Royal Canadian Air Force base nearby, which had been started 18 years earlier as a training unit for radar operators, when radars were new and top-secret technology. It was a teaching centre and didn't actually have any planes on it. After the Second World War, the government began providing housing for service personnel

returning back to Canadian Air Force bases, so military housing was constructed to provide accommodation for them and their families. With 3,000 personnel and their families to accommodate, neighbourhoods were formed called Permanent Married Quarters, or PMQs, and often had schools, churches, banks, stores and recreational facilities. The children of RCAF often formed strong bonds because of their unique living situation. It was June 1959 and the Harper's were just one of these families living in the PMQs. Leslie Harper was a flying officer in the RCAF and together with his wife Shirley, they

had three kids. Barry was 16, Lynn was 12 and Jeffrey was 5. The Harper's maintained a quiet and orderly home with a large lawn that was maintained regularly as per Air Force regulations. This story is about the middle child, 12-year-old Lynn, whose name was actually Cheryl but went by her middle name. Lynn was a petite 12-year-old who attended a mixed grade 7 and 8 class at a school on base and was described as a clean-cut girl active in Girl Guides.

She had a small scar on her lip that she was quite self-conscious about from an injury that occurred when she was much younger. Lynn was said to have been a bit evasive about how the scar came to be there. She was known to say that she either fell out of a window or fell on a shampoo bottle. Anyway, like most girls bordering on adolescence, she just wanted to be liked and accepted. A former teacher, Edgar Maitland, described Lynn as a high-spirited girl, determined and very independent. Because of her energetic personality, her teacher placed her in the seat in front of

the teacher's desk to keep an eye on her. Others remembered that Lynn loved sports and spent hours at her local playground with her friend Cathy Beeman. Quote, she was quite athletic. She was into sports and they had monkey bars and things like that, you know. And we'd go play on the monkey bars and see who could hang upside down the longest. Just regular kid stuff. In an interview with police in 2005, one of the girls Lynn went to school with, named

Joan Tire, recalled that Lynn just wanted to belong. Quote, she wanted to do what the other kids did and not so much the little kids but more the older kids. She just wanted to have a friend. She wanted to be with the bigger kids. Joan was two years older than Lynn and remembered playing baseball with her in the afternoon of Tuesday, June the 9th, 1959. A date that would go on to be etched in the minds of everyone on that base.

Lynn and Joan were on the same team and tiny Lynn hit the ball but didn't run fast enough to make it to first base. Joan teased her and Lynn, upset, decided to go home. She made it home for dinner at around 5.30pm. Once dinner was finished, Lynn got into an argument with her parents. She wanted to go swimming at the pool on the RCAF base. The problem was, as a minor, she needed adult supervision or a military pass to swim there. She went off to see if she could secure a pass from a base official but wasn't successful

so she came home in a huff, did the dishes then left the house again around 6.15pm, not telling her parents where she was headed. She was wearing turquoise shorts and a white blouse with a locket around her neck that had an RCAF crest on it. This was the last time her parents would see her. Lynn walked to the grounds of the local school and arrived there at around 6.30pm to find a brownie meeting going on, a group of girl guides for girls around ages 7 and 8. As an older girl guide, Lynn helped with the scavenger hunt they were putting on and then

chatted with an adult brownie leader named Ann Nickerson. Ann recalled Lynn saying that she didn't want to go home because of the argument she'd had with her parents. At about 5 minutes past 7, Lynn started walking away and Ann saw a teenage boy come along on a sporty looking green bike. His name was Stephen Truscott. He was 14 years old, 2 years older than Lynn, but in the same grade 7 and 8 classes her. She was idling on his bicycle around the school grounds and parked the bike when Lynn came

up. Stephen was a good looking boy, tall for his age, with light brown coloured hair. That day he was wearing red pants and a light coloured shirt. Stephen was confident, an athlete who played many sports including football. That previous November, his football team was victorious in a competition called the Little Grey Cup. But while he was popular with the other kids his age at school, he was wary about getting too attached to any one particular set of friends.

As an army brat, he had moved with his family from base to base across the country at the whim of Army Brass. The Truscott family, helmed by Dan and Doris Truscott, had been living at RCAF Base Clinton for 3 years since the summer of 1956. Dan Truscott was a warrant officer in the RCAF and Doris was a homemaker. Stephen had 3 siblings, Ken, who was 2 years older at 16, and Bill and Barbara, who were younger than Stephen. That night Stephen was due home at 8.30 to babysit his little brother and sister, but

before that he decided to do what many other base kids were doing and take advantage of the warm summer night. He decided to ride around on his bike for a bit. This was not the first time Lynn Harper had approached Stephen Truscott. A few days earlier at a house party for local teens, she had walked up to him and asked him to dance. He accepted and they danced together for a short while. Several people saw them dancing and said that this was as far as their relationship went.

Now, at the school grounds, Lynn had another request. According to Stephen, she wanted a ride down to Highway 8. She mentioned something about maybe seeing some ponies owned by a recluse who lived in a white house outside town. Several witnesses, including Brownie leader Ann Nickerson, saw Lynn and Stephen walk off together. When they reached the county road, Lynn climbed up onto the handlebars of Stephen's bike and the two began the downhill descent to the highway.

The paved, two-lane county road led north from the base, past a wooded patch called Lawson's Bush, named after Bob Lawson, the farmer who owned the property. A couple of hundred metres past Lawson's Bush, the county road was crossed by Canadian National Railway tracks. Just a short distance from the tracks was the Bayfield River, which was a popular spot to swim and fish on in hot days. The county road followed a bridge over this river and led to King's Highway Number 8, a major roadway.

To the west, Highway Number 8 led to Clinton and to the east, it led to a town called Seaforth. As they rode on the bike, Stephen remembered Lynn being in a cheerful mood, even if she did say she was mad at her mother because she didn't let her go swimming. Steve would later tell police that Lynn asked if she could get off the bike, he dropped her off at Highway 8 and then biked back towards the bridge over Bayfield River. Stephen says he looked back and saw her standing there with her thumb up. She was trying to hitchhike. He then saw a 1959 Grey Chevrolet stop to pick her up, with a yellow licence plate or

bumper sticker on the back. He distinctly remembered it because that was the first year that they had changed the style of the car. This latest version had large fins going out the sides like wings and tail lights he described as looking like cat's eyes. There were no other cars around like that, he said. He had glanced at a clock at the school where he met up with Lynn only a few minutes beforehand and saw that the time was 7.25 so he estimated when he dropped her off it was 7.30.

Several kids saw Stephen and Lynn together on his bike riding towards the highway. Several saw them ride over the bridge and at least one said he saw Stephen return alone a few minutes later. With just an hour to go until he had to be home to babysit, Stephen biked home but stopped at the school grounds where kids were still playing. One of them was his older brother so Stephen stopped and tatted a bit before swapping bikes with his brother and heading home to babysit his two younger siblings. The other kids observed him behaving normally and wasn't acting like anything out of the

ordinary had happened. At the time he got home, his mum was chatting with her neighbour and saw that it was about 8.25pm. Twelve year old Lynn Harper didn't return home. That evening her parents Leslie and Shirley searched fruitlessly for their daughter. Leslie contacted the RCAF guard house and told them his daughter was missing. He suggested Lynn might have hitchhiked to see her grandmother in Port Stanley about 200km or 80 miles away because she was still mad about the swimming incident.

The Ontario Provincial Police or OPP were contacted and a report was issued stating that Lynn was a runaway who was most likely hitchhiking. Back in those days, while not advisable, hitchhiking was a more accepted mode of transport and didn't have all of the perceived dangers associated with it like today. Back at home Lynn's parents left the lights on and the door unlocked for when their daughter found her way back home. But the next morning there was still no sign of Lynn. At 7.30am her father drove to the RCAF base and began asking if people had seen his daughter.

One of the people he approached was Dan Truscott, Stephen's father. Dan hadn't seen Lynn himself but told Leslie to drop by the Truscott household to check with the rest of the family. Leslie headed there straight away and found Stephen Truscott finishing his breakfast. He told Lynn's father he had seen her the night before, telling him about how they'd biked to the highway and how he'd seen her getting into the grey Chevrolet. Leslie Harper blanched when he heard this. He didn't like the sound of it.

He went home and he and Shirley began to call around Lynn's friends to see if she had slept over at any of their houses. She hadn't. The OPP began investigating. Since Stephen was the last person to see Lynn, it was natural that they would want to speak with him so they had his father get him from school to ask him a few questions. After he'd recounted what happened, he was dropped back off at school. Naturally, all the kids at school were talking about Lynn's disappearance, but everyone just

assumed she'd hitchhiked somewhere and would be in big trouble when she was found. Around 5pm, police came back to the Truscott house wanting to talk to Stephen again. They took he and his mother Doris out to the county road, the site of where he said he last saw Lynn and asked him to physically walk them through his encounter with her from start to finish. The following day, June 11th, Stephen was again taken out of class around noon for yet more questioning. Police had also started interviewing other children from the school in an empty room.

Meanwhile, a search party of 250 RCAF men came together at the base. They were tasked with searching for a body, a telling sign that the police believed Lynn Harper might be dead. The men divided up into three search teams. At around 1.30pm, Corporal George Edens and Lieutenant Joseph Ledger were searching the area called Lawson's Bush, which was situated about halfway between the school and Highway 8 where Stephen said he'd dropped Lynn off and before the bridge they were seen to have biked over together.

30 minutes into the search, they found the body of 12-year-old Lynn Harper. She was lying on her back in a hollowed area at the base of a clump of maple and ash trees. She was naked except for her blouse, which was blood soaked and ripped. Her right arm was still in her blouse, which was otherwise knotted around her neck and it was clearly evident that she'd been sexually assaulted. In an odd touch, three branches from ash saplings had been broken off about two metres from the ground and laid diagonally across Lynn's body. Equally perplexing was the fact that her clothing had been neatly folded next to her body.

Her socks were rolled up and her shorts zippered and placed carefully on the ground as if whoever killed her was concerned with appearances. There was no indication of a struggle at the death scene and no evidence of footprints either. There was very little blood on the ground or on her body. By now some of the searches had gathered and had put their jackets over the body, unfortunately compromising the crime scene in the process. When police arrived on the scene just after 2pm, they neglected to check the jackets for

evidence such as strands of hair or blood. Police fingerprinted the scene but couldn't find any prints on either Lynn's clothes or body. Police and RCAF personnel alike were shocked. Here in County was a low crime area. Violent sexual assaults and murders just didn't happen in the community. But there wasn't time for shock because the search for Lynn Harper had now turned into a homicide investigation.

The investigation went into full force. Police photographs were taken of the crime scene then a coroner Dr. John Peniston arrived. The coroner examined Lynn's body and a pathologist spent about 1 hour inspecting the death scene. When the doctor was through Lynn's body was carried out of the woods on a stretcher and taken to the Ball and Hutch funeral home in Clinton. Meanwhile at Lawson's Bush, searches found car and old bicycle tyre tracks. They reported these to police. At the funeral home Dr. Peniston and another physician performed an autopsy as three policemen

looked on. There wasn't proper equipment or space but police wanted things done quickly so it would have to do. The cause of death was determined to be strangulation. The two doctors opened up Lynn's stomach and removed samples of its contents which they placed in a glass jar. Dr. Peniston held the jar up to the light to take a closer look. This was the extent of his testing method producing findings that would prove to be an

important moment in this case with lasting consequences. Would stomach contents be used to estimate time of death? Dr. Peniston decided that yes it could. Working on an assumption he had that a normal stomach took two hours to digest a meal, Dr. Peniston gauged the amount of food in Lynn's body with the degree of putrefaction in her remains and decided she died two hours after eating her last meal. Since Lynn was said to have eaten her dinner at 5.30pm on June the 9th, then according to Dr. Peniston she most likely died sometime between 7.15 and 7.45pm that same night, around

the same time that Stephen Truscott said he was with her. The jar containing the stomach contents was sent to the Ontario General's Crime Library in Toronto for confirmation. At the same time the makeshift autopsy was being held, Inspector Harold Graham of the Criminal Investigative Branch of the OPP arrived from police headquarters in Toronto. He was a tough cop who assessed the details of the crime and originally advised his officers to look for someone with scratches on their face, neck, hands and arms. But not long after this, he zeroed in on Stephen Truscott as his number one suspect.

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Go to squarespace.com slash ctc for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code CTC to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, that's squarespace.com slash CTC with offer code CTC and get your passion project off the ground today. On Friday, June the 12th, three days after Lynn's body had been found, Stephen was called out of class yet again to be interviewed by Inspector Graham. Stephen was wary of the repeated police inquiries but remained polite and focused as he repeated his account of taking Lynn to the highway on his bike. In the meantime, the official results were back from Toronto with the analysis of Lynn's

stomach contents. Police conferred with the lab and decided that doctors there had confirmed the local coroner's death estimate of 715 to 745. As police knew, the only person to be with Lynn at this time was Stephen Truscott. It was very unclear if this is what the doctor's report actually said but police still used this supposed confirmation as reason to bring in Stephen Truscott. Stephen was taken to the OPP station in Goderich and questioned intensely without a lawyer or parent present.

They presented him with a statement from a classmate, Jocelyn Gaudet, who claimed Stephen asked her on a date to see some calves in Lawson's Bush that same night that Lynn was murdered. But when Stephen allegedly came around to her place at 5.50pm, she wasn't home. The inference was that Stephen, fuelled by raging teenage hormones, went off and settled on Lynn Harper as a substitute. Jocelyn said she later went to Lawson's Bush and to the farm but her statement would change both in terms of the time she said she went there and about who she was looking for, Stephen

or Lynn. The policeman worked Stephen over in turns. They wanted him to admit to sexually assaulting and murdering Lynn. The boy refused to oblige and stuck to his story about giving her a ride past Lawson's Bush over the bridge and to the highway. Stephen was taken to the RCAF guardhouse around 9.30pm. His father, who had been searching frantically for his son, was tipped to Stephen's presence at the guardhouse.

Stephen was reunited with his father, but the interrogation continued. Legally, Daniel Truscott could have removed his son from the guardhouse at any time. Stephen wasn't under arrest which meant police couldn't hold him against his will, only no one explained this to either father or son. A doctor named John Addison was called in at one point to perform a physical examination of Stephen. Dr Addison was curious about some small lesions he saw on Stephen's penis and decided that these lesions were the result of attempting to rape Lynn Harper.

Stephen still adamantly refused to confess to Lynn's murder, but it didn't matter because police had made their decision. Early in the morning of June 13, Stephen was taken before a justice of the peace and officially charged with the murder of Lynn Harper. He was placed in the Huron County Jail in Goderich. The community was relieved. The killer had been found and it was just some kid. Their community was still safe.

The RCAF was relieved too because it wasn't one of their servicemen who was responsible. The same day Stephen was jailed, Lynn Harper was memorialised at a funeral at the Protestant Chapel on the RCAF base. She was buried in a Girl Guide uniform and around 30 Girl Guides in uniform served as honour guards for her casket. 16 airmen from the base acted as pull-bearers. Obviously the community was shattered in grief, but none more so than the Harper family themselves. As if one death wasn't enough, 14-year-old Stephen Truscott also faced the prospect of

death because capital punishment was still in effect at the time. If Stephen ended up being tried as an adult and was found guilty, he could be sentenced to hang. Stephen's family retained a lawyer named Frank Donnelly to defend their son. Police and prosecutors faced two major problems. First, they had to establish that Stephen had enough time to commit the crime. It was established that he'd left the school grounds at about 7.25pm, then returned at about 8pm.

Adding in travel time along the county road and into Lawson's Bush, this meant Stephen had barely 10 minutes to assault and murder Lynn Harper. On top of this very narrow window of opportunity, police also had little in the way of physical evidence. No fingerprints, hair samples, blood, footprints or ripped clothing tied Stephen to the crime scene. There were his penis lesions, but that was circumstantial and really could have been caused by any number of factors.

The stakes in the case were high. At the end of June, it was decided that Stephen would be tried as an adult. On September 16, 1959, Stephen Truscott's criminal trial began in Goderich, Ontario, in front of Judge Robert Ferguson. Stephen was in a daze for much of the time and completely lost during those dense technical debates about points of law and unable to comprehend how he ended up on trial for his life. A very scared 14-year-old boy was taken back to his tiny cell each night after the court

proceedings were through. Stephen pled not guilty and the trial got underway. The crown's case was that Stephen and Lynn didn't make it over the bridge and to the highway. Instead, Stephen turned before the bridge down the lane towards Lawson's Bush and once they got into the bush, Stephen somehow overpowered Lynn, sexually assaulted and murdered her and then returned back to the school. Except he returned only minutes later and witnesses said he looked and acted completely

normal. Lynn's mother Shirley was one of the first witnesses for the crown. Testifying on September 17, 1959, Shirley insisted all was fine in the Harper household the night her daughter vanished. Mrs Harper also denied that her daughter ever hitchhiked, which was not entirely truthful. Her friends would come out later to say that she would often hitchhike. Coroner Dr John Peniston testified that Lynn was strangled with her own blouse and once more confidently placed her time of death as being between 7.15 and 7.45pm on June 9.

Dr Peniston said in his view, quote, death took place where the body was found and that Lynn's vaginal injuries, quote, might possibly have been produced by a blind, violent thrust of the male organ. When questioned by the defense, Dr Peniston conceded that it was difficult to precisely judge time of death by analyzing the degree of decomposition. Two doctors testified about the lesions on Stephen's penis. One of them suggested that the injuries came from, quote, a very inexpert attempt at penetration. Much was made about these injuries.

Jocelyn Gaudette testified that Stephen had come to her house a little before 6pm the night Lynn disappeared. She said Stephen had made a date with her to see some newborn calves on Bob Lawson's farm. Jocelyn claimed she biked to Lawson's farm after finishing her dinner and looked for Stephen but couldn't find him. A testimony that contradicted her earlier police statement that she was looking for Lynn. When questioned by the defense, Jocelyn admitted her memory was a bit shaky and that three

weeks prior to Lynn's murder, she had asked another boy named Gary to check out some calves at Lawson's farm with her. On September the 19th, 1959, a classmate of Stephen's named Arnold George who went by the name Butch took the stand. He'd previously told a bunch of kids that he'd seen Stephen with Lynn in Lawson's bush but then told others that he hadn't seen him. During his testimony, Butch claimed Stephen visited him at 6pm the day after Lynn disappeared. According to Butch, Stephen wanted him to lie and claim he had seen Stephen biking on

the bridge over Bayfield River with Lynn the night she disappeared. Butch's testimony presented Stephen as a duplicitous liar with something to hide but he also couldn't get his story straight and contradicted himself several times. The crown also argued that it was physically impossible for Stephen to have been able to see Lynn get into a car from where he claimed to be standing, let alone see the color of the license plate, so he must have been lying about that too. Stephen's defense began September 25, 1959. The court heard from a doctor who was a specialist in internal medicine and who had served as

a medic in the Canadian army in Europe during the Second World War. Dr. Barkley Brown had examined thousands of soldiers, including men accused of rape. His testimony cast doubt on the theory that Stephen's penile lesions were the result of forced intercourse on a young girl. In his opinion, it was highly unlikely that penetration would produce the lesions described. In his experience, it was rare that the penises injured during rape and that if it is, the injury is usually to the phrenom, the connecting membrane on the underside of the penis close to the tip.

The lesions on Stephen's penis were on the shaft. Dr. Brown also testified that the stomach of a 12-year-old girl normally took 3.5 to 4 hours to empty, not 2 hours as Dr. Peniston had stated. He added that factors such as stress and terror could also impact digestion time. Some of Stephen's classmates testified that they saw him and Lynn biking together and then noticed Stephen biking back alone a few minutes later. A total of 74 witnesses took the stand over 11 days of testimony. Some 77 exhibits were displayed during the trial and the court reporter recorded between

350 and 400,000 words. Not a single witness said they saw Stephen take Lynn into Lawson's bush, nor was there any physical evidence tying him to the crime or the crime scene. The prosecution's case was entirely based on circumstantial evidence. At 10.55 p.m. on September 30, 1959, after deliberating for only a few hours, the jury returned with a verdict. They found Stephen Truscott guilty with a plea for mercy. Stephen's mother Doris began to cry and Stephen himself turned white.

For the first time at the trial, he teared up. As it turned out, he had good reason to cry. Judge Ferguson did not show him mercy and sentenced him to death by hanging. While many Canadians were appalled that a 14-year-old could be sentenced to death on shaky circumstantial evidence, others were convinced that justice had been served. This was partly a reflection of the times. Back in the late 1950s, it was generally assumed that if a person had their day in court and was convicted, they were undoubtedly guilty.

The notion that police and courts could make a mistake was unthinkable. The Truscott family hired a new lawyer to make an appeal, which failed. But then there was one bit of good news for the family. Stephen's death sentence was commuted to life in prison by the federal government. Stephen would go to the Ontario Training School for Boys, a facility for juvenile offenders in Guelph, Ontario, until he turned 18, and then he would be transferred to a federal prison. Stephen was a model prisoner.

He did woodworking and played sports and stayed out of trouble. In the early 1960s, a journalist named Isabel Laborde began investigating Stephen's case. She felt he'd been wrongly convicted. She investigated and based on a lack of physical evidence and timelines, she concluded that Stephen was definitely innocent. When Stephen turned 18 in January 1963, he was transferred to Collins Bay Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario. There, he worked in the machine shop and continued to stay out of trouble.

Prison psychiatrist tried to get him to confess to Lynn Harper's murder using LSD and a truth serum, but he still maintained his innocence. His story never wavered. Three years later, Isabel Laborde's book, The Trial of Stephen Truscott, was published. The book was a sensation. People were shocked at the very idea that police and courts could accidentally convict an innocent boy. The book led to a two-week hearing into Stephen's case in the fall of 1966, before the Supreme

Court of Canada. During the scenes, the coroner, Dr. Peniston, put together a report in which he basically dumped on his own earlier findings. He called it an agonising reappraisal. He suggested he might have been too specific estimating Lynn's time of death based on stomach contents and instead of her dying two hours after she ate dinner, he said it was possible that she could have died up to 12 hours afterwards or even longer. In other words, she might have died outside of the time frame that she was with Stephen

Truscott. But this document wasn't presented to the Supreme Court. Why? Because it wasn't given to the court or the defence. It would be many years before this document saw the light of day. Doctor reports aside, police were picking up fresh tips and leads now that the Truscott case was back in the news. In a memo, Inspector Harold Graham cited quote, an aged couple named Mr and Mrs Fletcher Townsend

of Clinton who had seen a young girl hitchhiking in the vicinity of Highway 8 and the county road the night that Lynn Harper disappeared. Given that Stephen claimed he saw Lynn hitchhiking on the highway then getting into a car, this was a potentially important lead. The memo stated that the Townsends had been interviewed on June 11, 1959 by Constable Donald Tremblay in their Clinton Ontario home. This was the day before Lynn's body was found. Inspector Graham wrote in his memo quote, after the discussion between Townsend and

his wife and the fact that both agreed it was near darkness when the alleged sighting occurred, no further investigation was made. We were satisfied at the time it was an aged couple who were trying to be helpful in the investigation. Unfortunately for Stephen, again, none of this information was provided to his lawyers at the Supreme Court hearings. During the hearing, doctors from the Ontario Attorney General's Laboratory said they hadn't actually confirmed Doctor Peniston's opinion that Lynn died between 715 and 745 on June

9. That was roughly two hours after eating. Remember, the police interpreted it this way anyway and pressed on with their case against Stephen Truscott. Another medical expert said stomach content analysis was not a reliable guide for estimating time of death. Regarding the lesions found on Stephen's penis, several experts suggested that they might have been simply a skin condition and almost certainly weren't caused by an expert attempt

at intercourse, as what was previously claimed. Another defense witness suggested that Lynn wasn't actually attacked in Lawson's bush due to the lack of semen found at the crime scene, but was dumped there later after her death. Stephen's testimony on October 6, 1966 was going to be the highlight of the Supreme Court hearing, but unfortunately he wasn't a very good witness. Stephen was nervous and had difficulty remembering dates and details. He denied having any romantic interest on Lynn and repeated his account of giving her

a lift on his bicycle, then dropping her off at Highway 8. Stephen had biked away and watched as she got into a car. Lynn's defense lawyer pointed out that police found debris under Lynn's fingernails, suggesting she fought with her assailant, but also that authorities were never able to find any of her blood or hair on Stephen. On May 4, 1967, the Supreme Court of Canada voted 8-1 to uphold Stephen Truscott's conviction. The decision read, quote, The effect of the additional evidence which was heard by this court, considered in its

entirety, strengthens the view that the verdict of the jury ought not to be disturbed. There were many incredibilities inherent in the evidence given by Truscott before us, and we do not believe his testimony. In other words, the Supreme Court of Canada thought Stephen Truscott was a liar. Of course, Stephen was devastated, and he was further shaken up when he discovered his parents were splitting up. While separated, Dan and Doris Truscott remained dedicated to Stephen's case, as did the investigative journalist and author, Isabelle LeBordet.

But now, they were no longer alone in their struggle to prove Stephen's innocence. Unlike the late 1950s, the late 1960s was a rebellious time. Young people started questioning their elders on all matter of political, social, economic and cultural issues. One of these rebels was a teenager in Guelph, Ontario, named Marlene. She read up on Stephen's case and decided he was innocent. She began to write letters to his parents and also to Isabelle LeBordet. This wouldn't be the last we would hear about Marlene.

In Ottawa, the Liberal government announced that after Stephen Truscott had served out his minimum sentence, he would be granted parole. And then in September 1969, the National Parole Board did recommend that he be given parole. Their recommendation went to the federal cabinet, where it was quickly approved. On October 21, 1969, 10 years after he was first convicted, Stephen Truscott was released from the Collins Bay Prison Farm on parole. He was 24 years old and a free man, albeit one with the false last name and a murder conviction on his record.

After his release, Marlene, that teenager in Guelph, wasted no time in connecting with Stephen. The pair fell in love and they were married in the fall of 1970. They lived in British Columbia under an assumed last name. The newlyweds would later on move back to Marlene's hometown of Guelph, Ontario. And with Stephen's years of shop skills, he was able to get a job as a millwright. That's someone who repairs factory machines. In the spring of 1971, Marlene gave birth to the pair's first child, a daughter named

Leslie. That same year, Stephen was interviewed by journalist Bill Trent, who went on to release a book called The Stephen Truscott Story. The book made a strong case for the title subject's innocence. Eight years later, Trent published a revised version of his book entitled Who Killed Lynn Harper? This new edition was more of an investigative work and contained speculation on possible suspects beside Stephen Truscott.

By the time this book was published, Marlene and Stephen had their second child, a son named Ryan. By all accounts, Stephen was both a good father and employee. Some of his coworkers and neighbors knew his real identity, but generally kept this information to themselves. The years went by and Stephen saw more changes to his family. In 1979, his father Dan died of cancer. And then one year later, he and Marlene had another boy named Devon.

Even as he kept a low profile, Stephen had to deal with the burdens of parole and fame. In the eyes of the law, he was still a convicted murderer. By the 1990s, testing for DNA became a common diagnostic tool in criminal investigations. Blood, hair, saliva, semen or skin could be tested for DNA to determine if there was a biological link between a suspect and a victim. In the mid-1990s, DNA was used to clear two convicted murderers, Guy Paul Moran and David Milgaard, both wrongly imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit. Did DNA testing exonerate Stephen Truscott once and for all?

Stephen became involved with a non-profit legal organization called the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, or AIDWIC, a Toronto-based group that seeks to rectify wrongful convictions. It's now called Innocence Canada. With Stephen's blessing, AIDWIC began the process to obtain DNA from the remains of Lynn Harper. But in a blow to the case, it was discovered that all physical evidence in the case held at the Centre for Forensic Sciences, formerly the Attorney General's crime lab, had been

destroyed years before. AIDWIC had better luck retrieving boxes of documents from police that hadn't been seen in decades. The CBC TV news program, The Fifth the State, began its own investigation. CBC interviewed Stephen for a documentary, which aired in March 2000. It was the first time that Stephen Truscott had been interviewed on camera. He was now 55 years old. One cop says after being there just overnight, this is our suspect, we're charging this

person. I mean, what happened to the word investigation? Have you got it boiled down to any kind of a reason why this happened to you? It was the easiest road out for them. And the 14-year-old kid was the easiest possible way. They spoke to his daughter Leslie, an oldest son, Ryan, about what they think about the whole ordeal. Did you ever have any doubt that, my gosh, there's a dark side to my father that I didn't

know about? No. No. Never pressed your mind? Never. My God is the most laid-back, relaxed person I've ever met in my life. It's just, I'm sure everything that he went through with all the time in jail and that has really molded the wonderful person that he's become.

I guess I just couldn't imagine going through having all of my rights taken away from me, having my family taken away, everything taken away from me, and to be able to live through to tell about it. People talk about heroes all the time. And who do you admire and who's your hero in your life? And we don't even have to go anywhere but our house. Stephen and his wife, Marlene, also spoke about the ongoing fight for justice. Why is it so important for you guys as a couple, as a family, to keep pursuing this?

Whether he did it or not, he's scot-free. He did his time. He owes nothing to society. He is not scot-free. He goes to bed every night as a convicted murderer and he wakes up every morning as a convicted murderer and why should he be? I want to see justice done. Justice hasn't been done, not to the Harper family and not to my family.

So I mean for both families. It's all I want. After 40 years, I don't think that's too much to ask. The documentary highlighted another suspect named Sergeant Alexander Kalichuk. A known sexual offender and alcoholic, Alexander worked as a supply technician at RCAF Clinton until 1957. He transferred to a nearby base in 1957 but frequently went back to Clinton just an hour's drive away.

Alexander had two convictions for indecent exposure in Trenton, Ontario from the early 1950s and was a known alcoholic. Three weeks before Lynn Harper's death on a farm road near St. Thomas, Alexander Kalichuk tried to lure a 10-year-old girl into his car with the promise of new underwear. The case was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence. Alexander Kalichuk was hospitalized with severe anxiety following Lynn Harper's murder. He was eventually released but the military kept a close eye on him. He was a suspect in some incidents in the early 1960s involving a child molester in

a car trying to pick up little girls around Exeter, Ontario. But unfortunately the CBC wasn't able to ask Alexander Kalichuk about these incidents because he died of the effects of alcoholism in 1975. On May 16, 2000, AIDWIC lawyers and Stephen himself held a press conference to announce they were doing a 690 review. Section 690 of the Criminal Code, now 696, allows convicted people who have otherwise exhausted all legal avenues to directly approach the Justice Minister and request a review of their case.

Emboldened by all the public support he was receiving, Stephen began using his old last name again. He told CBC's Peter Mansbridge, quote, I want my kids to have my name, my dad's name. AIDWIC submitted a long brief to the Federal Justice Minister with new evidence. In early January 2002, Ottawa said Fred Kaufman, a former judge with the Quebec Court of Appeal, would review Stephen's case. Justice Kaufman interviewed 21 people under oath, including Stephen. In a huge breakthrough, Stephen's childhood friend Arnold Butch George admitted to making

false claims to police and said that Stephen actually didn't ask him to lie about being with Lynn Harper. And Jocelyn Gaudette, who said she was supposed to have had a date with Stephen that night, claimed she had a bad memory and difficulty recalling things. With these findings, Justice Kaufman submitted a 700-page report in the spring of 2004. The report was received by the Justice Minister, who ordered that the Ontario Court of Appeal review Stephen's conviction. April 2006, the body of Lynn Harper was exhumed upon request of the Ontario Attorney General's

Office. They hoped to find DNA evidence that would settle the Truscott case once and for all. But unfortunately, because the remains were in such poor shape, forensic experts weren't able to collect sufficient DNA data. On June 19, 2006, the Ontario Court of Appeal conducted a three-week hearing into the Truscott case, representing Stephen Truscott's side with three AIDWC lawyers. This wasn't a new trial altogether. The Ontario Court of Appeal was only supposed to hear new evidence.

Ontario's chief pathologist testified that based on coroner John Peniston's autopsy, there wasn't enough evidence to determine Lynn Harper's precise time of death. A nurse who roomed with Jocelyn Gaudette in the 1960s when she was studying nursing, testified that Jocelyn admitted to lying to police back in the 1950s and then at Stephen's trial. She was apparently jealous because Jocelyn wanted Stephen to spend time with her and not Lynn. Police admitted that they didn't seriously investigate other suspects beyond Stephen, including Sergeant Alexander Kalichuk.

This confession stunned the judges, who seemed incredulous that police would focus all their attention on a clean-cut 14-year-old boy rather than known sexual offenders in the area. Justice Michael Moldaver, quote, Did the thought ever cross your mind for someone to actually strangle Lynn Harper and then sexually assault her? You might want to look for someone who was more of a sexual pervert, a sexual psychopath. Did that ever cross your mind? Did you talk about that with your colleagues?

The police officer testifying replied, quote, I don't think I did. I don't recall a conversation to that effect. July the 7th, 2006 marked the last day of testimony. Renowned British pathologist Dr. Bernard Knight took the stand and blasted Dr. Peniston's methods, quote, Stomach content analysis might be of some use to perhaps direct the police investigation early on and say, well, I think she must have died within a few hours of the meal, but you

cannot pin it down to any useful period of time and pinpointing the time of death. As I said, I've taught all of my students that any doctor who gives a fraction of an hour in his estimation of time since death is either uninformed or incompetent. By 2006, scientists had become aware that the rate that stomachs empty varies widely and is affected by a variety of factors, including gender, age, diet, end of course, stress level. Another expert witness, Dr. Michael Pollanen, examined evidence and concluded that Lynn had probably died sometime on June 10th, the day after she went missing.

After all the witnesses and lawyers had been heard from, the Ontario Court of Appeal contemplated their verdict. The decision was released on August 28th, 2007, and it was a legal bombshell. Quote, In a decision released today, the court unanimously holds that the conviction of Mr. Truscott was a miscarriage of justice and must be quashed. The court further holds that the appropriate remedy in this case is to enter an acquittal. The court thus orders that Mr. Truscott should stand acquitted of the murder of Lynn Harper.

And with that, Canada's most controversial and long-standing court case came to a close. Stephen Truscott was acquitted. In the eyes of the law, he was no longer a convicted murderer. The court made the obvious point that Lynn Harper's death was, quote, out of place with the actions of a 14-year-old schoolboy whose sexual advances were rebuffed by a 12-year-old classmate. Rather, this picture would appear to be the work of a sexual deviant. The court also noted how difficult it was to accurately pinpoint time of death based

on a medical analysis of stomach contents. Stephen Truscott received news of his acquittal on a cell phone while driving with his family along Highway 401 near Milton, Ontario. According to the Toronto Star, he took a call from his legal team and then said, quote, oh, that's fantastic, fantastic. The decision wasn't a complete victory, though. Stephen Truscott and his lawyers had hoped the court of appeal would find him factually innocent, in other words, 100% exonerated.

DNA testing, which might have found him factually innocent, wasn't able to be utilized in this case. Nonetheless, the acquittal was likely as close to closure as Stephen Truscott would ever get in the case, but more was to come. After the decision came down, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant issued a press release that included an apology to Stephen Truscott on behalf of the government, quote, the court has found in this case in light of fresh evidence that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. And for that miscarriage of justice on behalf of the government, I am truly sorry.

The hearing revealed that there were more suspects in the Truscott case than anyone had known. One woman claimed that as a six-year-old child, she hid in her father's car. Her father went for a drive, stopped on a gravel road, and carried the lifeless or limp body of a young girl out of the trunk and carried it to a grassy area. The girl's father was a minister and possible sexual offender who lived in a village near the Clinton RCAF base. Another suspect who had a conviction for rape in the Seaforth, Ontario area, was never

questioned by police in the Harper case. On July 7, 2008, the government of Ontario announced they were awarding 63-year-old Stephen Truscott $6.5 million in compensation. When explaining how that figure had been decided, Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley referred to a report written by consultant and retired judge Sidney Robbins, who said, quote, there is no question that Mr Truscott's conviction, incarceration, and aftermath forever affected his life. He noted the emotional suffering Stephen lived through when he spent his teenage years and

early twenties in prison, many of those years thinking he was going to eventually be hung. And when he was released from prison, life wasn't easy. He had to change his name to avoid a tension that would come from living as a convicted murderer and spent many years moving his family around and living an isolated life. Stephen suffered from nightmares and social anxiety and, as a result, became shy and hesitant. Despite this, Sidney Robbins said Stephen had been, quote, an exemplary citizen. He'd utilised his trade skills and had worked steadily as a factory machinist to provide

for his family. Also, he'd always abided by the law, quote, the total amount paid to Mr Truscott should be enough to ensure that he can live the remainder of his life with financial security and in comfort and dignity, able to assist his family as he sees fit. It should also be enough to send a clear signal to the public that the government recognises the enormity of the suffering that this miscarriage of justice has caused. Stephen and his wife provided a written statement saying the compensation was, quote, a final and long-awaited step in recognising Steve's innocence.

But they added that the money was bittersweet because no amount of money could ever truly compensate Stephen for what he'd been through. The Truscott family went on to use part of this money to launch the Truscott Initiative in Justice Studies at the University of Guelph, funding two scholarships for students in the field. In 2012, the media reported that Stephen Truscott was fighting a new battle. At 67, he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was undergoing treatment. He and his wife were living just outside Guelph, Ontario and were now grandparents.

In 2014, it was revealed that he'd fully recovered from his prostate cancer and now lives a quiet life out of the spotlight with his wife, Marlene. Quote, you'll put on this earth and what's thrown at you. You either handle it or you don't. So see what just happened? It is impossible to tell the story of Lynn Harper without it morphing into the story of Stephen Truscott, leaving her tragedy as little more than a background prop to Canada's largest legal drama.

Unfortunately, the person who sexually assaulted and murdered Lynn Harper was never brought to justice. Several viable suspects have come to life, but several of them have since passed away and so much time has elapsed that the case is all but unsolvable. What became of her family? Obviously, they were quietly haunted by Lynn's murder for over five decades. After her murder, they remained on the RCAF base but were so grounded in their sorrow that they weren't able to do much of anything.

After Stephen was convicted, they left for a month in New Brunswick to try to deal with their pain. Eventually, they moved to another air force base in the UK where they tried to put everything behind them. But as Stephen's campaign for justice gained traction and publicity, they found that healing was impossible. In 2007, they finally broke their silence speaking to the media. Lynn's mother Shirley had long since died of a heart attack, so her father Leslie, ninety

years old at the time, spoke out, saying that they had always believed that Stephen was the one who had murdered Lynn. And after he was acquitted, the family experienced much mental distress. Leslie described how his legs went numb when he heard the verdict and even after all the years had gone by, he still couldn't bring himself to say Stephen's name. In the interests of reporting facts, it has to be said that it seems the family is not completely alone in their thoughts. Many searches of online forums discussing this case will reveal many people arguing

for and against Stephen Truscott's guilt, based mainly on the same circumstantial evidence that the Crown initially presented. One theory that is often discussed is, if Lynn were picked up by a car and driven away, why did the person return to the area where they picked her up to leave her body? And if they did, how were they not seen? Also, much has been made of Stephen's ability to be able to see the make of car and yellow patch on the back, from the distance he says he was at. Early witness testimony of the nearby kids is also discussed, even though much of it

was contradictory and would change as the years went by as personal motivations and confusions were revealed. It's one of those cases where everyone has their own opinion, it seems. Back to the Harper family, the reason they decided to speak to the media finally was in relation to Stephen's possible compensation. Leslie Harper and his son Barry, Lynn's brother, said they felt Stephen Truscott's motive in his efforts to clear his name was about the money. They felt that he was just about the compensation and said they would try to block it by making

written submissions as to why they think compensation should be denied. When the compensation was announced, Lynn's brother Barry said that it was quote, a real travesty. Lynn's father Leslie has now passed away, leaving behind a shattered family that has never received any closure. Sadly, while Stephen Truscott and his family were finally able to close an extremely painful chapter, for the Harper family there would now be the lingering question of who really did kill their daughter, Lynn.

In an article published in January 2015, David Yates, a reporter with the Goderick Signal Star, said quote, the most enduring tragedy of the Harper Truscott case is that there will be no closure for the Harper family. There are no websites or organizations demanding justice for Lynn Harper. There is no monetary settlement for the Harper family to compensate for their half-century of suffering. That in the end is the ultimate tragedy. Thanks for listening and thanks again to Nate Hindley for writing the bulk of this episode

based on his book. If you wanted to learn more about this case and go deeper into the evidence, I strongly encourage you to read Nate's book, Stephen Truscott Decades of Injustice. I'll provide a link to it in the show notes. In this episode, I wanted to recommend two other Canadian true crime podcasts. The first is called Murder Was The Case with Toronto based criminologist Lee Meller and his co-host Vanessa, discussing the details of dark crimes, often from an academic standpoint. The author of this episode, Nate Hindley, has also appeared on his podcast to talk about

his amazing other true crime books. Let's skip the foreplay, murder, you want to talk about it, hear about all kinds of nasty things, sex, torture, madness, dismemberment, and why, more than anything, you want to know why. Well dear listener, you ain't never had a friend like me. Tune in to Murder Was The Case, featuring author and investigative criminologist Lee Meller, sometimes solo, often with guests, always horrifically entertaining. Listen to Murder Was The Case on iTunes, Google Play, or go to MurderWasTheCase.podbean.com.

The other podcast I wanted to recommend is 1995, that's $19.95. Reporter Cathy Kinzor hosts this podcast about the other big things that happened in the year 1995. Most recent episodes are about another Canadian wrongful conviction and exoneration case, that of Guy Paul Moran. Also, check out her episodes about her personal account of the Paul Bernardo trial. She attended as a journalist and it's fascinating. If the ads in my episodes bother you, I do apologise.

They're helping to keep the lights on around here as I try to build things up. If you prefer to listen to ad-free versions of my episodes and receive them a few days early, it only costs $2 a month, so that's an option for you. Just visit www.patreon.com and search for Canadian True Crime. The link is in the show notes. Speaking of which, this episode I'm saying thanks to these patrons. Allison B, Kea, Autumn L, David B, George V, Donnie P, Jay Brunner, and Gavin. This episode of Canadian True Crime was primarily written and researched by Nate Henley, with

audio production by Eric Crosby. I'll be back in the middle of May with another True Crime story from Canada. See you then.