Olson, Clifford
Identification Canadian serial killer
Born January 1, 1940; Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada
Olson murdered eleven people in British Columbia in 1980
and 1981.
Clifford Olson’s problems with the law began during
his teen years, when he was arrested for theft. This
trend continued into adulthood, as he became in-
volved in increasingly violent crimes and spent time
in prison. His Canadian infamy, however, began in
November, 1980, when, for reasons that remain un-
clear, he turned to murder. Over the next eight
months, he would brutally murder three boys and
eight girls, ranging from the ages of nine to eigh-
teen, in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Several of Olson’s victims were sexually assaulted be-
fore he killed them. Because the victims did not
seem to fit a pattern and because many of the bodies
were not immediately discovered, the authorities
did not initially realize they were dealing with a serial
killer. In August, 1981, Olson was finally arrested by
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The Olson case was surrounded by controversy.
Some would come to blame pornography for Olson’s
crimes after he was discovered with such materials at
the time of his arrest. The main notoriety, however,
related to the deal the Canadian government struck
with Olson in order to get him to confess to his
crimes and to identify the locations of the bodies of
some of the victims. The price of his confession was
ten thousand Canadian dollars per victim, to be paid
to his wife. The government, recognizing that it
lacked evidence of Olson’s guilt in all of the mur-
ders and that the families of the victims desperately
wanted to be able to bury their loved ones (only
three bodies had been found at the time of his ar-
rest), agreed to his terms and paid his wife $100,000.
(Olson had provided information about one victim
for free.) Olson confessed in January, 1982, and was
sentenced to eleven concurrent life sentences. A
public outcry ensued over a deal in which a mur-
derer appeared to benefit from his crime, but the
agreement held. In prison, Olson’s notoriety would
continue, as he regularly corresponded with the
media.
In Canada, a nation that eliminated the death
penalty for murder in the 1970’s, a conviction for
first-degree murder means twenty-five years in prison.
Under the law, however, Olson was allowed to apply
for early parole in 1997. He was turned down. Then,
after completing his twenty-five-year sentence, Olson
was allowed to apply for parole in 2006. He was
turned down for parole again, but he was given the
option to apply every two years until his death.
Impact Olson remains the most notorious mass
killer in Canadian history, and his crimes have
sparked renewed calls for the restoration of the
death penalty for murder.
Further Reading
Holmes, W. Leslie, with Bruce L. Northorp.Where
Shadows Linger: The Untold Stor y of the RCMP’s
Olson Murders Investigation. Vancouver, B.C.: Heri-
tage House, 2000.
Layton, Elliott.Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Mod-
ern Multiple Murderer. Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, 1995.
Mulgrew, Ian.Final Payoff: The True Price of Convicting
Clifford Robert Olson. Toronto: McClelland-Bantam,
1990.
Steve HewittSee also Crime; École Polytechnique massacre;
Pornography; San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre.Olympic boycotts
The Event Back-to-back boycotts of the Summer
Olympics, one led by the United States and the
other by the Soviet Union
Date Summers of 1980 and 1984
Boycotts were an embarrassment to the International Olym-
pic Committee, which could not prevent international poli-
tics from interfering with the celebration of the Games. The
boycotts also demonstrated the two superpowers’ willingness
to use athletes as pawns in an effort to build support for
their policies.
Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in late December,- That decision set in motion an American-
sponsored boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics,
which were hosted by Moscow. The boycott marked
the first time that the United States did not take part
in the modern games. President Jimmy Carter or-
chestrated the boycott; as early as January 4, 1980, he
indicated that any Soviet military presence in Af-
722 Olson, Clifford The Eighties in America