My Friend Stan
Chapter 19 – Clifford Olson
The case of a serial killer that still casts one of the darkest shadows in Canadian criminal history.
Between November 1980 and July 1981, Clifford Olson abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered eleven children in British Columbia—eight girls and three boys between the ages of nine and eighteen.
He lured many of them with promises of work, money, directions, or alcohol. Once they were in his control, he drugged them. Some victims were stabbed. Others were bludgeoned or strangled.
All suffered unimaginable brutality.
Olson initially pleaded not guilty, then changed his plea to guilty three days later. Before revealing the locations of several victims whose bodies had not yet been recovered, he negotiated a notorious “cash-for-bodies” deal with police.
The RCMP agreed to pay him $100,000—$10,000 per victim, with Olson later joking that the eleventh victim was thrown in as a “freebie.”
Even after imprisonment, Olson never stopped manipulating those around him. He harassed prison staff, assaulted guards, filed endless grievances and lawsuits, and wrote taunting letters to victims’ families, journalists, and politicians.
When Stan evaluated him years later, at Saskatchewan Penitentiary, Olson had already been in custody for fifteen years.
Stan administered the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R).
Olson scored 38 out of 40—the highest score Stan had ever encountered. He later described Olson as “the quintessential psychopath.”
Looking back across your career, was Olson unique?
“Olson was extreme,” Stan said, “but not unique. He represented an especially severe example of a type I’ve seen before: the sexually sadistic psychopath.
I’ve interviewed sexual psychopaths before,” he told me. “The core aspects were the same. But what made Olson stand out was the brazenness of his behaviour during the interview itself. He showed no emotion in describing the acts, it was nauseating, but he described them in a light-hearted way.”
“He had absolutely no scruples,” Stan said. “No constraints at all.”
Psychopaths are often described as charming. Did you see that?
“Yes, but not always in the way people expect. Olson was extremely manipulative. He convinced prison guards that he had criminal associates on the outside who would kill their families,” Stan said.
He coerced guards into smuggling contraband phones into the prison so he could call sex lines, racking up enormous phone bills.
At one point, Olson even proudly showed me a box full of pornographic magazines—items he was forbidden to possess,” Stan said.
“Olson also repeatedly manipulated police into taking him on what were essentially field trips. He claimed there were additional victims, using details he had gleaned from newspapers to fabricate plausible stories. Investigators would transport him to search sites in hopes of locating new bodies. He did that dozens of times,” Stan said.
In your book you wrote about moments when you almost believed his stories.
Stan nodded. “With extremely slick offenders, you sometimes find yourself momentarily believing something that is obviously untrue.
“With Olson, it was a constant struggle. His storytelling style was so compelling that, at times, I had to consciously remind himself that what he was saying was manipulation. I had to give my head a literal shake,” he said.
How dangerous is someone who can momentarily make even trained professionals doubt reality?
“Extremely dangerous,” Stan said. “He had this hypnotic quality, and at one point during the interview, I suddenly realized Olson had reached across the table and was stroking my hand. It was extremely uncomfortable.”
Stan then described a phenomenon I’d never heard of.
“Olson also possessed what psychologists call “duping delight.” He got real pleasure out of misleading people, essentially, he liked getting one over on people.”
Did the case stay with you afterward?
“Yes,” Stan said quietly. “Most cases I could leave at the office, eat my dinner without it affecting me. But Olson was different. This was one of the two worst cases in my career.
During those five consecutive days of interviews, I found himself waking at night, unsettled. I had to go back and check my notes,” he said, “just to reassure myself that what I knew to be real was actually so.”
If Olson represents psychopathy at its extreme, what does that say about human nature?
“It tells us something uncomfortable,” Stan said. “There is a variant within the human species capable of profound harm. Psychopathy exists on a continuum. Olson simply sat near its outer edge.”
In my next blog we take a short break from this series and discuss the dumb but deadly psychopath. Don’t miss it!