Approximate word count 1260
Non Fiction - MJ Preston

On June 9, 1959, 14 year old Steven Trustcott gave his 12 year old classmate Lynn Harper a lift on his bicycle near an Air Force Base just outside of Clinton, Ontario. According to Trustcott, Harper had claimed to have argued with her parents and planned on hitching a ride. He dropped her off on the highway and said he saw her hop into a stranger’s car and drive away.

He was the last known person to see her alive.

Two days later, 12 year old Lynn Harper’s body was found in a wooded area near the town. She had been raped and strangled. Police immediately focused on Truscott and began to build a case based on circumstantial evidence. The foundation of the evidence rested on a determination that Harper had died between the hours of 7:00pm and 7:45pm. This determination was based on forensic evidence using stomach contents as a basis of determining time of death. Even by today’s standard, time of death cannot be pinpointed without an actual witness or supporting evidence.

As a result Steven Trustcott was picked up and charged with her murder as Police ignored all other suspects in the case. This included Air Force Sgt Alexander Kalichuk who lived 20 minutes from the base and had a history of sexual offenses. In fact, Kalichuk had come to the attention of police only three weeks before Harper’s disappearance for trying to lure a ten year old girl into his car.

A second potential suspect who was virtually ignored was an electrician with a conviction for rape who worked on the base and knew the Harper family. For reasons known only to police, neither of the two suspects was seriously considered and the focus on Truscott intensified.

After a trial that lasted only 15 days Steven Truscott was convicted of 1st degree murder and sentenced to be hung.

This boy, just in the pubescent stage, suddenly found himself waiting to go to the gallows. He was not even 15 years old and convicted on purely circumstantial evidence. One could only imagine the terror a young Truscott felt as the reality of execution by hanging loomed in his future.

While he waited in a Goderich, Ontario Jail, his young mind was tortured by the idea that the tightening of a noose around his neck could happen at any moment.

"I woke up one day and somebody was building something outside the wall," he told CBC’s The Fifth Estate. "You could hear the hammering, and I thought they were building a scaffold. And it's just kind of living in terror, and every day you expect it to be your last."

Luckily for Trustcott that day would not come. As the case gained National Attention public sympathy for this young man in his early years was compounded by a growing doubt about his guilt.

The case gained a renewed media attention in 1966 after author Elizabeth LeBourdais released her book: The Trial of Steven Truscott. LeBourdais pointed out the speed in which the police carried out their investigation and how quickly the trial had been conducted. She contended that the courts had turned justice on its ear and sentenced an innocent boy to die in the gallows.

Parliament under Prime Minister Lester Pearson called for a review of the Truscott case by the Supreme Court of Canada. The high court reviewed the case, basing their scrutiny on whether Truscott should receive a new trial, not on his guilt or innocence. They ruled 8 -1 that justice had been upheld.

Trustcott maintained his innocence and even subjected himself to LSD and Truth serum through prison psychiatric probes.

The death sentence was commuted to life in prison and after 10 years in 1969 Steven Trustcott was paroled. Wanting to start over, he changed his name and moved to Guelph, Ontario. He would marry, raise three children and worked as a tradesman. Living in relative anonymity he desperately wanted his name cleared so that his children and Grandchildren would not have to live with the stigma attached to his history.

In the year 2000 Steven Trustcott went public and appeared on CBC’s Fifth Estate and a public campaign ensued for his exoneration. Though the wheels of justice moved lethargically, a call for a review was finally conducted in between June and July of 2006. Witnesses took the stand and forensic evidence, including bug forensic entomology that challenged the original findings of Lynn Harpers time of death.

The Crowns case began to fall apart as witnesses were re-examined and the Ontario Provincial Police admitted that they had not followed up on key leads.

A farmer who owned the property where Lynn Harper’s body was found reported a strange car on his land the night of Harpers murder. This was never considered. Witnesses admitted to changing their testimony, so it was consistent with other witnesses and in the case of one witness the evidence was completely contrary to the statement she had given.

Three years after the review a report was filed to the Justice Minister in the spring of 2004. By October, The Minister of Justice referred the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal stating. "I have determined that there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice occurred in this case.”

In Jan.-Feb. 2007 a panel of judges from the Ontario Court of Appeal again heard testimony.

A staggering 48 years after being robbed of his childhood and innocence Steven Trustcott was exonerated after the Ontario Court Appeal overturned the conviction and deemed it a miscarriage of justice.

Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant offered an apology to Steven Truscott and said that the Crown would not seek further charges.

JULY 2008

The provincial government announced it would pay $6.5 million dollars in compensation. A large sum too many, but a mere pittance when compared to the lifetime robbed from a boy who offered his friend a ride on his bicycle one hot summer afternoon in 1959.

Editorial Comments

There was a time that I was a strong supporter of the death penalty and felt that a swift justice should be dealt out to Murderers in the form of execution. Part of that was visceral, but the other part of my reasoning was that the State was wasting funding to house people that are not salvageable.

I reversed this position after reading a number of books written by FBI agents like Robert Ressler, who have advanced investigation techniques by profiling killers. Ressler was a pioneer in the field before behavioral sciences at Quantico VA was even in the works. Ressler contended that interviewing killers like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy and cross referencing their findings has helped in determining what type of criminal they were tracking. Such cross referencing has determined things such as age, sex, race, and the type of killer. It is not as magical as some would have you think in CSI, but interviewing convicted killers has furthered the cause of the hunters.

I was also converted by the words of Joyce Milgaard. Milgaard’s son was wrongly convicted in the murder of a nurse named Gail Miller. When asked what her position on capital punishment was she simply said that her son would not be alive today had there been a death penalty in Canada during his ordeal.

Some believe it was the Truscott case they resulted in the abandonment of Canada’s Death Penalty, but that is purely speculation.

In any event it is surely a testament to the fact that the law and the police are not infallible.