Episode 685: Clifford Olson Part IV - Cash for Corpses

The Clifford Olson series comes to a close as the boys cover the final murders, Olson's long-overdue arrest, and the outrageous deal that saw Canadian authorities pay a serial killer $100,000 for the locations of his victims' bodies.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 01

  There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  On the left.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  That's when the cannibalism started.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Oh, really great news I got from the prison feeds of Canada. Ooh. This is important. This is super important. One of the great, one of the better letters I've received ever. Did not know this, another wonderful example of the Canadian state of mind. So in prison, the worst thing you can call somebody is a goof. Yeah. Canadian prison. In Canadian prison, goof means pedophile. Oh. So if you call somebody a goof in prison.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  In Canada. They will stab you to death.

• 2:00Marcus Parks?

  Oh my, what if you call someone goofy?

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Oh dude, you might as well be fucking, you're gonna get raped. Like you're gonna get beat to death. They're literally gonna tie you down, they're gonna beat you to death. I think goofy means like he'll probably do it. And then a goof is definitive, he's the guy.

• 2:17Marcus Parks?

  Maybe goofish.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Goofy is the guy, essentially 45-year-old man at the One Direction concert, 45-year-old man holding at a Taylor Swift concert. That's goofy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 2:32Marcus Parks?

  Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not goofy, I'm Marcus Parks.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  I'm the most serious man you've ever met, Henry Zebrowski. Not even remotely goofy. I do not stand for this anti-goofy talk. Whoa, he's one of these apologists, he's one of these goof apologists. Goofy is one of the great comedians of all time and he does not deserve this slander.

• 2:53Marcus Parks?

  Understandable, understandable.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  That's not his fault that he chose that name or the anti-Semitic Nazi scientist that invented goofy. Yes. Also proliferated the term. Goofinowitz, of course.

• 3:06Marcus Parks?

  Of course. Well, we are here at Clifford Olson Part 4, we are here at the conclusion. Let's finish big boys. And when we last left Clifford Olson, he'd just killed his seventh victim. But one thing that we didn't really illustrate by the end of the last episode was just how quickly Clifford Olson had reached such a high body count. He'd killed Christine Weller in December of 1980. His seventh victim, Judy Cosma, was killed just seven months later in July of 1981. But that wasn't one victim a month. He had waited four months between Victims 1 and 2, which means that Victims 2 through 7 were all murdered between April and July.

• 3:47Marcus Parks?

  And to put it in even more perspective, Clifford Olson was caught in August, and he still had four murders to commit by the time he murdered Judy Cosma in July. Pop quiz word problem, if Clifford had kept killing at this rate, how many bodies would he have produced by Christmas 1981? Please submit your answers to [email protected].

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Wow, this is one of those train things again. Yes. Another one of these fucking issues. That same body run was only ever matched by Pete Davidson. Come on y'all, come on guys, got him, coming for him, coming for him. Oh man, so sending everyone to side stories to, we're flooding this.

• 4:27Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, well, only with people that are good with word problems.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Oh, everyone's submitting.

• 4:32Marcus Parks?

  Only correct answers, no joke answers.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  No joke answers, does it matter? Like, the only thing is, is that I feel like the X-factor is the fight in the lady and the small boy.

• 4:44Marcus Parks?

  Well, that is true, but...

• 4:46Speaker 00

  How small the small boy is, how useful the boy is, about whether or not he can get on the good side of Clifford Olson, finally get that rumored job that all these other boys keep hearing about. I'll pay you $10 an hour. Wait a second, wait a second. Okay, tell me now. We're negotiating, it's negotiating.

• 5:04Marcus Parks?

  Now, it was no small wonder why Clifford Olson had decided to head out of town for a bit for his ill-fated trip to California, where, if you'll remember, he'd almost drowned his own infant son in a motel pool in a bid to get his wife to give him $4,000 that was supposed to repay a debt to Clifford's father-in-law.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  So goofy.

• 5:23Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Super goofy, that's very goofy behavior.

• 5:26Marcus Parks?

  So yeah, there's a lot going on in Clifford's life, but this was how Clifford had always lived his life. It was just that when a man crosses the line, the way Clifford had, that chaos has a way of catching up to you. Now, going out of town for a bit did in fact clear Clifford's head, because when he returned to Vancouver, he decided that he was gonna frame Randy, his 19-year-old drifter in training, for as many murders as possible. Clifford's head, however, was not clear enough to actually formulate a well-thought-through plan. See, Clifford figured that he could take some photos of Randy at the crime scenes, using some excuse or another, not telling him, hey, we're gonna go out to this crime scene, just, you know, let's go take some pictures.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Put your head on the skull, Randy, put an X in it, pretend to kiss him. Okay, that's great, now the odds are great, that's funny, no, hold, hold, hold.

• 6:17Marcus Parks?

  Kiss it like it's your grandma, kiss it like you love it.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  I didn't realize he was an artist.

• 6:21Marcus Parks?

  Well, Randy was not very bright, so Randy would pretty much do whatever Clifford told him to do. But once Clifford had those pictures, he planned to murder Randy, plant the photos on his corpse, as if Randy was some guy who just walked around with photos of himself posing at his own murder scenes, and then lead cops to the body. This Clifford hoped would ingratiate him to the police once again, because the currency he'd gained from helping to convict Gary Marco of the rape and murder of little girl in 1976, that was starting to run out.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  I'll tell you though, from the way the Canadian police operated in this case, he probably isn't that far off.

• 6:59Marcus Parks?

  No.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  It seems like it's a crazy plan, but I, the way things are going, I feel like it could work. Feel like every police officer, there is nothing they would love more than to have their favorite goof, take him out to a corpse, be like, there is right there and it's covered in evidence, he's got covered in evidence. And they're just like, wow, open and shut gate, boys, we did it. All good work, everybody, and they're just like high-fiving each other, like, all right, time to go to the cottage, somewhere make this man a deputy.

• 7:29Marcus Parks?

  Well, based on how Fred Miley earlier had, you know, the very first murder, he's like, you know, there was blood in that guy's hotel room, so, you know, I don't even need to arrest him, like, good enough for me, solved, move on.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Done.

• 7:45Marcus Parks?

  But before Clifford could figure out a rock-solid way to pin the murders on Randy, his own urge to rape and murder young teenagers was not in any way abating. In fact, Clifford's murders were about to get a whole lot worse. Almost immediately after Olson got back from California, he left his apartment around 9:00 AM on July 23rd, 1981, with a case of beer and a stack of Olson and Olson Enterprises' business cards.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  That's like Molson without the M. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you know it, that's how you remember it, it's Molson with no M.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  I could just see him like making his first business card with a, taking a box of Molson and just cutting the Olson off, and then writing his information on the back, and going, here's my card.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Cliff, you've done it again. Cliff, you're simply the best businessman you've met today.

• 8:36Marcus Parks?

  Work. Now, Olson usually picked up kids hitchhiking or hanging around gas stations, but this time Olson headed for the post office and the unemployment office because he figured those were good places to find desperate young kids.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Kids love licking stamps.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every time I go to the post office, I'm like, "Get these urchins off of you."

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Get out of here. But it's so nice because I hate the glue. Give me a mail, sir. I got your mail. You want a mail? You want a mail or something? I'll run it for you down the street. That's a federal crime.

• 9:05Marcus Parks?

  It's actually, it's a little known, like, thing that Canadians do when they're growing up. Geddy Lee, he was a stamp licker when he grew up.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Oh, he looks like one.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  You call him that one more time.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  You don't want to know what stamp licker means in Canadian prison.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  Is that how you end up looking like?

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Stamp licking leads to goofing.

• 9:27Marcus Parks?

  Before long, Olson had picked up a 15-year-old named Raymond King, who was looking for a job so he could quit school and get his own apartment. Raymond actually thought he'd hit the jackpot when Olson picked him up with tales of a $10-an-hour job, but this time Olson told his victim that the kid was going to be working with a nail gun. Raymond, however, had no idea that while nails were in his future, they would not be a part of any new job. Instead, a single nail would prove to be the instrument of Raymond's demise.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  You ever see one of these nail guns? You ever seen a nail gun? You should ever see what that does. It's kind of crazy, right? You don't need a license, doesn't need a holster, shoots nails. Now, I'm going to, you ever seen a fucking?

• 10:12Speaker 04

  I love nail guns. I want, I want one.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  We all do.

• 10:15Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, we all want one. It's, they're really fun to fuck around with.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  But they also don't work like you want them to. They don't shoot nails. That's a fact. That's a folk tale.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I would be really bad at it. I know that much.

• 10:25Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, they just kind of bounce off, you know? It's not as cool as you think it is.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  It's not like in Lethal Weapon 2?

• 10:30Marcus Parks?

  No.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Nailed him.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  I always wanted to do that. It doesn't work.

• 10:36Marcus Parks?

  All right, so we're gonna get in, we're gonna hop right into this.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  You're right, I'm sorry.

• 10:39Marcus Parks?

  So after taking Raymond out into a remote area of the Canadian woods, Olson drugged and raped the boy, but this time, after Olson was done, he picked up a hammer and a nail. And after carefully placing the nail on the crown of Raymond's head, Clifford used the hammer to drive it straight into Raymond's skull. Now Olson immediately tried prying the nail back out because he was usually pretty good about not leaving behind evidence of this nature, but when he tried removing the nail, he found that it was firmly stuck. Horrifically, though, Raymond was not only still alive throughout this struggle, but still conscious. So Olson raped Raymond again while the nail was still sticking out of the boy's skull.

• 11:22Marcus Parks?

  After finishing, Olson decided to forget the nail altogether. He dragged the boy to a gully and tossed him in with the nail still firmly implanted. And when the fall didn't kill Raymond, Olson threw small boulders at the boy's chest until he was sure that a fatal blow had caved it in.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  God damn it. So, um, I hate to just ask a weird question about this.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Please. Wait, I love this.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  So the nail didn't go all the way into the head?

• 11:51Marcus Parks?

  It did not go entirely in.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  And he couldn't get it out?

• 11:54Marcus Parks?

  He couldn't get it out.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  It doesn't kill you immediately necessarily.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  It says a lot for the skull.

• 11:59Marcus Parks?

  It does.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Not that the skull needs advertising, but the, uh, it is pretty impressive.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  It's true, and Canadians are tough.

• 12:06Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Marcus Parks?

  I mean, that's the thing about murder, is that that's what we find throughout these processes, is that it's a lot harder to kill someone than you think it is.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, isn't it true, like, sometimes when you're trying to stab someone, if you, like, hit a rib, the knife will break?

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 04

  That's, oh, that's crazy.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  It's very hard to kill a human being.

• 12:25Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah, it really is. Unless you accidentally hit that one, unless it's, like, Con Air and you accidentally, you know, kill a guy during a fight, which happens, yep.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Set or you systemically kill them.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Using pollution, you know, you know, money disparities, lack of healthcare.

• 12:40Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, cutting social programs.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  There's so many ways to kill whole swaths of people really easily, actually.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  I still think the DuPonts are worse than Clifford Olson, yes.

• 12:48Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I agree.

• 12:51Marcus Parks?

  Now, while that was the worst of Clifford's murders, well, I mean, arguably the worst, we're gonna get to one more that's still pretty bad, it certainly wasn't the last. Two days after murdering Raymond King, Olson picked up an 18-year-old German tourist named Sigrun Arnt, who was visiting a cousin in Coquitlam as a part of a Canadian solo trip.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  I just see him with that wool hat on and the lederhosen and a big, like, leather bag.

• 13:14Marcus Parks?

  It's a woman, it's a girl, it's a good, it's a girl.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Apologize.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, women everywhere. Can we isolate that? And then we can use it in the future.

• 13:25Marcus Parks?

  We can use it many times, many times. After picking Sigrun up, Olson disarmed her by saying that his best friends were actually two Germans from Frankfurt, Günther and Gisela Kleinschmidt.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  They trust me with everything.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  So he got one more use out of them.

• 13:41Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, he's like, "Do you know them?" And she's like, "Nine, you know, Frank, Frankfurt, quite a big city. I don't know, I don't know the Kleinschmitz, but in the end..."

• 13:50Speaker 00

  You ever met Adolf Hitler?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  What's he like? Have you ever met Albert Einstein? I wonder what he's like, big hair, huh?

• 14:03Marcus Parks?

  But in the end, Sigrun also fell victim to the hammer. This time Clifford led Sigrun to a clearing near some railroad tracks. After he bashed her head in and started getting undressed, however, a train clacked by. The engineer actually locked eyes with Clifford Olson, who was standing above the body of an unconscious girl, taking his shirt off. Clifford Olson gives the guy a friendly wave.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Hey, how you doing? Just goofing around.

• 14:34Marcus Parks?

  And according to Clifford, engineer just fucking waved back.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  I mean, that was a good move?

• 14:41Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  I mean, it seems like if you act casual, that's how I get away with smoking weed everywhere.

• 14:46Marcus Parks?

  Of course.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  You just walk around and start doing it.

• 14:48Marcus Parks?

  Oh, I thought you just started waving at people.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  I thought you were talking about it was a good move for the engineer to just, ah! Hi, bye!

• 14:55Speaker 04

  I mean, he's going by fast. I don't blame the engineer on this one.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  I actually am kind of think the engineer should have been more suspicious because the correct move, and we all know the correct move to a passing train is the pull the horn move. And if that's what you do to distract an engineer.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  You're right. You wave at boats and you pull the pistol.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  You're right, you're right.

• 15:16Marcus Parks?

  You're right, you're right. Like, but going by Clifford's own recollections, it seems like he was obviously starting to lose his grip on the whole situation. With Sigrun, he said he stood over her and told her to ask God to forgive him for what he was doing. By his recollection, he said, quote, "I want you to forgive me, Sigrun, for what I'm doing. I killed and raped eight other kids, Sigrun. I don't know why. Will you ask God to forgive me, Sigrun? Will you ask him for me? I hate to bug him. I hate to get into his way. He's got so many things going on."

• 15:56Speaker 00

  I asked him for a favor last week and the week before. He's tired of hearing from him. And guess what? He gave both to me. He did both. He allowed me to rape and murder with impunity, okay? God so far has been great. All right? He's treating me like a regular priest.

• 16:16Marcus Parks?

  Olson said that he was weeping as he said these words.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Abuho. Abuho, I'm crying here. Can God see how much I'm crying, Abuho? Awah wah.

• 16:28Marcus Parks?

  But just as Sigrun asked God to forgive Clifford, he smashed her in the head again and again with his hammer. This time, though, he finished the murder by drowning Sigrun in a ditch of scummy water. Clifford threw the body in, but it wouldn't sink, so he tried using a branch to push her down. Because, I mean, that's the thing about Clifford Olson's, like, they're all, it's a comedy of errors every time.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Every time.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  But if he would have planned, he would have gotten caught earlier.

• 16:54Marcus Parks?

  Yes, it really was. It's the chaos that keeps him from getting caught.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Lean into what you're good at.

• 16:58Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, and when that didn't, and when pushing her down with the branch didn't work, he got into the ditch himself and stood on the body until he was waist-deep in scum water, and he stayed there until the bubbles stopped rising. Tragically, Sigrun's disappearance was not noticed at all because she was traveling, and in 1981, it wasn't uncommon for someone to go months without contacting anyone. It wasn't until Clifford led authorities to her body that anyone even knew that something had happened to this incredibly unlucky German tourist.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  So what you're saying is, is that sometimes America's lack of paid time off can save your life.

• 17:35Marcus Parks?

  It can save your life, yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  And in Europe, because you can just leave your job with impunity, and you can, like, leave and go visit a mountain, and that's like an excuse, you can be like, "I'm going to the fjord." And they're like, "You'll need two or three weeks, Jörnson." You know, and they let you go, and then no one thinks about it, they don't care when you come back to work. It's great, but also you go missing, no one's looking for you, because guess who finds most dead bodies in America? An angry boss.

• 18:00Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, that is true. That is true. No, it is far better to just work yourself to death and not have any fun at all and live to 70.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:09Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, or 60.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  And she lives in Germany, she's like, "I'm going to Canada for vacation." People are like, "Oh, she's never coming back."

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, once she sees the, the pipes of the Yukon, once she gets her first taste of Molson.

• 18:24Marcus Parks?

  Clifford, meanwhile, continued experimenting, although Clifford always used very simple tools in his murders. I, I think it was just because they were, you know, weapons that were always on hand, could be disposed of easily and could be replaced just as easily.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  So improvised weapons are also extremely difficult to identify in investigations. I don't think he had no, he had no knowledge of that.

• 18:49Marcus Parks?

  No.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  I just think he was doing whatever was easy to get a hold of and then get rid of.

• 18:53Marcus Parks?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  So it wasn't just the hammer? He used other things?

• 18:57Marcus Parks?

  With his next victim, 15-year-old Terry Lynn Carson, Olson placed a screwdriver on the crown of her head and drove the bit into her skull with his hammer. He then wriggled the screwdriver back and forth, trying to get it out, but the fucking handle broke off.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  You'll never learn.

• 19:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Never buy from Canadian Tire.

• 19:18Marcus Parks?

  So as to not leave behind evidence again, Olsen actually stuck his fingers into the hole in her head to fish it out, again, with the victim still very much alive. Again, he gave up, and again, he decided to drown his victim as a finisher. After dragging Terry's body to a nearby creek, Olsen tried to drown her by standing on her back, but Olsen, again, had a bit of a blooper, and slipped, and fell into the water himself. But after composing himself, he finished the murder and went on his merry way, soaked but satisfied.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Ugh, soaked but satisfied, Marcus.

• 19:52Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, okay, yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  That one's on you. Soaked but satisfied.

• 19:56Marcus Parks?

  Okay, yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  I like it.

• 19:58Marcus Parks?

  I like it too. I was actually kinda proud of that one.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  No, it is. It's so upsetting.

• 20:04Marcus Parks?

  It's evocative.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is. You're right. The last time I was so soaked but satisfied was I just got done eating at Karksmo last night. Shout out for Karksmo.

• 20:15Marcus Parks?

  Karksmo, it's the best Polish food in New York City?

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:18Marcus Parks?

  Now, while the RCMP had been extremely slow to come around to the idea that there was someone actually murdering these missing kids, never mind that maybe this Clifford Olsen guy was behind the whole thing, Colonel Fred Miley's Serious Crimes Unit finally put surveillance on Olsen on July 28th.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  And this time, we're serious about it. Before, we were only just being little curious. This has firmly crossed the boundary into serious business.

• 20:48Marcus Parks?

  Well, quite unfortunately for Terry Lynn Carson, though, the SCU surveillance began hours after Olsen had murdered her using his screwdriver. But incredibly, the surveillance on Clifford was culled off later that day, because after just five hours, and I'm not even kidding here, they had decided it was too hard. According to the RCMP officers, Olsen's day-to-day habits were so bizarre and so erratic, the surveillance team just threw up their hands and deemed Olsen as an impossible person to follow.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  He's just simply an invisible criminal, and we... honestly, he beat us.

• 21:24Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  You know, if we keep following him, we're not gonna have time to get drunk. You know what I was thinking? It's we start following and drinking.

• 21:34Marcus Parks?

  But the problem is, is that, you know, the bar that I like to end my night at, we're going in the opposite direction, and I don't have enough gas to get back over there.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  This is fucking over. Ginty's doesn't have the goddamn game on. Yeah, I gotta go to Slur now in order to get my beautiful milk beer, all the wonderful things that Canada has to offer, my shrimp chips, my ketchup drink.

• 21:59Marcus Parks?

  The RCMP came to believe that Olsen was, quote, "jerking him around, playing games."

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was. He was being tailed by the police.

• 22:09Marcus Parks?

  But Olsen, and I actually believe him on this, he had no idea he was even being followed that first day. Olsen lived his life in such a state of extreme chaos at all times, that not even he knew what his next move was gonna be, which is why I often compare him to the Joker. That chaos obviously served a purpose, and it probably went a long way towards keeping Clifford Olson from getting caught as often as he should have been. And this was still a guy who spent half his life in prison up to this point. He should have been caught more, but if you're constantly zigging and zagging, and there's no pattern to anything you do, cops depend on patterns. And if they don't have that, they're lost.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Was Randy his, uh, number one guy?

• 22:52Marcus Parks?

  See, what is my favorite saying that in Spanish? We sat there, "Tu, eres mi número uno. Oméi." Olsen was playing a game at this point, but not the one the cops were expecting. Clifford was going full steam ahead with his plan to frame his number one guy Randy for all of his murders. And Olsen had set up a meeting with a detective named Dennis Tar to lay down the groundwork. Olsen was actually so confident in his plan that he actually brought Randy with him to this meeting, so as to establish to the cops that the two

• 23:32Marcus Parks?

  men were known associates when it came time to tell his web of lies about Randy. Now, the plan was that Clifford and Randy together were gonna give information about drugs and robberies, which would get the cops on Clifford's side, although I don't know what Randy was getting out of all this. He was, after all, an idiot. So I'm sure Clifford fed him a good enough line to at least convince an idiot.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  The key to get... the key to avoiding cops is to get as close to them as possible, and tell them everything that we're doing, Randy. All right? Everything we're doing, but the big things.

• 24:06Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  You get that, Randy? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yo. Okay, here's some beer. Thank you.

• 24:14Marcus Parks?

  But when the time was right, Olsen was gonna sacrifice Randy and take the credit for leading cops to this vicious killer of children who'd been haunting Vancouver these last seven months.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  They must have even orchestrated this with Clifford at this point, literally just being like, "We know what's going on, but if you could get us Randy, that'd be... we'll be great. We'll take Randy." Just give us anybody.

• 24:34Marcus Parks?

  "Give us anybody and we'll be fine," and then promise to never do it again.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  You just go on pinky swear.

• 24:39Marcus Parks?

  Olsen, however, was also good at improvising. See, Detective Tar wanted to immediately focus on the murdered and missing children. He wanted to know anything about drugs or robberies. So Olsen sped up the timeline. He told the RCMP that he might be able to lead them to these bodies, but only if they paid him $3,000 a month for his services. And so, the meeting ended with Detective Tar agreeing to introduce Olsen to other RCMP officers at a later time to perhaps solidify a deal for Clifford to get paid. At the same time, they also figured it was a good idea to put a tail on this Clifford guy, because Clifford was obviously shady.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  The man was asking for money up top, and the idea that they even could entertain that is so just out of my... it just boggles my fucking mind. Well, we can't pay him as much as we pay each other. Yeah, we have to think about that. He'll be making more than Deputy Stevens. You know, like, we just can't let Deputy Stevens know. Frankly, it's not fair. It's not fair, but Cliff's great. Yeah, he's finding all the bodies. He knows where everyone is, and he knows how they died, and he knows where they came from. He's even got a hammer. He's crazy. It's an old hammer. He shows me what to do.

• 25:59Marcus Parks?

  But this RCMP unit was different from Fred Miley's Serious Crimes Unit, who had also decided to give the surveillance another go.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Come on, boys. Let's... come on, I know you can do it. You're smiling, and you're not taking this serious enough.

• 26:15Marcus Parks?

  But the...

• 26:17Speaker 00

  Good, now that's a frown I can believe in.

• 26:20Marcus Parks?

  Well, it's not the frowning crimes unit, it's the serious crimes unit. You don't have to look like such a sourpuss all the time.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Honestly, I need you to fix your attitude. You take that sad attitude over to the child rape area, which is considered the sad wing of the Canadian police. The goofiest area we have, but you still cannot smile. Goofy is bad here.

• 26:44Marcus Parks?

  Well, the Serious Crimes Unit wanted to catch Olsen red-handed with surveillance. So when Olsen and Randy picked up two underage hitchhikers just 40 minutes after they met with Detective Tar, the SCU figured they were about to catch Clifford in the middle of mayhem.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, now we can get him right after he kills somebody. Okay, wait till he does it. Wait, wait, they're kissing, the hammer's coming back. No, he's putting it down, he's... oh, eh.

• 27:10Marcus Parks?

  I did actually wonder at what point were they gonna go, "Freeze." But because the SCU and the RCMP weren't communicating, the RCMP swooped in to save these two girls from being violated, and they arrested Clifford for the far smaller charge of contributing to juvenile delinquency. This, of course, completely fucked the SCU's plan. In fact, the SCU would have almost certainly caught Clifford red-handed, because Clifford claimed that he'd fully intended to murder one or both of those girls that day. That was most likely the day he was gonna initiate Randy. But because of the miscommunication, Olsen was set free after this piddling arrest one more time to commit one more murder.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Also, I like the idea of the crime that he was contributing to a juvenile's crime.

• 27:57Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  That's the idea, that it wasn't even that, he was an accessory to a child's crime.

• 28:02Marcus Parks?

  Yep. Now, while the RCMP argued over whether or not Clifford could be trusted to give them real information, he picked up his next victim, a 17-year-old named Louise Chartres, and took her two hours north to Whistler Mountain. There, he raped and killed her with a hammer, and left her body in a shallow depression in the ground before covering the body with sand and gravel. His last one was a bit anticlimactic. Meanwhile, people were starting to discover more of Clifford Olson's handiwork, which altogether removed the rash of runaways narrative that some authorities were still pushing. On August 5th, a hiker caught the unmistakable scent of a dead body at Weaver Lake, where Judy Cosma's body had been found just 10 days earlier. Cops soon found the nail-riddled

• 28:47Marcus Parks?

  body of Raymond King. And when this body was found, one RCMP inspector reportedly exclaimed, quote,

• 28:54Speaker 00

  "How many other bodies are up there? Oh, great. Oh, this is the best phone call I've got all day. Where is he? Oh, yeah, you got it. Oh, buddy, we're sitting on a gold mine." We're gonna solve all kinds of crimes today. We got one. Turns out, this wasn't a runaway.

• 29:15Marcus Parks?

  I like to go and hang out in the corpse garden. It's up on Whistler Mountain. So now that the bodies of three boys had been found raped and killed, it was the media's turn to speculate on the homosexual pervert angle. Thankfully, though, the originator of that theory, Fred Miley of the SCU, the Serious Crimes Unit, he had firmly decided that Clifford Olson was their man. He had, however, perhaps decided a little too firmly, as we'll soon see. Now, when the SCU ordered more surveillance on Clifford, they found that he had skipped town. After he'd killed Louise Chartres, Clifford had woken his wife Joan in the middle of the night just as he'd done after the murder of Judy Cosma. But this time, instead of going to Disneyland, they were going to the second happiest place

• 30:00Marcus Parks?

  on earth: Calgary.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Calgary is fun.

• 30:06Marcus Parks?

  I love Calgary. I had a great night there. They had, we saw that weird hip hop open mic night there.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  White Canadian rap is the most interesting thing you've ever seen in your life.

• 30:16Marcus Parks?

  I still put it among top 20 shows in my entire life.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  It was fun.

• 30:20Marcus Parks?

  It was so much fun.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  They're one of the youngest towns in Canada.

• 30:22Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah, they very much remind, it reminds me of Lubbock.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Real goofy place.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  If everyone's children, that's, it has to be goofy.

• 30:31Marcus Parks?

  Sure.

• 30:33Marcus Parks?

  Clifford told Joan that there were charges coming against him, but he was totally innocent. They still had to get out of town though. He's totally innocent of these charges, but they're coming and we gotta go.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Let's just say it's a whole thing.

• 30:46Marcus Parks?

  It's a whole thing. In reality though, it seems like Clifford Olson may have been trying to tie up loose ends. See, when Clifford went to Calgary, he contacted the woman we talked about in episode two, Debbie, whose weeks-long horror show with Clifford Olson in 1977 had landed her in a mental hospital. In fact, Debbie had just been released from the institution and Olson had every intention to murder her. Debbie, however, wisely declined to meet up after Clifford contacted her to catch up on old times.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  There's another note I'm gonna say to remind you all that I don't think there's any such thing as closure. And when somebody does that out of nowhere to call you after like years of not seeing you in that kind of way and then they're gonna do so. I'm gonna say a lot of times, just don't go. Don't pick up that phone call.

• 31:33Marcus Parks?

  Just don't go. I mean, if they're going through the

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Text them. Yeah, text them, say hello. You can say hi.

• 31:38Marcus Parks?

  If they're going through the steps and trying to make amends.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Please, yeah.

• 31:42Marcus Parks?

  Take that, it's a phone call.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Take the call.

• 31:45Marcus Parks?

  Take the call.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:45Marcus Parks?

  But don't meet them up.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  You don't have to take the call either if they're a real piece of shit.

• 31:49Marcus Parks?

  You really don't.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  You don't.

• 31:50Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, you really don't. It's up to you. Now, after Clifford Olson returned to Coquitlam on August 7th, the Serious Crimes Unit continued their surveillance. Every single fucking time I say it, I feel like I'm making

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Serious crimes.

• 32:03Marcus Parks?

  I feel like I'm making it up. Like it's, that's the name that I made up to make fun of Canadian police officers.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  These aren't parking tickets. This is serious crimes. You're serious, big time crimes.

• 32:17Marcus Parks?

  Imagine every time they have to explain what they are, they like spill something on them.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Oh, god damn it. Oh.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  He's like, sticky falls over his shoes. He's just serious. Who put this banana peel here?

• 32:29Marcus Parks?

  The cops keep sneaking into their office to put whoopee cushions on their chair.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  This is ruining the tone. This is a serious tone. Who give me the ink filled gum?

• 32:44Marcus Parks?

  Well, after just a few days of watching Clifford Olson, Mounties saw Olson pick up two young hitchhackers and drive them out to the woods.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Let's catch them on our horses, boys.

• 32:56Marcus Parks?

  Now, by my reading of the situation, Clifford had been trying again and again for a double murder. It's not uncommon, once killers enter the so-called berserker mode, that usually gets them caught. I mean, Ted Bundy famously killed two women in the same day at the same time by picking them up from a lake outside of Seattle, I think.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, and at four at the fucking, at the sorority.

• 33:17Marcus Parks?

  Well, that was the true berserker mode, yeah. But again, the Mounties intervened before Clifford could get too far. He and the girls were still in the drinking and carrying on phase. That's before shit turned really dark. But Clifford did not talk his way out of this one when the Mounties approached. Instead, he tried to make like a rabbit one more time and run, but this was the wrong move for the moment. Once Clifford was caught and arrested, the Mounties perused the notebook he had on his person. And after carefully reading through every line, they found the name of murder victim Judy Cosma, written in her own handwriting, just two weeks before Clifford had killed her.

• 33:57Marcus Parks?

  It was the first solid lead the cops had, but it was all they needed to finally pin at least one murder on Clifford Olson. For his part, Clifford would never see another day of freedom for the rest of his long miserable life.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  I guess the hockey game or something must have been over. They finally did some form of police work.

• 34:17Marcus Parks?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  You know, like it's, it's like almost like they finally, they were like, just got bored enough to be like, alright, I'll, why don't we look through the stuff he has?

• 34:26Marcus Parks?

  Hey, you know what? I don't think there's any hockey during August.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  I think that's what this is. And if maybe it's before soccer or after soccer.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Baseball season's wrapping up.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  Expos ain't fucking doing shit.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Oh, fuck the expo. I'm a Mets, I'm a fucking guard, died in the old Mets fan. Fuck the expo.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  They're not even a team anymore.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Fuck those motherfucking pieces of fucking shit. We beat them, dude.

• 34:53Speaker 00

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• 39:14Marcus Parks?

  As you might imagine, the interrogation of Clifford Olson was not a simple process. As it often happens with narcissists, they can't help but make contradictory and revealing statements once they feel like they have a platform to finally tell their side of the story.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Especially because they can't sometimes see their own, like, because they're so centered on their own point of view, their lack of empathy eventually does become a flaw.

• 39:37Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Because they can't really see how other people are interpreting them. They think they're in control.

• 39:42Marcus Parks?

  And for them, and that's the thing, is that for the longest time, they are. Like, they usually are, but

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Oh, he's been in control this entire fucking time.

• 39:50Marcus Parks?

  Uh huh. But the world that a narcissist builds to protect themselves, it only works as long as the narcissist has control over the narrative.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:58Marcus Parks?

  But when irrefutable evidence comes into play, the narcissist has to keep changing their story to fit the narrative. Or, the narcissist has to keep changing their story to fit the new narrative. One lie begets another, which begets another. And pretty soon, the narcissist becomes trapped in reality and he's only got two choices. They can either continue to deny reality and make up more stories. You know, OJ Simpson kept looking for the real killers until the day he died.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  He died of exhaustion. He died of exhaustion searching for those men, those many men. It took four men to kill those people.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, he had the fucking mirrors removed from his home. Yes.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Where is he?

• 40:41Marcus Parks?

  Or the narcissist can make a full confession and see where that takes him. Olsen, of course, tried both tactics before everything was said and done. Now, for the first hour and a half of Clifford Olson's incredibly long interrogation, the Mounties focused on the delinquency charge they'd just arrested him on, while Olsen calmly chatted about himself. They let him get comfortable for a bit. Finally, though, an SCU officer dropped the bombshell that Clifford was under investigation for the murder of Judy Cosma. Now Clifford pretended that he had no idea who Judy was, like, "Why are you even asking me about this?" Well, the cops said, "You've been charged with a lot of sexual assaults." Olsen, having never been convicted, said that he'd been framed every single time.

• 41:24Marcus Parks?

  And if he ever found out which woman framed him, he'd, quote, "Fix her clock."

• 41:29Speaker 00

  I'd kill her. I'd kill her and then bury her with a hammer. I'd murder with a hammer. And then bury her in a shallow grave.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  I tell you what, I'm never using these nails again. These nails, you just can't get them out of school.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  These are, honestly, Canadian tires gone downhill. That's what mostly, what my crimes have been about. It's also just so nice of y'all to let me hold on to my hammer.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, you might want to stop waving it around. You're making the detective nervous, but we want you to be comfortable.

• 42:00Marcus Parks?

  Well, the officers then asked Olsen about the repeated offers towards teenagers to wash windows for the ridiculous sum of $10 an hour, to which Clifford said, "Hey, come on here, I'm in construction. Look at my business cards. They're in busts."

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Oh my god, seashells. Oh my god, look at this mother of pearls.

• 42:19Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, right? I paid a lot of money for that. But finally, when the officers played their best hand and they told Olsen that Judy Cosma's name had been found written in his notebook, Olsen shut his mouth and asked for his lawyer, the aforementioned Bob Shantz.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Ah, Bob Shantz. You Shantz be going to jail. You choose, Bob.

• 42:40Marcus Parks?

  Shantz.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  They were correct.

• 42:43Marcus Parks?

  Now, it took a long time for Bob Shantz to answer Clifford's phone call. See, in America, cops aren't technically supposed to keep questioning a suspect after they ask for a lawyer, in theory. But that's not how it works in Canada. Cops can keep asking you questions as long as they want. So, for a full week, while Olsen waited for Shantz to call him back, Olsen was questioned by the RCMP in sessions that would last up to 13 hours at a time. During this part of the interrogation, one of Olsen's main antagonists was a self-styled tough guy detective named Rick Ruscio. Like a lot of tough guys, Ruscio didn't have a lot of imagination. So his go-to interrogation tactic was to call Clifford gay,

• 43:25Marcus Parks?

  then talk about how much Clifford probably liked to give blowjobs, like a gay, "'Cause Clifford, you're gay."

• 43:32Speaker 00

  I bet you think you're real tough, huh? I think you can get real tough. Now feel these muscles. Feel these muscles. Oh, you're gay, right? Then you're gay, right?

• 43:39Marcus Parks?

  I forgot when I touch a man, I'm gay.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Look how tough I am. Go over here, here. Sit on the back of my motorcycle. Put your arms around my fucking waist. Now, what I want you to do is I want you to press. I want you to press against me. Hold me tight. We're gonna go fast.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Feel the top of my penis.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Alright, listen, we're gonna go a little fast, right? Now, listen, now what I want you to do is I want you to sit on my lap, facing me.

• 44:00Marcus Parks?

  Alright.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  How's this make you feel?

• 44:01Marcus Parks?

  I, you know, I'm fine with it.

• 44:06Marcus Parks?

  It makes me feel a little gay, honestly.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is a little gay, right?

• 44:09Marcus Parks?

  I'm okay, I'm fine with it.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  What if I told you, Cliff, this is making me feel kinda gay?

• 44:16Marcus Parks?

  What if I told you?

• 44:19Marcus Parks?

  I'm a bit of a friend of Dorothy myself.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  You know what I'm saying?

• 44:21Marcus Parks?

  It's not as much of, it's not as much of a, a, an insult as you believe it is. That's what I'm saying.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Do you want to go Pluto, which is when two adults goof?

• 44:31Speaker 04

  I see what you're doing. You're doing good cop gay cop.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Well, I'm the gay cop. And everybody sucking dick, it's me.

• 44:42Marcus Parks?

  Now, Ruscio's bullying did nothing to budge Olsen. But when Olsen finally did get a hold of Bob Shantz, attorney-at-law, Shantz told him to answer whatever questions the cops had until they were satisfied that Olsen was not the person they were looking for.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Horrible lawyer.

• 44:56Marcus Parks?

  No, just answer their questions. Just do it.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Oh, you know, well, just keep answering questions. I get there. Say whatever you need to say, okay?

• 45:03Marcus Parks?

  In Cana-, you know, in Canadian law, that's always the best thing, is when the cops start asking you questions, answer all of them. And you know what? Don't even worry about me showing up. You don't need a lawyer.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  I Shantz be showing up to the trial.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  I gotta say, Bob, you get funnier every call.

• 45:20Marcus Parks?

  Only problem here is that Olsen was very much the person they were looking for. But despite Olsen's erratic behavior throughout his life, he had gone to great lengths to ensure that no evidence was sitting in his home waiting to bite him in the ass. He'd always burned all of his clothes and the clothes of his victims after murders. He used new weapons every single time. And if he did keep trophies, it was never for very long. He might hold on to a ring for like, a day before flicking it out the window.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  He truly did not care about a single other person.

• 45:51Marcus Parks?

  Did not care about, no, like, sentimentality is gone.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  'Cause normally even serial killers keep trophies as a way to control their victims later on.

• 46:00Marcus Parks?

  And to relive the crimes.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I just feel like he was so empty. He didn't even have that. Like, he didn't even have the, "I need to go and obsess about what I did already." He was so quickly making new bodies and moving on.

• 46:13Marcus Parks?

  Well, that's, it also speaks to, you know, the, you know, they say he never felt bad about anything. He has no sense of reflection, no sense of the past. None whatsoever. It's like, 'cause, you know, BTK kept, you know, a treasure trove in his daughter's treehouse for years. And you'd go up there and you'd relive his crimes. A lot of guys do this.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Did we go into the, did you go into Dennis Rader's journals? Did you hear all about this? And how, like, that's why his daughter finally stopped talking to him after all this time? She's, she kind of flipped her lid too. But because he had put in his journals, all of the times he had fantasized about raping his own daughter.

• 46:49Marcus Parks?

  Sure.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  And he wrote it in the journal. And that's also, so that's an example of how deep the obsession can go and how Clifford Olson doesn't have any of that.

• 47:00Marcus Parks?

  It's the exact opposite side of the spectrum. And it also, but I also think, like, I mean, you keep making the ADHD joke, but...

• 47:07Speaker 00

  I am, I'm just, it's just funny to make it as an excuse to get out of murder.

• 47:11Marcus Parks?

  But I do believe he does have ADHD.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  He doesn't have object permanence problems.

• 47:16Marcus Parks?

  But the thing is about it, is that he is, with ADHD, there's always certain things that you focus on and that you're really good at and that you can always pay attention to and get into no matter what. For Clifford, it was murder.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, boy murder.

• 47:29Marcus Parks?

  He knew how to get out, he knew, he could concentrate when it came time to cleaning it up, 'cause it mattered to him.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  And he's the ultimate example of, you do what you love. They say that you never work a day in your life, but actually, it's like, more that you do work even more than you've ever worked before.

• 47:45Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, it's like, it's, it just means you're constantly working.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  And if you don't want to work, you shouldn't choose a job that involves hammers.

• 47:51Marcus Parks?

  You're right. That is true.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Thank you, Eddie.

• 47:53Marcus Parks?

  That is true. Now, by the time cops searched Clifford Olson's house from top to bottom, there was nothing linking him to any murders at all. And to think, Olsen, he might have even skated on these murders, 'cause the only evidence against him was Judy Cosma's name written in his notebook. I mean, yeah, they had the nail in Raymond's head, but it's a fucking nail. It's not like he was going and buying like, special nails from a specialty nail store that they could trace.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  I'm still gonna say that the cops did not go as far as they should have gone in this case.

• 48:25Marcus Parks?

  God, no.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  So, like, the idea that, like, they, I feel like if they had just dug maybe a foot deeper.

• 48:31Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  They didn't, they stopped following him voluntarily.

• 48:35Marcus Parks?

  Yes, yeah, no, there's, they...

• 48:37Speaker 00

  He beat the cops every time.

• 48:39Marcus Parks?

  He did, yeah. The cops definitely were, they were baffled by him.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, and with the Cash for Bodies scandal, he ultimately won altogether. He became a cop. Yes.

• 48:48Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, well, I, I think it's also a case of, you know, we were talking about it in the very, either the first or the second episode, Cana-, they don't know how to deal with this shit. They, they have not, like, I think Clifford Olson scares the ever-living fuck out of them. And they don't want to go digging around in a corpse pit.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  They didn't want to find all of the horrible things that they missed.

• 49:10Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Now, even though Judy Cosma's name written in his notebook was the only evidence linking him to any murder at this point, Clifford began to think he was smart enough to talk his way out of these seemingly endless interrogations.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Why wouldn't he?

• 49:23Marcus Parks?

  So, after a week of Canadian good cop, bad cop...

• 49:26Speaker 00

  You, you gotta say something, 'cause if not, we're taking, we're gonna take those beers we put in your cell away from you, alright? You listen to that, you're gonna do that, and you're gonna smoke this whole pack.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Yes, and then, and then we're gonna switch it to American bacon.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know how you like that. That's only half the bacon you're used to getting.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  And I'm only gonna let you watch the first period of the Oilers game.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  That's what I won't stand for!

• 49:51Marcus Parks?

  That's too much.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  That's guys, I'm calling the Supreme Court!

• 49:56Marcus Parks?

  After a week of that, Olson began alluding to a friend who might know quite a bit about missing and murdered children in the Vancouver area. Olson would only tell investigators about this friend if they agreed to a deal.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  And his name is Blifford. Blifford Grolson.

• 50:17Marcus Parks?

  The first deal Olson put forth was pretty simple. He said that he did have information on nine to sixteen missing children, give or take. But, he would only give that information if he could get a guarantee that any part he may have played in their deaths would get him sent to a mental institution instead of a federal penitentiary.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  And we know why he was obsessed with the mental institution, because he really did feel like, once he got in there, he could either talk his way out or escape.

• 50:43Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  Do you think that he actually didn't know the number? Like, part of me thinks that he didn't know how many people he killed, and that was legitimate. He's like, "I dunno, five to sixteen."

• 50:51Marcus Parks?

  No, he knew.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  He knew exactly as much.

• 50:53Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, he knew exactly. It's kinda, he's, this whole time, remember, he is running a con. He is running, he is a con man, and, and, and at this point, if he's like, nine to sixteen, you know, you have to start big and then narrow it down. You let them tell you how much they know. So, he can go nine to sixteen, and eventually, they'll tell him how many bodies they eventually found, and then he can, you know, he can move around his story, move around the pieces however he wants, to get what he wants. But, once Olson started talking about his so-called friend, the Mounties knew that Olson was all but ready to confess. They just had to drag it out of him. And the man to do it, was Corporal Fred Miley from the Serious Crimes Unit.

• 51:36Marcus Parks?

  Now, instead of berating Olson about his supposed sexuality, Fred Miley related to Clifford Olson on a human level, and tried a little kindness.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  Hey, you're gay. It's okay to be gay.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  It's cool to be gay.

• 51:49Marcus Parks?

  It's great to be gay.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  David Bowie's half-gay.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  And look how cool he is!

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's cool as hell!

• 51:55Marcus Parks?

  Coolest guy around, I mean, can I?

• 51:57Speaker 00

  The coolest part of him's the gay part.

• 52:00Marcus Parks?

  Now, while being kind is far harder to do than just beating and berating a suspect, especially when you got a guy in front of you that you're pretty sure has murdered a bunch of children, being kind and treating someone like a human is, from what I've seen, the tactic that most often leads to a true confession. Berating and beating, that leads to false confessions. Or, if the suspect is a hardened criminal like Clifford Olson, it only causes them to clam up in defiance. "Fuck you, I'm not telling you nothing. Beat me all day long if you want."

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're already a sociopath.

• 52:33Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Either way, the idea that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, it works just as well for criminals as it does for anyone else.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  I also did get a very interesting email talking about how there is several studies that show that psychopaths experience pain differently.

• 52:50Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, they don't feel it as much.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  They don't feel it as much.

• 52:52Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. And so, Fred Miley let Clifford feel superior. He let Clifford brag about his career as the prison escape artist formerly known as Senator Rabbit. He let him brag about his manipulation of court documents to get early release, and all the other times that Clifford had outsmarted the cops, which, it's a long list.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  I bet he was genuinely impressed.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Wow. Wow, some of these are pretty serious crimes.

• 53:18Marcus Parks?

  But, this was all a prelude. Once Miley got Clifford to the point where Olson didn't want to stop talking, Miley brought up the fact that Judy Cosma's name had been written in Clifford's notebook. Now, Clifford obviously did not want the conversation to stop, but he couldn't link himself to Judy explicitly. So, he started talking again about his "friend", and Clifford again said that he might give information if he had a guarantee that he'd be sent to a mental institution.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Blifford is completely allergic to Salisbury steak. So, I don't think he can make it in jail. And Blifford needs so many things, for doctors, he needs Thorazine. Blifford is pretty sensitive.

• 54:04Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, and he needs a subscription to Cracked magazine, not Mad.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Not Mad magazine, those leftist fucks!

• 54:15Marcus Parks?

  So, Miley said, "Sure, sure, maybe, maybe." And that was just enough to keep Clifford going. Now, by this point, Clifford was on a roll, so he started in with the hypotheticals about means and motive. Olson said, still talking about his so-called friend, and by the way, we're now into the realm of direct quotes, because all of this shit was recorded, and a lot of it was played in court. Quote:

• 54:38Speaker 00

  Let's say it was pills and booze. Let's say Blifford, my friend, let's say he knows what he's doing, but at certain times, he don't give a fuck. What options are open to this guy? Right? How many children are missing? How many's been found?

• 54:55Marcus Parks?

  So, Miley showed Olson a list of sixteen missing children, asking about each one. Olson said he knew some-

• 55:02Speaker 00

  Got 'em, got 'em, need 'em, got 'em, got 'em.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  You have the cards?

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, what are their stats? I can look at that. It's really just, I need heights and weights.

• 55:11Marcus Parks?

  He denied knowing others, and the rest, he was non-committal on. And this made sense, because Clifford had killed eleven kids, not sixteen. Lord knows what happened to the other five. Now, what's really interesting here, is that Fred Miley sorta tried to give Clifford Olson some outs, but Olson refused to take the outs once he got himself talking. When Miley offered that Clifford's friend, Blifford, had a split personality, and by the way, Blifford is not, Blifford is something we made up.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  We made up-

• 55:41Marcus Parks?

  I wanna be clear that Blifford is something we made up. Ed made up Blifford on the spot. Blifford is not a part of the interrogation.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Blifford is real!

• 55:49Marcus Parks?

  Clifford did these crimes. I am continuing to look for him.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  He's a giant blue dog.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  You know, dog! You didn't see it, you'd scream if you saw him!

• 55:59Marcus Parks?

  When Miley offered that Clifford's friend had a split personality and couldn't control themselves when they were on alcohol and pills, Olson actually argued Miley's point. Clifford said, quote:

• 56:11Speaker 00

  No, you're wrong. You're wrong, Fred. Alright, he can control it, but he still doesn't, even though he knows it's wrong. It's the booze and the pills!

• 56:21Marcus Parks?

  And with that, Fred Miley knew that the good cop track was gonna take him straight to confession town. It's not that the strategy was set, another inspector named Larry Proke came into the room to stroke Olson's ego even more. And Olson was really starting to feel the fantasy here. He started saying that he knew the locations of thirty bodies, but he would only give those locations if he could get that guarantee of a stay in a mental institution.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  I want to live one flew over the cuckoo's nest!

• 56:52Speaker 00

  What a great movie. Yeah, really good movie. Do you wanna watch it? Do you wanna leave the salad and go watch it?

• 56:57Marcus Parks?

  What do you think happened to Chief after he left?

• 56:59Speaker 00

  I think that he went to Indian Heaven.

• 57:04Speaker 04

  Which is Canada.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, Eddie, it's not.

• 57:08Marcus Parks?

  Unfortunately, it's very much not, no.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  I know, I've read the stories.

• 57:12Marcus Parks?

  But, when Inspector Proke asked Olson what his lawyer thought about all this, Olson declared himself to be the smartest person in the room, saying, quote:

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Fuck Shats! No one tells Cliff Olson what to do!

• 57:24Marcus Parks?

  The moment you hear someone say that in interrogation, you're like, "Got him."

• 57:27Speaker 04

  Thank God. Except, they didn't.

• 57:29Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, well, yeah. Now, Inspector Proke told Clifford that he couldn't draw up the mental institution agreement without the location of at least one body, but Clifford flat-out refused. He told them, in no uncertain terms, that he held most of the cards here, which was actually true. Olson did give them a little hint, however, about the nail found in the skull of Raymond King, to kinda draw them along, because they're both trying to play a game at the same time. See, the nail hadn't been reported in the press, making it something that only the killer would know. So, Olson gestured to the crown of his head when talking about Raymond, to show the cops that he was on the level, without actually saying, you know, nail on the head. He's like, "You know, the kid with the, you know, the up top."

• 58:13Marcus Parks?

  But Olson then switched to talking about his crimes as if his friend had done it, giving reasons why he knew there was no physical evidence linking him to any murder. Olson said, in what is now the extremely recognizable cadence of a narcissist, quote:

• 58:28Speaker 00

  My friend, when he went out, disposed of everything. This guy was a nut. He burned everything. Alright, see, five people were missing. He burned five pairs of shoes, five pairs of pants, five pairs of socks, five shirts. You get what I'm getting at? That's why I know for a fact that you can't link any close to the crime.

• 58:50Marcus Parks?

  Mm-hmm. Now, Proke and Miley knew it was all but certain that Olson was their man, especially because Olson had begun to slip here and there when talking about his killer friend.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  Blifford!

• 59:01Speaker 00

  I mean, Blifford!

• 59:02Marcus Parks?

  For example, when Proke straight-up asked, "Why'd you do it, Cliff?", Olson said, in a direct quote, I remind you:

• 59:10Speaker 00

  It was the pills and the drinking. I might have been drunk, but I, you know, I always knew what I was doing. I mean, my friend always knew. It's him I'm talking about, Blifford!

• 59:24Speaker 00

  Not me, him.

• 59:25Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, and he kept doing that, over and over. He was like, "Yeah, you know, when he, when I took the hammer, and I really, I mean, when my friends took the-

• 59:32Speaker 00

  My friend took it! I ain't answering questions!

• 59:35Marcus Parks?

  This is what happens when I don't take my five vats!

• 59:37Speaker 00

  And then, every single time, they, they're like, huh, another mistake. But, it's like, not even anything, you know?

• 59:44Marcus Parks?

  And Bob Chance was now officially a part of Clifford's team here. Well, he was Clifford's entire team. And he had recognized that his client was definitely guilty of these crimes. So, he changed his tune and said, "Oh, wait, oh, so you did it? You should stop talking." At this point, you should stop talking.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  You shance be saying anything.

• 1:00:06Marcus Parks?

  Because Chance told him cops can't make guarantees when it comes to sentencing. That's not something a cop can promise.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  No, they can lie.

• 1:00:14Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, they can lie. He's like, "The mental institution plan," he's like, "It's a pipe dream. Not gonna happen." But Olsen had started looking forward to his daily interrogations. At long last, he could finally talk about everything he'd done, everything he'd gotten away with. And he was still hoping that he might get away with all of this as well.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  I would have gotten away with everything if it wasn't for those meddling police.

• 1:00:38Marcus Parks?

  But on August 20th, Fred Miley finally told Olsen that there was no way he could guarantee him a stay in a mental institution if he had anything to do with child murder. So Olsen made a counter offer, which would go down in legal history as the most controversial deal ever made in Canada. Olsen told Fred Miley that he'd give him 11 bodies in exchange for a payment of $100,000. Olsen would give evidence and make statements that only the killer would know, while the money would go directly to his wife Joan and his infant son Steven. Now, Miley balked, because while he knew that this was definitely gonna be a controversial move no matter what, it would be absolutely humiliating if they spent all that money

• 1:01:21Marcus Parks?

  and Clifford ended up being nothing more than a con man.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  As if that's the humiliating part, truly, where it's just like, "No, just giving money to a child rapist is enough."

• 1:01:31Marcus Parks?

  It's enough. That's humiliating enough.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  It's definitely like, so lazy.

• 1:01:40Marcus Parks?

  It's been a week. It's been a week, maybe nine days.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  Investigations can go on for months. Like, they should have been digging in and finding every single person who ever knew him, and going through all of the stuff that they need to do. They have the fucking resources for it, they just didn't want to.

• 1:01:57Marcus Parks?

  The thing was, Clifford was a con man, and I think it also, it's not just them not want, it's a combination of them not wanting to, and Clifford Olson being smarter than them.

• 1:02:08Speaker 04

  I mean, you gotta find these bodies fast. It's gonna get cold in four months.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  And you know, the cold, all it does is preserve the bodies.

• 1:02:19Marcus Parks?

  The thing is, since Clifford was a con man, he, his counter offer, when Miley said like, "I can't do that," it's pretty much the exact same thing as the last offer, but put in different terms. Clifford said, "All right, there's seven bodies you haven't found yet. You can give me $10,000 per location, and then you can give me $30,000 for additional information on these four bodies you already found." Then to close the deal, Olsen said, quote,

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  "I'll even give you a freebie. One body for nothing if we agree on the $100,000."

• 1:02:52Marcus Parks?

  It's the same fucking deal.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:54Marcus Parks?

  It's the same exact fucking deal. But Fred Miley was both impatient and desperate to bring this horrific chapter of Canadian history to a close, and apparently, so was everyone else in the Canadian government.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  This makes me sick.

• 1:03:07Marcus Parks?

  It's not like Fred Miley went rogue and did this all on his own. He took it to the Attorney General of British Columbia. He took it to the Solicitor General of Canada. He took it to the RCMP Commissioner. All of them said, "Yep, sounds good. Sign off."

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Done and done.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  You know, like I said earlier, in America, they would have just taken the money back.

• 1:03:30Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  They would have just lied and said, "Sure," and then took them around everywhere, and nobody would have gotten fucking anything. To be honest, like, that's what you do. You lie to a child rapist.

• 1:03:41Marcus Parks?

  You do. Yeah, you're allowed. You're allowed to do that.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  You can do that. We'll give you permission.

• 1:03:44Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah. But they signed the devil's bargain on August 24th, 1981, and Olsen was on a field trip two days later with Fred Miley to reveal the location of the first of seven bodies. Now Olsen's time in jail pre-trial was far more difficult than his usual stints, because Clifford Olson's crimes had finally earned him the reputation as the most notorious Skinner in Canadian history. As such, Olsen got abuse from both sides. When Clifford got his first prison-issued shirts from the guards, he saw that someone had written "baby fucker" on the back of all of his shirts.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Now, this is just artless. This is just low-hanging fruit. There's no reason to come at me for this. There's so many other reasons why I look like that little critter. There's so many other things. Timo Pedro Pascal. There's so many things.

• 1:04:36Marcus Parks?

  Actually, "little critter" sounds like another horrible name for, like, a cute name for a horrible thing. Like, "little critter," oh yeah, he's a guy that likes the mentally challenged. That's a little critter.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  He's a real little critter.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Do you believe that a baby fucker used to wear these clothes?

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Is this like one of those Native American things where your last name's your job?

• 1:05:01Marcus Parks?

  As far as the inmates went, they delighted in throwing cups of piss at Clifford from behind the bars of their cells. That's, I mean, that's American and Canadian. That's classic.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  And you're lucky I like piss.

• 1:05:13Speaker 04

  You know, cops did not want to lead him anywhere.

• 1:05:17Marcus Parks?

  In other words, Clifford's manic narcissistic charm had run out completely once the scope of his crimes began circulating. But Olsen did prove that he still had charm when it counted. When Olsen underwent a psychiatric evaluation to see if he was fit to stand trial, he bragged to Fred Miley that no evaluation would matter, because Olsen could trick any doctor they sent who might try to figure out old Clifford Olson. And sure enough, when the psychiatrist arrived in a room where Clifford was waiting and asked, "Hey, are you Clifford Olson?" Clifford acted drunk and said,

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  "Nah, how about Olsen? He just left."

• 1:05:54Marcus Parks?

  So the doctor said, "Okay, sorry to bother you, sir."

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  Jesus, fucking people are so fucking stupid. You're taking a prisoner's word. Going in there and literally the man, then you told us a list, a five-page-long list of crimes, murder and rape, and then you just go in, and he's like, "Well, he said he's not him, so I'm going home."

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm going home.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  I can't believe, I'm like, the American justice system is better. It's like, it's crazy.

• 1:06:20Marcus Parks?

  The psychiatrist walked right back out the door, and Fred Miley was actually waiting outside. So when the doctor left the room, Miley was like, "Jeez, doctor, that's a quick." The doctor said, "Oh, I haven't started. Where's Olsen?" Miley says, "He's in that fucking room you just came out of." And the doctor said, "No, you idiot, that's not Olsen. That's just some drunk." And finally, Miley says,

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  "Jesus Christ, that's Olsen. He's got you going too." This is literally a Marx Brothers fucking movie, dude.

• 1:06:47Marcus Parks?

  It's like, it's one thing, it's one step away from who's on first.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  He went that way.

• 1:06:53Marcus Parks?

  While Olsen could certainly trick a psychiatrist for a moment, he was by no means smart enough to manipulate one for his own grand purposes. Clifford Olson was not only found fit to stand trial, but was deemed by every psychiatrist to be a non-candidate for the insanity defense. Every mental health professional who saw Clifford Olson told attorney Bob Chance that insanity wouldn't work, because Clifford clearly knew the difference between right and wrong. Clifford actually tried to manipulate one psychiatrist into working with him on a book and a subsequent movie deal, which is not something that insane people generally tend to discuss when they have interviews with psychiatrists to determine their sanity.

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  But for the wise psychiatrist, you can offer quite the many dividends.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely, probably a better paycheck.

• 1:07:39Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. And so Olsen was left with no choice but to do a plain-old not guilty plea for all his charges. When the trial came, however, Olsen seemed both bored and mortified by the entire process. Most of the time, he was calm and callous, loudly sighing at regular intervals. But he also got agitated, particularly when he heard recordings of his own voice, because he hadn't expected to sound so sleazy and weak.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  I don't sound like that.

• 1:08:11Marcus Parks?

  Listen to my voice and listen to that, but play it back.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  Play it back. Is this, did Rick Moranis do this? Is this an impressionist? Is this SCTV?

• 1:08:21Marcus Parks?

  But in the end, it seems like Olsen just felt like the whole thing was taking too long. And so, because he probably saw the trial as a lost cause anyway, he changed his plea to guilty halfway through. The judge immediately gave him a term of life in prison for each murder, with a minimum of 25 years before he could be eligible for parole. In an uncharacteristic move for the Canadian criminal justice system, though, and this might have been the judge throwing a little bit of shade on every parole board who would let Clifford go again and again, the judge explicitly added that he hoped that no future parole boards would ever consider freeing Clifford Olson.

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  Wow, and those are some strong words. And I just feel like that really, wow, that really nailed it down. Him just going, "I really hope that somebody does the things different in the future."

• 1:09:11Marcus Parks?

  I hope that they consider it.

• 1:09:15Marcus Parks?

  So at long last, on January 14th, 1982, after a lifetime causing untold amounts of chaos, anguish, and death all across Canada, Clifford Olson's charm finally ran out at the age of 42.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  Oh, that's our age. It's my age.

• 1:09:31Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, I'm a little old.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:09:33Marcus Parks?

  That's my age. Now, the Bodies for Money scheme had been kept out of the press before the trial. No, wait, I'm 43.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  I'm the baby.

• 1:09:43Marcus Parks?

  Now, the Bodies for Money scheme had been kept out of the press before the trial, because while Canadian journalists had known about the Bodies for Money scheme, Canadian journalists don't have First Amendment rights, like we do, when it comes to trials. We can put anything we find out in the papers. In Canada, if a government doesn't want it in the papers, it doesn't go in the papers.

• 1:10:04Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:10:05Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, it's, it's, so as to not bias, but it's for the trial, so it's actually, it's a better way of doing it, honestly.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a smarter way of doing it, because it keeps people, because it keeps stuff like, people, juries already just, it keeps people that are already like, swayed by the news before they even get added to a jury.

• 1:10:22Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. But that's just during the trial. Once the trial was over, the media immediately broke the Bodies for Cash story, and the condemnation was so universal and so vigorous, that the Attorney General decided to just retire, because he didn't want to fucking deal with it.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  Pussy. You fucking pussy.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  He's like, "Hold on, I can just retire and you pay me and I never have to talk about this?"

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  So I'm just, oh, I quit.

• 1:10:50Marcus Parks?

  Overall, though, the government argued that the bodies would have likely never been found without Olson's cooperation.

• 1:10:55Speaker 00

  Because you suck.

• 1:10:56Marcus Parks?

  Well, I mean...

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  Who knows? They didn't even try.

• 1:10:59Marcus Parks?

  To be entirely fair, we wouldn't have found half of Gary Ridgeway's victims had he not personally led us to those bodies.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, you do it the old-fashioned way, where you break down the motherfucker. You just do it the way you're supposed to do it.

• 1:11:13Marcus Parks?

  Over time, yes.

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  Or you get the team of 100 people and you comb the fucking woods.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  That's the thing, and you just go and go and go, and you put lots of money and time into the investigation.

• 1:11:24Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, but the woods here were, I mean, even more vast than the woods outside of Tacoma.

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  There's a lot of woods in Canada.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  I do understand that this made it easier, and it happened.

• 1:11:34Marcus Parks?

  It did make it easier, but the media didn't buy this excuse.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:11:38Marcus Parks?

  It amounted to the cops justifying a shortcut to justice by putting taxpayer money in the pocket of a killer, or at least the wife of a killer, because all the money went to Joan.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  It basically went to him because then she can put it in the fucking kitty for him. She could do lots of different stuff with that money.

• 1:11:53Marcus Parks?

  I think Joan fucked off.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Marcus Parks?

  I think Joan was finally like, okay, he's in prison, I don't have to deal with him anymore. But speaking of Joan, the media got even more vicious when Joan Olson got the bodies for cash check for $100,000, and at the very same time, in fact, like the same week, the mother of Clifford Olson's last teenage victim, she had her welfare benefits cut in half because she was no longer supporting a child because Clifford Olson had murdered that child. It's a real bad comparison.

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  That's a technical that I kinda agree with, you know? Because as soon as you kill all the children of a family, they're not parents anymore, right?

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Did Joan pay her father back?

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, oh, no.

• 1:12:38Marcus Parks?

  Joan, so you got this $100,000, I'm just saying, that eight grand, I mean, it's an outstanding debt.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, we can think about it.

• 1:12:48Marcus Parks?

  But that mother, eventually, the mother of Clifford Olson's last victim, she was eventually awarded $4,000 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board of Canada. Coincidentally, this was the same board that had awarded Clifford Olson $3,500 in 1974 after he'd been stabbed in prison with a pair of scissors for being a snitch. I mean, Canada's just a wacky, mixed-up place, ain't it?

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  They're trying to figure stuff out.

• 1:13:11Marcus Parks?

  I mean, we all are.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:15Speaker 04

  So she got 4% of the murderer's money.

• 1:13:18Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 1:13:20Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. Now, Olson naturally lived a solitary life in prison, but he kept himself busy by talking extensively to Peter Worthington, the author of the book we used as a main source for our series, Predator. Like Clifford Olson, they're only supposed to have something like two phone calls a month, but Clifford Olson charmed his way into a payphone every day, for like dozens of calls a day, and collect calls.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  I think he did it through, when we listened to the, what was it, the, there was the, that podcast that was Calls From A Killer, that same thing, where he just got to talk for hours on the phone.

• 1:13:57Marcus Parks?

  Yep. Well, otherwise, Olson filled his time by filing repeated complaints in prison. In 1992, Olson filed a complaint because he was denied the right to purchase a solid pleasure, life-size, revolutionary, not-inflated sex doll for the low, low price of $24.95.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  What does that mean, not inflated?

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  You gotta blow it up yourself.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  So it's plastic?

• 1:14:18Marcus Parks?

  It's not inflated yet.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  It's foam?

• 1:14:20Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, solid, life-size, okay, so we're talking...

• 1:14:22Speaker 04

  It's an inner tube that hasn't been inflated yet.

• 1:14:25Marcus Parks?

  I'm trying to, I'm flipping through Men's Magazine's ads in my head for 1992.

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  Is it shaped like a pussy and a butt, or is it just a hole?

• 1:14:33Marcus Parks?

  It's a full sex, it's a full sex doll, but not inflated, which meant it was probably foam, but if it's $24.95, it's gonna be...

• 1:14:41Speaker 00

  It can't be a great one.

• 1:14:42Marcus Parks?

  It's not gonna be a good one, no.

• 1:14:44Speaker 04

  Not inflated doesn't mean it's not inflatable.

• 1:14:47Marcus Parks?

  Exactly, yeah. Because you can't, yeah, I'm trying to...

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  I'm looking it up. Continue.

• 1:14:52Marcus Parks?

  Well, Olson argued that the doll would greatly improve his mental and physical health, but after his request was denied, he actually tried taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. He did not, however, make it to the highest court of the land. But speaking of threats, Olson also threatened to sue anyone, any journalist, who called him a sex criminal, because Clifford had technically never been convicted of sex crimes. Murder, sure, but never sex crimes. But those lawsuits, of course, also went nowhere.

• 1:15:23Speaker 04

  Why would they even let him file them?

• 1:15:25Marcus Parks?

  I mean, you know, we've, we've had our own run-ins with serial killers being angry about the things that we say.

• 1:15:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Marcus Parks?

  They don't get anywhere. Like, it mostly amounts them to talking a lot of trash, it doesn't actually make it to court.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  If you have money to do it, you can sue anybody you like.

• 1:15:45Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you're in prison for serial killing, you don't have a whole lot of money, usually.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. He's got $100,000.

• 1:15:53Marcus Parks?

  Now Olson, well, that money was kept by his wife. Olson supposedly didn't see a dime of it.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna just say, I, in my heart of hearts, there is no way he didn't see some of that money.

• 1:16:07Marcus Parks?

  Sure. Now Olson did at long last decide to completely confess to everything in even greater detail than he confessed to author Peter Worthington. He actually filled 30 notebooks, at 50 pages each, full of details on how he picked up every victim, what he said to them, what his thought processes were, and what his fantasies had been. He then went into the rapes, the murders, and even the necropedophilia, to steal a phrase from Cannibal Corpse.

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  Cute.

• 1:16:35Speaker 04

  You understand what they're saying?

• 1:16:37Marcus Parks?

  Cannibal Corpse?

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Marcus Parks?

  I can read the lyrics.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, they read the lyrics.

• 1:16:41Marcus Parks?

  And also, the song is called Necropedophilia. I can, I can read the song titles on the sleeve of the record.

• 1:16:46Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 1:16:47Marcus Parks?

  I'm a big Cannibal Corpse fan. These notebooks were not for public consumption. Olson had written these to be delivered to his fucking son when little Steven finally turned 19 in the year 2000. He figured 19's old enough. As Olson said, he didn't want Steven to learn about his dad from others, and these notebooks would help set the record straight.

• 1:17:07Speaker 04

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• 1:20:40Speaker 04

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• 1:22:11Marcus Parks?

  Now, Olsen tried making more deals for bodies in an attempt to get him transferred to a mental institution at long last, but nobody wanted to take another risk on making a deal with Clifford Olson after what happened last time. And so Clifford became just another man to be denied parole again and again. But in 2006, Olsen was feeling particularly chatty during this parole hearing. He told the parole board that serial killers should never be paroled, adding, quote, "That's my opinion. I'm not trying to be facetious or smart or being a jackass or anything. I think serial killers need to be punished." Yeah. Now, Olsen didn't name anyone specifically, but all signs point towards him talking about Carla Homolka, who'd been granted parole the year before.

• 1:22:53Speaker 00

  I think we're seeing sexism talking. I don't want to talk out of turn. I know. I think Clifford Olson might have been a bit of a misogynist as well.

• 1:23:02Marcus Parks?

  It could be. Carla was one half of the Kenan Barbie killers with Paul Bernardo, and it seems like also it was miffed that Homolka had been released.

• 1:23:10Speaker 00

  Nobody in Canada is happy about it.

• 1:23:12Marcus Parks?

  No, not even Clifford Olson was happy about Carla Homolka being released.

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  She just actually, we covered inside stories not too long ago. She was just discovered in another Facebook mommy group where, because she's under an assumed name in a private area. And so she keeps being discovered and then having to flee wherever she's at. So she just recently was discovered again on like a mommy group on Facebook.

• 1:23:34Marcus Parks?

  She just needs to stay off social media.

• 1:23:35Speaker 00

  She needs to throw herself in a fucking lake.

• 1:23:39Marcus Parks?

  Olsen wasn't done making waves during this 2006 hearing. He said that it didn't matter what the parole board said because they had no jurisdiction over him anymore. Instead, Olsen claimed that he had been granted immunity by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Why? Well, apparently Olsen, according to his own testimony, had provided key information during the investigation into 9/11.

• 1:24:08Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you. New York thanks you.

• 1:24:12Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, we're in New York right now. New York Comic Con, New York definitely thanks you. Now Olsen did not reveal what information he provided, only that he had rung the alarm bell all the way back in 1999. He told people that 9/11 is gonna happen and he knew who was gonna do it too. Didn't say how he knew or how he'd found out about this, being in solitary for, you know, the last 20, 30 years.

• 1:24:35Speaker 04

  Cut to a little scene, a little bar in Coquitlam. Osama bin Laden's visiting, you know, walking around after taking, doing college in America. And he's just doing a little tour of Coquitlam and he sits down to a little rascally, little critterly looking man. And they tell each other their whole life stories and they laugh and they laugh all night.

• 1:24:58Speaker 00

  So Osama, let me ask you, if you had a million dollars and you could do anything, what would you do?

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  Destroy America, my friend. You know me too. Me too. Now I'm gonna tell my friend Karl Rove all about this. Don't worry, I love Karl. Karl is my friend.

• 1:25:23Marcus Parks?

  Does Osama bin Laden run a pizza shop?

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  Yes, I like him. You like a pornography? Me? I like pornography.

• 1:25:32Speaker 04

  I love a pornography.

• 1:25:34Marcus Parks?

  The parole board, of course, was not impressed by Clifford's last grand narcissistic gamble and therefore denied his release. By 2011, Clifford Olson had come down with cancer and he finally died at the age of 71, taking all of his 9/11 secrets with him.

• 1:25:51Speaker 00

  Give him 100 grand for the secrets behind 9/11.

• 1:25:55Speaker 04

  They didn't care about 9/11 and this proves it.

• 1:25:59Speaker 00

  Actually, you know, the truth is, is that Toronto had the first major investigation into 9/11 outside of the United States of America. They, Toronto devoted an entire world of resources to investigating 9/11. They were obsessed with it. And there was a whole, there was a place called Conspiracy Culture that used to be a bookstore in Toronto that was like the heart of like, this is where David Icke used to first show up, he used to go hang out, like all the good, cool guys.

• 1:26:27Speaker 04

  And they, yeah, they, they put Beluga Team Six on the whole thing.

• 1:26:32Speaker 00

  And they mostly were just like, we're gonna get back to this after the summer.

• 1:26:36Marcus Parks?

  Don't forget, wasn't there like a whole musical written about the jet that had to land in Newfoundland?

• 1:26:41Speaker 04

  Was it Newfoundland or New Zealand?

• 1:26:43Marcus Parks?

  It was Newfoundland. Yeah, it was definitely Newfoundland. Trust me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  But you know what? I don't need to see that because I'm too busy spending all money, all my money going down and buying premiere tickets to Slam Frank. Have you seen this?

• 1:26:56Marcus Parks?

  I've, I've seen Slam.

• 1:26:57Speaker 00

  I thought it was fake. I thought it was AI.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  It sounds fake as hell.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  It is a rap musical about fucking Anne Frank.

• 1:27:06Marcus Parks?

  I haven't.

• 1:27:06Speaker 04

  If it's not all whispers, I can't.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  I got my period. I got my period. And you know that's bad when the blood's in the water, the Nazis come back.

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  Hey kitty, this is shitty.

• 1:27:19Marcus Parks?

  It's a bridge to, it is a bridge too far.

• 1:27:21Speaker 00

  It's where Stomp used to be.

• 1:27:22Marcus Parks?

  It's trying too hard.

• 1:27:24Speaker 00

  You gotta rap.

• 1:27:25Marcus Parks?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:27:26Speaker 00

  If you can't just sit still, you gotta know that you, you sit with your mother inside for the rest of your life.

• 1:27:32Speaker 04

  It would be too offensive to do Anne Frank Stomp.

• 1:27:38Speaker 00

  Well, this was great.

• 1:27:39Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, this is, I had so much fun with this. It was fun to do true crime again. And next week, we're gonna get into an old timey flim flam man that y'all are gonna love.

• 1:27:48Speaker 00

  Love old timey flim flam man. And we got some spooky shit coming up. I, um, I'm so excited.

• 1:27:53Marcus Parks?

  Yeah. And the next head on the Mount Rushmore of evil is gonna be put up within, I think a month and a half, somewhere around there. Yeah, pretty soon, maybe even sooner.

• 1:28:01Speaker 04

  Gonna get thick.

• 1:28:03Marcus Parks?

  Yeah, it's gonna be really thick. Yes.

• 1:28:04Speaker 00

  Hell, sweet Satan, and we love all of you.

• 1:28:07Marcus Parks?

  And hell, gee.

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

  Oh, and go, uh, go to patreon.com slash Last Podcast on the Left to listen to us ad free. You can also watch Last Stream on the Left live every Tuesday, 5pm PST. And you can watch us on Netflix and also on our Patreon, Movie Stories. We're working very hard on that.

• 1:28:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's a lot of fun. We got a whole nother series coming up there. We're gonna dive into David Cronenberg. It's gonna be a fucking blast to watch David Cronenberg for a full fucking month.

• 1:28:33Marcus Parks?

  It's so good, dude. I have all the DVDs now, man.

• 1:28:36Speaker 00

  I bought Shivers.

• 1:28:37Marcus Parks?

  It's good.

• 1:28:37Speaker 00

  I've never seen it.

• 1:28:38Marcus Parks?

  You're gonna love it.

• 1:28:39Speaker 00

  Well, come see me on the road. I'm gonna be in Pasadena on December 3rd, uh, the Ice House. That's gonna be a lot of fun. Ed Larson and friends.

• 1:28:47Marcus Parks?

  Oh, I'm there, right?

• 1:28:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're coming. You're hosting. Uh, September 13th, St. Louis, I'm gonna be at the Helium. That's gonna be a blast. January 24th, Nashville. January 29th and 30th, Rochester at the Comedy at Carlson. And on January 31st, Albany, New York at the Funny Bone. We're having a blast. We're doing fun. A lot of these shows, I'm bringing my buddy Logan Metz to the one in St. Louis. Danny Pedrosian is gonna be hitting up, uh, the Rochester and Albany shows.

• 1:29:12Marcus Parks?

  Oh, Planet Keys.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then I got the Reformed Whores opening for me in Nashville. It's gonna be a fucking blast.

• 1:29:17Marcus Parks?

  Fantastic.

• 1:29:18Speaker 00

  Awesome. And then of course, Henry and I got a whole bunch of dates coming at you. We just finished our leg in New York and Connecticut and then we're going to Columbia, Missouri. We're going to Portland, Maine. We're going to Burlington, Vermont. And we're going to, uh, what's that other place that we're going to? Iowa City?

• 1:29:34Marcus Parks?

  Yep.

• 1:29:34Speaker 00

  They said we'd never go.

• 1:29:36Marcus Parks?

  They, we're going to only the best cities in this country. And we're gonna see you there in each one. And we're gonna try barbecue probably in every fucking city. So please send us what else to eat.

• 1:29:48Marcus Parks?

  Rabbit, is that Cronenberg?

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  Rabbit is Cronenberg, yes.

• 1:29:51Marcus Parks?

  That was the last one. Yeah, that was the last one I saw.

• 1:29:54Speaker 00

  The brood is great.

• 1:29:55Marcus Parks?

  All right.

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  It's a big shout out to Melrose Podcast. Thank you so much for housing our sounds here as always. Very, very professional. Thank you, man. You guys crushed it. And I'm sorry for what we said. Hell Satan, everyone.

• 1:30:06Marcus Parks?

  Oh gee.

• 1:30:08Speaker 04

  I don't know. This guy's.

• 1:30:09Marcus Parks?

  Hail New York!

• 1:30:10Speaker 04

  Hail New York. It is very nice to be here.

• 1:30:13Marcus Parks?

  It's so wonderful, wonderful to be home. It feels so fucking good.

• 1:30:17Speaker 00

  So great. Have had nothing but delicious pizza, delicious food. We've had, I've had it all. I've had Greek food. I've had Polish food. I have pizza. It's fucking great.

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  Hail the Astoria Seafood Market and hail Bagel Bobs. That's who I wanna hail.

• 1:30:30Speaker 00

  Go to the Astoria Seafood Market. It is a unique New York experience that is absolutely delicious. The best seafood I've probably, I've had outside of Florida.

• 1:30:40Marcus Parks?

  Oh man, I wouldn't have had, uh, drinks with my, uh, buddy Ivan on Monday night at the library. And man, it's so, I always forget that, that, uh, that bathroom's squeaky clean on Mondays. But like by Saturday, it's bad.

• 1:30:52Speaker 00

  Well, you know, when, remember last time we went and we saw like the fight? There was like an open fucking fist fight?

• 1:30:57Marcus Parks?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:57Speaker 00

  At the library?

• 1:30:58Marcus Parks?

  That happens pretty often. I mean, it's, it's the library. It's a fucking great park.

• 1:31:02Speaker 04

  Were they not being quiet?

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:31:04Marcus Parks?

  No, they weren't. People really react badly to being shushed.