Arlene Bynon answers a collect call. On the other end of the line is Clifford Olson: a man convicted of killing eleven children and teenagers in the 1980s. The oldest of them, eighteen. The youngest of them, nine. During years of secret phone calls from his prison cell, he tells this young journalist things he hasn’t told anyone else. Decades later, Nathaniel Frum dusts off a box of old tapes inherited from his late grandfather. When he hears Arlene’s voice, he knows he needs to find her. And they both know that this forgotten story needs to be told.Binge all 7 episodes of this season right now, early and ad-free, by subscribing here.
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This is a CBC Podcast. The following episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Please take care when listening. Whenever I stayed at my grandparents' house as a kid, there was a rule. Always pick up the phone. Because you never knew who could be calling for my grandpa Pete. A Soviet spy, a cabinet minister, a serial killer.
Growing up, I'd learn what my grandpa did for a living through the stories he'd share at the holidays or summers at the lake. It wasn't that he was bragging. Pete was actually really humble. He just had stories no one else could tell. And he never told the same one twice, because he never needed to. There was the time he stood just feet away from Lee Harvey Oswald as Jack Ruby pulled the trigger.
The time a bullet went through his sleeve in Algiers as fighting between the Algerians and French raged. The time he met the Beatles in Hong Kong. He didn't even think to mention that one until a couple years before he died. Long story short, he thought they all needed haircuts. My grandpa, Peter Worthington, was a newspaper man. And for some time, he was one of the newspaper men in Toronto.
He was a roving foreign correspondent, chasing every conflict through the 50s and 60s, until helping found his own paper, the Toronto Sun, a paper that still exists today. Pete continued to write until his death in 2013. The last thing he wrote was his own obituary. My grandpa left behind a bird's nest of papers, photos, and tapes, fragments of his extraordinary career.
It was all packed and sent away to Canada's National Archives by my grandmother, Yvonne. But six years after Pete's death, I brought those boxes back. By this time, I was in my mid-20s, trying to make it as a screenwriter in L.A., trying to find my next story. What if it lived in the boxes that Pete had left behind? I popped one of his hundreds of cassettes into a player. Tape 12, 1991. Okay.
Hello, Peter? Yeah.
I called last night there, and I can appreciate not calling you at home, but I thought sometimes for an emergency or anything, that comes up, Peter, you know?
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