‘They called him the Candyman.’In British Columbia’s lower mainland, children are disappearing. Families are terrified as the local RCMP attempts to find out who is preying on vulnerable kids.At a time when both the public and the police don’t know how to deal with a serial killer, Clifford Olson slips through the cracks.
Chapter 1: What is the true crime story behind the Candyman?
Do you ever finish a true crime series and wish that you could know more? It happens to me all the time. And that's what's driving my interviews on Crime Story. Each week, I'm lucky enough to sit down with the best storytellers and really dig into what it takes to tell those stories. And this month, our riches run deep. We have Keith Morrison, Amanda Knox, and Bone Valley's Gilbert King.
I'm Kathleen Goltar. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.
This is a CBC Podcast. The following episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Please take care when listening.
He seemed on level. He seemed charming. Maybe not really even charming. Just seemed like a normal, ordinary businessman to me. And then he offered me a job in Whistler, B.C., For a 16-year-old, shampooing carpets for $10 an hour sounded really good. And I thought this would be a way to make my mother proud of me.
The voice you are hearing is Kim Werbecki's. It's 1994, and she's being interviewed by Hannah Gardner on the CBC TV show, Contact. At this time, she's a young woman, but the night she's describing, she was just a terrified teenager who decided to hitchhike a ride from a stranger.
One hour outside Vancouver, on the way up to Whistler, suddenly you're stopping at a motel. Your antenna must have gone up.
Yeah, no, not at that time because it was foggy out and he said that we would continue in the morning and I could phone my mother from the motel and that we would get separate rooms. And there was nothing that seemed wrong. I mean, he wasn't trying to touch me or anything like that. So nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
What happened?
He followed me. into the motel room, into my room, and closed the door and locked it. And that's when I knew something wasn't right. I knew something wasn't right, but I was trying not to think the worst that could happen. And the worst did happen in that motel room that night. I don't remember exactly in what order things happened.
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Chapter 2: Who is Kim Werbecki and what did she experience?
I got another phone call. Mrs. Rosenfeld, I'm sorry, I guess that was your boy after all. That was the death notification. And I just, I, at that time, I remember screaming and I knew my children were at home. And I remember screaming, Gary, Gary, it's Darren, it's Darren. And Gary picking me up off the floor. Our lives as we knew them died with Darren.
Not only had the police made this most insensitive of errors, they'd left Sharon to find out the worst details of Darren's murder while running the most everyday errand. She'd been out chaperoning her younger son as he made his paper round.
He was 11 years old and there was a specific place where he was to pick up his newspapers to deliver. And so I went to meet him and I seen him sitting on the curb and he had his head in his hands and he was crying and I said, what's going on? What's the matter? And he pointed at the newspaper and there was Darren's picture.
So I took it out at the binding so I could look at it, and under the bottom of his picture it said, Darren Johnsrud's nude, raped, bludgeoned body was found along the banks of the Fraser River. I had no idea. I had asked the police if he had been found with his clothes on or off. That would give me some indication. They said they could not give us that information.
And so I respected everything that they told me because the last thing we wanted to do was mess up any type of investigation that they had going. So we had no idea that he had been raped.
When the police still believed that Darren was yet another runaway, Clifford Olson had his car stuck in a muddy ditch in the Fraser Valley about an hour and a half's drive from Darren's home. He'd say he paid a local to help him get his car out and then, once the coast was clear, threw a bloody hammer and Darren's clothes into the Fraser River.
Later that night, Olson was apprehended for driving drunk. He was released the next day. Not long after Sharon learned her son was dead, Clifford Olson married Joan Hale, the mother of his son, at the People's Full Gospel Church in Surrey. Four days after the wedding, Olson picked up 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner, who was hitchhiking in the area.
That afternoon, her worried boyfriend tried to report her missing to the police. They said they had to wait 48 hours first.
Debating. We've all done it. Who doesn't like to argue with a friend about whether Coke is better than Pepsi or if pickup trucks rule? I'm Steve Patterson, host of The Debaters, where Canada's top comedians and top arguers battle it out on these tricky, tricky topics. Like, is it okay to have a more successful partner? Let us take that one on instead of bringing it up with your partner.
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