by Julian Sher
Jocelyne, Butch and Philip all told different—and at times contradictory—stories about not seeing Steve or Lynne that evening. But their testimonies would later form the centrepiece of the prosecution’s eyewitness case against Steven Truscott. The three children did not see Steve, the argument went, because when Jocelyne, Butch and Philip were near the bush, Steve was in the woods less than three hundred feet away, strangling Lynne to death.
In the minds of the police, when the coast was clear, Steven emerged from the bush where he had left Lynne’s lifeless body, walked along the laneway and then biked peacefully up the road until he reached the school. By Steven’s account, after having dropped off Lynne at the highway, he simply left the bridge and headed home.
Either way, nobody disputes that Steven was at the school grounds around 8:00 p.m., although there would be quibbling about the exact time of his return. There would be no disagreement over the key fact that more than a dozen children saw him immediately upon his return to the school and everyone said he looked normal, as calm as he always was.
“What did you do with Harper? Feed her to the fish?” teased one of the boys playing ball.
“No, I just left her off at the highway like she asked,” Steve replied.
Steve then made his way around the corner of the school near the basketball courts and headed to the swings, where an older group of teenagers were hanging out. “A bunch of the girls and I had just gone up there and we were sitting, swinging,” recalled Lorraine Wood, who had danced with Steve four days before at her party. Several boys, including Steve’s older brother, Ken, joined the girls. Lorraine and two of her friends estimated Steve showed up at their neck of the playground about 8:10 to 8:15. One of the boys said it was closer to 8:00 p.m. To Lorraine, Steve looked “normal.” Her friend Lyn Johnston commented later: “His appearance seemed about the same as usual.” John Carew said Steve looked and acted “the same as he was any other time.” None of the teenagers noticed any scratches or sweat, much less any blood, on Steve’s face or arms.
Ken reminded his younger brother he had to go home soon to babysit.
“Yes, I know, I’m going,” Steve said.
“If you’re going, you may as well leave me the big bike,” Ken said jokingly. He was envious that Steve had a shiny racer, while he had to make do with an older bike.
“All right.”
The Truscott boys then joked about exchanging shoes.
“You’re wearing my shoes,” Steve teased.
“Do you want them?” Ken asked.
“No,” Steve replied good-naturedly.
“If you aren’t home in a few minutes, I’ll get after you,” Ken taunted his brother, and Steve promptly took off across the school grounds for home.
“I made it, Mom!” he exclaimed as he barged into the house.
“You’re lucky,” said Doris, never one to tolerate tardiness. “Where were you?”
“Riding down past the river and up at the school with the kids,” Steve explained.
She gave Steve instructions for babysitting his younger siblings. Bill had some homework to do, and Barbara had to be put to bed no later than 9:00 p.m. With Steve safe at home, his mother went upstairs to put on her earrings. Then, around 8:45 p.m., Doris and Dan Truscott joined their neighbours for an evening of food and conversation at the Sergeants’ Mess.
Steven grabbed some snacks from the kitchen and prepared himself for a boring night of babysitting. There was nothing on TV he cared to watch, and in any case, the picture tube on the set was going. He slumped down and relaxed, oblivious to the trouble that was beginning to brew all around him.
4
A GIRL GOES MISSING
While Steve was babysitting his siblings, several of his friends lingered by the river. They dried themselves slowly in the cool evening air, gathered up their clothes and fishing rods on the riverbank and headed up the county road. Around 8:20 p.m., three boys biked back to the base together: Butch George, Richard Gellatly and Kenny Geiger. As they made their way up the hill, past the railway tracks and Farmer Lawson’s bush, they chatted and bragged about the day’s adventures. Richard remarked he had met Steve with Lynne on his bike. Then, Kenny remembers, Butch said something odd: “Butch said Steve and Lynne were in the bush but he didn’t know what they were doing.”
This was the first time anyone ever mentioned Steve and Lynne together in the woods. “Steve and Lynne were in the bush.” Harmless words at the time, but words that would soon take on a much more ominous tone, and that came from the mouth of one of Steve’s best pals.
By all accounts, Arnold “Butch” George was not the most popular kid at the base. A “ruffian,” one classmate called him. “Loud” is how Maynard Cory, the convenience store owner, remembers him. “He was a meanie, a smartass,” Karen Daum, Butch’s neighbour, recalls, remembering his taunts and fisticuffs.
Undoubtedly, some of the hostility came from prejudice—Butch was an outgoing Native boy in a conservative, lily-white military community. His father was a lowly butcher in the supply and services department (the same section headed by Lynne’s father). Arnold lived in a somewhat dilapidated house at 32 Edmonton Road with an older sister, two younger twin brothers and a teenage uncle or cousin—no one was really sure—named Mike. Karen Daum remembers them as “a bit wild. Sometimes his mother would come outside. And then his father would come out and yell at her.”
Butch’s buddies, Steve among them, appreciated his reputation as a bit of a rascal: hanging around Butch always meant a good time, a sense of adventure and daring. A muscular boy, Butch stood next to Steve in the back row for team photographs, with dark eyes, a mop of hair and an eager smile.
What bothered the other children the most about Butch was his untrustworthiness. “He was the biggest liar I’ve ever met,” says Bryan Glover, a classmate and a friend of Steve’s. “He lied so much that you wondered if he would even remember what he said twenty minutes later. It would drive you crazy.” Catherine O’Dell has a somewhat more sympathetic take on Butch, who used to hang around her home quite often. “He changed his stories every day. He fabricated a lot. I think he was so used to making stuff up that it was just a reflex. I remember my mom asking him one day how come he lied so much. He just kind of shrugged it off and laughed,” she says. “As I look back now I wonder if, as an ‘Indian boy,’ he did it because he wanted to be something extra special and wanted to get people’s attention.”
Butch certainly started getting people’s attention on Tuesday evening by telling anyone who would listen that Steve had taken Lynne into the bush. It is possible Butch got the idea to start this tale by putting two and two together. Around 7:15, at the entrance to the tractor trail leading to the bush, he met Jocelyne, who he said told him she was looking for Lynne. About fifteen minutes later, according to Butch’s first story to police, when he was down at the river he saw Steve and Lynne go across the bridge on Steve’s bike. Less than an hour later, Richard Gellatly told Butch he also had seen Steve and Lynne on the bike. So perhaps Butch put Jocelyne’s search next to the bush together with the sightings of Lynne and Steve on the road and came up with the perfect tease: Steve had taken Lynne into the bush.
In any event, Butch’s story appeared to be a work in progress. At various points, Butch started telling people Steve “was going” to take Lynne there, which implied some prior knowledge of Steve’s plans; or that he “heard” that Steve was in the bush, presumably from some unnamed third party; or that he “saw” Steve go into the bush with his own eyes, though he never explained where he was or what time he made this observation.
On Tuesday night, soon after saying goodbye to Kenny and Richard when they reached the base, Butch ran into Allan Durnin, another fourteen-year-old. Allan was playing with his bow and arrow set, using a cardboard box up against a post as a target.
“Truscott is in the bush with Harper,” Butch called out.
“Oh, is that right?” an unimpressed Allan replied.
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��Yeah,” Butch said and went on his way. Allan didn’t think much of it at the time. “What it meant was that he was in the bush with Harper trying to do whatever fourteen-year-old boys do,” he recalls thinking. “Mess around—but nothing serious.”
A few minutes later, Butch had reached Steve’s house. It was around 8:45 p.m.; Steve’s parents had already left for the evening. Butch first told the police the two friends never talked about Lynne that night; but then he changed his mind and said the following conversation took place:
“Where have you been all this time?” Butch claimed to have asked.
“Down by the river.”
“How come you rode Lynne down there?”
“Oh, she wanted a lift down to the highway.”
“What was she doing along the bush with you?” Butch asked.
“We were looking for a cow and a calf. What do you want to know that for?”
“Skip it, let’s play ball.”
Steve denies this conversation took place. Arnold told so many versions of the story, it is hard to make sense of what really happened. There were no independent witnesses.
There were, however, several witnesses for Butch’s next performance. As darkness settled over the base, the older boys congregated at the Custard Cup, the local ice cream stand. Paul Desjardine, Tom Gillette, George Archibald and Bryan Glover met up with Butch. The stars were just starting to come out; the crickets competed with the noisy banter of the teenagers.
It was a time to relax and savour the day’s adventures. Butch bought a bottle of pop and a treat called a Brown Derby. All four of the other boys told slightly different accounts of Butch’s boasts that night. “We bought some custard and were just talking on the benches,” George Archibald said later. “Butch said he saw Steve go into the woods with Lynne.” Paul remembered it more as if Butch was somehow aware of Steve’s plans: “Butch said Steve was taking Lynne into the woods. I didn’t recall that he said he saw him take Lynne into the woods. The way I recall it is that Butch said that Steve was going to take her into the bush.”
What everyone agrees upon is that no one took Butch’s tale seriously. “I don’t think we believed him or paid much attention,” said George Archibald. “[We] just thought it was funny.” Funny because the boys could not imagine their pal Steve, the school jock and a “hunk” in the eyes of many of the older girls, trying to make a pass at a young girl they saw as a bit of a misfit. “My only reaction to it was surprise—that Steven would be even associating with Lynne,” Bryan recalls. “Steve was one of the most popular guys in the school and there were lots of girls in the school who liked him. I could imagine Lynne being attracted to Steve but I can’t picture it the other way around.” Tom said of Butch that he “says a lot of stuff and you didn’t know whether to believe it or not.” Paul was more blunt: “We didn’t believe Butch.” Even Butch himself conceded his Custard Cup boast was a bomb: “They said ‘I bet!’ and they were jeering at me.”
They had good reason to jeer. The boy nobody trusted could not get his story straight. Earlier that evening Butch was right near the bush, supposedly looking for Steve, when he met Jocelyne. Yet he told her he had not seen Lynne or Steve. Within two hours, he was telling seven different boys he had indeed seen Steve go into the bush with Lynne. Over the next six days, he would change his story at least three times.
But it did not matter much whether Butch’s tale was true or not. It quickly took on a life of its own. In the next two days, other children would hear his story about Steve taking Lynne into the bush and tease Steve about it; Steve would react with frustration, sometimes with what others saw as anger. The police would later seize on that reaction as yet another indication of guilt.
And it all started from a boy his friends called “the biggest liar you ever met.”
While the teenagers were amusing themselves at the Custard Cup, the other residents of the Clinton air force base settled in for another quiet summer night. The constant flicker of black-and-white images danced through the small windows of the homes. Television sets were still a novelty in Canada after their introduction only six years earlier. That night, the parents enjoyed Pierre Berton and the other panelists on Front Page Challenge while the children watched “Wyatt Earp” mete out frontier justice, swiftly and efficiently arresting—if not killing—the bad guys.
The sun set that evening at 9:08 p.m. The coolness of a peaceful June evening was a welcome break from the heat wave. But at 15 Victoria Boulevard, no one was relaxing. Lynne Harper had still not shown up.
Most of the other children on the base were safely indoors by then. “Lynne’s come-in time is 9:00 and her bedtime is 9:30,” her mother later told police. “She didn’t come back and we raised the alarm about 9:15 by asking [her older brother] Barry to go check. We thought she was only being naughty.” Lynne’s father joined in the search, while Shirley stayed behind, anxiously walking around the house several times and waiting on the back step.
Around 10:30 p.m., George Archibald, the sometime boyfriend of Lynne’s, arrived at the Harpers’ front yard. He had just come from the Custard Cup; perhaps his jealousy was tweaked by Butch’s tale about Steve going into the bush with Lynne. Lynne had also promised to lend George her sleeping bag for a “sleep-out” he was planning.
George saw Barry outside the Harper home and asked him if Lynne was still up.
“No,” said Barry, “she isn’t in.”
“She isn’t home,” Lynne’s mother said. “Do you know where she is?”
George said he didn’t. “I could tell already there was something seriously wrong.”
Meanwhile, over at the Sergeants’ Mess, Doris and Dan Truscott and their friends were wrapping up the evening’s festivities. Steve’s parents returned home by eleven to find him and the other children fast asleep. Doris woke up Steve’s younger brother, Bill, to take him to the bathroom. Then the lights went out at 2 Quebec Road.
The first officially recorded concern of Lynne Harper’s whereabouts came at 11:20 p.m. Leslie Harper went to see Flight Sgt. Frank Johnson, a neighbour who also happened to be the NCO in charge of the air force police. According to the official military logs, Johnson notified the police with a cursory message:
Lynne Harper, age 12 years, five foot
three inches tall, 100 lbs. White print
blouse, blue shorts. That she hadn’t
been home since about 1900 hrs and
that it was possible she was hitchhiking
to her grandmother’s in Port
Stanley, Ontario.
The next few minutes saw a flurry of activity. Corporal William A. Webb was on duty at the RCAF guardhouse when he got a phone call from Lynne’s father at 11:25 p.m. “Flying Officer Harper sounded very distressed,” he reported. “When further questioned as to any possible place the girl might have gone to, Flying Officer Harper stated that she might have headed for Port Stanley, Ontario, where her grandmother was living.”
At 11:30, Webb called the Exeter detachment of the OPP. He relayed a description of the girl and “in view of the possibility of the girl going to Port Stanley requested that all provincial police cars en route might be notified to be on the lookout.” Webb sent an officer to check the swimming pool Lynne had so desperately wanted to visit. The officer reported “negative results” at 11:40 p.m.
Police cruiser 685 was on patrol in the Clinton area when the dispatcher’s call came: “Proceed to RCAF guardhouse to check on the report of a missing person.” Constable Donald Weston was at the base in eight minutes. At the Harper home, he obtained a photograph of the missing girl. Lynne’s father reiterated his fear that their daughter had run away. “Flying Officer [Harper] believed Lynne may have gone to her grandparents’ home,” Constable Weston reported. He notified the Clinton police and patrolled the highway in the area.
In the space of about fifteen minutes, three OPP and air force police officers, in three separate reports, all indicated that Lynne was probably a hitchhiking runaway, inf
ormation that only could have come from Lynne’s parents. Clearly their first impulse was that their missing daughter had tried to flee to her grandmother’s some eighty miles away. Months later, when Steven Truscott was on trial for the murder of their daughter, Lynne’s mother denied under oath that as far as she knew Lynne never hitchhiked. Friends such as Catherine O’Dell, with whom Lynne did in fact thumb rides, were not called upon to contradict Mrs. Harper. The prosecution implied that Lynne had neither the disposition nor the desire to run away.
The defence team and the jurors never saw the police reports from June 9 that suggested quite the opposite. The reports remained hidden until now.
The police broadcast Lynne’s physical description to ten nearby counties over the OPP radio network, and passed on the information to radio stations in the neighbouring towns of Wingham and London. “The Harpers left the lights burning all night, the drapes open,” recalled a neighbour. “I imagine [they were] wanting Lynne to know that they were waiting for her to come home.”
For years to come the children of Clinton would remember where they were on June 9, 1959. Kevin Mattinson had whiled away the early evening up in his favourite cherry tree, near the ball field. “We spent a lot of time in that tree,” he says fondly. “With our overactive imaginations, it was sometimes a spaceship or a pirate ship.” He could see the schoolyard where Steve had met Lynne before they set off on their bike ride. He could see the county road that led down to the bush and the river. For Kevin and the other children of Clinton, it had been a summer night just like any other. But in the next few days, everything in their world would be turned upside down. Teasing comments would become serious accusations, confused memories would become set in stone as definitive accounts, and friends would become liars.