by Julian Sher
In the fall of 2000, Steve and Marlene’s children surprised them with an open-house party for their 30th wedding anniversary. Among the eighty guests who showed up were modern-day neighbours and childhood friends from Clinton such as Bryan Glover and Karen Allen. Bob Lawson came with his wife, Anne, as did Steve’s former teacher from the air base, Maitland Edgar. It was a cross-section of the people whose lives were touched by the Truscotts over the decades.
“It was really amazing,” says Christa Severa, their neighbour from the 1970s. “They really deserved it.”
The key legal players in the saga—Frank Donnelly, Glenn Hays, Justice Ronald Ferguson, Arthur Martin, Emmett Hall and his eight other colleagues on the Supreme Court—all died without ever having made any major public comment on the Truscott case.
Shortly before Dr. John Penistan died in June 1973, he deposited “additional reading material” from his files with the Perth County Archives in Stratford, Ontario. What was unusual—and perhaps indicative of how tortured Penistan was over his role in the trial—was the preface he penned to his archive collection. “Whether Steven Truscott did murder Lynne Harper is not known; nor will it ever be known unless further and incontrovertible evidence on the subject is obtained,” the doctor wrote. Eight weeks later, Penistan was dead. It was a surprising final statement on the case coming from the medical expert whose testimony on time of death convinced a jury that there was indeed “incontrovertible” evidence of Steven’s guilt.
Dr. David Hall Brooks, the chief medical officer at the air force base who assisted Penistan at Lynne’s autopsy, is more talkative. But today, the man who seemed so eager to convict Steven during his testimony shows signs of recanting. He told jurors in 1959 the sores on Steven’s penis pointed clearly to an “inexpert attempt at penetration.” Now he is less than certain. “Looking back on this, it would have been very fine if my ideas of ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ and young people [were] not … as highly powered as I thought,” he says. He is also far more equivocal about Steve’s guilt. “In the absence of DNA, I don’t think it will be settled.”
Perhaps Brooks’ newfound sympathy for Steve stems from his own run-ins with authorities over sexual allegations. Brooks left Clinton in 1959 and eventually became medical director of the Forest Hill Rehabilitation Centre in Fredericton. In 1966, the Canadian Physiotherapy Association deferred approving the centre for its interns when one of the therapists reported Brooks “has been witnessed in several acts of exhibitionism in front of patients and staff (and) there is doubt as to his ethical procedures when examining female patients.” The Medical Council of New Brunswick investigated. It found there may have been “carelessness on exposure” in one instance but exonerated the doctor in August of 1967.
Or so it seemed. The following year, the council refused Brooks’ request for a “Statement of Good Standing”—in effect, blocking him from practice. The official minutes record the health minister at the time, Dr. Peter Weyman, wanted every provincial medical council in Canada “to be alerted to the conduct of this man.” The minutes also indicate the RCMP began an investigation. Brooks left the province for the United States. He is now retired and lives in New Jersey.
Dr. George Scott, the prison psychiatrist who tried truth serum, LSD and a battery of psychological tests to get a confession out of Steven, ran into embarrassing problems of his own. In 1995, the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons revoked Scott’s licence to practise medicine for “professional misconduct” when he pled guilty to having sex with one of his female patients. He began counselling her in 1965 while he was also handling Steven’s case. Under Scott’s care, her psychiatric treatment—along with “regular sexual intercourse”—continued until the mid-1970s.
George Scott is retired now and lives not far from the prisons in Kingston where he served for so long.
For opponents of the death penalty, Steven Truscott remains a living example of what is wrong with capital punishment. Had Steven’s sentence not been commuted, Canada would have hanged a boy many are convinced is innocent.
“Capital punishment is unjust.… It is final. It is irreversible. Its imposition has been described as arbitrary. Its deterrent value has been doubted.” Those words come not from a lobby group but from the Supreme Court of Canada. On February 15, 2001, the court reversed a position it had taken a decade earlier, when it allowed two American prisoners in Canada to be sent back to the United States to face possible death sentences. This time, the court ruled unanimously that the federal government must not extradite people to countries that still practise capital punishment.
The highest court in the land specifically cited five cases of wrongful conviction in Canada: Donald Marshall, David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin, Thomas Sophonow and Gregory Parsons. (Four of those five cases were won with AIDWYC’s assistance; all five were fought with help from lawyers who are now working on Steve’s case.) The Supreme Court of Canada stated forcefully that: “The recent and continuing disclosures of wrongful convictions for murder in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom provide tragic testimony to the fallibility of the legal system.”
One group of people is not prepared to admit—or even discuss—their fallibility. The children of Clinton, now grown up, have wrestled with their demons. The Supreme Court’s opinion on the death penalty has evolved; the justice department says it is “very aware” of the potential of a miscarriage of justice in the Truscott case. But the Ontario Provincial Police remains steadfast in its unconditional refusal to budge an inch from its 1959 stance.
Only two of the many OPP and air force police officers involved in the case are still alive. “As far as the investigating officers on that case, there’s no one who thinks he’s innocent,” says Dennis Alsop, the identification officer called who testified as a footprint expert before the Supreme Court. “That’s a pretty solid case. That’s what the job is about and they had the right man. Not a doubt.”
Hank Sayeau, the corporal who acted as second in command on the Harper murder case, is still furious at what he sees as biased reporting by the fifth estate. “You made us look as if we screwed this kid,” he says. “He’s gone through every process in our courts and you made him into a male Joan of Arc.”
Harold Graham retired as commissioner of the OPP in 1982. More than seven hundred friends attended the testimonial dinner, including the Ontario premier, William Davis, nine other cabinet ministers and the chief justice of Ontario. The master of ceremonies was Attorney General Roy McMurtry.
Graham refused all invitations to talk about his role in arresting and convicting Steven Truscott. “It’s been years,” he said in a telephone interview in 2000. “When are we going to let this thing go?”
“Graham doesn’t like to be reminded about how this case keeps coming up,” said his former associate Hank Sayeau. “I think it’s always on his mind. He’s always thought about the Truscott case.”
The first signs of spring were unmistakable in Guelph. A couple of students from the university jogged along a path that winds past the old reform school, which later served as a maximum-security jail before being shut down. The dogs were out romping in the park along the Eramosa River. Up the road from the river, outside the Truscott home, a bird feeder dangled from the branch of a tree. A half-used bag of salt lay on the porch, the only souvenir of the dreary winter just past.
Ryan Truscott, who lives in a basement suite in his parents’ home, was thinking of getting some new lawn furniture for the backyard, which is enclosed by neighbours’ fences on two sides and with the walls of the Truscotts’ house and garage on the other sides. But Steve didn’t like the idea.
“It’s too confining,” Steve said. “I like it out front. It’s open. You can see.” Then he added, referring to his prison days: “I don’t like the walls.”
“Dad,” Ryan exclaimed, “that’s the first time I have heard you say anything like that.”
A year after their lives were turned upside down by the fifth estate broadcast, the Truscott fami
ly was returning to normal—except it was a different kind of normal. Steve now wore his pride on the outside, voicing feelings he kept inside for so many years.
Life has been good to the Truscotts. Steven’s tastes and living style have always been simple. More often than not, especially in warm weather, Steve bicycles the few short blocks to work. Ryan is a successful manager for a cosmetics dealer. Lesley works part-time at a restaurant and is raising her three children. Devon, who inherited his father’s passion for and ease with anything mechanical, works at an automotive shop and puts all his extra cash into remodelling his truck.
Steve’s two brothers, Ken and Bill, are firemen in small southern Ontario towns, with families of their own. Barb runs a small business outside of Ottawa. Doris Truscott lives not far from the home in Richmond where she waged her relentless battle to free her son. “Well, I survived this long,” she says when asked if she thinks Steve will finally win this time with his section 690 appeal. “I hope I survive to see the end of it.”
Malcolm “Mac” Stienburg, the United Church minister who was Steve’s prison chaplain, his parole officer and now is his friend, sees at last in Steven a man at peace with himself. “The fact that he doesn’t live under that secrecy, I think he has found that liberating,” Stienburg says.
“He’s the best person that he knows how to be,” the pastor says. “He’s not a church person, but I think he’s basically a very moral person, a very good person. I don’t think he’s one bit more callous or more hardened now than he was when he went into prison.”
But for Steven and his children, there remained one last step to take to complete their journey. “In the whole time I’ve been married to Steve, he would never say the name ‘Truscott,’” Marlene says.
“It’s hard to get over the protection thing,” Steve says, suggesting it was hard to shake the assumed name to which he had grown accustomed.
His wife disagrees. “It wasn’t out of habit—he just wouldn’t say the name.”
That, too, changed after the fifth estate broadcast. Steve began introducing himself to more people as Steven Truscott, abandoning the surname he was obliged to take as a condition of parole.
“To live under an assumed name is not an easy thing,” he says. “I’m proud of my name; I have nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. It really is a big relief.”
“It was something that we’ve always dreamt of since we’ve been married,” Marlene adds. “Sometime or another everything would come out and we could be back to who we’re supposed to be. It’s a long time coming but I think it’s finally here.”
Lesley took her husband’s name when she married. Ryan, at twenty-seven, legally changed his surname to “Truscott,” and his younger brother, Devon, plans to do the same.
“I think now that it’s really important because we’re proud of who we are, we’re proud of my dad and we’re proud of my mom for the work that she’s done in helping him,” Ryan says. “There’s nothing to hide from. It’s sort of exciting. It’s something that you thought about all through life—when was this going to happen? Or would the day ever come where it would be accepted enough that we could say, ‘This is who we are’? And it feels great. We’re still the same people, but it’s just nice to have that name on paper.”
For Steven, it is one final proof that, in the end, he has won. “The children grew up with me, so they know what I’m like every day,” he says. “Year after year they know I’m innocent. But I think it’s a relief to them to say, ‘Hey, I’m his son. I stand behind him.’ And this gives me a lift that I don’t think anything else ever would.”
At fourteen years of age, a young boy was arrested. He lost his freedom, his youth and—by order of the parole board when he finally was released from prison—his name. Now, as a father and a grandfather, Steven Truscott has reclaimed his dignity—and his name.
44
RETURN TO CLINTON
The chrome on the tail fins of the Chevrolet Bel Air, the Ford Fairlane and the yellow T-Bird convertible glisten in the afternoon summer sun. The chords of Elvis Presley’s hits echo from loudspeakers. The fairgrounds in Clinton are full of children eating hot dogs and drinking Coke—and Steven Truscott is having as much fun as everyone else.
Only Steven isn’t a fourteen-year-old high-school student. It is 2000 and Steven is fifty-five, walking through the fairgrounds with his three children and three grandchildren. Going against conventional wisdom, Steven was proving that you can go home again.
The town of Clinton had organized a 150th reunion, and the classic car show was one of the weekend’s highlights. Steven had been to Clinton a few times in recent years to visit the Lawsons and once to film with the fifth estate, but those trips had been made discreetly, and Steve was always nervous. “Steve wouldn’t get out of the car if there was a stranger’s car in our driveway,” Bob Lawson says.
This time, in the wake of the publicity after the TV show, the entire family decided to go to Clinton together. At reunions there, Steve met former teachers and classmates such as Cathy O’Dell and Michael Burns.
At the car show, a photographer from the local newspaper caught sight of Clinton’s best known former resident and asked Steve to pose for a picture—strikingly, in front of a classic car from the 1950s.
Two women came up to him and introduced themselves as children who grew up in the area around the time of the trial. “We all thought you were innocent,” one said. “But no one would believe us because we were just kids,” the other added.
When Steve told them about his lawyers’ plans to file for a section 690 review, the women encouraged him. “Go to court, go for it—don’t ever give up,” they said, ending the encounter with hugs and tears.
“It was really uplifting for me to meet people from forty years ago and to know that they felt that way about me,” Steve says about his decision to come back to Clinton so publicly. “It was something that I needed to do.”
“It was good for Steve to see the whole town was not against him,” Marlene adds.
Steve’s mother, Doris, was on hand as well, watching her grown boy play with her great-grandchildren. “We had a lot of good times here in Clinton,” Doris says. “It’s important that Steve remember those as well.”
The Clinton reunion took place on a holiday long weekend in Ontario, and the tourists were out in numbers. In nearby Goderich, the first sign that greets visitors on Highway 8, which leads into the town, announces tours of the “Historic Gaol.” Inside the grey walls, you can get a picture of yourself on a Wanted poster and see the leg irons once used on prisoners. You can also tour the cells, a flyer says, that once housed “famous” prisoners like Steven Truscott.
Four decades after being a headline about hanging, Steven had become a tourist attraction.
The prim and proper military neighbourhood where Steve and his friends grew up has given way to the trappings of modern suburbia. Private developers took over the land from the former air force base. TV antennas and satellite dishes dot the roofs, and minivans cram the driveways.
The old corner store where the air force children once swarmed for ten-cent Oh Henry! bars and blackballs now rents videos and sports a stern warning sign on the door: “Due to a large increase in theft, only three students at a time, no backpacks, no loitering. We will prosecute on a first offence. Surveillance system is in use.”
Down the county road from the farm, the bridge where Steve and his friends hung out still crosses the Bayfield River. But the river is too dirty to be a swimming hole any more. There are no more bikes and baseball gloves and fishing rods scattered about, no more sounds of children splashing and laughing.
There are only faint echoes of that hot June evening in 1959 when a young girl died—and with her, the innocence of many other children and the illusions of an entire country.
Much has changed since that summer in 1959. Some things cling, however tenaciously, to the past. From his barn, Bob Lawson slowly eases out his tractor, rattling
with age, its colours long faded.
“It’s still running,” Steve says, the mechanic in him impressed.
“That’s the tractor you used to drive,” the farmer points out proudly.
“Well, some things are newer,” Steve says, glancing at the refurbished barn and across the street at the expanded school grounds, “but some are older, just like we are.”
“I think maybe we’ve aged a little,” says the sixty-two-year-old farmer.
Steve pauses for a moment. Perhaps he is thinking of the last time he stood on the tractor, a fourteen-year-old working in the fields with Farmer Lawson on a Friday evening, his last hour of freedom before the police came to pick him up.
“Yeah,” he finally says, “we all aged a little bit.”
Just over a year after their reunion alongside the tractor, Bob Lawson sat quietly in the back of a packed room in Toronto. He was there to watch Steven Truscott on one of the most important days of his life. At a press conference carried live across the country on CBC Newsworld, Steven Truscott stared at the phalanx of a dozen television cameras and jostling reporters and calmly called on Ottawa to formally reopen his case. “I want my name cleared,” he said.
It was the climax of a tumultuous fall in 2001 that proved to be a pivotal period in the Truscott saga.
Just a few weeks before the press conference, in early November, retired OPP commissioner Harold Graham died at the age of 84, taking to his grave many unanswered questions about his most famous case. “It haunted him all throughout his term and through his retirement,” a friend of Graham’s told a Globe and Mail reporter. “But to his death, I’m sure he thought [Truscott] was guilty.”
Yet we will never know why Graham stayed silent while the Crown suppressed crucial testimony from nine-year-old Karen Daum that she saw Steve and Lynne cycling to the highway, especially when he himself witnessed and signed Daum’s statement. We will never know why, after Dr. Penistan’s autopsy on Harper’s body, Graham issued a handwritten police bulletin estimating the time of death at 9 p.m. but insisted at trial that the evidence pointed to a time of death two hours earlier. And we will never know why, on the eve of the Supreme Court review in 1966, he and the Crown kept secret Dr. Penistan’s “agonizing reappraisal” on the time of death.