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THE BERTON POEM:
After Steven Truscott was sentenced to murder, Pierre
Berton wrote a poem about the decision. He didn't
comment on the conviction, only the harsh sentence.
Partly because of the Truscott case, Canada abolished
the death penalty months later. Steven Truscott
sentence was communted to life in prison. Read the
poem.
THE GRAHAM MEMO:
Harold Graham, the OPP inspector who would always
be known as "the man who cracked the Truscott
case" writes a memo in which he reveals how
concerned he and other officials were about any
public perception of a "miscarriage of justice"
in the case. More
THE SUPREME COURT:
In 1966, the Supreme Court decided
to hear the case of Steven Truscott - not to determine
Truscott's innocence or guilt but simply whether
or not he deserved a new trial. Much of the Supreme
Court's hearing was a war of medical experts over
the validity of the medical evidence at the first
trial - especially stomach contents and time of
death. The judges also found Truscott's testimony
confused and vague.
The country's top judges rule 8 -
1 against Truscott getting a new trial. Read
more from the lone judge, Emmett Hall, who dissented
the decision.
 THE
KALICHUK FILE: In the mid-1960s, a senior
air force officer at the Clinton air force base
made a discovery that, decades later, raises grave
questions about the integrity of the investigation
of Lynn Harper's murder. He found a misplaced
psychiatric file from 1959 and, reading it ... he
felt a chill. The subject of the file was a sexual
predator ... who also sounded like a killer. After
40 years, the fifth estate uncovered that file.
More
Steven Truscott was released from prison ten years
after he was convicted. He lived under an assumed
name, married and had three children.
He lived in hiding until he took his story public
on the fifth estate in March 2000.
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