the fifth estate uncovers evidence that a possible suspect was never investigated by the OPP. more

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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.

The file subsequently disappeared for nearly 40 years. An investigation by the fifth estate, assisted by the National Archives in Ottawa, retrieved that file -- part of a 900-page dossier on Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk:

Sgt. Kalichuk was a troubled man, a heavy drinker with a history of sexual offenses. He lived in a farmhouse less than a 20 minute drive from the Clinton base. He worked as a supply technician there until 1957. He transferred to another base, in Aylmer, about a one hour drive away, but made frequent trips back to Clinton ... where Lynn Harper's father was the senior supply officer.

In 1950 he had two convictions for indecent exposure in Trenton, where he was stationed. See the court documents.

Just about three weeks before Lynn Harper's murder, he stopped three young farm girls on a country road outside St. Thomas, Ontario. He tried to lure one of them, a 10-year old, into his car - offering a gift of new underwear. He left when he saw the girl's father approaching ... but was later arrested by the OPP and charged.

A week later, a judge dismissed the charge for lack of evidence. Before he let him go, the judge gave Kalichuk a stern lecture ... making it clear that he knew what he'd been up to. It seems unlikely that the police wouldn't have felt the same - and kept an open file on him - even though he'd walked away scot free this time. This was only 12 days before Lynn Harper was murdered. See a military document which summarizes the case.

On the same day Harper disappeared, June 9, 1959, air force medical officers were discussing Kalichuk's weakness for alcohol and little girls. They met with a probation officer who was reporting another incident of indecent exposure involving Kalichuk - this time in Seaforth - a few miles from the Clinton base. See the report.

At the Aylmer base, where he worked most of the time, a medical doctor opened a file on Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk. On July 2 - three weeks after Lynn Harper was murdered - Kalichuk is said to be suffering from "overwhelming anxiety, tension, depression and guilt." See the report.

Later, the senior medical officer was blunt in his diagnosis: his problem was sexual deviation and anxiety reaction. See the report.

Kalichuk was released from hospital but apparently far from cured. A heavily censored confidential military memo about "Sgt Kalichuk's aberrations" warned cryptically that when he was later posted at a base near Clinton in the early 1960s, ongoing incidents were serious enough to get into the local paper. Read an excerpt from the military report.

In fact, police were warning about the activities of an unidentified molester who was preying on young girls from a car ... through all of which, Sgt. Kalichuk managed to avoid particular attention as a suspect - in those incidents - and, most significantly of all, in the murder of 12-year old Lynn Harper.

Here are two stories that appeared in the local newspaper, the Exeter Times Advocate.

Until 1959 the Kalichuk vehicle was a light yellow Ford, which dated from a year between 1952-1955. Kalichuk still owned this car in the early months of 1959.

In early 1959 Sgt. Kalichuk bought a brand new 1959 canary yellow Pontiac Stratochief. He would only have had it a few months when he sold it weeks after the Harper murder. The mechanic who worked on the car confirmed it was brand-new when Kalichuck purchased it.

He then purchased another brand new 1959 car, this time a tan Oldsmobile, and this car was kept for about a decade. The picture which follows is of Sgt. Kalichuk's own car taken in 1961:

What Truscott said he saw at the corner of the County Road was a grey 1959 Chevrolet Belair which he said he was able to recognize from the fins and the cats' eye shape to the tail lights. There is no way of knowing if the car seen by Truscott had anything to do with her death or if it was the last car she got into. The picture to the right is from the manufacturer's advertisement.

Sgt. Kalichuk drank himself to death in 1975. Today, the OPP refuses to say if they have ever investigated Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk.