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

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POLICE INVESTIGATION

It took the police only 24 hours after Lynn Harper's body was found to arrest Steven Truscott. No other suspects were seriously investigated. The police records indicate that there was no attempt to check police records or military records for known sex offenders.

You'd think the first place the police would have looked for suspects in the Lynn Harper case would be among young adult males in the area - and there was no shortage of those.

There were several thousand servicemen living on the airbase. Many men were young and single - strangers to each other, living there temporarily. And in that complex situation there may well have been leads to suspects far more likely than a 14-year-old school boy.

They police questioned one 18-year-old airman who claimed to have seen the girl the night she disappeared around 6:30 pm in the town of Clinton - an impossibility since she never left the base. Yet he oddly was able to describe the blue shorts she was wearing.

The police quickly ruled he was "cleared of suspicion" simply on the word of his girlfriend who said she was with him most of the evening. The police notes do not indicate if any further investigation was done.

Here are some excerpts from the police notes which show the claim that Harper was in Clinton at 6:30-6:40 pm and that she was wearing blue shorts.

George Edens, the man who found Harper's body spotted a clear set of tire tracks, right where the bush trail met the pavement of the country road. Here is what Edens told the fifth estate:

EDENS: Going up you could see skid marks. Just up to the pavement, it was only maybe three or four feet long.

MACINTYRE: As if somebody had spun their tires...

EDENS: Yeah. Yeah. Well they definitely spun their tires there, yeah.
What makes this all the more intriguing is that on the night of Lynn's murder, a car was spotted right near the bush where her body was found.

Bob Lawson was suspicious because he had never seen a car parked there near his property before. He reported it to the authorities a few days later, but by then Truscott had already been arrested. As he told the fifth estate:

LAWSON: They didn't take it very serious. He said I think they've, I think they've already picked somebody up.

MACINTYRE: And they weren't interested in anybody else at this point.

LAWSON: They didn't want to hear anything else.

Years after the trial, another possible suspect emerged, Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk. There is no evidence that police investigated him despite his history of sexual offenses. Read more.