Kim Werbecki
Appearances
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Darren's trip to the drugstore was taking an hour. Then it was two hours. Then more. And Sharon started to worry.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Sharon sends Darren's cousin Billy to go check out the local kids' hangouts, like a pool hall. Nothing. Other families start walking the neighborhood to see if they could spot him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
It was 8 p.m. when the local Coquitlam RCMP arrived at Sharon's door.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Eleven days after Darren disappeared, a boy's body was found. Sharon is notified by police, but is advised that it's unlikely that the body is Darren's. A few days later, everything changed.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Not only had the police made this most insensitive of errors, they'd left Sharon to find out the worst details of Darren's murder while running the most everyday errand. She'd been out chaperoning her younger son as he made his paper round.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
When the police still believed that Darren was yet another runaway, Clifford Olson had his car stuck in a muddy ditch in the Fraser Valley about an hour and a half's drive from Darren's home. He'd say he paid a local to help him get his car out and then, once the coast was clear, threw a bloody hammer and Darren's clothes into the Fraser River.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Later that night, Olson was apprehended for driving drunk. He was released the next day. Not long after Sharon learned her son was dead, Clifford Olson married Joan Hale, the mother of his son, at the People's Full Gospel Church in Surrey. Four days after the wedding, Olson picked up 16-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner, who was hitchhiking in the area.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
That afternoon, her worried boyfriend tried to report her missing to the police. They said they had to wait 48 hours first.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Spring was turning into summer, and the frequency of Olsen's killings was about to speed up. He'd murdered at least four children between November and May. But as the weather warmed, young people ventured outside. To play, to hitchhike, to run errands for their parents. Their neighborhoods, Olsen's hunting grounds. He would later refer to himself as the Beast of British Columbia.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
A week after Sander Wolfsteiner disappeared, RCMP Corporal Daryl Kettles was dispatched to investigate an overturned car in Hemlock Valley. The driver was reported to be a suspicious man with a seemingly drugged teenage girl. The driver, Clifford Olson, was apprehended. The girl, not Sandra Wolfsteiner, was taken into holding to sober up.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
She described being offered a job by Olsen, who then kept pushing beers on her. Corporal Kettles would later claim he felt strongly this man was the killer of Darren. The two cases had so many similarities, including the age of the victims and where they were taken. But according to Kettles, there was insufficient material to question him about Darren's murder.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Clifford Olson was released that day on a promise to appear on charges of impaired driving and contributing to juvenile delinquency. The charges went nowhere, and another child went missing.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
One day late June 1981, Trudy Court's sister Ada was expected home from babysitting their brother's two children. She did that often. She was the responsible kind.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Their brother lived with his young family in an apartment complex in Coquitlam, and Ada had slept over.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Trudy says this wasn't unusual for Ada, and the bus stop was only a short walk from the apartment block.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
For how long? Oh, days. When did you call the police and what did they say?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
We've been researching Olson in these cases for years, and there are familiar beats. Olson's M.O. was expertly practiced. Pick up a hitchhiker or any kid looking for easy transit. Maybe offer them a job. Get them to trust you. If they look up to it, push a drink on them, which has already been spiked. But Trudy revealed a detail on our call that I'd never heard before. Not even from Olson himself.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
So Ada very well could have met him or known him. Was it likely or just a chance, do you think?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
It makes sense. If he lived in the same building, had a young baby himself, and was known to the local children, Ada wouldn't have had her guard up around him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Do you remember how your parents felt when they found other children were missing? I mean, were they— Well, my mother was just a wreck.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Unlike some of the other kids who previously disappeared, Ada Court simply didn't fit the profile of a runaway. It was becoming harder for local police or the RCMP to keep up the wait-and-see approach.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Reporter John Daly again.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Around 10.30 a.m. on July 2, 1981, nine-year-old Simon Partington finished his cornflakes and hopped on his bike on his way to a friend's house. He seemingly vanished in broad daylight. Simon's bike, with a Snoopy book in the basket, was found leaning against a corner store. That image, reported widely on TV and in the papers, stamped itself onto the public consciousness.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
I think it was the moment this became a national story. Simon's case was the first I'd heard of these disappearances living across the country in Toronto. And for those living in lower mainland BC, the reality that something monstrous was happening around them was sinking in.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
John tells us that the Partington family approached Top Brass at the BCTV network to get a plea by Simon's mother, Marguerite, on television.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Kim says she was held at gunpoint and assaulted for more than 10 hours. When her assailant decided to get back on the road with her as passenger, she managed to escape at a gas station after pleading for help from the attendant. Days after the ordeal, she went to the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to report what had happened. From hundreds of photographs, Kim pointed out her attacker.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Olson would give the authorities yet another lead. Four days after Simon Partington vanished, a 16-year-old girl flagged down an RCMP car. She told the police that a man had offered a job, but once she was in his car, he tried to drug and rape her. He was driving a green Ford Granada. Within minutes, Clifford Olson was once again in police custody.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
But again, Olson walked because investigators weren't convinced the teenage girl was credible. This time, however, something was different. The officer who questioned Olson, Corporal Les Forsythe of the Burnaby RCMP Detachment, was also looking into the disappearance of Ada Court, and he had a hunch that Olson was behind Ada and Darren's cases. So he began seriously looking into it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
At Forsythe's urging, the Burnaby Detachment of the RCMP held a meeting with 24 police investigators from surrounding detachments.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
The meeting attendees decided Olson was a key suspect in the cases of, at this point, five missing and murdered children. They agreed to put him under surveillance. The next day, Forsyth and a partner went to Olson's apartment to establish it as his residence. Much to their dismay, he was gone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Not only had he slipped surveillance, he and his wife Joan left for a trip to California for what Olson described as a vacation.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
At least four more young people would be killed before Olson's spree would come to an end.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
His name was Clifford Robert Olson. The police charged Olson with rape, buggery, and gross indecency, plus two counts of possession of a weapon.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
We know better now than to so freely call someone a child prostitute. There is no such thing as child prostitution. There is exploitation and sex trafficking. But even though Kim was just 16 when this happened to her, this was the 80s. And because she had been paid for sex prior to ever meeting Olson, she had doubts the justice system would take her seriously.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
The so-called inconsistencies in her statement came down to whether or not Olson left her money after assaulting her. She had initially left out details about it happening in a motel room, but Kim had never wavered on the claim she'd been raped.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
On April 8, 1981, Clifford Olson walked out of the courtroom on $5,000 bail. He faced no charges for his alleged abduction and rape of Kim Warbecki. The police hadn't known that before Kim first came to them, Olson had already killed one child. And in the four months following his release, Olson would go on to rape and murder at least 10 more young people.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Kim Warbecki's name has stuck in my mind in the decades since. She endured Olson's violence and somehow managed to escape with her life. But she was ignored. It pains me to hear her blaming herself in this interview.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Of course, with hindsight, it's easy to point out all the occasions when tragedy could have been averted. No matter what he did or what he was accused of, Olson seemed to be gifted in slipping through the cracks.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
But in Clifford Olson's case, there were just so many missed chances for the local police and RCMP to stop his murders and get him off the street for good.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
This is Calls from a Killer from CBC's Uncover. I'm Arlene Bynum. This is Episode 2, Something Monstrous.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
John Daly is a longtime reporter who covered this area and this case for the BCTV news station throughout the 80s.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
On November 17, 1980, 12-year-old Christine Weller biked next to her father as he walked to the local pub. When they reached the Surrey Inn, her father kissed her goodbye and told her to bike home.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
A month later, on Christmas Day, Christine Weller's body was found.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
The news reports were vague. They had no suspects.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Colleen Dagnon. She was last seen at a service station not far from where police were combing for clues around Christine Weller's murder. Colleen's family reported her missing straight away. But again, there was no immediate sign of foul play.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
The voice you are hearing is Kim Werbecki's. It's 1994, and she's being interviewed by Hannah Gardner on the CBC TV show, Contact. At this time, she's a young woman, but the night she's describing, she was just a terrified teenager who decided to hitchhike a ride from a stranger.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
John admits that he should have made connections sooner.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
In 1981, Sharon and her blended family had just moved west from the Canadian prairies, settling in Coquitlam, B.C. Darren was her eldest.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
Sharon says Darren was an easygoing kid for the most part. But when he reached 11 or 12, he started getting into a little more trouble.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
There was an incident when Darren and two other kids stole lighters from a local Zeller's.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
It was as Darren barreled into his teenage years that Sharon agreed with her ex-husband that maybe the best thing would be for Darren to go live with him in Saskatoon.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
But like so many children of divorce, Darren struggled to be away from the other side of his family. He told his mom that he wanted to move back in with her and his stepfather, Gary.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S33 E2: Something Monstrous | Calls From a Killer
For his birthday, they flew him home to B.C. The family returned from an overnight vacation in Seattle where they'd ironed out the details. Darren would see out the school year and return to Coquitlam and Sharon in the summer.