Nathaniel Frum
speaker
55 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Nathaniel Frum’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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There's no shortage of serial killer content out there. Documentaries on streaming services, TV shows, movies, fiction thrillers that sit on bestseller lists for weeks. But in Clifford Olson's case, there was no long, winding, twist-filled road to catching him. Because for a long time, police didn't know there was a him to catch. Until Olson told them. Until he was able to get something in return.
Olson proposed a deal. $10,000 for each body. For each child he led the RCMP to.
This season on Calls from a Killer, from CBC's Uncovered.
Calls from a Killer was written and produced by me, Nathaniel Frum, Arlene Beinen, and senior producers Ashley Mack and Andrew Friesen. Additional writing by Alina Ghosh. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.
Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Calls from a Killer from CBC's Uncover. Or you can binge the whole series by subscribing to our True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts. Just click on the link in the show description.
I grew up in the United States, even though both my parents are Canadian. So there are certain cultural icons north of the border that seem like a quirky novelty, as well as a source of pride to me as a kid. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are a good example. Like Nelson Eddy during the golden age of Hollywood, singing Song of the Mounties in Rosemarie.
a proud, noble police officer in his Red Surge uniform and Stetson hat mounted on his horse. The Mounties were the cartoon Dudley Do-Right, or square-jawed, upright constable Benton Fraser in the TV show Due South.
They were an incorruptible force for good, maybe a little too earnest, but effective. The Mountie always gets his man. If I had a rose-colored view of the RCMP, that was also due in large part to my grandfather, Peter Worthington. Pete viewed the RCMP fondly, and the cops liked Pete. Throughout his journalism career, they had a good working relationship.
He cultivated reliable sources in the Mounties and became their go-to reporter when they wanted to get a story out. Pete knew they had their faults, but he wasn't about to burn a bridge at the expense of a scoop. Until recently, I never really gave much thought to the RCMP and what their function is in Canada. They're like the Canadian FBI, but also not.
They serve as state police, sorry, I mean provincial police, but not in all provinces. Ontario and Quebec have their own. Also, in many places in the country, there are no local police forces. So, contrary to what you'd think of a federal authority that investigates serious crimes, it's up to the nearby RCMP detachment to do traffic stops and respond to 911 calls.
It's a confusing patchwork of jurisdictions across one of the largest countries in the world, if we're talking landmass. But when Clifford Olson was on the loose committing murder after murder, there could be no doubt catching him was the RCMP's responsibility. Before working on this story with Arlene, I thought they'd done a pretty good job. They'd caught a serial killer in a matter of months.
Surely that's a sign of solid police work. But as I learned how many times Olson slipped through the RCMP's fingers, how many victims were ignored, how many interviews they didn't do, how many times Olson was practically begging to be caught, my opinion changed. The authorities didn't explain themselves. Not back then, and not now. This is Calls from a Killer from CBC's Uncover.
I'm Nathaniel Frum.
So even before 1981, Olson was well known to the RCMP. If not as a serial killer, certainly as a career criminal. And Glenn's right. In his entire adult life, Olson only spent around 1,700 days on the outside, not incarcerated. That's just a little over four and a half years. He was first imprisoned when he was 17, in the late 50s, for a break and enter.
For the next 22 years, he'd be in and out of custody, tallying up more than 90 convictions. Put away for robberies, burglaries, and forgeries mostly, Olson, by all accounts a charming man, would sometimes be granted early release for good behavior. On other occasions, he had his sentence extended after escape attempts. But he kind of thrived inside.
It was in prison that Olson honed a talent for gaining and dealing in information, a skill that could earn him favor with prison guards, parole boards, and the police. His greatest triumph on that front involved a man named Gary Marcoux.
In 1976, Olson befriended Marcoux while they were both in prison in the B.C. penitentiary. Marcoux was facing charges of rape and murder.
The case was at a standstill because the Crown prosecutor, a man named Bob Shantz, didn't feel there was enough evidence to convict. But Olson provided a lucky break. Olson came up with the idea to trick Marcoux into writing down a detailed confession to the murder, under the pretense that he'd help him come up with an alibi.
Olson promptly sent the confession to British Columbia's Attorney General and continued to talk to Marcoux on the inside, gradually gathering more evidence. Marcoux eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years without parole, a sensational coup for Prosecutor Shantz and the foundation of Olson's relationship with the RCMP, and his reputation as an effective snitch.
On July 25th, 1981, near a town named Agassiz, four campers came across human remains. They were soon confirmed to belong to Judy Cosma, a 14-year-old girl who had disappeared about two weeks earlier. She had been chalked up as another runaway.
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