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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Appearances
The same day that Judy Cosma's body was discovered, Corporal Ed Drozda received a call from Clifford Olson. He was shopping himself around, offering to become a paid informant. At the time, the RCMP was still haggling over the details of putting Olson under surveillance. Two days later, 15-year-old Terry Lynn Carson disappeared. Her mother reported her missing.
The next day, the RCMP finally put a tail on Olson. The officers tasked with watching him noted he was driving erratically, off habit, and at a frantic speed. He was almost impossible to track. By 1.30 p.m., on the very day they started, the RCMP pulled their surveillance operation. They assessed that Olson was already on to them. They were wrong.
The same night, at around 10 p.m., Olson went to meet Dennis Tarr at the Caribou Hotel Lounge in Surrey with a younger man in tow. Olson thought Detective Tarr was looking to him for tips. $200,000 worth of TVs had recently been stolen in the area. He smelt a paycheck.
But Tarr, with RCMP Corporals Fred Mela and Ed Rosda watching from another table, was more interested in asking about the missing children.
As Olson leaves the restaurant, Tarr is more convinced than ever that Olson is responsible for the string of missing young people. Now with Olsen firmly back in their sights, RCMP surveillance follows him as he drives into the night. Outside Surrey, they observe Olsen with his male friend pick up another young man and then two teenage girls looking to hitchhike.
The surveillance team stops the car and sees the two girls holding beers they say Olsen gave them. Olsen is arrested for contributing to juvenile delinquency. We don't know how, but Olson is released by 3.30 a.m. that morning. And by lunchtime that day, he meets with Tarr again at a White Spot, which is a chain of restaurants in B.C.
And he's properly introduced to the RCMP's Fred Mele and Ed Drosta. This is Olson recording his perspective of the meeting in 1991.
By the peak of summer, there was no escaping the news that children in the lower mainland of British Columbia were in great danger. but the police were still not making it public that they only suspected one person to be responsible.
Former TV reporter John Daly says patience was starting to fray, as was the previously civil relationship between the media and the police.
Corporal Mele would later tell my grandfather, Pete, that at first, they had no intention of paying up.
Those lawyers included Bob Shantz. Once the Crown prosecutor when Olson was a prison snitch, Shantz was now acting as Olson's defense lawyer. He'd testify in a court case that he advised Olson the police were making promises they wouldn't keep.
Former RCMP investigator Glenn Woods will admit he wasn't in the room where the big decisions were made. But he knows his colleagues didn't have a strong hand.
The Mounties finally got their man. But at what cost? My grandfather Pete would often remark to me that the money the RCMP paid Olson was the best $100,000 they'd ever spent. And he probably knew some things most wouldn't, because Pete had no problem getting the RCMP to talk. We were less fortunate. Glenn Woods was the only one who would talk to us.
Ed Drozda hung up on me as soon as I mentioned what I was researching. When Arlene got another ex-RCMP investigator on the line, he refused to be interviewed for fear of backlash from former colleagues.
When we get down to the point where you've got a missing nine-year-old kid who's six blocks from his home and disappears when he's at the corner store getting an ice cream or a candy bar, you've got a big problem.
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