Steven Truscott Case Timeline
Posted January 30, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It is either the longest miscarriage of justice in Canadian history or an injustice to the memory of a murdered 12-year-old girl.
As the hearings into the case of Steven Truscott begin again, a court will revisit a crime that dates back to 1959 in hopes of finally figuring out if the right man paid the price for a vicious killing.
Here’s a timeline of the events:
1959
June 9: When 12-year-old Lynne Harper goes for a walk and then disappears from the air force base near Clinton, Ontario, her parents and officials become concerned. An all-out search is launched for the pre-teen, with fears she may have been lost in the bush filled countryside. But no one knows what happened to her.
June 11: After two days of searching, the worst fears of everyone involved are realized. Harper’s body is discovered on a nearby farm. Evidence shows she’s been raped and strangled. Fourteen year-old Steven Murray Truscott, a classmate, was the last person seen with the victim. He had apparently offered her a bike ride before she disappeared.
June 12: Truscott is questioned by authorities. He admits he was with the girl, but claims they split up and he saw her getting into a car as he was riding away. Despite his story, as community outrage grows with demands for action, the young boy is placed under arrest and is officially charged with her murder the next day. He maintains his innocence from the start.
December 8: After months of preparation and a trial, a jury finds Truscott guilty of the murder. Despite his age, they sentence him to death by hanging. The court case lasts just 15 days.
1960
January 22: Amid much controversy about the serious sentence, the Conservative government under then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker commutes the penalty to life in prison. Truscott has been on death row for four months.
1966
The story falls out of the headlines and becomes yesterday’s news until a journalist named Isabel LeBourdais publishes a book called “The Trial of Steven Truscott”, the first document to raise serious questions about the case and its outcome. It prompts the Supreme Court to take a second look at the issue. But after deliberating and reviewing the case, the justices vote 8-1 against giving the young man a new trial.
1969
After ten years behind bars, and despite his life sentence, Truscott is released from jail. He disappears, taking on a new identity and settling into obscurity in Guelph. But despite his second chance at life, the convicted killer, now in his mid-20s, remains haunted by bearing the scar of a guilty conviction for a murder he insists he didn’t commit.
He marries and has three children, but his secret stays safe for the next 20 years.
1997
September: Truscott agrees to the same type of DNA testing that exonerated Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard of murder. But crucial evidence that may have helped clear him had been destroyed.
Prominent attorney James Lockyer agrees to take on his case. He’s the same advocate who helped overturn the wrongful conviction of Morin for the death of Christine Jessop in Queensville, Ont. in 1984.
2000
March: Truscott comes out of hiding and reveals himself for the first time in almost 40 years, with an interview on the CBC. He vows to do everything in his power to clear his name.
2001
November 28: Lawyers for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted file an appeal to have Truscott’s case reopened, as the public outcry against the original decision grows.
2002
January 24: Retired Quebec Justice Fred Kaufman is appointed by the federal government to review the case.
2004
After two years, Kaufman’s report goes to the Justice Minister. But its conclusions aren’t made public.
October 28: Justice Minister Irwin Cotler sends the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal to consider if new evidence would have changed the outcome of the trial back in 1959.
2005
November 29: The public finally gets to see the Kaufman Report. It suggests there was a miscarriage of justice but there’s simply not enough evidence to get Truscott of the hook.
2006:
April 6: After more than four decades and a lifetime of scientific advances, the body of Lynne Harper is exhumed. But Truscott is doomed to more disappointment – after so much time, no useable DNA is found on her remains. She is reburied four days later.
June 19: Truscott finally gets his day in court, as the Ontario Court of Appeal starts hearings in his case. They last until July, and as the court hears witness after witness talk of irregularities and problems with the evidence, lawyers for both sides are ordered to make oral arguments in January 2007.
2007
January 10: Attorney General Michael Bryant announces cameras will show cases from the Ontario Court of Appeals. The first one to be televised: the Steven Truscott case.
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