If Steven Truscott didn't kill Lynne Harper, who did?

On a warm summer evening half a century ago, June 9, 1959, 12-year-old Lynne Harper (left) of Clinton, Ontario, quarrelled at home with her parents, Leslie and Shirley, before setting off after dinner toward a nearby school playground. There she met a slightly older schoolmate, who had his bicycle. She asked for a ride to a nearby highway. Steven Truscott (right) agreed. Lynn clambered onto the handlebars of the 14-year-old boy's bike and they pedalled off. It was a brief ride that would set in motion a 48-year-long chain of events that shattered two families; that horrified a community; that subverted justice and forced a country to question its morality and the virtuousness of its criminal justice system.

Lynne's partially nude body was found in a small stand of bush in a nearby farmer's field two days after the fateful bicycle ride. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. The community, and it seemed the entire province, was overcome with bloodlust borne of vengeance. The Attorney General offered a reward of $10,000 for the killer, "dead or alive." It was an amount and an expression never seen before in Ontario. Almost immediately, investigators fixated on 14-year-old Steven Truscott as the likely killer, though there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder and no witnesses. He had the misfortune of having been the last person to see Lynne alive.

Two days after her body was found, Steven was charged with murder and a judge ruled he could be tried as an adult. His fate already was sealed.

The trial lasted 15 days. It answered none of the troublesome questions about the murder – the scene, the timing, the evidence – that seemed to exculpate Steven. With precision that would later be proved faulty, doctors fixed Lynne's time of death at a period when Steven had admitted to giving her the bike ride. He willingly told police what he had done that night and when accused, maintained his innocence. Known as a gentle and kind boy and an excellent school athlete, no one could imagine him a perverted sex killer. He was found guilty, with a plea for mercy from the jury. Justice R.I. Ferguson passed sentence on Sept. 30, 1959:

Steven Murray Truscott, I have no alternative but to pass the following sentence upon you. The jury have found you guilty after a fair trial. The sentence of this court upon you is that be taken here to the place from whence you came and there be kept in close confinement until Tuesday, the 8th day of December 1959, and upon that day and date you be taken to the place of execution, and that you there be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

The intention of the Canadian government to hang a 14-year-old boy horrified many. The Guardian newspaper in England called the sentence "a shocking thing." If the execution were carried out on the appointed date, Truscott would have been the youngest person ever put to death in Canada. Secret cabinet minutes (embedded below), since declassified, reveal that the prime minister of the day, John Diefenbaker, was immediately horrified that a child had been sentenced to death and he had no intention of allowing the execution to take place.

Four months after Truscott's conviction, the federal cabinet commuted his sentence to life in prison. In 1966, a meticulously researched book was published, The Trial of Steven Truscott, by Isabel LeBourdais, that asserted a miscarriage of justice had taken place. The book catalogued inconsistencies in the Crown's case, investigative oversights and a trial process that appeared to have abandoned any presumption of innocence. The book sparked a rare reference from the federal government to the Supreme Court of Canada. The high court upheld Truscott's conviction, with dissent from one judge, who concluded there were "grave errors" at the trial.

Truscott was released from Collins Bay penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, on October 21, 1969, and he began a secret, seven-month life in Kingston under an assumed name. He lived with Mac Stienburg, the prison chaplain who had befriend him at Collins Bay and who believed in his innocence.

Forty-eight years after the murder, on August 28, 2007, Truscott was acquitted of the murder in a decision by the Court of Appeal for Ontario. The court ruled that Truscott's conviction was a miscarriage of justice. It stopped short of declaring him innocent. The case shook the foundations of justice in Canada, shattering public confidence in a system thought to be beyond reproach.

• No 14-year-old child had been convicted of murder as an adult in Canada since 1875, until Truscott's conviction.
• Had he been executed on schedule, he would have been the youngest person put to death in Canada.
  
• The outcome sparked a national outcry that refocused the country's attention on the controversial use of capital punishment. It was eventually abolished in 1976.
  
• The relentless efforts of a few people to prove Truscott's innocence exposed the frailty of a criminal justice system whose actors were willing to go to any lengths to secure the conviction of a suspect that they were convinced was guilty, despite the absence of evidence.

The government apologized and gave Truscott $6.5 million in compensation. The murder of Lynne Harper will likely never be solved.

A vast catalogue of resources exists online about the Truscott case. Here a few:
» The most complete, single source may be the Fifth Estate's excellent archive, based on its documentaries about the case.
» Click here for a 1959 television report about the murder and conviction
» Julian Sher's book about the case, Until You Are Dead, is complemented by this rich archive
» This CBC page features a compendium of mostly legal documents
» This CBC page has an archive of video from Truscott's 2007 appeal

The secret cabinet deliberations
Below are minutes from four separate meetings, October 1, 1959, October 6, 1959, October 21, 1959, and January 21, 1960, when the cabinet formally made the decision to commute Truscott's death sentence to life in prison.

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