Post by clusium on Sept 24, 2019 0:21:44 GMT
Lynn Harper was a 12 year old girl who had been violently raped & murdered back in June 1959, in Clinton Ontario. She grew up on an army base, in Clinton Ontario. One evening, just a few weeks prior to summer vacation, Lynn went out to the local baseball diamond, & a boy in her class named Steven Truscott was also there, & he arrived their on his bike. Lynn had a crush on Truscott, & asked him for a ride on his bike up to the highway so that she could hitch a ride from there, down to a local stable to look at some horses. Truscott obliged her.
As requested, he dropped her off along the intersection of the highway, where she then went on to hitch for her ride. Truscott then turned around to return home. After a good distance back, Truscott looked back at Lynn, & saw that she managed to hitch a ride.
There were several kids who saw Truscott riding up to the high school with Lynn riding on the bars of his bike up to the intersection, & with Truscott returning home alone.
Lynn Harper was not seen alive again, after that. Her parents phoned the police, & the police interviewed the kids who saw Lynn riding with Truscott up to the highway. A few days later, Lynn's nude raped body was found in the woods on a farm, right by the very baseball diamond, where Truscott had picked Lynn up. Truscott (who already was interviewed by police) was called in again, & interrogated. Truscott told them everything he saw with Lynn getting into the car; the model, colour, & even a sticker on bumper of the car. The police found no such car.
They further did a strip search of the boy, & found he had lesions on his genitals. An autopsy performed on the girl's stomach showed that what she had for dinner a couple of hours before, was not fully digested.
Police were convinced that they had their man, and that man was a 14-year-old boy. No other people were interviewed. The fact that Truscott was seen driving the girl up to the highway, & seen return alone went ignored, by the authorities.
In September 1959, just 3 months after the rape & murder of Lynn Harper, Steven Truscott stood trial for first degree murder. Among the witnesses for the prosecution was Jocelyn Gaudette, a classmate of both Truscott & Lynn testified that she was supposed to go on a date with Steven in the very woods that Lynn's body was found, to find newborn calves, on the night in question, but, later had to cancel, because of dinner being served, when Truscott arrived at her house. However, she also testified that after dinner, she went to the woods for their intended date, & did not find Steven or anyone else there.
The kids that testified in Truscott's defence were called liars, right on the witness stand, by the Crown Attorney, who was prosecuting the case. Then on the final day of statements by both the Defence & the Prosecution, the Crown Attorney brought up Jocelyn's supposed date with Steven in that bush, & said that the fact she could not make it "was God's Blessing on her," clearly implying that it would have been Jocelyn's murder, whom he would have been prosecuting, had Truscott been with her that evening.
After a few days of jury deliberation, 14-year-ol Steven Truscott was found guilty of First Degree Murder. At the time of this case, Canada still had the death penalty, & upon conviction the judge immediately sentenced the boy to be hanged!
Truscott was to be hanged for murder in December 1959.
Until then he was held in the local jailhouse, awaiting his execution. In the meantime, those kids that testified to seeing Truscott take Lynn Harper up to the highway stood by their stories. Truscott actually had to be home before 8:00 PM on the night of the murder to babysit his younger siblings. Had he been guilty of the crime, he would have had very little time to commit the barbaric act.
Shortly before the execution date, Truscott's sentence got commuted to life imprisonment, rather than death. A few years after his conviction a journalist interviewed him, & heard his side of the story, & came to the conclusion that he was innocent of the crime. She wrote a book entitled The Trial of Steven Truscott, which led to their being an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, in 1966. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Truscott maintained his innocence. In 1969, 10 years after his murder conviction, Truscott was paroled, & went on to marry & raise a family. Then in 2000 he & his wife came to the forefront to fight for his innocence again. The autopsy upon Lynn Harper's stomach remains was now deemed faulty, but, the final evidence that proved his innocence were photos of the entomology evidence (as shown by the photos that were taken of the body back in 1959), showed that Lynn Harper died several hours AFTER Steven Truscott had returned home.
In 2007, Steven Truscott's 1959 murder trial was declared a miscarriage of justice, & Steven Truscott was finally acquitted. However, this also means that who ever killed Lynn Harper got away with murder (thanks of course, to the police in charge of investigating her murder back in 1959).
Will Lynn Harper's murder ever be solved? Who killed Cheryl Lynn Harper, back in 1959, & was only too happy to let another child- Steven Truscott-take the punishment for his own crime?!?!?!
Cheryl Lynn Harper