Steven Truscott

Steven Murray Truscott (born January 18, 1945 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian man who was sentenced to death in 1959 for the rape and murder of classmate Lynne Harper, which he did not conduct. He continued to maintain his innocence until 1975, when his conviction was overturned; he was formally acquitted of the crime. Five decades later was he finally exonerated fully of that crime . Steven Truscott had been a suspect in the rape and murder of Lynne Harper, having been the last witness to see her alive.

Truscott was scheduled to be hanged; however, the federal cabinet reprieved him and he was sentenced to life in prison. He is still alive as of January 2017.

Cheryl "Lynne" Harper was born to Leslie and Shirley Harper on August 31, 1946 in Moncton, New Brunswick. She had one older brother, Barry Harper, who lived in Ohio and a younger brother, Jeffrey. Her father was a school teacher before he joined the military in 1940. They relocated to the RCAF base at Clinton in July, 1957. Lynne spent time going to Sunday School, Bible class and Girl Guides.

On June 9, 1959, Lynne – then 12 years of age – disappeared near RCAF Station Clinton, an air force base that lay south of Clinton, Ontario (roughly 80 kilometers north of London). Two days later, on the afternoon of June 11, searchers discovered her body in a nearby farm woodlot. Harper had been raped and strangled with her own blouse.

Steven Truscott and Harper had been classmates in a combined grades 7/8 class at the Air Vice Marshal Hugh Campbell School located on the north side of the Air Force base. In the early evening of Tuesday, June 9, 1959, Truscott had given Harper a ride on the crossbar of his bicycle and proceeded from the vicinity of the school northwards along the County Road. The timing and duration of their encounter, and what happened while they were together, have been contentious issues since 1959.

In court, the Crown contended that Truscott and Harper left the County Road before reaching the bridge over the Bayfield River and, in a wooded area beside the County Road (known as Lawson's Bush), Truscott raped and murdered Lynne. Truscott has maintained since 1959 that he took Harper to the intersection of the County Road and Highway 8, where he left her unharmed. Truscott maintains that when he arrived at the bridge, he looked back toward the intersection where he had dropped Harper off and observed that a vehicle had stopped and that she was in the process of entering it. On June 10, 1959 at 9:30 a.m. Steven was interviewed by (Constable) Hobbs in a cruiser at his school. He told Hobbs that while standing on the bridge, he saw Lynne get into a "late model Chevrolet" and there "was a lot of chrome on the car and it could have been a Bellair [sic] version." At 11:20 that evening, Lynne's father reported her missing.

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