Wronged - The UC Observer

26.8.15

Wronged - The UC Observer: Henry grew up rough in Regina, quitting school after Grade 8 and fleeing an abusive home for a life of petty crime. In his late teens, the crime became less petty. Besides convictions for break-and-enter and car theft, his record includes a three-year prison term for stealing a television and a five-year term for attempted rape.

In the early 1980s, while on mandatory supervision, he ended up in Vancouver. To support his drug-addicted wife and their two young daughters, he worked construction jobs and sold designer jeans from the trunk of his car.

During this period, the Clifford Olson sexual murders of young people had galvanized the Lower Mainland. Once Olson was arrested, his cash-for-bodies deal (the RCMP paid his wife $100,000 in return for Olson’s revealing the location of the corpses) outraged the public. At the same time, week after week, a serial rapist was terrorizing Vancouver. The police badly needed a PR win.