After years of anguish and weeks of uncertainty for his victims’ families, Clifford Olson, one of Canada’s worst serial killers, died Friday of cancer in a Quebec prison. He was 71 years old.

Terry Bizeau, the mother of Terri Lyn Carson, who was murdered by Olson when she was 15 years old, said she received a call from Corrections Canada at around 12:30 Pacific time, and knew what it was about before picking up the phone.

“When [the Corrections spokesperson] told me who she was, I knew it anyway,” Bizeau said. “I asked if he’s dead and she said yes. I yelled out that he was dead and I started crying.”

“Mr. Olson officially died at 15:41 p.m.,” said Geneviève Guilbault with the Quebec coroner’s bureau. “The coroner in Quebec has to make an investigation every time a prisoner dies, so his body was transported to our morgue in Montreal.”

Olson’s death ignited a stream of emotions from his victims’ families, who were informed by Corrections Canada last weekend that the killer had just days to live.

“How can you put feelings into words,” Bizeau said. “All I feel right now is that it’s finally over. Justice has finally been done. I hope that whatever they do, if they bury him or cremate him, I hope they cremate him and flush his ashes in the toilet.

“With him being dead, to me that’s finally closure on it,” she went on. “He’s not going to bother us. He’s not going to be on TV all the time. He’s not going to be killing any more kids. It’s finally the end.”

Dee Johnston, stepmother of Colleen Daignault, who was killed when she was 13, also received the call.

“It’s been 31 years of going through hell and now it’s time to let it go,” she said in an interview.

Olson had been imprisoned at the Regional Reception Centre, a federal penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, north of Montreal. When he finally died, Olson was at the nearby Archambault Institution.

In Laval, the Correctional Service of Canada also confirmed Olson’s death. The killer’s next of kin were notified of his death, said spokesman Serge Abergel.

Abergel said while Olson’s next of kin can claim his body and make funeral arrangements, Corrections Services remains involved.

If the body is not claimed, Abergel said Olson will be buried in an undisclosed location. There will not, however, be any ceremony or memorial erected in Olson’s name.

“We will do a rigorous search to ensure we haven’t missed anyone who should be informed and if the person is not claimed, the deceased will be buried by the Service,” said Abergel. “With an individual who has made comments in the past that has shown little remorse to his victims or have asked for a monument, anything that will be hurtful to victims, the Service will never let that happen.”

Olson, the self-proclaimed “ http://photogallery.thestar.com/1057523beast of British ColumbiaEND” had served nearly 30 years in jail for torturing, sexually assaulting and murdering eight girls and three boys around B.C.’s Lower Mainland in the early 1980s.

Olson was serving 11 consecutive life sentences after he was convicted in 1982 of killing eight girls and three boys. Although pig farmer Robert Pickton, who was charged with killing 20 women before his 2002 arrest, is considered Canada’s worst serial killer, Olson’s murders, targeting vulnerable children, ensure him an ignoble place in this country’s history.

After his arrest on Aug. 12, 1981, Olson collected $100,000 — $10,000 for each body —from the RCMP after he brokered a deal to tell police where he had buried his victims’ bodies. The first body, Olson bragged, was a “freebie.” The money had been left in a trust for his then-infant son, Clifford, Jr., and his estranged wife, Joan. During his decades in jail, he also claimed to have accumulated a small fortune in government pensions and from the sale of his possessions on an auction website.

Throughout his time in prison, Olson maintained an active criminal lifestyle, including possessing drugs and illegally reselling postage stamps. He was never far from the media spotlight.

“The first 17 years, he was in the news every month, like clockwork. It was really impossible to heal,” said Raymond King, whose 15-year-old son, Raymond Jr., was abducted and murdered after Olson enticed him with the promise of work.

“Just having to deal with that animal has been totally frustrating,” he said. “Even the people in charge of Corrections couldn’t keep him in check.”

Last year, Olson attracted attention after trying to send a donation to the Conservative Party of Canada and asking for a tax receipt. The Prime Minister’s Office rejected his contribution.

Through the years before his death, Olson continued to inflict hell upon the families of his victims. “He sent letters from prison, launched a lawsuit against us for defamation of character and made 12 videos on how to abduct children,” said Sharon Rosenfeldt, the mother of 16-year-old Daryn Johnsrude, one of Olson’s victims, in an earlier interview.

The Coquitlam, B.C., killer grew up a teenage bully and a thief, then turned into a police informant, rapist and, finally, serial killer. He was incarcerated at 17 for breaking and entering.

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It was the first of 83 lifetime convictions.

Olson’s first murder victim was 12-year-old Christine Weller, who was found strangled and stabbed on Christmas Day 1980. After nearly nine months terrorizing the Lower Mainlaind, Olson was reigned in by a police surveillance team after he attempted to pick up two hitchhikers.

“Thank God it’s over,” King said. “The thorn’s out of my side and it’s going to heal. I just pray that there aren’t more out there like him.”

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