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Who killed Lynne Harper?

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Retired OPP sergeant Barry Ruhl believes he knows the identity of the person who killed the Huron County pre-teen in June 1959.

Ruhl, the author of A Viable Suspect, spoke to a Petrolia audience recently and outlined his theory.

Steven Truscott, only 14 at the time, was convicted of 12-year-old Harper’s murder and then sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life in prison.

The Clinton youngster was later released on parole and decades later acquitted, but the Harper case appears to have grown cold and her real murderer has never been arrested.

Speaking at the Petrolia library, Ruhl said he first met who he believes is Lynne Harper’s murderer — whom he calls Larry Talbot, although that’s not the suspect’s real name — when Talbot attempted to rob Ruhl and his wife.

Since the suspect has a family Ruhl chose not to use Talbot’s real name.

“I didn’t want to name them because they weren’t part of his deviance.”

But Talbot, the retired OPP sergeant contends, might be responsible not just for Harper’s murder, but for a string of unsolved Ontario cases.

“I believe Larry Talbot should be considered a person of interest in several of them,” he said.

Ruhl said the suspect was a traveling salesmen, and was considered a person of interest in other cases.