The summer of 1981 was just beginning for the Partington family of Surrey, British Columbia, who were looking forward to a happy vacation. But their lives, and the sense of security in their community, were shattered on the morning of July 2, 1981. Nine-year-old Simon Patrick James Partington, a slight, angelic-faced boy with blond hair, finished his breakfast of cornflakes around 10:30 a.m. and hopped on his bicycle.
Dressed in blue jeans and a blue T-shirt, he was headed to a friend's house, with a new orange Snoopy book tucked into his bike's basket. He never arrived.
Simon’s bicycle was later found abandoned, leaning against a corner store just a few blocks from where another child had vanished months earlier. His disappearance marked a terrifying turning point in what had become a string of missing children and teenagers in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. While police had previously considered some of the older missing youths as possible runaways, there was no doubt in the case of a nine-year-old boy from a supportive family. Investigators knew immediately that Simon had been abducted, and his disappearance triggered an "all hands on deck" response. The public was gripped with fear, and Simon's mother, Marguerite, made a heart-wrenching, three-minute crying appeal broadcast to the public, pleading for the kidnappers to release her son so he could come home.
The investigation into Simon's vanishing soon connected with the sinister activities of Clifford Robert Olson Jr., a career criminal who was already on the periphery of police attention. In the months before and after Simon was taken, several other young people had disappeared. Olson, known as "The Beast of British Columbia," lured his victims with promises of work before abducting, sexually assaulting, and murdering them. He killed 11 children and young adults between November 1980 and July 1981. Simon was his sixth, and youngest, victim.
Olson was finally arrested on August 12, 1981, after attempting to abduct two more potential victims. While in custody, he began a grim negotiation with law enforcement. In a hugely controversial deal that sparked public outrage, Olson agreed to lead investigators to the bodies of his victims, many of whom were still considered missing. In exchange, the government paid $100,000 into a trust fund for his wife and infant son — $10,000 for each of the first 10 bodies he revealed.
Following this "cash-for-bodies" agreement, Olson led police to a remote, boggy area in Richmond. There, they recovered Simon’s remains. It was later determined that the little boy had been raped and strangled on the same day he was taken. The discovery brought a devastating end to his family's hopes and confirmed the community's worst fears. The mother of another of Olson's victims later recalled how the murder of the "beautiful little blond-haired boy" had a profound impact on everyone, saying, "I think Simon's age and just the look of Simon, I think, affected everybody."
In January 1982, Clifford Olson pleaded guilty to 11 counts of first-degree murder, including that of Simon Partington. The plea spared the victims' families the trauma of a prolonged trial. He was sentenced to 11 concurrent life sentences, with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The judge at his sentencing remarked that, in his opinion, Olson should never be granted parole for the rest of his life.
Olson remained imprisoned for the rest of his life, taunting his victims' families and the justice system with periodic parole applications, all of which were denied. He died of cancer in a prison hospital on September 30, 2011, at the age of 71. His death brought a sense of finality for the families who had endured decades of pain, but it could never erase the loss of the 11 innocent lives he so brutally extinguished, including that of a nine-year-old boy who just wanted to ride his bike to a friend's house on a summer day.
