I listened to my grandfather talk to a serial killer. I'll never see grief the same way
What started as a true crime podcast became a lesson in loss and family legacy
This First Person column is the experience of Nathaniel Frum, co-host of CBC Podcasts' Uncover: Calls From a Killer. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
For the past six years, I've been working on a story.
It began in 2019 when I requested and received dusty boxes from Canada's national archives. Inside were newspaper clippings, police files, legal documents, photographs and dozens of cassette tapes.
At the time, I was a struggling screenwriter hoping to pick up a story my grandfather had worked on but never finished. What I didn't know was that unsealing these boxes would change my life. It would reconnect me to my late grandfather, bring me a deep and unexpected friendship, and force me to confront the raw, devastating weight of loss — both my own and that of others.
I picked the dustiest tape from the bottom of one of the boxes and loaded it into an ancient player.
As soon as it played, I recognized the voice of my maternal grandfather Peter Worthington. He was the founding editor of the Toronto Sun, a war correspondent and a legendary Canadian journalist. It was the first time I had heard his voice since he died in 2013.
To his grandchildren, Peter Worthington was just Pete — the man who taught us magic tricks, how to shoot a BB gun, how to throw a baseball and how we could save two dollars by buying three-day-old cakes at the grocery store. Sometimes, he would talk about the time he was nearly killed in Algeria or the time the Pierre Trudeau government charged him under the Official Secrets Act — but frankly, we were more interested in his incredible belief that the root beer jelly bean was superior to any other.
Pete's voice on the tape was soon joined by another. This was the one I had set out to listen to in the first place: the voice of the serial killer, Clifford Olson.
Calls from a killer
In the early 1980s, Olson abducted, raped and murdered at least 11 children in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. Considered one of Canada's first serial killers, he was convicted and sentenced to 11 concurrent life sentences. It was from prison that Olson started calling my grandfather on the phone. He had first started by calling Arlene Bynon, a journalist who had just done a radio series on the American serial killer Ted Bundy. Soon, Arlene was conducting phone interviews with Olson in secret. After several weeks, Arlene enlisted my grandfather, her mentor, to help conduct those interviews.
Listening to these recorded calls, it was the first time I'd ever heard Pete work. He was measured, incisive and disarming. A gifted journalist, Pete coaxed Olson into revealing more than he ever intended. I began to understand the skill, the patience and the moral complexity of what he did. I felt close to him in a new way.
A new project took form in my mind, one that would eventually become the new CBC podcast Calls From a Killer. But I soon realized that I couldn't undertake this alone.
So I turned to another voice I heard on the tapes: Arlene Bynon. She, too, received calls from Olson and was Pete's reporting partner on a never-completed investigation into Olson. We joined forces — two people from different generations, united by curiosity, a shared sense of obligation to Olson's victims and brought together by Pete.
A raw understanding of loss
For five years, Arlene and I worked together on this story and eventually partnered with the CBC — a broadcaster that meant so much to another of my grandparents: Barbara Frum. It was like walking in the footsteps of giants. No pressure.
But a month into our partnership with the CBC, my own life shattered. In February 2024, my sister Miranda died from complications related to a brain tumour surgically removed years earlier.
I felt like my world was destroyed. My family, in an instant, devastated. I stopped working on the podcast. I couldn't bear the thought of calling people who'd lost their own loved ones, and asking them to speak about the worst days, weeks, or years of their lives.
Any distance I had from the story evaporated.
After several weeks, I thought getting back to work would do me some good. When I finally returned to the project, I truly understood what it meant to suddenly lose a loved one. I could speak now to the victims' families with the compassion and understanding of shared, sudden loss.
Over time, I came to see that these families weren't speaking to us to tell Olson's story; they were speaking with us to reclaim their loved ones' legacies. To correct the record. To assert that their children were not footnotes in some monster's biography. They were kids. Siblings. Daughters. Sons.
And I was being asked to help tell their story. I hope we have done them justice.
'Making sense of something senseless'
My life is very different from when I first opened those boxes. I've lost my sister. I married my wife, Isabel. We are expecting our first child, a daughter.
Arlene and I often ask each other what we hope listeners will take away from the podcast. For me, the answer is simple: I hope it brings some measure of closure, not just to the families of Olson's victims, but to anyone who has ever tried to make sense of something senseless.
I think back to that first dusty cassette, the moment I pressed play and heard my grandfather's voice after so many years. I thought I was chasing a story. But what I found was something far more personal: a connection to my past, a reminder of what's been lost and a responsibility to carry forward these names and memories.
Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? We want to hear from you. Here's more info on how to pitch to us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
