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GUELPH, ONT.-As a teenager, he faced the hangman's noose, condemned as a child killer and a rapist. For more than 50 years, he fought to clear his name of a crime that he insisted he did not commit.

But now Steven Truscott, one of Canada's most famous victims of a wrongful conviction, is fighting one final, daunting battle - against cancer.

Truscott, a 67-year-old grandfather, had his entire prostate removed last year in an attempt to destroy a potentially deadly tumour. He has since undergone 33 radiation treatments and doctors continue to test him for any warning signs that the cancerous cells may have returned.

"Worrying about it isn't going to make it go away," Truscott told the Toronto Star in an exclusive interview at his home. "I figured if the government couldn't get rid of me, this wasn't going to get rid of me either."

At age 14, Truscott faced execution for the murder and rape of a classmate, Lynne Harper, in 1959 near the air force base where they lived in Clinton, Ont. His sentence was commuted to life in prison just weeks before the scheduled hanging.

That early brush with death seems to have informed Truscott's resolve to fight his cancer. "You're put on this earth and what's thrown at you - you either handle it or you don't," he said.

Inspired by the very public battle waged by the late NDP leader Jack Layton, Truscott agreed to discuss his medical condition to send a message to Canadian men to regularly take a simple test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a possible early indicator of cancer.

"I'd always been healthy. I figured you don't need the test if I feel fine," he said. "It takes two minutes to take the PSA test. If you know someone who has died from prostate cancer, it is not a pretty picture."

Truscott spent 10 years behind bars and then a lifetime on parole as a convicted murderer. In 2007, after a decade-long legal battle to reopen his case, the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned his conviction as "a miscarriage of justice" that "must be quashed."

The following year, the Ontario government awarded Truscott $6.5 million in compensation. He moved into an expansive home on the outskirts of Guelph with his wife Marlene and looked forward to a comfortable life with their three children and four grandchildren.

Then, the devastating news. Truscott, who says he never spent a day in his life in the hospital, had not visited his family doctor in two years. When he finally booked a visit, a routine checkup and blood test found dangerously high levels of PSA.

A subsequent biopsy confirmed he had prostate cancer.

"I can remember thinking: 'Why does this have to happen to him?'" said Marlene, Truscott's wife of 42 years and the driving force in her husband's battle to prove his innocence. "I was just sick, absolutely, completely sick from worry."

Truscott, who had learned to control his emotions after years in prison and frustrated legal appeals, was more reserved - at least outwardly.

"He handled it almost stoically; none of this 'poor me' stuff, just about the way you would expect Steve to react," said Mac Stienburg, who was Truscott's prison chaplain in the 1960s and, later, his parole officer. He has remained a close family friend.

"This (cancer) would sound like peanuts in comparison with a death sentence to hang," said Stienburg. "This paled in comparison."

Still, when Stienburg got a late night call from Truscott, he sensed the man he had known since he was a teenage inmate was more concerned than he would admit.

"What's God doing to me?" Stienburg remembers Truscott asking, only half-jokingly.

"I don't know, but I'll ask him and put in a good word," said the former chaplain.

Last summer, Truscott underwent surgery for a prostatectomy, the complete removal of his infected gland.

It went well but Dr. Timothy Wesley-James, the urologist who performed the operation, found the cancer had infected 40 per cent of Truscott's prostate and "microscopic" traces had spread locally.

"You have concerns," Wesley-James told the Star.

Then late last year, a blood test detected PSA again - bad news because with the prostate removed the only explanation for PSA readings was that some of the cancerous cells indeed were still present. So over the winter, Truscott began intensive radiation treatments, five days a week for almost two months.

In April he walked into the office of Dr. Joda Kuk, his radiation oncologist at the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre in Kitchener, to get the latest test results.

Kuk had drawn a smiley face and the scrawled the word "YAY!" on Truscott's medical folder: The PSA levels were undetectable.

"It was evidence that I had hit the target of cancer cells," Kuk said.

About 40 per cent of men like Truscott who had high-risk features in their prostate cancer might see a recurrence of the disease, Kuk explained, but effective radiation treatment can cut that danger in half.

"The outlook is good but you monitor these patients for 15 years because it could still come back," said Wesley-James.

The surgery, radiation and stress over the past year have taken an obvious toll on Truscott. Once a strong, fit man with the ramrod-straight bearing of a boy who grew up on an air force base, Truscott has put on weight, walks more slowly and lacks the energy he once had.

"I tire out faster," he admits.

Marlene has also spotted a "big personality change," noting her usually easygoing husband at times is "far more distant, more irritable."

The Truscotts have largely stepped out of the public limelight since Steven's acquittal in 2007 after a gruelling decade of appeals, hearings and campaigns against wrongful convictions.

The family has quietly launched the Truscott Initiative in Justice Studies at the University of Guelph, funding two scholarships for students in the field and working toward setting up a chair devoted to justice and social issues.

They still get letters and emails regularly from supporters and schoolchildren working on projects about the famous legal case.

Truscott said there is only one thing that would bring him back into the public eye: "If they ever try to bring back the death penalty," he said, referring to occasional murmurs from some Tory politicians.

"How many wrongful convictions have there been in Canada, and how many of those people would be dead (under capital punishment)?" he asks. "I would come back for that."

But for now, Truscott wants to think about life, not death.

He and his wife dream of spending more time with their grandchildren and taking a road trip to explore Canada.

"I was given two chances," Truscott says, escaping a hanging death after a criminal conviction and - for now at least - a lingering death from cancer. "My cat has nine lives, so I have seven more to catch up."

He breathes heavily as he rolls his 270-kilogram Kawasaki motorcycle out of his garage. So far this spring he has found the energy to take the bike out for a spin three times, an exhilarating jolt of freedom for the grandfather who still chafes at the memory of spending his teenage years behind bars.

"You just get out there and feel free," Truscott says, a hint of that boyish twinkle in his eyes. "Nothing holds you back."
Julian Sher can be reached at 514-944-6943, at sher.julian@gmail.com and on Twitter @juliansher.

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Steven Truscott fights another battle for his life | The Star

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GUELPH, ONT.-As a teenager, he faced the hangman's noose, condemned as a child killer and a rapist. For more than 50 years, he fought to clear his name of a crime that he insisted he did not commit. But now Steven Truscott, one of Canada's most famous victims of a wrongful conviction, is fighting one final, daunting battle - against cancer.

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Steven Truscott to get $6.5M for wrongful conviction | CBC News

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The Ontario government will pay Steven Truscott $6.5 million for suffering a "miscarriage of justice" and living 48 years with the stigma of being wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder he did not commit. "We are doing what we can to bring to the conclusion this remarkable aspect of Mr. Truscott's life's journey," Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley said Monday in Toronto.

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The family of Lynne Harper finally broke their silence Wednesday to talk about the "mental distress" they have suffered while watching the acquittal of the man they have always believed to be her killer.

Steven Truscott, who was convicted as a teen of raping and murdering 12-year-old Lynne in 1959, was cleared of the charges Tuesday in a unanimous judgment of the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The court stopped short of declaring Mr. Truscott innocent, but nevertheless gave him reason to declare victory in his long-fought legal battle.

While Mr. Truscott and his supporters celebrated in Toronto, on the other side of the continent, Lynne's 90-year-old father, Leslie, had to take the news sitting down in his private room at a nursing home in the western United States. When he heard the verdict, he said, his legs went numb.

"All I can think about is the cruel 50 years of mental distress," Mr. Harper said, hoarse-voiced in a telephone interview Wednesday. "The joy, the jumping up and down on the streets where he [Mr. Truscott]was yesterday, it doesn't sit too well.

"I'm numb, as a matter of fact. I'm to the point where I don't feel as if I can even stand up or walk."

Mr. Harper, whose wife Shirley died several years ago of a heart attack, stayed up all night before the 300-page judgment was released.

When his eldest son, Barry, called him about it, Mr. Harper was stunned.

Mr. Harper passed up the opportunity to speak directly to Attorney-General Michael Bryant because he prefers to hear news about Lynne's case from Barry.

While he still possesses all of the faculties required to digest the thick document that contains the court's rationale for acquitting Mr. Truscott, the elder Mr. Harper says he doesn't have the stomach for it.

"A little girl was never given an opportunity to live," he said.

He and the rest of his family have believed that Mr. Truscott was guilty since he was first convicted as a teen in 1959. Even after all these years, Mr. Harper cannot force himself to say Mr. Truscott's name.

The Harpers have been haunted by Lynne's murder since the day her body was found. "He still has things that belong to my sister that he picks up on a daily basis," Barry said of his father. "He's never gotten over his sorrow."

At the time of Lynne's killing, the Harpers had only been living at RCAF Clinton, a base in southwestern Ontario, for about two years. Mr. Harper was a flight lieutenant. His wife, Shirley, stayed home to care for their three children, Lynne, 12, Barry, who was in Grade 10, and Jeffrey, who was only four years old when Lynne's body was found in Lawson's Bush.

"I think my sister was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Barry, whose recollection of the days before and after Lynne's killing are pristine. Still, he's shied away from speaking publicly about them - aside from a deposition he gave during a two-year review of the case in 2002 - because the courts, until now, have upheld Mr. Truscott's guilt.

"Years ago, when the Supreme Court threw the appeal out, I thought that was the end of it," Barry said. "The thing has got a life of its own."

Now, Lynne's funeral still runs like a movie reel through Barry's mind.

"The funeral procession went from Clinton all the way to St. Thomas. That's got to be about 60 or 65 miles," he said. "There were Brownies and Girl Guides standing on the sides of the street as the [hearse]went by. It was something that kinds of sticks in your mind."

Six months later, when Mr. Truscott was convicted, he was only 14. Still, he had already earned a reputation among the youngsters at RCAF Clinton as being more interested in schoolgirls than books, Barry said. Although he was closer to Steven Truscott's older brother, Ken, Barry remembers being paired as a defensive line mate with Steven. "I grew up with that guy," he said.

Now an engineer for an auto-parts manufacturer in the United States, Barry still keeps a cache of newspaper and magazine clippings documenting his sister's case, which has been immortalized in several movies and books, although he rarely needs to refer to them. He's carried with him for nearly 50 years the memories of his family's destruction.

"My dad wouldn't talk to anybody. He'd go to work and come back and sit in the chair and think about what happened, I guess."

Barry said that after the killing, the muted family remained on the base, but their only outings were for Sunday dinners at the base dining room.

"I don't think they did any socializing," he said. "From the time of the trial to the time we moved, we didn't do much of anything."

After Mr. Truscott's conviction, the Harpers left for a month-long respite in New Brunswick. They avoided as much as possible speaking to the media while working through their terrible pain. Eventually, they moved to a different air force base in Langar, England, where they tried to get on with their lives. But over the years, as Mr. Truscott pressed on with his campaign for exoneration, healing became impossible.

"You never want to see someone who was innocent convicted of something," the elder Mr. Harper said Wednesday. "But this is about money."

The Harpers have long felt that part of Mr. Truscott's motive in continuing the efforts to clear his name has been to win a hefty compensation package from the government.

On Tuesday, Mr. Truscott's lawyer, James Lockyer, said his client should "get every penny he can out of the government after what he has been through." Former Appeal Court judge Sydney Robins has been appointed by the provincial government to review the issue. However, he said he must first decide whether Mr. Truscott, who has not been deemed innocent, is entitled to an award.

"The issue turns on the fact that there was no explicit finding of factual innocence in the case," Mr. Robins told The Canadian Press Wednesday.

Both Harpers said they will try to block any payout to Mr. Truscott. Barry said he has spoken with provincial officials to notify them that he and his father both plan to make written submissions to Mr. Robins on why they think compensation should be denied.

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Lynne Harper's family speaks out on Truscott

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The family of Lynne Harper finally broke their silence Wednesday to talk about the "mental distress" they have suffered while watching the acquittal of the man they have always believed to be her killer. Steven Truscott, who was convicted as a teen of raping and murdering 12-year-old Lynne in 1959, was cleared of the charges Tuesday in a unanimous judgment of the Ontario Court of Appeal.

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Steven Truscott's $6.5 Million Award for Wrongful Conviction

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Worst Cases Of People Being Wrongly Accused