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This website is about all the people who have been wrongfully convicted. This goes into detail about Truscott's entire case, all the evidence and about the entire trial and appeals he went through.

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We've helped exonerate 21 innocent people since 1993.

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This article is about how a retired OPP officer believes he had found the real suspect in the case of Steven Truscott. I think it is very important to look for the real murdered in this situation.

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'Viable suspect' explored in murder that saw Steven Truscott wrongfully convicted

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A retired OPP officer believes there is a credible suspect in the 1959 murder of Lynne Harper, a crime Steven Truscott was convicted for, and later acquitted of.

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This article is about what had happened when he was 14 years old. It goes into detail about the facts and evidence of the case. This also goes on about how Steven is now battling prostate cancer. I think this must be very difficult for Truscott, as he dealt with a wrongful conviction now cancer.

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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.

Steven Truscott is now battling the second big fight for his life - this time with prostate cancer. (Julian Sher / For the Toronto Star)

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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This is Steven Truscott at the age of about 60 years old when he was released from jail and acquitted of his charges.

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This was Lynne Harper at the age of 12 when she was brutally murdered and raped. I personally think she was very young at the age especially to be raped and murdered.

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This was Steven Truscott at the age of 14 when he was wrongly convicted. I believe he was very young at the time and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. However, I think could have fully been avoided.

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This video is all about the compensation that Steven Truscott received after he was acquitted of his convictions. I think this video is very informational about what happened after his wrongful conviction.

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Steven Truscott's $6.5 Million Award for Wrongful Conviction

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This video goes into the simple facts of the case. This goes over who Truscott and Harper are and how they knew each other. It also talks about the crime scene and what happened to Lynne Harper. I think watching this video really gives you the exact details of the case.

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This is the fifth estate video all about Steven Truscott's case. It goes into detail about the events leading up to the rape and murder of Lynne Harper. It also goes into detail about the evidence the justice system based the conviction on. I think watching this video gives you insight on the entire case and what Steven Truscott went through for all those years.

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Steven Truscott - His Word Against History - the fifth estate

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It was a hot, muggy evening in 1959 when 14-year-old Steven Truscott gave his schoolmate Lynn Harper a ride on his bicycle near an air force base outside Clinton, Ontario. Two days later, the girl's body was found in a wooded grove near the town. She had been raped and strangled.