5th  Sunday, June 21, 1981 – Ada Court

Ada Court, victim

Thirteen-year-old Ada Court of Burnaby had spent an uneventful Saturday night, babysitting at her brother and sister-in-law’s Coquitlam apartment, the same family apartment complex where the Olsons lived and where Olson Sr. and Leona worked as caretakers. She babysat her brother’s two toddlers so often that others often referred to the little ones as “Ada’s babies.”

On a sunny Sunday morning, Ada caught a bus to meet her boyfriend. Then, she simply vanished. Burnaby police were baffled. Nothing was missing from her locker at Cascade Heights Elementary School and there was no evidence that she packed any belongings from home.

Fifty-two-year-old Jim Parranto, a White Rock resident, believed he saw Olson disposing of Ada’s body. Interestingly, this was not the first time that someone saw Olson as he disposed of a body, but the people involved did not understand what they were witnessing. It would later be discovered that Olson’s vehicle had been stuck in the mud at least twice while disposing of two bodies. In one case, he even called a tow truck.

The Olson Murders relates the events with Parranto: “It was at about 8 p.m. on June 21 when the logging camp chef was driving through Weaver Lake, a popular picnic area. He turned a corner and saw a man beside a black pick-up truck, bending over the body of a young girl in a multi-colored sweater.

“I thought he was in trouble and I pulled up. I got out of the car and spoke to him and he turned around and looked at me. He wouldn’t answer me when I talked to him. He just stared at me and I could see something wasn’t right. I got back in the car. I thought, `hey, I’m getting out of here.’” After a harrowing chase by Olson, Parranto swerved onto a logging road leading to the Eagle River forestry camp where he worked, losing Olson on the road. A month or two later he reported what he saw to the White Rock RCMP.

Entrance ot the White Rock RCMP Detachment (Jan Bouchard-Kerr)

Two months later, after Olson’s arrest, dental charts confirmed that a skull and upper jawbone found by searchers near Weaver Lake in the Agassiz area belonged to Ada Court.

Parranto was asked if he was sure that he was looking at the serial murderer.

 “It was Olson,” he replied. “I was staring him right in the face.”

By the end of June, Olson had murdered five children but only two bodies had been recovered: Christine Weller in Richmond and Daryn Johnsrude at Deroche, near Mission. But Christine Weller’s murder had not been connected to Daryn Johnsrude’s and Olson’s other victims had not yet been found.