My brother and I each had a near miss with a pedophile when
we lived at Simon Fraser University in 1981. The first one happened to my
brother and the second one to me.
One afternoon my brother and I were returning home from
school. Simon Fraser University is located on the top of Burnaby mountain in
Vancouver and our school was located in Burnaby at the bottom of the hill.
Every day, we would get on the 135 bus that stopped on the main street outside
the school and it would take us up Burnaby mountain and drop us off at the
entrance to the university – an imposing concrete block bus loop at the centre
of the campus. Right near this bus loop there was a large concrete dais that
rose above the Traffic and Security office that was located at the foot of the
bus loop. What this dais was for, I’ll never know, but on this particular day
it was occupied by a balding bespectacled man holding a V8 video camera. He was
just sitting there and in order to get home we had to walk on a sidewalk that
went past him. As we walked past he called out for us to stop and listen to a
proposal that he had.
I remembered what dad had told us so many times about
talking to strangers and motioned to my brother that we really should get
going. He told me that I could go, and he would continue to talk to the man. So
without thinking much of it I went home and let mom and dad know that he would
be back soon. About an hour later my frantic brother comes through the door
short of breath and panting. We all asked him why he is like this and he relays
his story:
My brother: “Right after Chris left, the man told me that he was
making a movie like “The Jerk”, and that he needed to get a shot of me with my
pants around my ankles, just like the guy in the movie had. He said he would
give me $5 if I did this.”
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the movie, “The
Jerk” was Steve Martin’s first major movie. In it, in one of the very last
scenes, he walks around in a bathrobe with a pair of pants around his
ankles. This picture of Steve Martin is
what appeared on all the promotional posters for the movie. We both knew this,
so to my brother, the man’s request did not seem that absurd. My brother continued to
relay what had happened:
“So this guy walks me over to the large wooded area to
the south of the bus loop and tells me to get out of sight and take my pants
down like in the movie. I freaked out and ran straight home.”
Within a half hour dad had called Campus security and reported
what had happened. We later found out that the campus security arrested the
man. This happened right around the time that Clifford Olsen was abducting and
murdering children in that area, so the incident seemed like a real near miss.
I often wonder what would have happened to my brother if he had not run like he
did. Now, you’d think that I would avoid getting myself into a
similar predicament, but we often cannot see where a situation is headed until
it is too late.
One thing that I loved to do at S.F.U. on Sundays was to
roam the Academic Quadrangle. The AQ was a central area of the university in
the shape of a square with four massive corridors that joined up into a square
and around which all the lecture theatres and classrooms were arranged. The AQ
had banks of vending machines and photocopiers on each side of the
quadrangle. Often, people would drop
change on the floor that would roll under the vending machines and
photocopiers. I could often find a dollar or two in dimes nickels and quarters –
enough to go to the cafeteria and have a burger and a slice of pie or something
else that I liked.
One Sunday I was doing exactly this when a young man who
looked a lot like Mark Hamill from Star Wars comes to the vending machines to
buy a chocolate bar. He was wearing a white lab coat. I can’t quite remember whether
he started talking to me or I started talking to him, but soon I was talking to
him, in complete disobedience of the rule that my parents had established. Eventually he invited me to go see his lab,
which I thought was really cool. How could I pass that up? He took me to a lab
in the chemistry wing where there were tons of flasks, Bunsen burners, glass
retorts and burettes. I have no idea what he was researching but he took a real
interest in showing me the mini-computers there and what the various messages
on the green LED screens were and explaining what they meant.
I must have been there for several hours, and eventually he
suggested that we go explore, like I was doing before, but since he had access
to places I’d never been and couldn’t normally get into it seemed again like an
invitation I’d be crazy to turn down.
Eventually we wound up in lecture theatre C9000, which was the largest
of the Chemistry lecture halls, designed for first year courses with upwards of
300 students. He took me up to the front
panel where the lecturer normally stands. There was a very large number of
controls and light switches – all with labels: house lights, panel light and a
dimmer switch for the panel light. There were also hoist controls for the
projector screen that came out of the ceiling for overheads. He told me that
there were tons of interesting things in the ceiling that he wanted me to go
and get for him. He suggested that if he lowered the screen down to floor
level, that I could climb on and he would raise me up and I could climb into
the ceiling. By now I was getting scared. I knew that this was definitely not
something that either of us were supposed to be doing, but I felt powerless to
leave. He had just the right amount of authority, that I felt that I had to
comply.
I reluctantly agreed and he lowered the screen. I climbed on
and he raised it up. I got REALLY scared as I was now about 30 feet in the air
and all I wanted to do is get down. I kept begging him and he kept saying that
no, he wouldn’t lower me down. “I’ll jump!” I said. “No, don’t do that! You are
over 30 feet up. You will get badly hurt!”. But initially he did not agree to
lower me down. I kept threatening to jump. Finally, he agreed to let me down,
which he did. Once I was back on the ground, he motioned me over to the central
console. Then when I was there he turned out all the lights in the theatre and
ran up into the seats. Now I was really freaked out, as it finally
dawned on me what was about to happen. I fumbled with the switches and turned
on a switch to the panel light, so I could at least see right in front of me.
TURN YOUR PANEL LIGHT OFF! Came his coaxing voice from the
lecture hall. I turned the dimmer switch to reduce the amount of light but did
not turn it off. TURN YOUR PANEL LIGHT OFF! came his voice again. I dimmed it a
bit again. “YOU’RE NOT TURNING IT OFF. THERE’S GOING TO BE TROUBLE IF YOU DON’T
TURN YOUR PANEL LIGHT OFF!!” Oh shit! I was out of options and I started
glancing around the room frantically. Then, at the moment my eyes met up with
the entrance door, which was left open, I saw the shadowy figure of a campus
security guard just standing there listening. He must have just arrived there
and was trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, I flicked on all the
light switches looked over at the figure and shouted: “There is a man after me
right over there!” and I pointed to the empty seats. The man popped up from
behind one of the desks where he had been crouching. The security guard went
over to him and demanded to see is ID. The last words I heard him say were “I
don’t have any ID on me sir.” I ran towards the door on the opposite side of
the lecture hall and out into the courtyard. Once I realized where I was, I ran
straight home without looking back. When I got home, I was in a lot of trouble for
talking to a stranger.
I’ll never know whether he had ill intentions or was just
playing an innocent game. But whenever I would hear about a young person being
abducted and killed, I would think about my own experience. I would get an
especially strong chill down my spine years later when I read about serial
killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy; especially Gacy, as he appeared so
innocent to his victims right up to the point where he decided to kill them
with hi infamous “rope trick”. I often
wonder what would have happened to me if that guard had not been there at that
moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment