VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Canadian authorities charged a 41-year-old man with killing nine children in an eight-month murder spree and said they know two other missing youngsters are also dead.
Clifford Robert Olson, in custody since Aug. 18, was formally charged Monday in nearby Burnaby with killing five girls and three boys between the ages of nine and 18. Olson was charged late last month with the murder of a 14-year-old girl, one of the 11 children to disappear.
'I laid eight (charges) today in Burnaby ... against Cliff Olson,' said Special Crown Prosecutor John Hall.
Olson is scheduled to make his first appearance in court Sept. 18 on charges of killing Judy Kozuma, 14, of nearby New Westminster.
In Seattle, the FBI said at the request of the RCMP it was checking police records in Oregon, Washington and California for 'certain patterns' that may resemble the British Columbia killings.
As charges were filed against Olson, police continued the search for the two remaining youngsters to vanish in the past eight months near Vancouver in a case paralleling the 28 child killings in Atlanta.
Royal Mounted Police Superintendent Bruce Northrop, heading the investigation, said police know the two missing children -- Colleen Daignault, 13, and Sandra Wolfsteiner, 16, -- are dead.
Police said two more murder charges will be filed when the children's bodies are found.
An aunt and a 15-year-old sister identified a T-shirt, socks, jeans and running shoes belonging to Miss Daignault, who disappeared April 16.
'It was really sad,' the aunt, Gail Smith, said. 'She (Colleen's sister) was in hysterics. She identified Colleen's T-shirt. They wouldn't tell us where they found the clothes.'
Olson, a self-employed construction worker from Coquitlam, British Columbia was arrested Aug. 18 and subsequently charged with the stabbing death of Miss Kozuma, whose nude body was found July 25 some 40 miles east of Vancouver.
The nude bodies of the other victims were found within a 72 mile radius of Vancouver, starting last December.
The boys were bludgeoned to death and the girls died of multiple stab wounds. Advanced decomposition in most of the bodies has hampered pathologists' efforts to determine if the victims were sexually assaulted. Police believe all died the day they disappeared.
Police were also investigating the death of Mary Ellen Jamieson, 17, who was found asphyxiated Aug. 15, 1980 but were unsure is she was a 12th victim.
