LYNNS LEGACY

In the New Glasgow police station, a box of nearly 30-year-old files never seems to get time to collect any amount of dust. It's taken out every so often, contents reviewed and put back. It's one of the department's longest cold cases but no one is ready to close the books on it. Not the police, not a mother who remembers it like yesterday and not a son who will only know his mother from stories and photos. It is the missing person's case of Lynn Adel Oliver...

Jeff
Jeff Oliver doesn't remember his mother. He was only 18 months old when Lynn Oliver disappeared, and now he's nearly a decade older than she'll ever be.
Raised by his grandparents, he always knew that he had another mother out there, somewhere, a woman who vanished without a trace on a hot August day nearly 30 years ago.
There have never been any answers for Jeff, or many of the family members left behind to wonder and worry about what happened to her. And it's left the Stellarton man with a burning desire to know what happened to the mother who, by all accounts, adored him.

Steve
There are times Sgt. Steve Chisholm looks off in the distance, wondering, waiting for that one lead that will make all the difference, that will make everything make sense and solve a mystery that has been eating at him for years.
His wife snaps him back into reality, and he smiles, telling her he's thinking about work.
But he has one specific case on his mind - a woman with long brown hair and a contagious smile that grins out at him from a faded black and white picture, whose face dances behind his eyes more often than he cares to admit. A young mother he's sure died 30 years ago, whose body he's desperate to find.
It's a story that haunts Chisholm, who was only 16 years old when Lynn Oliver went missing. A Pictou County boy, he can still remember the talk at the time about her disappearance. He knew, even then, that he wanted to be a cop, and he paid attention to what he heard.
There's still talk about the case around the New Glasgow Police Department today, where the current chief, Delaney Chisholm, was one of the early investigators assigned to Lynn's disappearance.
Most of the officers at the station today weren't working at the department at the time Lynn went missing, but it's a case that none of them will ever forget. It's one of the longest-running and most memorable cold case files they have. And like Chisholm, they've vowed never to stop looking for Lynn's body, and searching for the answers about what happened to her.
lois
Lynn's mother, Lois, is waiting. Sitting in a rocking chair in her living room, she tries not to dwell on what's missing from her life. She tries to be thankful for what she does have. But as she sits in her living room, surrounded by photographs of her three other children, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren, there's one beloved face that's missing, frozen in time.
For 30 years, she's waited and wondered what happened on the day her daughter disappeared.
She waited in vain that day for her daughter, who would be celebrating her 23rd birthday in just a few weeks time, to walk through the door of their Stellarton home.
She waited for police to begin an investigation. And then she waited for word on what was happening.
She's still waiting and she still doesn't have any answers, but she's never given up hope that eventually, she'll find out what happened.

lynn
It's August 25, 1979. It's a hot day, but Lynn is never without her trademark blue jeans that she wore everywhere, no matter what the weather. "Can I get a ride?" she asks, cradling the phone at Quality Cleaners, where she works. She'd promised to come home for lunch early to be with her baby, so her mother could leave for a family celebration.
On the other end of the phone, Lois is busy, trying to get ready for her niece's wedding later that day, while keeping an eye trained on Lynn's toddler, Jeff.
"Mike ran up the street," Lois told her daughter, referring to her husband, who drove Lynn back and forth to work every day. "As soon he comes back, I'll get him to pick you up."
She never imagined those would be the last words she'd ever speak to Lynn.
They hung up, and co-workers say Lynn decided to walk to their Stellarton home for lunch. She sets out from the drycleaners at 11 a.m., impatient to get home to Jeff.
She was never seen again.
Lynn Adel Oliver was a lot of things to a lot of people: adoring mother; a great friend; a loving daughter; and a good musician.
What she wasn't is the type of person who would walk away from her life and never look back. While she traveled around the area in her younger years, she always called her mother to tell her where she was. And once she had Jeff, she was content to stay close to home.
"When she had that baby, he was her life," says Lois.
There was no trace of Lynn after that day. She never went back to Quality Cleaners to pick up her cheque, her social insurance card has never been accessed, her bank account never touched. By all accounts, she simply vanished that summer morning.

It was just past 1 p.m. when one of Lynn's co-workers called Lois. She'd warned them before that if she ever failed to come back from a lunch break, to wait 30 minutes and call her mother.
The slender girl with the sparkling green eyes was afraid. Lynn had been having problems with a local man who was harassing her and had been threatened repeatedly by him.
Her connection with him was tenuous at best. She'd met him through his mother, who was ill. Lynn's big heart prompted her to volunteer to run errands and help the woman any way she could. Somehow, for the woman's son, that meant Lynn was available to him as well.
She worried any time she set foot outside her Stellarton home, away from the protection of her family, but she refused to allow fear to rule her life.
It may have been Lynn's downfall, that stubborn, independent streak.
Lois believes Lynn set out on foot from Quality Cleaners, walking down the Stellarton Road towards their home.
"She was awful for hitchhiking," recalls Lois, her hands clenching slightly. "But I know she didn't get in that car on her own that day. She was nervous. He'd done so much already. He scared her. Someone helped him get her in the car that day."
Lois believes the man who had frightened her daughter so badly had grabbed her. She believes he murdered her that day, and wonders if her daughter's body is sitting somewhere in the old landfill in Priestville.
jeff
Not having a grave where he can visit his mother's body eats away at Jeff.
"That's the worst part," he says. "I don't even have a cemetery where I can go to. There's nothing I can think of doing on the anniversary of the day she went missing to pay my respects."
A father now himself, he's close to telling his oldest son the truth about his grandmother. He learned the truth too young, he says, and it's haunted him all his life, creating what he calls an "attitude problem" and affecting his schooling when he was younger. He wants better for his own children.
"I wrestle with this, knowing she's out there, every day," he admits.
Growing up, Jeff always knew he was loved by the grandparents he called mom and dad. But the knowledge that his real mother is somewhere out there has always haunted him.
"You can't know what it feels like," he says. "I feel the emptiness. I miss her. It's hard to explain how you can care about someone so much who you don't even remember. But I do. She's my mom."
He has a picture of his mom, holding him as a baby. It's something Jeff treasures, and it's one of the few pictures he has of Lynn. The rest are at Lois' home. She needs them more than he does, he figures.
Lynn's disappearance hasn't just screwed up his life. It's affected everyone who knew her.
"My life has been shattered," he admits candidly. "My mother's brothers and sister, their lives have been shattered. My grandparents? Their lives are just shattered too."
lois
As soon as Lois hung up with Lynn's co-worker, she shouted for her husband Mike, sending him up the road to look for her daughter, as her heart clenched with fear. When he returned empty-handed, her next call was to the police. All thoughts of her niece's wedding flew from her head.
But police didn't take Lois' words seriously right away, she says, treating it as a simple missing persons case. A New Glasgow man had taken off around the same time, and police originally assumed that Lynn had run off for a fling with him.
Lois knew better. She and her family began looking for Lynn, but there wasn't much they could do. Not until the police took it seriously, anyway.
Days went by, Lynn's Sept. 10th birthday passed. Weeks turned into months, and four months after her disappearance, Lois gave up hope that her daughter was still alive. It was Christmas Day.
"I knew she'd never let Christmas go by and not see that baby," Lois said. "She loved Jeff with all her heart. That's when I knew, when she didn't come back that first Christmas. I suppose, for a while, I kept hoping. But then I knew."
Eventually, police knew, too, that Lynn wasn't coming back. They interviewed friends, co-workers and acquaintances of the missing woman, following leads across Canada in an attempt to discover her whereabouts.
By then, however, the trail was already cold. It would remain cold for the next 30 years.
steve
Over the years, police have kept going back to a banker's box filled with files. The early ones are handwritten in the neat penmanship of the early investigators, like Delaney Chisholm. Later files have audio recordings and CDs filled with information they've gathered over the past few years as they've systematically tracked down the original witnesses from as far away as Australia to re-interview them, looking for any new lead.
"We've tried everything," says Chisholm, who took over the major crime unit three years ago and has since made it his mission to find the answers for Lynn's family.
There's no body and no proof that foul play occurred, but Chisholm truly believes she's dead. Officially, though, the case is still classed as a missing persons case, and the police will follow up on each and every lead they come across. He's hoping a bit of publicity on the case will jog someone's memory and bring forth some new information.
"This case isn't closed," he said. "It won't be closed until we know what happened."

lois
Seeing Lynn alive, Lois believes, is a dream that won't happen in this lifetime. A Christian woman with strong beliefs, Lois fears those answers won't come until she goes to 'meet her maker.'
The years are passing, she says, and many people who might know the truth about what happened to Lynn have since died themselves. Lynn's step-father, Mike, died a few years ago without ever knowing what happened to her.
But Lois has faith that whomever may have hurt Lynn will also face the consequences one day, whether it happens on earth or in heaven.
jeff
That's not good enough for Jeff. He's looking for answers, and he wants them now - not before the man they believe killed his mother dies.
"I don't want him to just die," he says. "I want him to go to jail; be punished for what he did. It's unbelievable to me, that he's walking around free and she's gone."
Jeff is angry, furious that there are still no answers for him after 30 years. He firmly believes that people in the county know what happened - he's even tried digging for answers himself - and he's begging anyone who might know anything at all to come forward.
"I've always held out hope that someone's going to say something," he says. "I just want to know where she's at. I want to know where her bones are. I want to bury her, the way decent people should. I just want to know."
steve
The box containing the files on Lynn's disappearance never gets dusty. Every few days, Chisholm takes it out, leafs through it, trying to get a new idea, looking for something he may have missed. It sits in the cabinet at the New Glasgow Police Station next to the active cases, and every time the officers in the major crimes division turn on their computers, a reminder notice pops up. It's marked as overdue - just like solving this case is overdue.
Lynn's case has been featured in a national police magazine and is on file with police departments across the country. Every chance Chisholm gets, he discusses it with other officers, looking for any different angle, taking every off-the-wall suggestion to heart.
Still, even at the time of the disappearance, the majority of tips and information came from within the county.
"I feel that somebody out there, somewhere, knows something that could help us," Chisholm said. "I want to at last close this chapter for her son and her mom. I can't imagine anything worse than not knowing where your mom or child is."