A few weeks ago, as he lay dying of lung cancer in an Edmonton hospital, serial sex offender Karl Toft told a retired police detective that he still worried about offending again.
It was a characteristically open statement from a man once labelled as the most prolific sex offender in Canadian history, said former police officer Wil Tonowski — and it spoke to how hard Toft worked every day to keep his incurable impulses in check.
"In a way, he was sort of the ideal offender that was in our program," said Tonowski, who started having regular meetings with Toft as part of his job, but continued having breakfast or coffee with him long after his 2007 retirement from the Edmonton Police Service.
"He's earned some respect from me, certainly not as a sex offender, but for … how hard he worked to try and not have another victim. He talked a good game but, to be frank with you, I have no doubt in my mind that he lived up to it as well."
Toft served 13 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 1992 to 34 charges related to the abuse of boys at a reform school near Fredericton. He later admitted to assaulting hundreds of boys over a 35-year period. He died Saturday morning from lung cancer at age 81.
Toft moved to Edmonton after his release from prison and remained in the city after he was allowed to move out of the halfway house in 2005.
Police wanted to profile Toft
Speaking to CBC News on Sunday, Tonowski recalled that Toft and his lawyer were reluctant to take part in the regular meetings proposed by Edmonton police, who wanted to build a face-to-face relationship with Toft so they could profile him and continue to assess his risk levels.
"My goal was to sell him into our program, and I was able to do that very quickly by letting him know that we were not going to try and set up him to fail, that the idea was to help him to continue to not reoffend. And he bought into that relatively quickly," said Tonowski.
In early years after his 2005 release from the Edmonton halfway house, police kept a close eye on him even though Corrections Canada had deemed him to be a medium to low risk.
"With those kind of numbers of victims," Tonowski said, trailing off. "He admitted 363 victims, minimum. He was convicted of only 34 but there was many, many other ones that he had. And he was happy to talk about those on a regular basis."
But in regular meetings and surveillance, police discovered that Toft had learned from sexual offender programs he'd taken in prison and, more importantly, he was determined to do everything he could to avoid reoffending.
"He was constantly on top of his own risk factors, his crime cycle. … He kept a very detailed journal of where he went. He would write down the mileage on his vehicle. He was very conscious of people being aware of who he was," Tonowski said.
"It became a lifestyle with him, to not reoffend."
Toft learned — and so did police
And as much as Toft may have learned from his regular meetings with police, he taught them even more.
Toft would openly talk about what makes sex offenders tick, physical traits they might exhibit when they're going off the rails, or how to design release conditions to be more specific and effective, Tonowski said.
"And we learned. We paid attention to him," he said. "Some of these things we knew, but he expanded on them. He expanded our knowledge."
Right up until his final days, Toft knew that his attraction to pre-pubescent boys was something he would never be able to cure. "He was attracted to those children and we couldn't change this sexual orientation or how he thought," Tonowski said.
"But we could teach him about victim empathy, we could teach him about his crime cycle, his risk factors and he bought into the program."
And if there is any kind of happy ending to this story, Tonowski said it's that Toft's life after prison was proof that Canada's sex offender program, along with associated supports in the community, can be successful.
"If you don't want to go to jail again, if you don't want to hurt another child, pay attention to the support system that is around you," Tonowski said. "People will help you, including the police. And this is what Karl did. He was a living example of that."