TORONTO -

1959

June 9: 12-year-old Lynne Harper goes missing after taking a walk near the Lake Huron community of Clinton, Ont.

June 11: Harper's body is found on a farm and evidence suggests she had been raped and strangled. Steven Truscott, 14, a classmate, was the last person seen with the victim.

June 12: Truscott admits to police he was with Harper, but saw her get into a car as he rode away on a bike. Despite his claim, Truscott is arrested and charged with her murder the following day.

Dec. 8: After a 15-day trial, a jury finds Truscott guilty of the murder and sentences him to death by hanging.

1960

The Conservative government under then prime minister John Diefenbaker commutes Truscott's sentence to life in prison.

1966

Journalist Isabel LeBourdais publishes a book called "The Trial of Steven Truscott'' which raises questions about his case. It prompts the Supreme Court to re-examine the issue, but the justices vote 8-1 against giving Truscott a new trial.

1969

Ten years into his life sentence, Truscott is released from jail, but disappears into obscurity in Guelph, Ont. He marries and has three children, and remains out of the public eye for the next 20 years.

1997

Truscott agrees to the same type of DNA testing that exonerated Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard of murder. But crucial evidence that may have helped clear him had been destroyed.

James Lockyer agrees to represent Truscott -- the same lawyer who helped overturn the wrongful conviction of Morin for the death of Christine Jessop in 1984.

2000

Truscott emerges from hiding and says he will do everything in his power to clear his name.

2001

Lawyers for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted file an appeal to have Truscott's case reopened.

2002

Retired Quebec Justice Fred Kaufman is appointed by the federal government to review the case.

2004

Kaufman's report goes to the justice minister. But its conclusions aren't made public. Then federal justice minister Irwin Cotler sends the case to the Ontario Court of Appeal to consider if new evidence would have changed the outcome of the original trial.

2005

The Kaufman report is made public and it suggests there was a miscarriage of justice but there is not enough evidence to exonerate Truscott.

2006

After more than four decades, the body of Lynne Harper is exhumed. But no useable DNA is found on her remains. She is reburied four days later. Soon afterward, the Ontario Court of Appeal starts hearings in the case.

2007

August 28: The court acquits Truscott, calling his murder conviction a "miscarriage of justice.''