Dead Man Under a Pool Table

We journalists have different beats: politics, health care, education, Native issues, environment, technology. You name it. Whatever turns people’s cranks, there are news bureaus and reporting beats to help keep folk “informed and entertained.”

For more than 25 years, my beat was federal prisons, provincial jails and remand centres. It was in these ‘penal institutions’ where I chased down stories. Some turned out to be major stories; more on that later in this post.

I’m often asked what life in prison was like and what the cons and the guards were like. Most people haven’t been to a jail or prison, even as visitors. They’re curious. They want to know if being incarcerated is anything like in the movies. The short answer is yes — sometimes. It goes without saying there’s tension, tragedy and sadness in prisons. But there’s also humour, some thoughtful moments … and yes, success stories too. It’s not all negative.

I very much enjoyed the prison beat. That sounds strange, I know, but I loved true crime, I enjoyed the challenge of landing a big interview … and of course, it was always satisfying to nail a scoop. The bigger the scoop the bigger the smile.

Some might find my language in this post offensive. I make no apologies. Hell, it was part and parcel of covering crime. When I reported from the Alberta Legislature [boring], City Hall [really boring] or the Courthouse [cool], I wore a suit and tie and used ‘appropriate’ language. Mostly. However, in prison — in the company of offenders who had lengthy criminal records but were generally short on manners — I donned a sweater and blue jeans and used rougher language. It was my job to get through to these people, and so that was the approach I used.

I learned much while ‘in prison,’ for which I am grateful. Some of my teachers did not have criminal records — but most did. 

Featured in this post are mini-stories about:

• Tom Barrett, Gary Poignant, Ed Mason, Larry Donovan, John Grant, Kathy Little, Gord MacAlpine, Judy Fantham, Stuart Bayens, Mark Lewis [media]
• Landon Karas [prisoner]
• John Schimmens [prisoner]
• Willy Blake [prisoner]
• Ricky Luo [prisoner]
• David Rose [prisoner]
• Roy Sobotiak [prisoner]
• Al Tessier [corrections officer]
• Rick Dyhm [corrections officer]
• Shawn Murray [prisoner]
• Earle Hastings [Canadian Senator]
• Colin Thatcher [prisoner]
• Steve Ford [prisoner]
• Jerry Crews [prisoner]
• Dean Cooper [prisoner]
• Gord Lussier [prisoner]
• David Milgaard [prisoner]
• Damon Horne [prisoner]
• Wiebo Ludwig [prisoner]
• Lou the Biker [prisoner]
• The Shrink [should be a prisoner]
• James Dean ‘Dino’ Agecoutay [prisoner]
• Richard ‘Ricky’ Ambrose [prisoner]
• Wilson Nepoose [prisoner]

HOW IT ALL STARTED

When I got into journalism, in the late 1970s, it was never my goal to become a “criminal-justice” reporter. I had a strong interest in foreign development — foreign aid, for the less politically correct — and so I did a number of stories on that topic. I also traveled to the ‘Third World’ and saw firsthand the wretched living conditions for so many on this crazy planet of ours. [See the post Doctor Helen, the story of a medical missionary who built a hospital on the side of a mountain in Nepal.]

After I joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC] in the early 1980s, the plight of Canada’s Indians got my attention. I then did stories on Native issues and because many of them ended up on our National News, they were heard by Canadians “from coast to coast.”

But those stories sometimes drew heat, particularly when I focused on the rights of Indian bands that hadn’t signed treaties with the Federal Government — which, coincidentally, controlled funding for my employer, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Understandably, CBC management was also riled up — as were some of my colleagues in the newsroom. I get that; people have mortgages and car payments. See the post, An Indian Protest: 1988.

The stories on Natives also got the attention of Canada’s spy agencies, particularly its biggest — the one that reads people’s emails and monitors their phone calls without warrants — the Communication Security Establishment [CSE], the Canadian version of NSA in the United States. When a former CSE agent told me this, I was stunned. “A warrant?” he asked incredulously, “are you kidding me?” Nearly all our searches were done without warrants.” “Hey,” he continued, with a laugh, “the CSE has files on one in four Canadians.” Nice to know someone’s paying attention, and that our tax money isn’t being wasted. [You read right: one in four.]

All things considered, I figured it was time for another change. A new challenge and all that.

REPORTERS WHO LEAVE THEIR MARK

In the late 1980s, I decided to focus on a beat that was pretty much “owned” by Edmonton’s two dailies, the Sun and the Journal. The newspapers often had scoops from the Edmonton Institution — the Max as we knew it — located at the very northeast corner of the city. The papers got exclusive stories because their crime reporters [Tom Barrett of the Journal and Gary Poignant of the Sun come to mind] took the time to cultivate contacts.

Speaking of contacts, reporter Ed Mason of CHQT Radio and CHED Radio in Edmonton cultivated his police sources and probably landed more exclusive, kick-ass crime stories than any print, radio and TV journalist in the country, not that anyone keeps such stats. But that’s my read. Put it this way, radio stations in Edmonton faithfully monitored Mason’s reports to see if they’d been scooped yet again. The man worked his police contacts like Russian David Oistrakh worked his violin.

I would do the same. My plan was to ‘connect’ with as many people as I could and develop working relationships with prisoners, guards, prison management and prison pastors. Taking a cue from the successful reporters, I would cultivate my contacts by phoning them from time to time, seeing how they were doing, finding out what was new in their lives … and if there was anything happening at the prison people should know about.

Having a business card is all well and good, but it’s better if the person whose wallet has found a home for your card knows you have a sincere interest in them.

Unfortunately, the media has far too many ‘users.’ They are to our business what VD is to sex.

BUSINESS CARDS AND SCOOPS

One of my stories involved a behind-the-scenes account of a 1991 hostage-taking at a penitentiary in Saskatchewan where shotgun blasts from a guard sent two prisoners to the Promised Land. The exclusive information landed CBC Radio Edmonton its first major reporting award for investigative journalism. More on that coming up.

While I was at the prisons, I passed out my business card to convicts, guards and prison officials, going through my allotment of cards in record time. When I ordered a new batch, our supply clerk called the newsroom to double-check something … “Do you really want your home phone number on your business card?,” she asked. I sure did. Most reporters prefer not to publicize their home numbers, but I wanted my dealings with those I interviewed to be as transparent as possible. I really didn’t feel there was that much of a risk by putting a home number on a business card. Still don’t. Nothing untoward ever happened to me outside those prison walls because of stories I did.

Both CBC Radio and 630-CHED [which I would join in 1996] would broadcast more than their share of scoops from the prisons, jails and remand centres. It’s great to be first with a story. To use a baseball analogy, landing a scoop is like hitting a home run or, better yet, a grand slam. Rewriting a government news release, on the other hand, is like getting on base with a walk. Pay cheque journalism.

TWO MYTHS

Before I go any further, let’s get some things out of the way: it’s widely believed that all prisoners claim they’re innocent. Sorry. Not true. It’s my experience that most cons will readily admit to their crimes. They know darn well why they’re behind bars, and they’ll say so. What they’re often tight-lipped about, however, are details of those felonies, especially if it’s a homicide or if the victim is a child. But if one really gets to know them, they may reveal some nasty stuff they got away with. That includes murder.

Toward the end of my reporting career, a con serving time for murder shared that he’d actually killed another man but got away with it. I said, “You’re lucky I’m not your parole officer.” I asked when this had happened. “A long time ago,” he said, ducking the question. And the victim’s name? “None of your fucking business.” The inmate wasn’t proud about killing a man, but he seemed somewhat pleased that police never found out he did it. I never followed up on that murder, real or otherwise. At that point, I had my fill of homicides anyway. My head could only take so much.

It’s good protocol to let prisoners broach the subject of why they’re behind bars. Here’s a tip to journalism students: If you’re in the joint trolling for stories, don’t walk up to an inmate and ask what they’re in for. Let them bring it up. They’re expecting you to pop The Question. Surprise them. Don’t.

That’s not to say that inmates feel police played fair, that the judge was fair — or that the news media didn’t look for dirt and sensationalize their crimes. That’s a whole different matter. Cons usually don’t have a lot of time for reporters. We’ve made them “look bad,” even if they are more than deserving of negative coverage.

Another myth is that everyone in the joint deserves to be there. Not true. There have been a number of wrongful convictions, and there will be more. Judicial systems are flawed. The result is that thousands of innocent people are behind bars. Canada alone has about two dozen [proven] wrongful murder convictions. Isn’t that incredible? Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that is so wrong. God only knows how many other wrongful conviction cases are waiting to be exposed. I shudder to think of the number of people around the world who are in jail and shouldn’t be.

The government in power will go out of its way to make it difficult for wrongful convictions to come to light. That is no accident. The ‘status quo’ wants the public to believe the criminal justice system is always on the up and up. It isn’t.

While the system isn’t a complete sham, it’s far from perfect. The late Bob Sachs, an Edmonton criminal defence lawyer, once told me he figured the wrongful conviction rate in Canada was as high as 20 percent. Other lawyers have said it’s at least 10 percent. God only knows.

JOHN SCHIMMENS – Prisoner

The head of the Inmates Committee at the Edmonton Institution in the 1980s and 90s, John Schimmens, had influence and power. He was top dog. Word was, he could order cons to be killed or he could stop a hit.

Schimmens was a great contact. The man was about a year older than me [I was born in 1949]. With his confident demeanour and slicked-back hair, he reminded me of Arthur Fonzarelli, ‘The Fonze’, a fictional character played by Henry Winkler in Happy Days, the 1974-1984 TV sitcom.

Schimmens was doing time for murder, 2nd degree. The long-time criminal had taken a baseball bat to the head of Renne Hammond of Calgary, batted 1.000 and killed him — over a drug debt. For that, he got about ten years. I once asked Schimmens, “How much money did this guy owe?” “$100.00,” he replied. “God,” I said, “for a lousy hundred bucks you blew away ten years of your life??” You could talk to Schimmens that way and — usually — he wouldn’t get upset.

I can’t recall what our meeting was about, but one day John Schimmens and I were alone in a conference room at the Max. We sat at a small table, just he and I, alongside a bullet-proof glass window that looked into an office where two corrections officers were meeting. One guard was out of our line of sight. The other had his back to us; he sat on a chair, sipping coffee from a white styrofoam cup.

Schimmens was trying to get his point across but I kept cutting him off. I’m not sure why I was doing that. But I cut him off one too many times and Schimmens suddenly lost it! He grabbed me by the collar and began twisting hard. And I mean hard. I couldn’t breathe. And yes, I finally stopped talking. Through clenched teeth and a shaking fist, Schimmens made this gentle request: “Will you shut the fuck up!?’ At that point, I reached over and grabbed his collar and did the same. Schimmens then released his grip, and so did I. “Fuck,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d grab me …”

Still sipping coffee, the guard, a mere metre away from us, was completely oblivious to the violent encounter. I didn’t report Schimmens for his outburst; that’s not my style. Besides, I had more to gain by keeping my mouth shut [you can take that either way], because the man was a valuable contact. And of course, I was in the wrong. I shouldn’t have been interrupting.

Some of Schimmen’s anger was reserved for prison administration. Most of the cons at the Max were of course Canadian, but there was one from Columbia, South America. He was a big-time drug dealer who was busted for smuggling cocaine. The dope was on an aircraft that crashed in New Brunswick. The smuggler ended up at the Max in Edmonton where he developed a quiet following of sorts from other cons — and it was all because he’d showed them pictures of his mansion in Columbia. You can imagine. The cons were bedazzled at the big money that could be made from drug-trafficking.

One con who wasn’t impressed was John Schimmens. He felt the Edmonton Institution should not have let the photos in because the prisoners were getting the message that crime not only pays, but pays very well.

Another side to prison life that the public rarely saw — or perhaps didn’t want to see — was that convicts like John Schimmens organized fund-raisers for a number of charities.

Schimmens also helped organize events to lift the spirits of his fellow prisoners, whether it be a softball game between the cons and my CBC Radio team … or a boxing match with trained boxers from the outside. Clearly, this “multi-dimensional” individual wasn’t all bad.

I attended as many ‘socials’ at the Max as I could. Members of the public were allowed in [well, those without criminal records] and inmates were generally in a better mood. Their spirits had been given a boost. Christmas was an especially good time for that.

The Native prisoners always had big socials [known as powwows] with plenty of food, music and speeches. I was at one of their events. It was either late summer or early fall and I was sitting on the boards of a hockey rink in the huge exercise yard [the boards remained up all year round] and making notes about what an elder had said about the benefits of Native spirituality, healing and all that. Suddenly, a young Native prisoner — low to mid-20s I reckon — uninvited, plunked himself down beside me. He opened up by telling me his name. The name rang a bell, but not loud enough. “Fill me in,” I said. The young fellow explained that he’d killed a man at a party in a village in northeastern Alberta. “I remember now,” I told him, “seems to me you were either drinking or on dope, right?” “Drunk,” he clarified.

Given the uplifting mood of the day, I figured it was a good time to ask the man if he had reflected about his crime, or his victim. Apparently not. “That was one cocksucker,” he said. “When I get out,” he continued, “I’m going to piss all over his fucking grave.” The con then stood up, shook my hand and ran off to grab some grub. I don’t know what ever became of the guy; perhaps he’s now an investment banker on Wall Street … or a bureaucrat with Indian and Northern Affairs.

WILLY BLAKE – Prisoner

Not all prisoners were like the man who wanted to piss on his victim’s grave. Certainly not Willy Blake. Blake, born in 1951 near Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territories, got on the wrong side of the law after he ran away from a residential school. He went to jail in 1973 and got out of prison twenty years later.

The former Chief of the Native Brotherhood [Edmonton Institution] was respected by staff and inmates alike for his positive attitude, and for having turned his life around while in the joint.

Blake never stopped preaching about the need for First Nation people to get back to their roots — and to stay away from drugs and booze.

One time, I interviewed Blake and another con at the Max … but in my rush to meet a deadline, I mistakenly mixed up their offences and the item went to air with incorrect information. Hey, excrement happens. Within minutes, my phone rang. It was Blake’s wife — and she was not happy. “You said my husband was a bank robber,” she blurted, “he’s NOT! Willy would NEVER rob a bank!”

I had defamed a murderer. That’s right. Blake was serving time for killing a prisoner at Stony Mountain Penitentiary near Winnipeg, Manitoba. The news item was corrected and rebroadcast — and when that happened, the Universe slipped back into alignment.

A few years ago I got a surprise phone message from Blake. I returned the call and we had a good chat, the first in about 20 years. The man was still sober, he’d gone straight as he vowed he would and was living near Cardiff, a small community about half an hour’s drive northwest of Edmonton.

Blake called because he was upset that funding had been cut for Native rehab programs in the joint.

One of Willy Blake’s prized possessions was a letter he received from Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, inviting him to a lunch at a fancy hotel in Edmonton. The letter was addressed to “Chief William Blake’ at the Edmonton Institution. At the time, Blake was serving a life-sentence for murder and, of course, couldn’t attend the dinner. Blake showed the invite to inmate Colin Thatcher, the former Saskatchewan cabinet minister convicted of killing his ex-wife. Thatcher read the letter, handed it back to Blake and said, “No wonder the country is in such a mess.”

Mulroney’s letter “disappeared” after Blake, going along with the joke, filed a request for an escorted leave to meet the PM.

Blake eventually got parole. He was released in 1993 — with a lot of negative publicity and hype — which I found strange. The newspapers made a big deal of a convicted killer being back in the community. Duh. Happens all the time, folks.

Blake returned to the Edmonton Institution, but he was not wearing handcuffs … nor a prisoner’s uniform. The man was working. Blake was hauling wood for a Native sweat lodge in the joint. He’d already taken several loads to the prison before one of the guards took a second look and said, “Hey, aren’t you Willy Blake?” “Yes.” “What are you doing here?” “I’m dropping off wood for the sweat lodge.”

The guard immediately notified management. As a precaution, the firewood Blake was delivering never made it to the sweat lodge. Fearing the wood might contain hidden contraband such as drugs or weapons, it was set alight a safe distance from the prison fence.

INMATE PROTOCOL

John Schimmens once complained about a remark I’d made [in frustration and anger] to a meeting of lifers, prisoners serving life sentences, usually for murder. A con convicted in the shooting death of a police officer had taken a cheap shot at the Edmonton Sun. I wasn’t in the best of moods that day and so I fired back, “Is there anyone who’s in here for a brave act?” Schimmens advice was: “Don’t talk to them that way, Byron. You’re destroying what little pride they have.”

It may have been a coincidence, maybe it wasn’t … and it may have been an accident, but I doubt it. It happened soon after, in an area of the Max not covered by security cameras. One evening, I was hit hard by a con [whom I did not know] who was leaving the industrial area with a group of other prisoners. It was a direct shoulder-on-shoulder hit. I saw him coming and I could tell by the look on his face he was going to ram me. I braced myself and leaned into him. We hit hard. I kept my balance, as did he. But the bastard got me good; my left shoulder ached for days.

Word got around because I was soon called up to the administration area where the head of security asked me to take a seat in his office. Flipping open a file folder, he said, “This incident near the shops … can you tell me about it?” I said, “I have nothing to say. It’s over and done with.” The officer closed his file and said, “Very well. Thank you for your time.” End of meeting.

I probably could have identified the “offender” but I figured I’d get more mileage by not making an issue out of it. Schimmens found out about the meeting in the office. “I heard you didn’t rat him out,” he said.

Did this change my opinion of guys in the joint? No, it didn’t. I still believe that few are in there because of acts of courage.

Another time, Schimmens pulled me aside and offered this tip: “Do not trust these guys. 98 percent are ‘pieces of shit.’ Be careful with anything they tell you.” I tried to lighten things up with a little humour. “So much for the guards, John, what about the cons?” in that respect, the head of the Inmates Committee was on the same page as most guards, police, parole officers and members of the public.

I once interviewed a convicted rapist at the Max who had information on the real killer of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller, the young woman everyone thought teenager and drifter David Milgaard had raped and murdered in 1969. John [can’t recall his last name], said he’d spoken with fellow prisoner and rapist Larry Fisher, and that Fisher had confided that it was he who took Miller’s life — not Milgaard. At the time, Milgaard was serving time at a pen just north of Winnipeg. I’d been asked to look at his file at the request of [the late] CBC Radio producer Bill Cameron in Saskatoon. More on Milgaard later.

When John Schimmens found out I’d met with a “skinner,” he pulled me aside and said, “Don’t expect much cooperation from us [meaning cons who weren’t in for sexual offences] if you continue to talk to rapists and “baby killers.” The boys sure had a hate-on for sexual offenders. “You have a choice,” he said, “them or us.”

It was easy to pick out the ‘skinners.’ [See? Schimmens even got me using the term.] The sexual offenders had what I would call out-going personalities, not unlike those slick used-car salesmen with greasy smiles. “Hey there, good buddy, how ya doing?” … and all that fake jiving. I will say one thing about the men and women who take advantage of children, they’re the lowest of the low. But I still wanted to interview them. In the end, nothing changed. I met with all prisoners, skinners included.

SCHIMMENS MAKES PAROLE

John Schimmens was eventually given parole — at least twice — but for some reason he ended up back in the slammer. His supporters claim it was because of lame excuses. The first time Schimmens made parole, in the late 90s, I happened to come across him in downtown Edmonton. He was a passenger in a taxi and I was in my car, about to pull out into traffic. Traffic was at a crawl so Schimmens rolled down his window and yelled, “How the hell are you, Christopher?” He told the cabbie to pull over and while the meter ticked away, we had a brief chat.

Schimmens ended up with a nice room on the bottom floor of a halfway house in the downtown area, immediately north of MacEwan University. He’d saved his money earned from prison jobs, plus a few thousand dollars from an injury settlement when his hand was mangled by a closing cell door. The former top honcho at the Max was now a free man. And like all men and women when they’re released from prison, he was seriously pumped. Schimmens beamed and showed me more than a dozen paintings he hoped to sell at a profit. He was not only free but was going to show the world what he could accomplish. He vowed not to slip up the way some paroled cons had.

Before we left the halfway house, Schimmens nodded in the direction of a female guard sitting on a couch with a male parolee. The two were necking. “See that broad?” he said, lifting his eyes, “she’s banging that guy.”

We left by a side door. It’s here where Schimmens stopped and pointed to a dumpy, three-story walkup apartment building next door. “They sell a LOT of dope in there,” he said, resting his arms on a mesh fence, “… ironic, isn’t it? … a halfway house right beside a fucking crack house.”

A police source confirmed Schimmen’s intel and I did a story for 630-CHED Radio, giving the location of the suspected crack house. Just minutes after the item aired on one of our morning casts, News Director Bob Layton got a phone call from City Police. Two years of their work [surveillance on the crack house] had just gone down the drain. Layton, a huge police supporter, was clearly disappointed.

It never took Schimmens long to sniff out life’s ironies. “Remember old so-and-so,” he said, “the medicine man who came to the Max?” “Yup, sure do.” “Well, I saw him downtown,” he went on, “and shit, the guy was pissed out of his head — staggering all over the street!” Schimmens laughed, slapped his knee and said, “Crazy Indians, eh?” [Note to American visitors to this site, ‘eh’ is Canadian for ‘huh.’]

I asked, “Was he the same joker who got caught trying to smuggle pot hidden in a sacred ‘medicine bundle’?” [the drugs were detected by a dog at the front gate]. The question prompted Schimmens to laugh even more. “Nope,” he said, “that was a different goof.” ‘Goof’ is one of the most disrespectful terms one can use in the joint.

I did a news item on the Indian “medicine men” who’d been busted at the main gate with pot in their medicine bundle. As far as I knew, no one else touched that story.

Where is John Schimmens today? He’s free. And I mean free. In March 2014, the long-time prisoner left the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, covered in a white sheet and in the back of a van from the Medical Examiner’s Office. Schimmens was 65. Prison officials didn’t say what caused his death. A relative said he died from cancer of the liver.

In any case, John Schimmens spent his final days in the Palliative Care Unit. Damn. Wish I’d known that. I would’ve made the trip to Saskatoon to visit him. I would have told Schimmens that while I didn’t like it that he killed someone, or broke the law, I admired him for helping others, me included.

DEATH SENTENCE FOR PRISONER LUO

Ricky Luo [pronounced: ‘loo’], a refugee from Vietnam, was a hood wannabe. He was behind bars because he knifed a young man to death [in front of the victim’s girlfriend] in a traffic rage incident at the southern edge of the High Level Bridge in Edmonton. Luo was a short, slightly-built man with jet black hair who always seemed to be in the company of a bigger con. I can’t recall him ever smiling, only smirking.

Word is, Luo was a drug dealer who refused to extend credit to two cons who wanted to buy some dope. Luo’s life came to an end in B Unit, in a room where the prisoners played pool. A con shoved a sock down Luo’s throat, strangled him and tossed his body under the pool table. All 24 prisoners in B Unit … wait, make that 23 … went down to check out Luo’s body.

When guards worked out why Luo hadn’t returned to his cell, the alarms went off. I was on the phone at the time with cop-killer Jerry Cruise. Cruise was talking about how he was having a difficult time getting clearance to allow his girlfriend in for their wedding and suddenly, all hell broke loose. “Gotta go!” Cruise shouted over the noise, “something’s happened here …” Click.

The entire Edmonton Institution — not just B Unit — went on lockdown for several days. A lockdown is standard procedure whenever there’s a death at the joint. And it’s not because inmates are in mourning. The lockdown serves two purposes: guards search for weapons and other contraband … and the inmates are given a message: behave or you’re locked in your ‘house’ [cell] 23 hours a day. Everyone is punished, even those who haven’t done wrong.

If some miracle had occurred and Luo was brought back to life, the cons may have killed him again because they were so pissed at the lockdown.

Luo’s killing is still officially unsolved.

I only had one encounter with the ‘suspect.’ It wasn’t pleasant, but it was insightful. David Rose came up to me at the tail end of a meeting of Native prisoners. He was in a room with about a dozen Indians. I said, “What are you doing here? You’re white.” Rose’s explanation was that he was interested in Native spirituality. Whatever.

Rose then asked, “Do you know who I am?.” I took a good look at him and said, “Yeah, you’re the guy who blew away that cabbie in the west end.” [the taxi driver was shot to death over a drug debt, his body discovered by some kids going to school in the morning] Rose immediately lost it and shouted in my face, “Is that ALL you know me for?” Well, at this point I had to think. I couldn’t say, “Hey, that was your signature killing …” Thank goodness I knew a bit more about the gentleman. “No,” I said, “as a matter of fact, you’re a terrific hair stylist.” Rose gave haircuts at the joint, and yes, he was very good at that. The con then smiled and said, “Why, thank you.” We shook hands. Never saw him again.

Native spirituality, my ass. That joker should have been in an anger-management class.

It pays to do your research. What I really wanted to ask was why he would shoot a man in the head, of all places — not only killing him — but ruining his hair. To my way of thinking — maybe I’m wrong — no true hair stylist shoots somebody in the head.

According to the Vancouver-based website prisonjustice.ca, nearly 200 inmates die in Canadian prisoners every year. I suspect few cross over because of old age.

ROY SOBOTIAK – Prisoner

I once asked John Schimmens if he could “use his influence” to stop a purported contract on Roy Sobotiak, the Edmonton man who went down for the February 1987 murder of his former babysitter, 34-year-old Susie Kaminsky.

Sobotiak’s trial had drawn a lot of media attention. Here’s why: the story goes that he and Kaminsky, a single mom, were making out when Sobotiak decided to get kinky, but she wanted no part of it. It’s alleged that Kaminsky was then strangled, dismembered in a bathtub, her body parts stuffed in garbage bags and tossed in a dumpster. Nasty stuff. Sounds like something drug lords in Mexico would do.

Edmonton Police suspected Sobotiak right off the bat. The detective who first questioned him at his apartment downtown said the man was pumped. “They’re like that when they kill someone,” he noted, puffing his chest out to make his point.

More than two years later, Sobotiak was busted in a sting-like police operation at the Chateau Louis Hotel, near the Municipal Airport in north-central Edmonton. An undercover cop gained Sobotiak’s confidence, plied him with booze … and while the suspect was totally pissed [at one point he staggered to the bathroom to have a leak], he confessed to taking Kaminsky’s life. He also provided the undercover cop with all the gruesome details, including how hard he worked to cut off his lover’s legs.

The confession was secretly recorded by a video camera hidden in an air-vent in the ceiling of a room at the Chateau Louis while detectives in the room next door watched everything on monitors.

Sobotiak later said he made up the whole story to impress his “friend,” in the hope he could peddle drugs and make some coin.

Susie Kaminsky had disappeared and her remains were never found. A detective told me they went to the city dump to look for body parts, but couldn’t find anything because the place was so big. “Have you ever been out to the dump?” he asked. He described searching for evidence there as “trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

After a jury pinned a second-degree murder conviction on Sobotiak, the man was transferred from the Edmonton Remand Centre to the Edmonton Institution. Sobotiak was detained in ‘F’ Unit, where new arrivals quietly end up. Not many knew the notorious killer was at the Max. But word got out just the same. Prisons are terrible places for secrets.

Sobotiak also phoned to say he was at the Max, and so I arranged to get in to talk with him. I’d met him previously at the Remand Centre — and yes, he also had my business card. Sobotiak was a bit worried. Someone told him there was a price on head. But he didn’t know who had put up the money, how much cash was involved … or who might knock him off. All he knew was that his days were numbered. Someone had tipped him off about it, Sobotiak said, and he felt it was real.

I was suspicious about the ‘contract.’ There is so much BS and bravado in prison; it’s as bad as when the Alberta Legislature is in full swing. To help shed some light on the matter, I met privately with John Schimmens. Schimmens confirmed that a relative of Kaminsky had put up some money [I won’t disclose the figure], and that two guys in the joint — gentlemen Susie had known, put it that way — were eager to cash in.

I asked Schimmens if the killing could be stopped. He immediately flew into a rage. “This is none of your fucking business!” he shouted, “you can’t come in here and tell us what to do! What concern is it of yours if Sobotiak lives or dies? …” I tried to defuse the situation with a little humour. “John,” I explained softly, “I’m trying to do a story on Sobotiak. If he croaks, all my hard work goes right down the drain …”

Then something remarkable happened. Schimmens smiled and said, “Can you get me on As It Happens?” [The respected CBC national current-affairs radio program based in Toronto.] I asked what he had in mind. “If you can get me on As It Happens,” he promised, “Sobotiak won’t die.” “It’s a deal,” I said, and we shook on it.

“What sort of things are you involved in at the Max that would interest the show?” I asked. Rubbing his chin, Schimmens replied, “Well, I’d like to start a needle-exchange program for drug addicts here. “Perfect!” I said, “As It Happens goes for shit like that.”

I put in a call to Toronto and within a day, the head of the Inmates Committee at the Edmonton Institution was on As It Happens, going on about the need for a needle-exchange program at the joint. John Schimmens was heard by millions, from coast to coast.

I remember clearly when Edmonton Police pulled up outside the CBC Radio building. Reporter Dave Cooper looked out our second-floor windows and announced, “Looks like you have visitors, Byron.” I didn’t stick around. It was Friday afternoon and I was leaving anyway for a camping trip to the Rockies. I grabbed the tape, made my way down a stairwell and beat it out of Dodge. When I returned to Edmonton, I gave the tape to CBC management … which gave it to our lawyers … who put it in a sealed envelope and gave it to a judge. I can’t remember whatever became of the tape, even if the judge heard it.

Roy Sobotiak is still alive and eating prison food … and a relative of Susie Kaminsky didn’t get to fork out thousands of dollars. How would this have worked anyway? If the hit-men got paid some cash up front — but failed to come through — what would the relative had done? Complained to the Better Business Bureau???

Sobotiak continues to phone. I last heard from him in the spring of 2014. He was in a penitentiary in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Sobotiak is still adamant he didn’t kill Kaminsky. I take no position on his guilt or innocence.

In the early 1990s, Sobotiak called one night [from prison] but I told him that I couldn’t talk long, as I had to leave to interview an Indian Chief at a hotel in the city. “For Christ sakes,” he warned, “Stay away from the Chateau Louis!”

CORRECTIONS OFFICERS

I got along with most of the guards. The constant searching for contraband and the drug scans at the main gate were a pain in the ass, but I realized the officers were only doing their jobs. I was to prison scores of times but never once tested positive for narcotics. It helps that I don’t use drugs nor hang around those who do.

Guards will ionize test everything from a driver’s licence, trousers, hat … even our tape recorders. The first time a visitor tests positive they’ll be told, but usually admitted just the same. Lawyers sometimes test positive to cocaine, and guards will tell them it’s likely because they’re handling $100 bills. I was told that if they test positive a second time at the Edmonton Institution, the information is quietly passed on to City Police, though the visitor isn’t told.

I thought the guards were caught between a rock and a hard place. Offenders, the term guards often used for inmates and prisoners, would unload on them about how they’d been screwed over — and even if it was true — there’s nothing they could do about it. Their job was to house them until they’d served their time, and hopefully help them along the way with job training and some spiritual guidance.

Correctional officers have an uphill battle. They have to put up with verbal abuse and, occasionally, extreme violence. Case in point: a middle-aged guard, working near the Edmonton Institution gymnasium in the 1990s, found out the hard way that inmates can go violently crazy. The guard was in his office when a prisoner suddenly rushed in and — without warning — repeatedly stabbed him, known as “shanking.” The wounds were so severe that the guard nearly died. The attack left his mind messed up and he spent time in a mental hospital. The man never returned to the prison, and who can blame him?

One of the most tedious guard jobs is to drive around the outside of the prison in a pick-up truck, with nothing but the radio and a loaded rifle for company. Around and around they go, slowly, the tall mesh fence crowned with razor sharp wire going by their window. The constant circling by an armed guard in a truck is a deterrence to a break-out, of course. I once said to one guard at the Max, “Man, that’s gotta be one boring job!” He said, “It is … the guys in those trucks sometimes get stuck with that shift because they’re in shit with management.”

AL TESSIER – Corrections Officer

I can’t imagine correctional officer Al Tessier ever being in management’s bad books. The lanky Tessier was an outstanding guard and human being. He took time to try to understand prisoners, where they were coming from … and the sad lives many lived before ending up on the wrong side of the law.

Over coffee one day, Tessier shared that he’d just done an intake [where incoming prisoners are processed] and had to search a young male. The prisoner began to cry. His story was that he’d been raped as a youngster. Al looked at me and said, “That’s why I do this job, so I can help these kids.”

One time Al and I were talking and he pointed out that inmates often went to extremes. If they found God, they’d walk around reading the Bible … but if they had a hate on for someone, it could lead to a killing, and vicious one at that.

Tessier was the kind of guy who drove around his neighbourhood in northeast Edmonton on the coldest of nights [minus 35 to minus 40 degree celsius] looking for stranded motorists whose car wouldn’t start. He pulled out his jumper cables and gave them a boost. No charge, just a good guy helping another human being. Tessier retired a few years ago.

Al Tessier died suddenly of a heart attack in March 2014. When I heard the news, my mind flashed back to the time he gave me a private tour of segregation [the hole]. He asked me to step in one of the cells, and I did. Clang went the door behind me, locking shut. Al stood on the outside laughing. “Ha! Try and get out, Christopher!” RIP, Mr. Tessier. You were one of the good guys.

RICK DYHM – Corrections Officer

For a number of years, Rick Dyhm was the media liaison person at Edmonton Institution. He was regularly quoted in the newspapers and he was often on radio and television explaining a “news event” at the Max, or giving the prison’s perspective on an issue. Dyhm was professional, well-spoken and thoughtful.

The two things I liked most about the man is that he always returned phone calls, and he never messed up on my paperwork. When I scheduled a visit to the Max through Dyhm, his paperwork was always at the front gate. The officer was reliable.

He also had guts, minus the bravado. We shared a noon meal one day in the prison dining hall, surrounded by hundreds of cons who could have easily taken him out. Dyhm brought me there because he wanted me to see what the prisoners were eating. It wasn’t the Four Seasons, or even Swiss Chalet, but the food was far healthier than most fast-food joints. Then again, I’m a wieners and beans kind of guy. The food at the Max is prepared by prisoners.

The man took no crap from the cons, called a “spade a spade” and the inmates respected and trusted him.

For a long time, Rick Dyhm ran inmate rehabilitation programs at the Max.

We often met for lunch, usually at a restaurant a few miles from the joint. We talked about prison issues, sometimes personal stuff like where our lives were going, CBC politics, whatever — but never with any booze. Just coffee or water. Dyhm was ‘real.’ I liked him. He was a straight-shooter and I trusted his read on prisoners.

The odd time, other guards — friends of his — would join us for lunch. One day, a former prisoner sat down at our table; Dyhm had worked with him at the Max. I could tell Dyhm was impressed with how the guy had turned his life around. You could see the spark in the officer’s eyes as the man spoke with pride of how he’d been off booze and drugs for years and was finally making an honest living.

From that meeting, I saw that people like Rick Dyhm — and he couldn’t have been the only correctional officer out there like that — wasn’t just in it for the pay cheque. He had a genuine interest in people, in this case men who’d gone off the rails at one point in their lives but were now back on track.

Mr. Dyhm, who turned 60 in late December 2014, is now retired from correctional officer work. We still meet for lunch and talk about where our lives are going.

DEADLY HOSTAGE-TAKING & REPORTING AWARD

Not all correctional officers were like Rick Dyhm and Al Tessier, especially those involved in the fatal shooting of two inmates at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert in the early 90s. Three cons had taken a guard [Mr. Juker] hostage in the prison’s industrial area. Guards fired in tear gas, then used a fork lift to break open a large door, allowing Juker to escape. ‘Squeeze out’ is perhaps a better way of putting it. Mr. Juker was on the heavy side.

Shotgun blasts took care of two of the three hostage-takers, Gerry McDonald and David Warriner. The third, bank-robber Shawn Murray, escaped the shotgun pellets — but not the boots of the guards. After Murray surrendered the guards used his head as a soccer ball. A prison worker who tended to Murray after the incident said she barely recognized him because his face was swollen so badly.

Once outside the prison, the guards were caught on camera giving one another “high five’s.”

The issue was this: were the prisoners executed after they’d been overcome by teargas? Murray’s account was that they’d already given up. The shooter’s account … well, there was no account. The shooter [whose identity was never made public] did not have to testify at an inquiry because the RCMP ruled he was only the “mechanism.’

What was interesting is that both bodies arrived at funeral homes with not only bruises on their faces, but in one case, makeup had been applied to hide the bruises. It backed Murray’s claim the men had been kicked repeatedly after being shot.

I put in a call to Murray only to be told by Warden James O’Sullivan — the man known as “Jimmy O — “that he had been shipped out the previous day to another prison ‘somewhere in Canada.'” I said, “Isn’t Murray in the Special Handling Unit at a federal prison, near Montreal?” That’s exactly where Murray was, because that’s where I soon reached him for an interview.

Shawn Murray and I recorded a number of phone interviews in 1991. Here’s a snippet [0:08] of Murray’s account of how hostage-taker Jerry McDonald was first overcome by tear gas, then shot …

Warden O’Sullivan’s response to my question of “Were those two inmates executed?”: “That’s a question that shouldn’t be asked.” His remark made the CBC Radio National News.

Murray’s version of how things went down in the hostage-taking shook our audience. CBC National TV then jumped on the story, followed by the rest of the mainstream media. The stories led to a Senate investigation — and to my first national investigative reporting award, the first for a journalist at CBC Radio in Edmonton.

News of the award made the Globe and Mail, the Edmonton Journal, The Canadian Press/Broadcast News and a number of other media outlets — including the Tribune in my hometown of Campbellton, New Brunswick.

Make no mistake about it, the two prisoners who were shot and killed that day at the Prince Albert pen were mean and twisted, or as one con described them, “two crazy fuckers.”

One was from Manitoba, the other from Newfoundland. The man from Manitoba [Warriner] had gunned down a cab driver, shooting him in the back [firing through the back seat] after the cabbie took a wrong turn. Wounded and in pain, the driver stopped his vehicle, opened his door and fell to the ground. He begged for his life as his passenger stood over him. Bozo-brains responded by emptying the rest of his handgun into the man. I spoke with the parents of the killer; they struck me as decent folk who’d tried everything in their power to raise the kid right, but nothing worked. One of his early antics was to try to burn down his school.

Meanwhile, the Newfie — who had a rap sheet longer than his arm — make that two arms — broke into the home of a lawyer in Newfoundland and slit his throat while he was in bed with his girlfriend. The victim was a Crown prosecutor who’d previously dealt with McDonald. His girlfriend called 911. The lawyer survived.

‘Crazy fuckers’ seems like a good description of those two. I had no personal dealings with the men during my time in the joints.

Liberal Senator Earle Hastings opened an investigation into the hostage-taking. He came to the conclusion the Israeli-made tear gas used by the guards was so powerful it should not have been used indoors — and that because the hostage-takers had been overcome by the gas anyway, there was no need to blow them away. Then again, hindsight is always 20-20. I’m not sure what would have been running through my mind if I was a guard and my partner [guard Juker] struggled to get out while these two psychos were running around and desperate, aware their hostage-taking had failed.

Senator Hastings also pulled a few strings and got the Federal Government [Ottawa} to pick up the tab for shipment of one of the bodies [McDonald] to Newfoundland. The mortician at the funeral home in Corner Brook, Newfoundland said the corpse was riddled with shotgun pellets. The prisoner died after being shot in the back. He figured he would have been alive for about 15 minutes.

I lost track of Shawn Murray. While in his new prison in Quebec, he was attacked by another inmate — but Murray grabbed the knife and killed his assailant. What was suspicious about that attack? It’s where it happened — in the prison’s Special Handling Unit [SHU], the prison within a prison where security is the highest. Inmates can’t get in the SHU with a knife. Impossible. The cons are always searched thoroughly. The attack happened not after I interviewed Murray [by phone]. Hmmm … was that an arranged ‘hit?’

For a while, Murray’s kid sister in British Columbia wrote with updates on how her brother was doing. She revealed that Shawn had a screwed-up childhood and was always in trouble with the law. He’d turned into a bank robber. One of his bank jobs was in Edmonton in the mid-1980s.

I was tipped off about how the Prince Albert hostage-taking went down by two bikers who approached me during a social at the Edmonton Max. Lou and Tim, both wearing “biker” sunglasses [for some reason bikers at the Max often donned sun glasses] walked up to me in the exercise yard. “You a reporter?” one asked. “Yup,” I said, “what’s on your mind?” The guys had just been transferred in from Prince Albert Penitentiary and they had a story to tell about how a hostage-taking ended.

I devoted a lot of time to this file [most of the hours never made it to my timesheet] getting information from not only prisoners but prison management — plus a great contact at the John Howard Society [who shall remain anonymous] and Claire Culhane, the prisoners’ rights activist [now deceased].

News of the award prompted a phone call from Lou the biker. He wanted to meet. I drove out to the Max, got there early and was chatting it up in a conference room with a Native prisoner who’d murdered a prostitute in Saskatchewan. Forget his name now, but he was a big dude who wore tank tops to show off his muscles. In walked the two bikers, both wearing sun glasses again. Lou raised his right arm, snapped his fingers and spoke only two words: “Fuck off,” code for ‘could we have privacy please’? The hooker-killer smiled a fake smile and left.

On a small table at the far end of the room was a coffee urn with a tap, a stack of styrofoam cups, some sugar cubes and that dreaded artificial whitener. God, I hate that shit. The bikers said nothing as they poured fresh coffee into three cups. Lou raised his cup and said, “You did good.” I was quite taken by this and so I remarked, “Well, that’s something because you fellows never open up with your feelings …” With a sharp cough, Lou cut me off. I remained quiet until the subject was changed to the weather or some innocuous thing. The meeting ended shortly after. Neither one of these guys would make it as a speech-writer.

I did not mind Lou. He was an ‘enforcer.’ It was his job it was to beat the snot out of people who owed money.

More on Lou the biker later.

COLIN THATCHER – Prisoner – [Part 1 of 2]

Colin Thatcher was one of the most interesting prisoners I interviewed. He was educated, well-spoken … and courteous. Not very often you sit down for an interview and an inmate apologizes for his body odor because they just had a workout. He also didn’t swear, a rarity for people doing time.

It was the late 1980s, and Colin Thatcher leaned back on a chair in one of the meeting rooms at the Max. The former Saskatchewan cabinet minister was dressed in green prison fatigue with his family name in small white letters on his chest. He didn’t smile and his arms were folded, tell-tale body language that he wasn’t terribly keen about being interviewed.

I told Thatcher I’d treat him fairly, that I wanted an update on how he was doing … and how things were going with his appeal. Because he was cautious, I pulled the cassette tape out of my Sony 142 recorder and said, “See this? It’s yours. If you feel I’ve screwed you in this interview, keep your tape.” We did the interview, and it went fine. Thatcher gave straight-forward, clear answers … and I walked out of prison with his cassette tape.

That night and all next day, CBC Radio broadcast portions of Colin Thatcher’s first interview behind bars. It was the top news story in Western Canada.

Thatcher was — and likely still is — a huge fan of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League. He knew everything about the team. The man knew a lot about football, period. One Friday afternoon, I was away from the newsroom [CBC Radio] and a part-time reporter, sitting at my desk, took a phone call from Thatcher. She was rather excited that she’d spoken with the Colin Thatcher. When I returned, she asked, “Why was Colin Thatcher calling you?” I explained, “Well, sounds silly, but I follow the Sports Select gambling game [where one gets to bet on games] and every Friday, Thatcher phones with his predictions for the NFL matches coming up on Sunday.” Thatcher was often right on with his picks.

In the early 1990s, I did a live interview on CBC Newsworld on Colin Thatcher, basically an update on how things were going with his attempt to get a new hearing. There was wide interest in Thatcher’s case, not just in Saskatchewan, but across Canada. The man was described by some as Canada’s J.R. Ewing, from the fictional TV series, Dallas. I took no position in his guilt or innocence; whether he got a fair trial was something else. I am of the opinion his trial was not fair.

I came across a document which I released in the CBC TV interview. It was a bombshell. The audience didn’t suspect a thing. The interviewer, in Calgary, asked if there was anything new to report. I told him there was. I reminded the interviewer that Thatcher claimed to have been at his ranch, west of Moose Jaw, at the time of his wife’s murder in Regina, 100 kilometres away. He also claimed to have telephoned his girlfriend in Palm Springs, California at about 25 after 6 that evening [the murder was around 6pm]. If what Thatcher was saying was correct, there’s no way he had time to pull the trigger and drive all the way to his ranch, especially in the dead of winter, icy roads and all that. Impossible. It’s doubtful that Mario Andretti, using the world’s best snow tires, could have done it. Conclusion: Colin Thatcher did not pull the trigger.

Thatcher also had witnesses who said he was at home at the time of the murder, but because they were his children — and a babysitter — their evidence was not given much weight. Thatcher was not charged with the murder until about a year later, and by then his phone records had been destroyed. Therefore, his alleged phone call to California could not be verified. Worked into the mix was that the man was drinking at the time, and perhaps his memory wasn’t clear to begin with.

The murder trial began and Thatcher’s girlfriend in California — soon to become his ex-girlfriend forever — was a Crown witness who gave evidence against him. The woman denied getting a phone call from Thatcher the night of the murder. Turns out, she was correct on that. She was then asked, by the defence, if Thatcher could have been mistaken, perhaps she phoned him …? “No,” she said. Her testimony helped sink Colin Thatcher, and off to prison he went … for 22 years.

I reminded the Newsworld host of these events, then revealed that Thatcher’s girlfriend had, in fact, made a phone call to Thatcher from the hotel she worked at in Palm Springs. The announcer asked how I knew this. At that point, I held up a document showing a record of long-distance calls that were made from her office at the hotel. And there it was: a call to the Thatcher ranch at 6:24pm the night of the murder. Checkmate. The woman had lied on the stand. Thatcher had been right all along about speaking to his girlfriend the evening of the murder. The viewing audience of that Newsworld interview now realized that Colin Thatcher sure wasn’t in Regina when his ex was murdered.

The interviewer asked where I got that document. I did some ducking and told him to zoom in on a large ink stamp in the upper right-hand corner. It was the mark of the Regina Police Department. The document, I explained, was from the files of the Regina Police. That was damning. Not only had a Crown witness perjured herself on the stand, both the Regina Police and the Crown withheld information that could have helped the accused, at least helped him get a fair trial.

Colin Thatcher could still have been charged with the murder — if police had evidence he hired someone to do it. However, jury members were asked to decide from three options … a] Thatcher was innocent, b] that he shot his ex himself or c] that he had someone else shoot her. If the Crown had not withheld critical evidence about the Palm Springs phone call, then jury members would have had only two choices, not three.

At Colin Thatcher’s murder trial, the scales of justice were bent a little out of shape. That begged the question: If a former cabinet minister cannot get a fair trial, what hope is there for the average person?

As I say, it was a bombshell interview. The CBC Newsworld producer in Edmonton who lined up that interview, Larry Donovan, was canned soon after. Are you surprised? Donovan, a former News Director at CKUA Radio in Edmonton, was a solid journalist. Things went downhill for the man after that. Once Donovan got out of journalism, however, he recovered. Donovan’s strength was that he had integrity.

A Saskatchewan con who spent decades behind bars for a string of bank robberies, James Dean [Dino] Agecoutay, once remarked that for all those imprisoned at the Max, Colin Thatcher had ‘fallen the farthest.’ “Many of us,” he went on, “lived on the streets before we ended up here. But Colin was ‘one of them’ [meaning establishment] — and look what they did to him.”

It was Agecoutay who said that Thatcher — one of the most educated prisoners in the Max — would help other cons with their correspondence, correcting grammar and restructuring their letters so they made sense.

More on Colin Thatcher, later in this post.

CBC’s EDMONTON AM … LIVE FROM THE MAX

It’s unusual for a media outlet to do live programming from a federal prison, but CBC Radio in Edmonton did just that. And we have someone at CJCA Radio in Edmonton to thank. CJCA — at the time, at the top of the ratings heap — was working hard on having their popular phone-in show broadcast from the Edmonton Institution. John Schimmens tipped me off about it. So did the Assistant-Warden, Al Swaine.

I said, “Johnny, can you do me a favour? … stop it.” He asked why. I told him CJCA would likely only sensationalize things … “and that would be awful.” Schimmens said, “What do you suggest?” I said, “Let me get the CBC morning crew out there and we’ll do a proper job.” After weeks of memos flying back and forth between the suits at CBC and the suits at Corrections Canada — along with the blessing of the Inmates Committee, of course — on the morning of 15 of April, 1993 about a dozen CBC workers, myself included, plus boxes of our gear arrived in the darkness to get ready for our live broadcast.

The entire three hours of Edmonton AM went out from the Max that morning. Some of our interviews were canned [pre-recorded], but most were live. Overall, things went well. Prisoners and prison officials had interesting things to talk about. The running joke that morning was that CBC had a “captive audience.”

We got our first news story before we went to air. In the middle of the night, a drunk driver had spotted the bright lights of the Edmonton Institution and mistook it to be a gas station. As I say, he was inebriated. And so he pulled in to sober up. A guard spotted a car weaving into the parking lot, went out to investigate. When the drunk rolled down his window, the officer called police and the man was charged with impaired driving. That was one cool story, you gotta admit.

Here are three photos I snapped that morning …

STEVE FORD – Prisoner

At 5:30 am on the 1st of August 1989, 17-year-old Stephen Arnold Ford took an axe to his mother and father, Kathleen and Stephen, at their home in Airdrie, north of Calgary, killing them both. Neighbours awoke to their chilling screams.

In the summer of 2009, after spending two years at a halfway house in Victoria, British Columbia, a parole board granted the 37-year-old double-killer full parole.

According to a story by Katie DeRosa in the [Victoria] Times Colonist, Mike Church — a neighbour of the Fords — said that Steve Ford’s parents would want him to have a second chance at life. “I would think they would be praying to God now that he’s out,” Church said, “[that] he’ll make something of his life — just like when they were alive. They were always encouraging and loving.”

The newspaper also quoted Rudy Froese of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, who became friends with Steve Ford when he was in the Edmonton Institution. “There is such a thing as a second chance,” Froese said. “I’m sure at night when he lies awake, [Ford] wonders what it would be like to have a mom and dad. I’m glad he’s there [in Victoria] and not in Airdrie because of all the publicity surrounding the case.”

I remember Ford as shy and soft-spoken. Because of his young age, he seemed so out of place in a federal prison. If Ford hadn’t been wearing prison garb, I would have thought he was a visitor. He had a deer-in-the-headlights look about him that seemed to say, “What have I done?” Other than small talk, we didn’t converse a lot.

DEAN COOPER – Prisoner

Dean Cooper once shared with me that he had great parents who stood by him — even after the murder. As for the killing that ended one life and changed Cooper’s forever, he said that he and a buddy robbed and murdered an innocent man at a pawn shop. “No one deserved that pain,” he said, “especially the victim, his friends and my parents and friends.” Cons rarely talk like that. My read is that Cooper’s rehabilitation started not by sitting across the desk from a counsellor, but from standing in front of a mirror.

A con once said to Cooper, “You mean your parents brought you to Disneyland? They must have cared for you, man. What the hell happened?”

The prisoner, who has now spent more than half his life behind bars, is at a minimum security prison near Gravenhurst, Ontario. His girlfriend also lives in Southern Ontario. It was Cooper who asked for a transfer from Alberta so he could be near her.

For three days in December 2014, Dean Cooper had his first unescorted time away from prison — known as a UTA. And for the first time in a quarter of a century, the con had his first meal as a [nearly] free man — at Swiss Chalet — a block or so away from his halfway house in Brampton, Ontario. He was not accompanied by a guard, but by his girlfriend.

Cooper now has his sights set on getting out and starting all over again.

Dean Cooper turns 49 in February 2015.

JERRY CREWS – Prisoner

You’ll see Jerry Crews in the group photo [above], in prison garb sitting next to inmate Blair Pelletier. Crews, born and raised in Nova Scotia, partnered up with Albert Foulston, a long-time criminal and drug addict who was out on parole. On the 25th of June 1990, the pair robbed a branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia at the northwest corner of 124th Street and 107th Avenue. [Note: in Edmonton, Alberta, the streets run north and south, and the avenues run east and west.]

Crews did the hold-up and Foulston drove the getaway vehicle. The bank robbers didn’t get far. They were soon spotted by an alert policeman who heard about the bank robbery on his radio. In an attempt to get away from the officer, Foulston sped down an alley — only to find his path blocked by road construction [installation of a sewer line]. The thieves were trapped.

In the police cruiser was one officer — 33-year-old Constable Ezio Faraone. Faraone spotted the getaway car scooting down an alley, and he followed thm. He then spotted Foulston, standing alone, arms held high, his fingers shaking slightly. Foulston was cornered and apparently giving up. The officer approached him, gun drawn.

Albert Foulston wasn’t really surrendering. It was a set-up. A trap.

Hidden in the back seat of the get-away car was Jerry Crews, toting a loaded shotgun. When Officer Faraone walked by Crews’ car, the gunman popped up and shot him with both barrels, first in the chest and then, as he fell, in the head. The officer died on the spot.

At the time, I was working for CBC Radio News. I was in the newsroom when “breaking news” came over our police scanner: I heard “Officer down!” and sped to the location, only to find the area cordoned off with yellow tape. Parked near the lifeless body of Constable Faraone was a van from the Medical Examiner’s office. The body was covered with a plastic tarp with only the officer’s black boots visible.

A walk-up apartment building faced the alley; people were on their balconies taking everything in. Police cars continued to roll up to the scene, lights flashing.

Standing alongside me that day was Kelly Gordon, a reporter for CHQT Radio, Edmonton. The years would pass and Gordon would find himself on the other side of that yellow tape — as a Communications Officer with the Edmonton Police Service. Kelly later said ‘adios’ to the media business and became a long-haul truck driver.

I met both Albert Foulston and Jerry Crews at the Edmonton Institution, but didn’t have a lot of contact with them. Foulston — later to make parole and, like his cocaine, blow it — struck me as wanting to be noticed. Crews was the more “thoughtful” of the two, strange as that may sound since he’d murdered a peace officer. But you could talk with Crews, not so much with Foulston who seemed to be scattered, perhaps the result of too much narcotics. There’s a reason that stuff is called ‘dope.’

Jerry Crews phoned one night from the Max, about what I can’t recall now. I remember him though sharing that he’d spent time in foster homes when he was a kid growing up in Nova Scotia. I told him I had been a foster parent. Crews also mentioned he was having trouble getting his fiancé into the joint for visits. He said he was hoping to get married, but the guards were making things difficult. The con felt he was being mistreated because he had taken the life of a police officer. I commented, “Well, I guess that happens when you blow away a cop … and [according to all media reports] a popular one at that.” Crew’s response was that he had no idea the officer was so well liked. He seemed to be surprised the officer was a good guy.

Crews had to suddenly break away from the call because the alarm bells at the prison were going off. I could hear them ringing loudly, even at my end. “Gotta go!” Crews shouted over the noise, “something’s come down here.” Turns out, a guard in B-Unit had discovered a dead man under a pool table.

Crews is not eligible for parole until 2017. I’ve not had any contact with him for decades.

There’s another sad footnote to Ezio Farone’s murder. At the end of a police news conference, Police Chief Doug McNally asked us to turn off our microphones and put down our cameras because he wanted to get something off his chest. It had to do with a newspaper reporter who had phoned the mother of Ezio Faraone, in Vancouver, to get her reaction to the murder and to find out more about her son.

Problem: Mrs. Faraone did not know that her son was dead. A policeman had arrived at her house in Vancouver and was about to knock on her door [with the dreaded next of kin notification] when he heard someone inside screaming. The officer found Mrs. Faraone in shock, weeping uncontrollably.

McNally called the reporter’s actions “despicable.” The Chief, normally a soft-spoken, even-keeled kind of guy, was royally pissed. I could see him struggling to hold back from saying what was really on his mind. And that’s how our news conference ended. No one said a word. We quietly packed up our gear and got out of there.

My guess is that the reporter assumed Faraone’s mother had already been told. But when calls are made that soon after the occurrence, one is “rolling the dice.”

To honour Ezio Faraone, the City of Edmonton built a small park in his name at the north end of the High Level Bridge, southwest of the Alberta Legislature. The focal point of the park is a classy, bronze statue of Officer Faraone assisting a child.

Judy Fantham left Mothercorp. Last I heard, she was ‘Director of Organizational Development’ for Toronto Housing Community, described as the largest social housing provider in Canada and the second biggest in North America.

There was an odd footnote to our April 1993 broadcast. For days, the Max had been abuzz that CBC Radio was coming out. As Colin Thatcher noted, the cons worked hard to have the joint cleaned up and the floors shining.

Unknown to us at the time, two prisoners — who’d just transferred in from Quebec — planned to bust out while the guards were preoccupied with our broadcast. One of the cons grabbed the keys to a delivery truck in the yard. The plan was to ram the vehicle through the fence [like in the movies, I guess] and [again, like in the movies] perhaps make their way back to Quebec and live happily ever after. God knows what these fools were thinking. But in their excitement, they rammed the wrong key in the ignition and they could not get it out. Wrong key. Wrong time. Wrong Place. How’s that for Karma? A guard walked up to the two cons and said, “Let me give you a hand with that, boys,” and within 60 seconds they were both sporting prison jewellery — hand cuffs. Off they went to the hole.

I believe it was the last time a radio station was allowed into the Edmonton Institution to do a live program, and two prisoners from Quebec were largely responsible. That’s sad because I thought our show enlightened listeners to life in the joint.

A live softball game, now that was a different matter. In1995, I brought in our CBC Radio softball team for a friendly “exhibition game” with the prisoners. We won handily, but that wasn’t the point. The real winners were the prisoners who had fun and got to ‘escape’ for a few hours.

Before the first pitch was thrown, a rifle-toting guard manning one of the towers went through some rules. I’ve forgotten them all — but one. The rule that stands out after all these years is that we were not to get to within two metres or so of the fence, a no-man’s land area set off by a while chalk line. If a softball went past that line, we had to ask permission to retrieve it. Given the number of foul tips, it happened a few times during the game. No problem. Ask permission. Permission granted. Throw the ball back into play.

One time, however, a prisoner went to get a ball that had glanced off the fence. But he didn’t ask for permission from the guard. He just got up and walked over, nonchalantly, without a care in the world. Just as he crossed the white line, he faked being “gunned down” — complete with the sound effects of a machine gun. The man hit the dirt and his arms and legs flailing. All that was needed was for him to squirt ketchup on himself. The antics cracked everyone up. A great ice-breaker. Even the officer in the tower, with a birds-eye view of everything, got a kick out of it. I enjoyed the horseplay. It demonstrated once again that the prison wasn’t all doom and gloom.

Because I was nursing a hamstring injury, I couldn’t play. I sat in the “bleachers” with a clipboard on my lap, surrounded by about two dozen cons. The prisoners were taking in all the action, shouting words of encouragement to the home team. One con joked, “Remember buddy, three strikes and you’re OUT.” He laughed at his own joke, slapped his knee, then glanced back to see the reaction.

A young prisoner was passing out cans of soft drink. From the way he was “jiving” and playing the part of Mr. Personality, I figured he was in for a sexual offence. I thanked him for a Pepsi and the guy sat down beside me, and introduced himself. Never knew his name, and I told him that I hadn’t seen him around before. He responded, “You probably know my sister.” I thought to myself, where’s this going? The con went on to say that he was the younger brother of Jan Arden, a well-known pop singer based in Calgary. I said, “No shit.” The guy went on to tell me that he’d killed a young boy in British Columbia. Again I said, “No shit.”

A few months later, Arden was around to CHED for an interview. I asked if she had a brother doing time. Turns out, she did. It was the young man I’d met at the Max. Arden went on to say that her brother had raped and killed a boy. She added that the crime so devastated her family, and that it was especially hard on her mother and father. I could imagine.

GORD LUSSIER – Prisoner

Most cons have ‘partners,’ someone they hang out with most often. Colin Thatcher’s partner was Gord Lussier, a former bank robber and drug addict. He was also a hit-man, but I wasn’t supposed to know that. An unusual pair, you have to admit. Thatcher looked and spoke like a bank executive and Lussier looked like a bank robber, tattooed with big scars on his arms from either knife attacks or suicide attempts, I wasn’t sure which. Didn’t ask either.

It was interesting to see how well the two got along. One memory I have of Lussier and Thatcher is them in the weight room, in a corner of the gymnasium at the Max. Thatcher was on his back, struggling to push up some heavy weights. Standing right alongside him was Lussier, his eyes focused on the weights slowly inching upwards. “You can do it, Colin,” he said softly, “you can do it, you can do it …”

I got a phone call from Gord Lussier’s wife that her husband was being held in segregation at the Max over some issue — forget now what that was — and that he wanted to talk about it. I drove out to the prison one evening to hear what he had to say.

After spending about ten minutes in a small lawyer’s room by myself, staring at the drab concrete walls, the door opened and there stood an unfriendly guard and a handcuffed Gord Lussier. The prisoner was wincing. I could see that his cuffs were too tight, and so I said to the officer, “Could you please remove his handcuffs?” The officer refused, citing the restraints were for my own safety. “I can handle this wimp,” I assured him. That was complete bullshit of course, but I was only trying to ease the tension. Still, the guard refused to take off the cuffs. In frustration, I said, “Well, I guess there’s no interview, thanks for wasting my time,” and I stood up to leave. The officer then unlocked the cuffs and walked away.

Lussier slowly made his way into the room, rubbing his wrists. With a wink, I motioned for him to take a seat.

The heavy door closed with a sharp click, leaving Lussier and I alone. I recorded a short interview, essentially his grievances about how the warden was running things. A typical prison story, if you will. I warned Lussier that if this went to air, he’d only be in more trouble with management. Years have passed and my memory isn’t clear as to how the hardened prisoner responded. I can’t recall if he said something like, “I have given this much consideration and am prepared to face the consequences” … or if he said, “I don’t give a flying fuck.” But it was one of the two.

Lussier then asked how his friend Colin Thatcher was doing, particularly how his appeal was coming along. Being in segregation meant that Lussier was essentially cut off from the world, certainly the mainstream prison population. I filled him in on what was happening with the appeal.

Lussier then asked if I’d give Thatcher a message, and I said, “sure thing.” I was about to write everything down in my notepad when it occurred to me that Lussier could just as easily record a message on my cassette tape recorder. And so he did just that, holding the mike for a very personal, heartfelt message. I was surprised by what this former druggie had to say. It was beyond thoughtful. Lussier told Thatcher to hang in there, that God was looking after him … and that he was always in his prayers. Christ, I didn’t expect that.

I then made my way to ‘B Unit’ and asked a guard to unlock Thatcher’s cell and ask him to come down to the interview room, at the entrance of the unit. A few minutes later, in walked Thatcher, looking a little skeptical. “What brings you here?” he asked, taking a seat at the table. I told him that I’d just spoken to Gord Lussier. “Oh yeah,” he said, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. “Is he back here now? He was transferred to the SHU [the Special Handling Unit] in Prince Albert.” I replied, “Yes, he’s back here … in seg.” I added, “Colin, Gord has a message for you,” and I reached over and hit ‘play’ on the tape recorder. And there, like magic, was Gord Lussier speaking to Colin Thatcher … with some powerful words of love and encouragement.

To catch every word, Thatcher leaned forward and put his ear to the speaker. When the message ended, he smiled and looked my way. “Could I hear it again please?”

After the recording was played a second time,Thatcher nodded but said little, aside from ‘thank you.’ We shook hands and I bid him good night. The former cabinet minister who lifted weights with a bank robber made his way up the stairs to his cell at the far end of ‘B Unit,’ and I made my way home. You can file that under ‘Maintaining Contacts.’

One more thing about B Unit: of all the units at Edmonton Institution, ‘B’ was my favourite. At the entrance to B Unit were three fish tanks with some gold fish swimming about. It was the job of the cons to feed the fish and change the water. The three tanks were different sizes with signs that read ‘Minimum,’ ‘Medium’ and ‘Maximum.’ Today those fish tanks wouldn’t be permitted in the joint.

COLIN THATCHER – Prisoner – Part 2 of 2

Colin Thatcher spent about a decade at the Edmonton Institution. Towards the end of his time there, he applied for a transfer to the pen in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, so he could be closer to his family. A guard promised to let me know when something was decided with his transfer. I was trolling for stories at the Max one day when the guard pulled me aside and said, “Thatcher’s moving out tomorrow … he’s off to Bowden.” Bowden is a medium security prison just south of Red Deer, Alberta.

I checked the gymnasium. No Thatcher. If he wasn’t in the gym, he had to be in the chapel. Prisoners liked the chapel for two reasons: it was a haven and it was quiet. Make that three: phone calls made from the chaplain’s office were not monitored.

I caught up to Thatcher in the newly renovated chapel. He was just leaving the office and I said, “Colin, you’re moving out tomorrow. Start getting your stuff ready — and not a word to anyone.” Thatcher asked if he was going to Prince Albert and I said, “No. Bowden.” He thanked me for the information and promised not to tell anyone.

Next day, I was doing the morning news run on CBC Radio when a call came in from a guard at the front gate. “Thatcher has just left in a [prisoner transfer] van,” he said. Click. I made the transfer of Colin Thatcher to a new penitentiary the lead item on our 8:30am news. Once Broadcast News picked up the story, everyone had it. Of course, few gave credit to the CBC. They ran the story as if they were the first to find out. Hands up if that surprises you.

When I met Thatcher again — this time at the penitentiary in Bowden — I told him about the guard tipping me off about his move. The Bowden Pen is right alongside the main highway to Calgary. “So it was you,” he said, “because the cars and trucks honked non-stop …” Apparently one of the radio stations in Red Deer asked drivers that morning to give Thatcher a warm welcome by honking as they passed the prison.

I made the trip to the Bowden penitentiary in part because fellow CBC reporter David Kirkham wanted to meet with Thatcher. We drove to Bowden on a sunny and but cool fall day. The guards at Bowden, I thought, were not as polite nor as professional as the guys in Edmonton, but we got in. The three of us met in a lawyer room upstairs. Kirkham and Thatcher had talked on the phone a few times, and they were now finally meeting face to face.

Kirkham asked Thatcher, “So what’s your theory about what happened [to Joanne, the murder victim]? Thatcher, sitting across the table, looked down and said, “I don’t know.” It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

Thatcher, however, opened up about one con in particular at his new prison. Bowden has a lot of sexual offenders.

He was particularly shocked at a sexual crime one of the cons had committed, and he tried to tell us about it. But he just couldn’t finish the story. It was that disgusting. “There’s a guy in here,” … then he stopped. “I can’t talk about it.” “Come on, I said, “this place is crawling with skinners, what the hell.” “Well,” Thatcher went on, “this fellow from St. Paul …” And he stopped again. I knew instantly who he was talking about because we did stories on the guy.” “Come on, spit it out,” I said. David didn’t say a word. “Well,” Thatcher said, “this man worked at a funeral home and …” Again he stopped. I said, “So what did he do? Come on …” “I can’t talk about it,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. Finally, he blurted: “HE HAD SEX WITH A DEAD PERSON!!” And, in a monotone, disinterested voice, I said, “And your point is …?”

The twisted humour would not have been a surprise for Thatcher because more than once at the Max I had cracked a bad joke and he’d say that God was going to punish me. [“He’s going to strike you dead, Christopher!”] And I would respond, “He is punishing me … I’m working at the CBC!”

Though he never talked about it much, Colin Thatcher found ‘religion’ while in prison. Religion is always a very personal thing, and so I usually didn’t ask about it. His pastor and good friend at the Max, whose name escapes me now, once told Thatcher, “Byron is just making a joke, Colin. Come on, lighten up.”

Many cons find Jesus in prison, prompting me to ask John Schimmens once, “What did He do? And how much time’s He serving?”

Colin Thatcher eventually made parole, and when he got permission from his parole officer to travel to Edmonton, we got together at a Swiss Chalet restaurant in the west end of the city, on 170th Street and 107th Avenue. This was around 2005 or so. He was in town to see an Edmonton Oilers game. I recall asking Thatcher if watching the struggling Oilers play was part of his sentence.

Thatcher was in the company of prison lay pastor Wayne Land, whom he’d met in the joint. At the time, I was reporting for 630-CHED Radio in Edmonton.

It was different seeing Thatcher as free man. He was relaxed. He laughed and smiled more. When a customer spotted us at the restaurant, the man did a double-take, stopping in his tracks. Thatcher then did the biker thing and popped on a pair of sunglasses. I was worried the customer might call a newsroom and there would be a camera crew waiting for us when we got outside.

It was at this meeting where I suggested to Thatcher that he do his first interview as a “free man.” Initially he refused, saying he didn’t need the publicity. I said, “People want to know your story, from your perspective.” I also suggested he write a book. He said no to that too, but did say he had a lot of material since he had kept his writings from prison.

After the meal, the three of us went for a spin in my old car, the ’37 Oldsmobile. Thatcher said he’d often spotted it in the parking lot of the Edmonton Institution and wondered if he’d ever get to ride in it. I told him I got a good deal on the car because the dolts at General Motors put two of the doors on backwards. Turns out, the old girl had been assembled in Regina in late 1936 at a time when GM had an assembly plant there.

THE THATCHER RADIO INTERVIEW

As for the interview, Colin Thatcher said he’d think about it. I felt he was sincere, I didn’t think he was putting me off. About two weeks passed and my cell phone rang. It was Thatcher. The interview was a go. We picked a date and time and I got from him a private phone number where he could be reached. We recorded the interview from one of the booths at CHED, worked on the tape for a few more hours … and next morning the exclusive ‘breaking’ story was released. It was, of course, our top item. It was everyone’s top story.

Canadian Press/Broadcast News, the wire service which served hundreds of media outlets, was given an advance copy of the interview — on the condition they wouldn’t release the story until CHED had gone with it first. When the Thatcher story hit the ‘wires,’ it went national. Just about every media outlet in the country ran it.

Canada’s most infamous/famous prisoner gave a personal and insightful account of his life behind bars, what it was like to finally be a free man after 20-plus years — and his plans to write a book. Thatcher wanted to call his book, Odyssey: Anatomy of a Frame.

People who didn’t care for Colin Thatcher didn’t care for the interview, but those who supported the man rallied behind him even more.

The story also ticked off some reporters in Saskatchewan because Thatcher had repeatedly turned them down for interviews. When he was released, he also said he wouldn’t do another interview. The disappointment of the Saskatchewan reporters didn’t bother me one bit. It’s one thing to get scooped, it’s another to get scooped by someone in another province.

I did a number of interviews for newspapers and radio stations based on the CHED story.

It took Thatcher a year or so to finish his manuscript and publish his book [by ECW of Toronto], which eventually took the title of Final Appeal … Anatomy of a Frame.

THATCHER’S BOOK

When Colin Thatcher’s book was finally released, I did his first media interview as well: 10 August 2009. For that interview I drove to Moose Jaw, in Southern Saskatchewan to speak with him. ECW had couriered an advance copy of the book to my house in Edmonton. Within minutes of it arriving, I hit the road. I stayed up late in my motel room in Moose Jaw reading the 400-page book and jotting down questions. I finally finished reading around 3am, then set two alarms to wake up at 8:30. Thatcher promised to drop by the motel at 9.

At 9 exactly — and I mean exactly — my room phone rang. I walked out to reception in sock feet to meet Thatcher.

The former Saskatchewan cabinet minister checked out my spacious suite and gave a nod of approval. I closed the door and handed him his book. It was the first time he’d seen it. He gave it a quick glance and remarked, “Hmm, so this is what they did with the cover …”

I had initially booked a lower-priced room at the motel but when I arrived, I was told that my accommodation had been “upgraded” — free of charge — to a large, “executive” suite. Strange. I didn’t know what to make of that especially after seeing a mysterious object shining in a ceiling vent. It sure didn’t look like ‘original equipment,’ put it that way.

After Thatcher plunked himself down in a chair at a small table in the corner, all ready for the interview, I had a ‘Roy Sobotiak moment’ and pointed to the ceiling vent, asking, “What do you think that is behind the grate?” Thatcher studied it for a moment, tilting his head to get a better look. In a flash, he was on his feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, car keys in hand.

I paid my bill and we climbed in Thatcher’s Dodge Ram pick-up. The noisy diesel motor came to life and we made our way through Moose Jaw to a beautiful, sprawling park at the southern edge of town.

On the way I spotted a street sign that read, ‘Thatcher Avenue’ and so I said, “They don’t hate you here that much, Colin. They named a street after you.” “That’s my father,” he said, without bothering to look where I was pointing. I knew that, of course; I was only pulling his leg. Colin’s father, Ross Thatcher, was a former Premier of Saskatchewan. Tough. Respected. [I never met the man.]

The setting for the interview was perfect, or just about. We sat at a picnic table and talked for about an hour … but for ten minutes or so, a park worker — operating a grass cutter — made a bit of a racket. That buggered up my audio, but overall things went well. One by one, Thatcher answered my questions; I ticked them off as I made my way down the list. Once the interview was done, I checked the tape to make sure everything was there, shook hands with Thatcher, snapped a few pictures and immediately hit the road for Edmonton, six or seven hours’ drive away. I was exhausted but I needed to return home to file the story.

I’d sold the Thatcher book-interview story exclusively to Maclean’s, a national weekly magazine based in Toronto. It was evening when I finally got back home — a few coffees, Cokes and a roadside snooze later. I then phoned an editor at MacLeans who deliberately stayed back, waiting for my call, and fed him the raw tape of the interview. The editor was professional and easy to deal with. He worked into the night on the interview. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be Maclean’s cover story.

Once Maclean’s hit the stands, Colin Thatcher and I spoke on the phone and it didn’t take him long to say that he didn’t like the photo they chose for the cover. “It’s a terrible picture,” he said. “I just knew when the photographer [Marianne Helm] snapped that pose, it would be the one they’d be using.” I said, “Well, you have always said you were innocent of the murder your wife … you’ve spent 20-plus years in the joint … why would you want to be  smiling?”

I had sent out ‘feelers’ to about ten media outlets about the exclusive Thatcher book interview. Most expressed an interest. I promptly wrote off those who didn’t respond, or “communicated with silence.” There would be no second knock at their door. One major news organization, CTV National News, expressed a very keen interest in the Thatcher interview. We spoke numerous times on the phone about it. But then I found out CTV was trying to land the Thatcher interview on its own. One of their staff had contacted Thatcher’s lawyer in the hope of getting him to talk to them first. “Thanks for the story idea, Byron.”]

In two days, the four-page Maclean’s story was on the stands. I’d also given portions of the book to an Edmonton crime website, Last Link on the Left, operated by media-watcher Stuart Bayens.

Once the Thatcher magazine story was public, the mainstream media was chomping at the bit to talk to him as well. He turned down few media outlets after that, always doing the interview in the same park in Moose Jaw. According to Thatcher, one reporter showed up with a copy of Macleans as his research material.

Maclean’s paid well for that interview, plus my mileage. Their cheque arrived within a couple of weeks.

Below is page one of the four-page spread [click to enlarge]. The rest of the article can be found online by clicking here:

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/colin-thatcher-on-how-he-thinks-he-was-wrongfully-convicted-of-his-ex-wifes-murder-and-on-his-children-his-faith-and-his-new-book/

A PROTEST GOES SOUR

It was the Spring of 1993, and the NHL Stanley Cup Final between the Los Angeles Kings and the Montreal Canadiens was in full swing. Players were popping in goals and fans were hurling abuse when the referee didn’t make the right call. The behaviour of the fans was not unlike the behaviour of prisoners at the Edmonton Institution after they were locked in their cells for a few days. As I say, they hate lockdowns.

It was evening and I was trolling the joint for stories, notepad by my side. As I walked past B Unit, Sharon, one of the guards, shouted, “Byron! come see this! look at this bloody mess!” Sharon was absolutely right. It was a mess, worse than any teenager’s bedroom. The inmates had decided to toss their evening meal, trays and all, on the hallway and against the concrete wall. There were potatoes, meat, carrots and juice everywhere. “Wow,” I said, “is the food here that bad?” Sharon was in no mood to laugh. She stood at the end of the top range, hands on her hips, like women do when they’re ticked, telling me the guys were pigs.

There are two tiers on each unit; upper and lower. I first went down to the lower tier. Nothing but spilled food and trays everywhere. Same thing for the upper tier. Wait. I could see that at the very end of the tier that everything was clean, as if the cell at the end was empty. I tip-toed through the mess [with Sharon yelling, “Be careful or you’ll slip and break your neck!”] until I got to the end. I knocked on a cell door. Colin Thatcher’s face appeared in the small opening. “How’d you get in here?” he asked. “Easy,” I said, “I climbed over the fence and walked into the receiving area.” He rolled his eyes. I continued: “I’m here to do a story on WIMPS who refuse to take part in peaceful, legitimate protests …” Thatcher rolled his eyes again.

I could hear the play-by-play of a playoff hockey game coming from a small television set [the TV was on a desk opposite his bunk]]. Los Angeles and Montreal were playing in the Stanley Cup final. “Who’s winning?” I asked. “Montreal,” he said disappointingly. The inmate was rooting for the Kings.

Colin Thatcher was a hockey fan period. During a social at the Max, I noticed two Edmonton Oilers — a forward whose initials are Dave Hunter; the other a trainer, Peter Miller — had gone out to pay Mr. Thatcher a visit.

DAVID MILGAARD – Prisoner

What article on prisons would be complete without something on the ‘poster boy’ of the wrongfully convicted, David Milgaard?

It was the fall of 1991 and some friends were over for an evening meal at my apartment in South Edmonton. We were just about to dig in when the phone rang. Surprise. On the line was David Milgaard, of all people. He was calling from a penitentiary in Manitoba. I hadn’t spoken with Milgaard before, but I certainly knew who he was.

In 1970, a jury found Milgaard, then 16, guilty of the 1969 rape and murder of nursing aide Gail Miller in Saskatoon. The year before her bloodied body had been found in snow in an alley. Rumours started swirling in the 1980s that Milgaard — who had been behind bars for two decades — didn’t do it … and that the real killer was a known rapist in Saskatoon, Larry Fisher.

However, Milgaard hadn’t called me about his own case. He wanted to know how a prison pal of his [whose last name was McDonald] had died in the botched hostage-taking at the penitentiary in Prince Albert. Coincidentally, I’d been researching the Milgaard file, talking to as many people as I could, and I can only surmise that’s how he got my business card with my home number. I opened the file and informed Milgaard, “Your friend was hit in the back with a shotgun blast.” Milgaard also wanted to know if his friend had suffered. I said, “Appears so. I’m told he moaned for about 15 minutes, then stopped.” “Is this off the record?” Milgaard asked and I said, “You phoned me for information, David, I didn’t call you …”

We didn’t talk long as my food was getting cold. There’s nothing worse than eating cold salad.

A few months passed and David Milgaard phoned again, from the same prison in Manitoba. But this time, I was at my desk in the newsroom of CBC Radio in Edmonton. Because it was Milgaard, I asked him if I could record our talk. He said ‘sure’ and the interview began. Turns out, he had some explosive information — as in ‘big scoop': Milgaard informed me that he had fired his long-time lawyer and friend, Hersch Wolch. I went, “Holy shit!” or something like that. The reason he canned his lawyer, he said, was that he was upset because his case wasn’t moving along fast enough. I said, “So what did Wolch say about this?” and Milgaard replied, “Haven’t told him yet.” Hmmm. Well, I guess you can fire someone through the media. I then asked, “What does your mother [Joyce] think about this? “Haven’t told her either,” adding, “I’m pissed off at her too.” Hmmm again.

I did not run the story. Just too many red flags. Next morning [at the exact same time], my phone rang again. It was Milgaard, and he sounded worried. “Did you run that story?” he asked, with a tone of desperation in his voice. “No,” I replied. “Thank God!” he said, “… Mom and I had a meeting last night and we “sorted everything out.” A relieved Milgaard paused for a while, then asked, “Why didn’t you run it? …” I explained that he sounded anxious, and so I held off. Milgaard thanked me profusely. I said, “It’s no big deal, man.” He said, “It is to me … I owe you one.” I said, “Don’t worry about it … just help a stranger and we’re even.”

The day David Milgaard was finally released from a penitentiary, he was by far the biggest news story in Canada. He walked out of prison a free man, at last, surrounded by his lawyer, Hersh Wolch, and a pack of journalists. But Milgaard said nothing. He got into the back seat of a car and went straight to his mother’s townhouse in Winnipeg. From there, he phoned for his first interview. Let me tell you, that was big. The only story that could have top Milgaard’s release would have been if Mother Teresa had given birth to triplets.

Fast-forward a few months and David Milgaard was living in Vancouver. It was here where he would meet his future wife, Marnie. Marnie, who was working at a library, had gone outside for a smoke and Milgaard, walking by, bummed a cigarette off her. The two fell in love and got married. After Milgaard got a multi-million dollar settlement from the government, the pair travelled to Europe and Australia. Milgaard kept in touch during their travels, sending me emails with  photos attached. That was a bit of a novelty back then. [Marnie was tech savvy] However, the two eventually split. When I think about how they met, there’s proof that smoking isn’t a good thing.

Let’s back up a bit. Soon after Milgaard was released from prison, he made his way to Edmonton. By then, I’d spoken to him on the phone a number of times, but I had not met him in person. One summer afternoon, my doorbell rang and there stood David Milgaard — without any shoes. That’s right. He was standing on my porch in his sock feet. I said, “Where the hell are your shoes?” “I sold them for smokes,” he said.

I put him in the shower to clean up, and later that night, brought him to a shelter downtown. While driving down The Whitemud Freeway — and this has to be one of the strangest memories I have of David Milgaard — he stuck his head out the front passenger window and began to sing, at the top of his voice, with the wind shipping his hair about. The man was in another world, certainly not prison. I thought, hey, what the hell, he’s free.

Milgaard continued to phone, from his new home in Vancouver. He expressed an interest in going to the Rocky Mountains. I often camped in the Rockies with Mark Lewis, public address announcer for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League. At this point, Milgaard had not yet been exonerated for the murder of Gail Miller. He was out of prison, yes, but on parole … while officials with the Department of Justice took another look at his case.

His parole officer in Vancouver rang and said, “What’s this trip to the Rockies David is talking about?” Milgaard wasn’t supposed to leave British Columbia unless he had permission. I assured his parole officer that Milgaard wouldn’t be a problem and that he’d be back in Vancouver.

It was mid-April and Lewis and I met Milgaard in Jasper and we drove to a [private, okay illegal then] camping spot south of Jasper. Oh. When we met Milgaard, standing outside the old train station in Jasper, he was on the sidewalk in sock feet. The man needed smokes again. Lucky for him, I had an extra pair of running shoes in the car.

An interesting point: the three of us went for a stroll near the Athabasca River, not far from our camp. I spotted a tall evergreen tree, a dead one. Okay, nearly dead then. I figured the old tree would be good firewood, and so I took an ax to it. It came crashing down with a huge thump, branches flying everywhere. Milgaard was startled and said, “What’s the beef?” [meaning, what are the charges?] He knew it was illegal to fell a tree in a national park. I handed him the ax, saying, “Hold this,” then answered his question, “I’m not worried — you’re the convicted murderer!”

It was about 11 in the morning and the sun was already doing a number on us. “Time for a beer,” said Milgaard. Keep in mind that we were in western Canada, three times zones behind eastern Canada so, when it’s 11 in Alberta it is two o’clock in Ontario and three in the Maritimes. Lewis glanced at his watch and announced —  “I have a rule: no beer before noon!” Milgaard, trying to be agreeable, nodded. We could all wait another 30 minutes. The silence was broken by ‘pssst,’ the sound of a can of Canadian beer being opened. Mark Lewis closed his eyes, took a sip of cold brew, glanced my way and said, “It’s gotta be noon somewhere in Canada.” With a huge smile on his face, Milgaard hurried to the cooler.

The hot sun was also doing a number on the snow that was piled high on the tall mountain peaks, several miles away. About every ten minutes or so, a small avalanche of ice and snow would tumble down the mountain side … and every 30 minutes, there was a big one. Milgaard grabbed my binoculars, plunked himself down in a meadow — with a can of beer for company — and caught all the action. We spotted the avalanches first and heard the rumbling noise two seconds later. Man, those suckers moved fast. I’ve done numerous news stories on people getting killed by avalanches in the Rockies. I could see why they had little time to escape.

We were staying at a spot we named ‘Negan Wutchee’, a Cree for ‘in front of mountains.’ I suggested to Milgaard that he help out by chopping some wood for our fire. Tell me. What guy camping in the Rockies — wouldn’t take pride in showing his prowess with an axe? Milgaard chopped ONE small log into half a dozen pieces and laid down the ax. I said, “Is that it?” “Yup,” he said. I said, “Shuffles [his prison name], “Christ, we’re here for three days …”

Milgaard complained that I was a slave-driver, mimicking the sound of a whip cracking. I shot back, “I now have PROOF you didn’t kill Gail Miller!” … to which he replied, “What evidence is that, Christopher?” I said, “You’re too fucking lazy to kill anyone.” A nervous Mark Lewis was certain that blows would be thrown, but after a beer — maybe three, maybe four, maybe five —  all was forgotten.

That night, around a whitman’s campfire [meaning tall flames], with the wood crackling, Lewis tried to engage Milgaard in a discussion about what prison life was like. But he would have no part of it. “Too much fucking shit,” he said. We didn’t bring it up again. It was clear that prison life had tormented our guest.

David Milgaard spent some time running back and forth to a small stream nearby to check out the mountain trout. “There are two fish!” he shouted, waving his arms in the air, and he ran back to tell us. Then three fish. Four. Five. Milgaard kept running from the stream to where Mark and I were resting on lawn chairs in the spring sunshine, enjoying some cold brew and contemplating the meaning of life. “What the hell is it with Milgaard and these damn fish?” Lewis asked. I explained that, to prisoners, fish represent “freedom.”

However, the best response came from Milgaard himself: “I wish Dad was here,” he said, “… we could go fishing.” Milgaard longed to spend time with his father, Lorne. Lorne Milgaard died about ten years later from cancer. In his last months, I got a number of phone calls from David, wondering what could be done to save his Dad.

David Milgaard now lives in Calgary. He has two children — a boy and girl — but he’s separated from his second wife, Cristina [from Romania]. Milgaard now spends time with a former journalist.

Milgaard and I still get together, though not nearly as much as before. When he comes to Edmonton, he hangs his hat at my house. During one visit, he asked to hear ‘Wheatkings,’ a non-hit song by the Canadian pop group, Tragically Hip. The song is about David Milgaard and the fact he was wrongfully convicted. There’s also a reference to a “late-breaking story on the CBC,” which Milgaard says is about the time CBC Radio did that [exclusive] story on his release.

If you’re looking for a touch-feely story about David Milgaard, here it is: when Milgaard was found guilty of the murder of Gail Miller, in 1970, I was working at CJDC Radio-TV in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. I was reading television news and came across a wire story about a drifter who’d raped and stabbed to death a nursing aide, leaving her body in the snow in an alley. I thought, what a son-of-a-bitch. For years, I hated Milgaard’s guts and I wondered what I’d tell him if our paths ever crossed.

Years would pass — indeed, a decade or so — and I began working on the Milgaard file. It was at the Max in Edmonton, interviewing a prisoner who had spent time with both Milgaard and Larry Fisher, who confessed to him that he had murdered Gail Miller. This new information hit me … and it nagged at me for years, like a dark secret I didn’t want to share with anyone, especially Milgaard. It took a while until the pieces came together, and then I realized — that after all those years — I’d been dead wrong about the guy. I was not alone. At the time of Milgaard’s murder conviction, what percentage of Canadians figured he was innocent?

However, most weren’t as bad as a close friend of Gail Miller [she will go un-named because I never knew her name anyway]. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the nurse met my daughter Sonja and the two got talking about David Milgaard. Turns out, Miller and the nurse had been friends, and the nurse revealed that she couldn’t stop hating Milgaard — even though it was widely known that someone else was the killer. After more than two decades of anger towards David Milgaard, the woman just couldn’t stop hating him.

Why was Milgaard exonerated? It wasn’t because the Canadian Government wanted to admit to another judicial miscarriage. The Canadian Government really doesn’t give a rat’s ass as to whether someone is innocent or guilty. For all they cared, Milgaard could have committed suicide in prison [he tried]. Milgaard was freed because of Gail Miller’s panties, which had been stored in a filing cabinet in the basement of the Department of Justice in Ottawa. When forensic investigators did a DNA test on Miller’s underwear and matched it to DNA from Larry Fisher, they found a match. Ooops. Sorry, Mr. Milgaard about those two decades you spent behind bars … thanks to taxpayers, here’s some money for your troubles.

Bravo to the scientists who discovered we have DNA fingerprints.

I held off apologizing until David Milgaard drove up from Vancouver one spring day, so he could talk to my journalism students at NAIT, the Northern Institute of Technology in Edmonton. Milgaard was standing in my kitchen reading a story in the Edmonton Journal [below] about his appearance at the school. “Hey,” he said, pointing to the article, “we’re both mentioned in the story.”

When Milgaard finished reading the newspaper story, I said I needed to apologize for something. I then explained that for many years, I thought he was a real bastard for killing Gail Miller … and only much later did I realize that he was innocent. “My apologies,” I said. Milgaard put down the newspaper, walked over and gave me a hug. “Let it go, Byron,” he said, “… it’s okay.”

Oh. Something else … for the past 20 years, when I’ve been with David Milgaard, he hasn’t been in sock feet.

DAMON HORNE – Prisoner

It was the early 90s when I first met Damon Horne, at the Edmonton Max. He was serving time for bank robbery. It was Horne, a member of  the Inmates Committee, who started the prison’s recycling program. He was also known as a ‘jailhouse lawyer,’ who spent a lot of his time in his cell pouring through law books. Horne often gave “legal advice” to cons.

Horne wanted me out at the Max to discuss his technical arguments for a new trial. His beef was that police couldn’t prove they had used marked [script] money during one of his holdups.

Horne arrived carrying so many binders he had to support them with his chin. But we had no place to get together; all the meeting rooms were being used. I went to the administrative area [out of bounds for prisoners, except for the cleaners] and asked the Warden’s secretary if she could help. She offered use of their boardroom, of all things. Horne’s binders hit the big, shiny boardroom table with a slap and before I could make any notes, the secretary opened the door and said, “Can I get you gentlemen anything?” That’s funny, I know. ‘Gentleman’ is so out of place when addressing reporters. I said to Horne, what would you like … coffee or tea?”

The secretary returned a few minutes later with one cup of tea, one cup of coffee, sugar, real cream … and some cookies. All on a tray. Pigging out on the goodies, an excited Horne checked out his surroundings and said, “Jesus, what kind of pull do you have here?”

For the life of me I couldn’t make heads or tails of Horne’s argument for a new trial. Then again, I didn’t pour over legal books the way he did. I wrote up a story for CBC Radio on what Horne claimed were mistakes by the trial judge. Within a few days — believe it or not — a judge in Edmonton set him free. Word quickly got around the Max that “Damon had beat the rap.”

Horne pledged to find meaningful work and go straight. He did go straight — straight to a clothing store, where — in spite of the warm summer weather — he picked up a balaclava. You know what’s coming next. He and his girlfriend then robbed a bank in the north end of Edmonton. To be specific, Horne was the holdup man and his honey did the driving. In prison parlance, she was the wheelman, or wheel-lady I guess. What she lacked was experience. The woman panicked as she sped away from the bank, blowing a red light. Bang! The get-away car was creamed by another vehicle. Horne had gone from tea at the joint to being T-boned.

Horne took off on foot with the loot, leaving his girlfriend behind in the car. Nice guy. After police collared Horne, he was put in the back of a cruiser and taken to the main police station downtown.

It was 5:25 in the afternoon, same day, when an excited Horne phoned me at home. He was in a police holding cell. “I’m supposed to be phoning a lawyer,” he whispered, “but I’m calling you instead.” He then blurted, “I’m being charged with robbing a bank!” I went, “Whoa, what bank’s that?” “I don’t know,” he said. Horne pulled the phone away and called out to a policeman. “What bank did I ALLEGEDLY rob?” The cop shot back, “Well, it sure wasn’t a SPERM bank, Damon.” It’s nice to hear a little wit in the holding cells.

It was now 5:26 and we had a newscast in four minutes. I thanked Horne for the news tip and immediately filed the information with our newsroom. The breaking story of the arrest of the just-released Damon Horne led our 5:30 cast. It’s always cool to break a police story before the police communications officer knows about it. Now that’s a scoop with an asterisk [*] beside it.

Horne’s next move was to try to marry his girlfriend. I’m not making this up. His thinking was that she couldn’t turn evidence against him if they were man and wife. Put it this way, it was a quick decision to get married … no time to discuss honeymoon plans, or where to get a bank loan.

Another Einstein move by Horne was to subpoena nearly a dozen people — myself and a police officer included. We all gathered in an anteroom alongside a courtroom in Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton, and every one of us was pissed. You could say that Horne was upping the ante by ordering us to appear at his trial in the faint hope of impressing the judge. I’m not really sure what his game plan was. No matter. He was about to get T-boned again, this time by a judge.

I was the first called into court. I didn’t know why I was there, so I walked over to Horne, who was standing beside a desk that had a stack of legal binders. The man had traded in his blue jeans and balaclava for a suit, compliments of his elderly mother who sat anxiously in the gallery, hoping her son could pull another rabbit out of the hat.

I asked Horne, “What the hell’s going on?” The judge heard this and he wanted to know who I was. So I told him. He also wanted to know why I was in court. I said, “Your Honour [I love that bullshit term] I’ve been subpoenaed by Mr. Horne — but I think he’s guilty. The judge immediately slammed his gavel down, announcing “dismissed.” I said, “Thanks.” Before I left the courtroom, Horne cussed and said, “Fine for you, Christopher, you and your ‘government job’ …” ‘His Honour’ heard the whole thing.

I then popped in to the anteroom and shared with everyone on how they could get excused early. They were beaming.

But not Damon Horne. The judge found him guilty and gave him a stiff sentence. He was going back to prison. Talk about recycling. The last thing Mr. Horne would have heard in that courtroom — besides his mother’s sobbing — was the ratchet sound of cuffs being put on his wrists.

Horne and the wheel-lady went their separate ways, so they never did tie the knot. Horne relocated to a federal pen in Drumheller, in Southern Alberta, a place simply known in prison circles as “Drum”. I don’t know where the wheel-lady ended up; last I heard, she was living in Edmonton. I called her after Horne’s trial and she said the bank robbery caught her completely by surprise. Who knows, maybe she’s now running a driving school.

In 1995, Damon Horne was back in the news again. He held a news conference in the chapel of the Drumheller prison where he told reporters that all prisoners in Canada were tarnished by the “heinous crimes” of a few violent offenders. “I would like to change the image of people in prison,” he said. “The public is not informed to the extent they should be,” Mr. Horne went on. “All prisoners are getting caught in what amounts to a hate campaign by hard-line citizens’ groups and the Reform Party.”

WILSON [WILLY] NEPOOSE – Prisoner

Willy Nepoose had something in common with more than 20 Canadian prisoners — David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin and Donald [Junior] Marshall, to name but three — he was wrongfully convicted of murder.

Based on the evidence of two lying drunks, the Samson Cree Indian went down for the 1986 murder of an Edmonton woman whose body was found in a gravel pit near Hobbema, southeast of the city. The victim had been strangled.

In the next four to five years, Nepoose — himself a heavy drinker with a rap sheet of minor offences — would endure a sort of psychological strangulation behind bars, one that would crush his spirit.

The stunning thing about the Nepoose case was that the evidence was there all along; the RCMP just either didn’t investigate, or they didn’t investigate properly. As a kid growing up in the Maritimes, we often heard that the Mounties “always got their man.” What we didn’t hear that it wasn’t always the right man.

Not until former Mountie Jack Ramsay started his own, private investigation did the courts order Willy Nepoose to be released from prison.

It was at the Edmonton Institution where I interviewed Nepoose. It was his first and second-to-last media interview behind bars. CBC TV did the last one, minutes later.

The backstory to the Nepoose radio interview was that everyone knew he was being released in a couple of days, and so I got on the phone to John Schimmens. I asked him to get Nepoose on the line. He did, in minutes, and Nepoose readily agreed to an interview. We then sorted out a time.

I added the Wilson Nepoose interview to our newsroom “shot list,” which we shared every morning with our counterparts in television. TV was in a different building, a mile or so down the road. Before long, TV had taken it upon themselves to invite one of their reporters to my interview, which prompted a phone call from Schimmens. “If you want,” he said, “I can stop those guys from coming in here.” I said, “Let them in.” CBC-TV needed the boost. When it came to ratings, CBC TV was like the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League: in the cellar.

TV reporter Grant Gelinas and a cameraman arrived, but I made it clear they were piggybacking my interview –not the other way around. I would speak with Nepoose first, and when I was done they could have their time with him. We only had a certain amount of time, and reporters have a reputation for taking as much time as they want, and screw the next person in line. I was once burned by some dip-stick who did that. But, give him credit, Mr. Gelinas was more than decent.

A guard escorted Nepoose to the visitor’s room and the prisoner slowly shuffled to a table, where I began asking him questions: about his time in the joint, his murder trial, what went wrong, how he’d been framed … and his plans for the future. Nepoose struggled to speak; his speech was slurred as though he was heavily medicated … but his thought-process was clear. [the motor was running, but his wheels were flat.] I had not talked to him before other than to say ‘hi’ when we passed in the hallways at the Max.

Once the TV boys did their thing, we were gonzo. Next day, so was Willy Nepoose. He was soon the centerpiece at a news conference in the boardroom of a Native bank [Peace Hills Trust] on 109th Street in Edmonton. I was at that newser, along with about a dozen other reporters. I was setting up my mike at a table in front of Nepoose when he said, “How are you doing, Byron?” That surprised me as I didn’t think he would remember my name.

It was our chance for a little chit-chat, and I again thanked him for making time to see me at the joint. He smiled and said, “Well, I didn’t really have a choice.” I said, “What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice?” His answer: “Johnny [Schimmens] said he’d kill me if I didn’t talk to you.” What the hell.

After the newser was done, I got on the blower to Schimmens. He confirmed what Nepoose said. I was furious. I said, “What the fuck are you doing threatening to kill guys if they don’t talk to me? I don’t need that shit.” Schimmens’ response was simply, “Well, you got your interview, didn’t you?” I said, “Yeah, but that’s not the way things work.” “Oh yeah?” he said, “that’s how they work in here.”

Private investigator Ramsay proved that Nepoose could not have committed the murder. He also exposed how the Mounties — his former colleagues, mind you — had screwed up big time. In some instances, there was deliberate malice. The Nepoose case was a complete sham. Officers knew that the testimony of their two star witnesses was BS, and when one sobered up and tried to retract her statement, they threatened her.

Nepoose should have never been convicted of that murder, let alone charged with it. Sounds to me like some lazy and dishonest cops just wanted to clear the books — and they didn’t give a rat’s ass if their suspect was innocent. Shame on them.

Wilson Nepoose was never fully exonerated  — and he was never compensated. Also, he never recovered from the ordeal. For a while, the man was free, yet still a prisoner haunted by a terrible injustice. His family, led by his brother Lester Nepoose, worked around the clock and spent thousands of dollars to clear his name. No one from the Department of Justice has ever picked up the phone and said, “How can we compensate you?”

On December 31, 1997 — while Canadians were sipping booze at New Years parties — Willie Nepoose had a few drinks himself and staggered off into a terrible blizzard, never to be seen alive again. His remains — essentially a skull — were found next spring. The former prisoner was identified through dental records and a wallet found nearby.

A white wooden cross marks Nepoose’s grave in a cemetery not too far from his home.

What happened to Wilson Nepoose brought to mind the words of an Edmonton criminal defence lawyer who once said that when you’re dealing with the criminal justice system [meaning, the police and the courts], “You’re rolling the dice.”

WIEBO LUDWIG – Prisoner

In April 2000, Pastor Weibo Ludwig, leader of a small Christian community near Hythe in Northwestern Alberta, got 28 months for oilfield vandalism … and for counselling an undercover police operative to buy dynamite. One well-head was cemented in, while there was an explosion at another.

Led by Ludwig, the people of Trickle Creek had protested about deadly sour gas leaks. They complained to civic officials, the gas industry, government regulatory bodies and to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — but nothing was done. The leaks got worse. At that point, Wiebo Ludwig decided to take matters into his own hands. “If the oil companies run roughshod over your lives,” he said, “you have to take defensive action against them, whatever is necessary. You can’t just let them kill your children.” [Wikipedia]

No one was hurt in the explosion, but that can’t be said for the gas leaks. At Trickle Creek, a baby was delivered stillborn and scores of animals were born with defects. Deadly gas leaks, of course, are illegal — but only if the perpetrators are convicted. In this case, they weren’t even charged. Ludwig accused the Mounties of looking the other way, certainly upwind from the leaks.

Ludwig was sent to a federal medium security prison at Grande Cache, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.  On weekends, family members made the 500-kilometre round trip to visit him.

The “eco-environmentalist” or “eco-terrorist” [take your pick] was released after serving 19-months.

I’d first met Wiebo Ludwig during his trial at the Courthouse in Edmonton. That’s where I gave him my business card. I also gave him a line that CHED Radio was rolling in the dough and the station paid 500 million dollars for story tips. Every week!

I didn’t think much of it until Ludwig called my home one night from prison. It would be his first [and, turns out, only] media interview behind bars. At the time, I wasn’t able record phone interviews from home, and so I put Ludwig on hold, phoned the newsroom at CHED [spoke with operator Ken Cameron], hit ‘link’ and, like magic, all three parties were connected by way of a three-way call. Ken said, “We’re rolling,” and the interview began.

An aside here, Ken Cameron was more than an operator. Ken [whose last name was really Camphaugh] had a long career as a country music DJ. Besides Edmonton, Cameron also worked in Lethbridge, Camrose, Calgary and Vancouver. Ken, a heavy smoker and drinker, died at home from a heart attack on 10 February 2015. He was 58.

Ludwig mainly talked about living conditions at the joint and how he was spending his time. He also gave a slight hint that he should have dealt with the gas companies differently. However, the man still maintained his innocence. He also said it’s not right that people are poisoned by sour gas.

The Ludwig interview was lead item on our morning news. That morning, a television news crew from Edmonton was on the road to Grande Cache with the hope of talking to Ludwig as well. No luck, not without making proper arrangements. It wasn’t like Ludwig could stroll out to the fence and have a chat with the reporter. That only happens in the movies.

Later, in October 2000, I obtained a copy of a letter Ludwig had written to Suncor Energy, apologizing for the way he handled things.

Wiebo Ludwig died from throat cancer on Easter Monday, 9 April 2012. You can read a more in-depth post on Ludwig and Trickle Creek in this same blog [no news release journalism]. Just go back to the main menu [go to the top of the page, click on the blue button in the top right corner that says ‘Main’] and scroll down to the article called ‘God, Family and Big Oil.’

LOU THE BIKER

I’ll call him Lou The Biker because for the love of me, I cannot remember his last name.

Lou was an ‘enforcer’ with a bike gang. I met him and his partner in 1991, during a social in the exercise yard of the Max. The boys had just transferred in from the penitentiary in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan where there had been a fatal hostage-taking. The bikers feared that Shawn Murray, the con who survived the takedown, wouldn’t be around much longer. I gave them my business card and Lou, the guy who hadn’t said much at that point, said he’d be in touch.

Lou kept his word and phoned. We saw one another now and then at the joint.

One time, I decided to ask Lou about “biker protocol.” I wanted to know why, when I passed about a dozen bike gang members on the highway with my motorcycle, that they caught up and surrounded me. Lou squinted as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing. “That was very STUPID of you,” he said. I continued with the story. “So the bikers took off, but didn’t exceed the speed limit. And because I was in a hurry to get to work, I had to pass them a second time.” “That’s REALLY stupid!” injected an agitated Lou. I finished the story: “They surrounded me again, this time at the traffic lights outside CFRN-TV in the west end. The bikers revved their motors,” I said, “and glared like they wanted to punch me out.” Lou responded, “You’re fucking lucky they didn’t DRAG you to work.”

Lou hadn’t found Jesus, and every now and then he would utter a profanity.

Lou once gave me a cool little story about how some scamsters in the United States had sent him a letter — while he was an inmate at the Edmonton Institution, of all places — enticing him to buy some [swamp] land in Florida. “Wow,” I said, “Kick-ass story.” But Lou was cautious about going public with it. “Don’t run anything until I talk to my lawyer first,” he said, “because I don’t wanna get sued.”

It was Sunday afternoon, a slow news day at best, and so I ran the story about a prisoner at the Max getting a letter in the mail to buy land in Florida. The Edmonton Sun heard the story and went with it. After it hit the papers, Lou called in a huff. “I’m going to be sued,” he exclaimed. I shot back, “Lou, no one is going to sue you. You’re a penniless prisoner. You have done good by exposing a scam. This is a good thing.” Lou was silent. I could tell he was thinking.

Then I screwed up. I said, “Lou, if you’re still bothered by this, why don’t you and I have a ‘go’ at it in the boxing ring at the Max?” “WHAT!?” he shouted. [I’d fooled him completely.] “YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME?” he asked incredulously. I replied, in the calmest voice I could muster, “Lou, I’m glad you wear sunglasses … because I’m going to beat the shit out of you.” There was a strange noise, then the line went dead. “Hello? … hello?”

Soon after, my phone rang. On the line was an animated John Schimmens. “What the hell did you say to Lou?” And so I told him. “Byron,” he said, dragging out my name, “By-roooon, you can’t joke with Lou … he doesn’t understand humour.” “Lou was so pissed off,” he said, “that he ripped the receiver from the phone.” [breaking a metal cord in the process] Oh shit, I thought, both Lou and I are in do-do now.

I asked Schimmens to get Lou to phone. He did, but the man wasn’t saying much. Mr. Biker was still ticked. I explained that I’d only been JOKING — and that I could never, ever, ever in a thousand years — make that two thousand years — take him in a fight. “I was just pulling your leg,” I pleaded.

I could almost hear the hard-drive on Lou’s shoulders whirring and processing this new information, then he announced in a soft voice, “Okay, it was a mis-understanding then.” Wow, I thought, that’s big word. But given what had just happened, I kept my mouth shut.

A way to demonstrate how Lou didn’t have a great sense of humour is to relate the following joke. Mind you, this isn’t the kind of humour that would ever make the rounds at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, just so you know. If you were to ask Lou the Biker, “How can you tell that a Chinaman has broken into your house? Answer: Your dog’s been eaten — and your kid’s schoolwork is done.” If Lou heard that, he would have said, “Why do those guys eat dogs?” [I thank a certain CBC announcer for that joke.]

A few months later, the biker and I met again, in the gymnasium at the Max during a boxing tournament, of all things. Lou was against a far wall, sitting on a chair and manning the drink dispensers, handing out soft drinks and coffee. I plunked myself down beside him. “You!” he shouted, “You really had me going there! …” We smiled, then watched the boxing match. Lou was jiving as though he himself was in the ring.

For a few minutes, neither said a word. Then Lou then looked my way. “Want to know something?” he asked, without waiting for me to answer. “I ain’t never killed a man.” I was about to compliment him on the thoughtful comment, but he kept talking, “But you, Byron — I don’t know about you … you might’ve killed lots of people.”

Lou and I lost touch. We drifted apart, as bikers and reporters do I suppose. I remained in Edmonton while Lou was transferred to the pen in Drumheller. It was at ‘Drum’ where he ran into — who else? — John Schimmens. Schimmens called. “Just ran into Lou,” he said. “He asked about you. Lou says you’ve got more balls than brains.”

Lou, if you’re reading this article at a cyber cafe — one financed by bikers, say — please take note that when we meet again, I will beat you MERCILESSLY. At chess.

THE SUSPICIOUS SHRINK

I can’t identify this controversial psychologist, but he worked at a federal prison “somewhere in North America.” The shrink was responsible for the release of some killers who went on to murder more people once they were out on the street. Prison officials maintained the men should not have been set free, but the doctor’s assessment had more ‘weight’ [to use a legal term] and the good doctor got his way.

[A psychologist studies how we think, feel and behave from a scientific viewpoint and applies this knowledge to help people understand, explain and change their behaviour. Source: Canadian Psychological Association.]

The word around the joint was that the shrink was having sex with male prisoners. Both guards and inmates noted that soon after an assessment by the psychologist, the cons would head straight to the shower. That’s another example of a man thinking with his small head instead of his big head.

If the reports were true, the predator was partly responsible for the deaths of innocent people.

I phoned the shrink at his office — twice — and left messages. Neither call was returned. I wanted to talk to the man about what I was hearing at the joint. I also put in a call to a contract who worked in administration at the prison.

The prison eventually took action against the man, and good for it. But the on-going rumours about his poor judgement and illicit relationships only fuelled suspicions that some folk do the crime — but don’t do the time. It especially irked prisoners, who were behind bars for breaking the law — and here they were in the company of a predator who was getting away scot-free, and pulling in a handsome salary to boot. And we wonder why people think the justice system is a joke?

JAMES DEAN [DINO] AGECOUTAY – Prisoner

It was 1980s and a cold winter day in Regina, Saskatchewan’s capital. A 14-year-old Native lad aimlessly walked the streets downtown, searching for a car to steal. He found one, and he sped off. He pulled over to the side of the road and made an interesting discovery: in the trunk were not one — but two — shotguns. One was brand new, shiny, still in the box. There was some ammunition as well. The youngster popped two shells in the new shotgun, laid it down on the front seat and headed out of town.

The kid was hungry and needed cash. He was about to pull off his first armed robbery.

The teen pulled up to some gas pumps on the edge of Regina and began to fill up. Then came the moment. Scared, he walked into the gas station with his new shotgun resting on his forearm. Behind the counter was a tall, older man. The kid ambled up to the counter.

The cashier, a friendly sort, immediately fell in love with the shiny shotgun. “Wow! he said, “w-h-a-t a gun!!” … and without warning, he reached over the counter and grabbed the weapon and began checking it out. Ooops. This wasn’t in the script. The man held the gun and looked down the sights as though he was blowing ducks out of the sky. “Beautiful,” he said, “just beautiful.”

He then opened up the shotgun. “Whoa!” he said, staring at the kid. “Did you know this was LOADED?” “Yup.” “Better be careful, son,” he said, and he handed the gun back to the stunned teen.

The kid didn’t know what to do. He no longer had the heart to do a robbery. However, the cashier sure liked that shotgun. So, a deal was struck. The kid walked out with $40 cash — plus the gas in his stolen car — and the cashier was the proud owner of a brand new shotgun.

That kid, James Dean Agecoutay, soon to become known by his nickname, Dino, was to learn that he had to be more “authoritative” if he was ever going to make a living as a robber. In time, he’d perfect his skills and take down banks across Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It was always the same financial institution: the Imperial Bank of Commerce. Who says cons don’t have loyalty?

Agecoutay and his mother celebrated every bank job by buying new furniture for their penthouse suite in Regina. The thief sometimes got himself a whole new wardrobe as well. Agecoutay liked new clothes and he loved dressing to the nine’s, even for robberies. From an old clip I saw of an armed robbery Agecoutay pulled off, he was one sharp-dressed dude.

The long arm of the law eventually grabbed Dino Agecoutay and off he went to the Big House. That’s where I ran into him; he was on the Inmates Committee at the Max. The con gave an inspiring talk about Native spirituality, of all things. I suggested to Agecoutay that if he ever got released, he might want to consider a career in journalism. Don’t laugh. According Allan Wachowich, former Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta, the Edmonton Journal once had a reporter on staff who had spent time for bank robberies.

I offered to give Agecoutay classes on how to become a reporter. He was excited as hell and looked forward to the weekly lectures. The guards found us a room, brought in a small blackboard and we were in business. The con arrived dutifully on time, proudly holding the CBC notepad I’d given him. Agecoutay was a keener. He paid attention, didn’t interrupt very often … and he took notes.

Agecoutay often talked about how tough things were growing up. No father. On the streets, inner-city streets no less. Fights — with firsts, guns and knives. Tough schools. I was reminded of a famous line by the later American comedian, Lenny Bruce: “I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I’m going to be if I grow up.”

At one point, Dino Agecoutay started to give me pointers on HOW TO ROB BANKS. You read right. I thought, what the hell, given the cutbacks we’re having at the CBC …

Agecoutay’s main tip when robbing a bank was, don’t be nervous! “Be calm and confident,” he said. “And DON’T go in blasting away with your gun! None of this bullshit of firing into the ceiling or shooting up the place,” adding, “I just hate guys who do that. And don’t make the poor tellers afraid by pointing a gun at them,” he said, “they’re scared enough as it is. When they hand you the money,” Agecoutay summed up, “say something like, ‘have a better day.'”

What Agecoutay forgot to mention was that his trademark ‘have-a-better-day’ comment was used against him at his trial.

Had I known then how Damon Horne would screw up so badly, I would have invited him in to hear Agecoutay speak.

Agecoutay talked about the ‘bond’ amongst bank-robberies. That was news to me. “Unlike the Brinks [armoured car] guys,” he said, “we stick together.” He revealed that when he was on the street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on the lam after busting out of a jail in Saskatchewan, a car pulled up and the driver said, “Get in.” Once inside, Agecountay said he was given $1,000 cash. “It’s for some of my holdups” said the driver, “– ones you took the rap for.”

Agecoutay explained that police had cut a deal: if he fessed up to a string of bank robberies — even though they weren’t his — they’d put in a word to the Crown prosecutor about a reduced sentence. And you thought bank investors had funny math?

Dino Agecoutay eventually got parole. For a while he lived with the secretary of Edmonton’s mayor and landed a job at one of the Native newspapers in the city. Neither venture lasted too long.

I once saw Agecoutay at West Edmonton Mall, which has a huge indoor amusement area, exciting rides and all that. The former bank robber was on the dreaded roller coaster ride, the same one that killed several people in 1986 when the wheel bearings seized and it crashed to the concrete floor. It’s one scary ride. But it didn’t fizz Agecoutay. While others stepped out of the small coaches, shaking in their boots, Agecoutay was smiling. “That was quite a rush,” he said, “just like a shootout with the police.”

I was told that Agecoutay once sang and played his guitar before a sold-out crowd at Northlands Coliseum, during a half-time break at a major rodeo show.

But it wasn’t long before Agecoutay was in trouble with the law again. He got caught stealing a pack of gum from a grocery store in Edmonton. And according to Agecoutay himself, he also did some “enforcement” work to earn extra dough, once breaking the arm of a man in Sherwood Park [near Edmonton], walking into a bar to do it and walking straight out again. As he told it, the guy was slow in paying off his gambling debt. Agecoutay talked about the attack, and how much money he’d been paid [somewhere in the $5,000 range, if I recall]. I said, “Christ, what the hell are you doing, man?” His defence was that he needed the money and besides, he only broke one arm — not two — as he’d been asked. Some of that Native spiritually must have rubbed off on the guy.

He left the Mayor’s secretary to live with a blonde who worked at a store that rented porn movies. The gal supplemented her income … [are you ready?] … by being a prostitute. I could see where Agecoutay’s new life was headed. Though he stayed away from bank holdups, he got doing drugs again, failed a piss test and was sent back to the slammer. His old girlfriend summed things up this way: Agecoutay couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to be ‘James Dean’ or ‘Dino.’

The last time I saw Agecoutay was at the Max. I surprised him cleaning up one of the meeting rooms. He wore an old pair of slippers with holes in them. I said, “Dino, you fucked up.” “I know,” he said, “I know.” I then thought back to how often Agecoutay’s talked about Native spirituality, and it now seemed rather shallow. I’m reminded of the words of one critic: “I’ve got nothing against God … it’s his Fan Club I can’t stand.”

On my way out, a guard asked who I’d seen that day. So I told him. He remarked, “Ha, that’s the guy we caught screwing another con.” By the sounds of it, Dino was what they call the ‘insertive’ partner, as opposed to the ‘receptive’ partner. Yes, those are real terms. In any case, I didn’t see that one coming, no pun intended.

One phone call stands out from Dino Agecoutay when he was doing time at the Max. He called to talk about journalism, and I couldn’t stop talking. Finally, Agecoutay said that he had to get off the phone. “There’s only a few phones here,” he explained, “and there’s a line-up behind me of guys wanting to use the phone. Don’t want to piss anyone off,” he said, “a lot of killers in here, you know.”

James Dean ‘Dino’ Agecoutay is out of prison and living in Manitoba. And according to a con who spent some time with him recently, Dino has found Jesus. 

RICHARD [RICKY] AMBROSE

Ricky Ambrose, another con at the Edmonton Max, had killed two policemen in Moncton, New Brunswick in December 1974.

While behind bars, Ambrose met a news reporter and married her. Years later, his parole was revoked after he allegedly laid a beating on the woman. Although never charged with the assault, he was quickly returned to the Max.

I saw Ambrose many times, mostly as a prisoner but also a free man: in the 90’s, when I was doing an interview at the Parole office and he dropped in with some paperwork. A number of years later I ran into him again, this time at a convenience store, just down the street from where I live in the west end of Edmonton. He was at a 7/11 to get a “slurpy,” a popular ice-cold drink.

Ambrose, who had then changed his name, was shingling roofs in a new subdivision nearby. Many cons end up working at tough jobs such as roofing. The fellows who did my first roof, back in 1993, looked as though they were straight out of the Remand Centre.

Ambrose and I are from New Brunswick; we talked about that when we first met in the joint, in the late 1980s.

Ambrose never gave me a lot of details about the terrible crime he’d committed in the mid-70s. I was aware that he and his partner, James Hutchinson [whom Ambrose always referred to as his “co-accused”] had taken two Moncton police officers hostage — Constables Aurele Bourgeois and Michael O’Leary and murdered them. Ambrose and Hutchinson shot both officers and buried their bodies in shallow graves.

According to a con at the Max who spoke with Ambrose, one victim tried desperately to claw his way out of the grave. The story goes that he was beat with a shovel until he died. And we wonder why people continue to cry out for the death penalty?

A monument at Victoria Park in Moncton commemorates the two slain policemen.

Charlie Bourgeois, whose father was one of the murdered officers, went on to play for nine years in the National Hockey League. The 6’4″ defenceman played for the Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues and Hartford Whalers.

Ambrose later changed his name to Bergeron, although I continued to call him ‘Ambrose.’ He said to me once, “I’ve changed my name now, Byron.” I said, “Why?” He never gave an answer. I figured it was because of his past.

I once told Ambrose — this would have been in the early 90s — that I was about to travel to Moncton to visit my brother and some old school buds. He wanted to know if I’d drop around to his old home and say ‘hi’ to his family. Well, okay. When I got to Moncton, I asked my brother, Arnold, if he could give directions to Ricky Ambrose’s house [his family lived out of town]. His esponse was, “Are you fucking nuts?” Such was the reputation of the Ambrose family. Mention Ricky Ambrose’s name to people in Moncton and eyebrows are raised. People fear him a lot … and hate him even more.

They don’t have to fear Mr. Hutchinson anymore. He went to meet his Maker in June 2011. I’m not sure how the parole officers in Heaven deal with people like that.

I last saw Ambrose at the Edmonton Institution. I’m not sure of the year, but of course it was after his parole was yanked. The con was heading into a room, accompanied by a guard, and I was on my way out. All he said was, “Hi Byron, how are ‘ya doing?” He had aged so much that I barely recognized him.

I relate the story of Ricky Ambrose because this is the kind of offender that correctional officers, pastors, parole officers, reporters — perhaps even you — may deal with at some point. Hundreds of killers are running free. They’ve served their time and they’re very much part of society again — most with restrictions, mind you. But they’re there. Every day, we pass these people in shopping centres, they are next to us in traffic … and they live nearby, perhaps next door. Who knows? They may have shingled your roof too.

And, like the man who stood in line behind Ricky Ambrose at 7-11, “we have no idea.”

THE LAST WORD …

Goes to John Schimmens. It was the mid-1990s and I was chasing a story about a murder where the body was found in a gravel pit near Wetaskiwin, Alberta [a town southeast of Edmonton]. I had a lead that a tall Native man, whom I’d seen at the Max at one point, was behind the killing. I’ll identify him as XX, but those aren’t his real initials.

My plan was to get out to Wetaskiwin and have a talk with him.

I gave Schimmens the con’s name. He knew him — only too well — and immediately pleaded for me not to go. “NO, NO, NO!!” he shouted. Do NOT meet with him, Byron. He’s a fucking psychopath. He WILL kill you … he’s already murdered six people. If you go there,” he predicted, “you’ll end up in the gravel pit too.”

I checked with another prisoner, a man who seldom got too excited about things, even when he was in politics — and he had the same advice. Stay away from the guy! He also said that the suspect I wanted to interview had murdered at least half a dozen people. “And the reason he runs free,” the prisoner went on, “is that he’s a police informant.”

In the end, I chickened out and re-wrote a government news release.

Schimmens also has the final picture. RIP Johnny. You weren’t all bad.