The Flying Bandit Read online

  OPP funding was to be used to rent the safe house, to pay informant expenses, to rent and furnish apartments for the undercover officers and to lease them Rent-a-Wreck vehicles. Twenty thousand dollars was set aside as ready cash to purchase evidence from the fences.

  Besides the Rent-a-Wrecks, four unmarked vehicles would be provided to the investigators by the OPP. Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester would provide one car each.

  Deputy Commissioner Lidstone liked what he read and urged the other police chiefs in Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester to contribute manpower to the project. Lyle MacCharles was assigned to be the project coordinator.

  MacCharles was the perfect man for the job. Besides being a good administrator, he was a cops’ cop who knew about life in the streets. With a grade eleven education, he’d come a long way to become an OPP Inspector. In his youth MacCharles had served in the Canadian Navy, sailing on the old aircraft carrier HMCS Bonaventure as an electrical rating. He still had the salty language and the RCN tattoo on his forearm to prove it. Five years after leaving the navy he joined the OPP and began working his way up the system.

  In his police career he had done everything: worked the highways, been an aircraft observer, laid the first traffic ticket in Ontario from the air, taken fingerprints and photographs in identification, investigated province-wide auto theft rings. In 1978, as a staff sergeant, he went into the anti rackets squad and joined a combined forces unit with the RCMP and Metro Toronto Police to investigate organized crime. In this capacity he helped pursue the three notorious Commisso brothers.

  When that investigation was finished, it was a testimony to MacCharles’ integrity that the Commisso brothers reportedly held no hard feelings against him, even though Cosimo Commisso had been sent to jail for fourteen years.

  In 1985, at the age of forty-six, MacCharles was promoted to inspector in the Criminal Investigation Branch of the OPP. The following year, he was posted to Kingston as one of four inspectors responsible for CIB duties in eastern Ontario, an area which extended from Peterborough to the Quebec border and included the detachments around Ottawa.

  Although MacCharles was tough and demanding, Snider liked working for him. The detectives who served under him respected him because they knew he would always support them. Furthermore, he would never ask his men to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

  With his peers, MacCharles had a comfortable, sensible approach that made him easy to get along with. His counterparts in the other police jurisdictions were more than willing to work with him on CAFE.

  Although CAFE would not officially begin until March 16, much of the intelligence on the fences and their suppliers needed for the project had to be gathered well in advance of that starting date. Snider and Heyerhoff would be responsible for providing most of it. Consequently, they began to spend a lot more time working together.

  Like all other Ottawa detectives, they had heard of the Birks Bandit and were aware of the theory that one person was responsible for all of the robberies. They also knew that the shotgun left behind in Vancouver had come from an Ottawa B & E. During one of their intelligence sessions together, they began to speculate on the stolen shotgun.

  George said, “If the gun was stolen by an Ottawa thief, it was probably used by an Ottawa guy.”

  “Maybe,” Ralph replied.

  “Well,” George said, “let’s suppose it was. And if it was used by an Ottawa guy in Vancouver, who would he sell the jewels to?”

  They both looked at each other and said, “Tommy!”

  “Where was it stolen?” George asked.

  “In Gloucester.”

  “Who did the B & E?”

  “A guy named Louis Morris,” Ralph replied.

  “Let’s go shake him and see what happens.”

  Snider and Heyerhoff went looking for Morris and tracked him down having a hamburger at McDonalds on the corner of Ogilvie and Montreal Roads. They let him finish his coffee and then hauled him out to the car. When Morris heard the line of their questioning, he was very reluctant to cooperate. But Snider and Heyerhoff went at him for a very uncomfortable forty-five minutes. Finally, he broke down.

  “The gun went to the Playmate,” he said.

  As soon as Morris was released from the police cruiser, Snider voiced what they both knew: “It’s beginning to look like Tommy’s got his finger in this Birks thing.”

  Ralph said, “I’ve got a friendly (an informer) in jail who deals in jewellery and sells stuff to Tommy. I’m going to talk to him and see what he knows.”

  The friendly was a local rounder named Diamond Pete who got his nickname dealing in stolen jewellery. At the time, he was imprisoned at the Regional Detention Centre on Innis Road in Gloucester, a jail that most of the local constabulary referred to as Holiday Innis.

  Diamond Pete confirmed to Heyerhoff that he thought Tommy Craig was involved in the Birks robberies but he didn’t know who was actually pulling the jobs. When Heyerhoff reported this information back to Snider, he told him, “We’re right on the money, George. Tommy’s knee deep in this mess. Now all we got to do is figure out who he’s using to do the jobs.”

  Although that question continued to nag at them, the official startup of CAFE began in the early months of 1987. Consequently, Snider and Heyerhoff had to set the Birks issue aside and focus their attention on their new duties with the project.

  In his first meeting with the CAFE team, Lyle MacCharles introduced the various members around the table who had been transferred in from a wide array of police jurisdictions. A formidable group that brought a variety of strengths to the project, the team roster included the following members:

  John Gardiner– Gloucester Police, Detective

  Scott Hogarth– OPP Killiloe, Detective

  Ralph Heyerhoff– Ottawa Police, Detective

  Jim McGillis– OPP Hawkesbury, Detective

  Dan Mulligan– OPP Guelph, Detective

  Bill Paterson– OPP Long Sault, Detective Cpl.

  Jack Richard– Nepean Police, Detective

  Mel Robertson– Nepean Police, Detective Sgt.

  George Snider– OPP Kanata, Detective

  Dennis Tremblay– Gloucester Police, Detective

  Bill Van Kralingen– Ottawa Police, Detective Sgt.

  At that first meeting with his CAFE team, MacCharles declared “open season on fencing.” Then he gave them a little advice.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “you are no longer an OPP cop from Guelph or Hawkesbury or wherever. Neither are you a city cop from Gloucester or Ottawa or Nepean. You are now a member of Project CAFE. That means you give all of your attention and all of your energy and all of your loyalty here, to this group. I don’t want you thinking about your old job or your old responsibilities or your old boss. Throw all that shit away. I want every ounce of your attention on what we’re doing here. We aren’t going to be at CAFE long enough to divert one second of our time from concentrating on it. Does everyone understand what I’m saying?”

  Wisely, everyone nodded their head and indicated they understood. It was easy to work for MacCharles. He told them what he expected and then he got out of the way and let them do it. God forbid they should mess up along the way.

  Right from that first meeting George Snider felt lucky about this project. Everyone at the Kanata detachment knew that when George felt lucky, something good would come his way. It was just a matter of time.

  When they paired the detectives up, George was assigned to work with Ralph Heyerhoff; Mel Robertson was linked with an undercover agent, OPP Constable Jim McGillis from Hawkesbury.

  As the CAFE personnel fanned out into the community, the comfortable criminal underworld of Ottawa-Carleton, including Robert Whiteman, had no idea what was coming their way. Hundreds of unsuspecting thieves and fences were about to be squeezed in a relentless grip that would monitor their every move. One of them would be Tommy Craig; another would be his side-kick, Pete Bond.

  Early surveillance on Craig confirmed that the
Fat Man was at the centre of the action. Many known B & E artists were seen coming and going at the Playmate Club. Although the action in the place was constantly on the boil, the police were never able to observe Tommy actually engaged in exchanging money for goods. They watched for any signs of jewellery transactions because it was well known that Tommy was one of the most knowledgeable jewellery brokers in the city. Although he bought and sold some of it legitimately, the police figured he was responsible for moving 70 per cent of all the stolen jewellery in the region.

  Pete Bond was a problem for George Snider. Since their first meeting after the Munster Hamlet arrest, George had been cultivating him as an informant. He managed to keep him out of court for almost a year by manipulating the system to get him remands and to change his election from one court level to another. Bond kept playing the stalling game with Snider. Although he gave George bits and pieces of helpful information from time to time, he still hadn’t come through with his promise to deliver the name of the nation-wide jewel thief.

  Bond was also suspected of still being very active in the break-in business. CAFE sightings of him were reported all over the city, often in locales where criminal activity had just taken place. But he was very difficult to follow. He was very bright and constantly on the lookout for the presence of police. Also, being a heavy cocaine user, he was so paranoid about being watched that he took serpentine and circuitous routes which made it extremely hard for CAFE members to stay on his tail.

  Bond drove an orange Bronco 4x4 that would have been easy to spot at an auto show, but he drove it so crazily and through such tough terrain, no one could keep up with him. CAFE members figured he was doing several break-ins a day but they couldn’t catch him at it.

  Police did notice that Tommy, his wife Linda, Pete Bond and Neil McLaren all drove new Chrysler 5th Avenues. Occasionally, CAFE members, in cryptic conversation among themselves, would refer to this group as the “5th Avenue gang.”

  When CAFE first started up, Robert Whiteman was not a name that was known to any of the police on the project. For the first while, his sporadic appearances at the Playmate Club were insufficient cause for the police to pay much attention to him. He was such a minor player, they didn’t notice at first that he too drove a Chrysler 5th Avenue.

  Conversely, Robert had no idea that a special task force was zeroing in on his friends at the Playmate and watching their every move. Unaware of the police presence, Robert carried on with his usual flair. His robbery of Birks in Ottawa was carried out while CAFE members were buzzing around town gathering intelligence on almost everyone who walked in or out of the Playmate Club.

  And what the CAFE detectives were discovering was remarkable. They noted that one thief started work every day at 10:00 a.m. and was always done by 2:00 p.m. His goods were always fenced in time for him to get home for supper. They observed another thief who sent nine- and ten-year-old boys out to knock on doors in a neighbourhood so they could identify the houses where no one was home. Then the robber would go around to the back door of the empty houses and break in.

  The undercover men – McGillis, Mulligan and Hogarth – were making progress at becoming fences in their own right. They were buying typewriters, VCRs, television sets, fur coats, cameras, stereos. One of them bought a $9,000 photocopier for $100. Another bought a stolen $35,000 Camaro for $500. At one point, CAFE arranged to have Ottawa police arrest some of their own undercover operatives just so their cover in the criminal world wouldn’t be blown.

  Constant surveillance at the Playmate made it obvious that Craig and Bond were running contraband booze and cigarettes from Akwasasne. Once CAFE caught on to this, they stepped up their surveillance and tried to follow Bond everywhere he went. As soon as they had sufficient evidence, the RCMP would be brought into that part of the investigation.

  During the prolonged watch on Tommy Craig, CAFE personnel finally began to take notice of one dark-haired man who was spending a fair amount of time with the Fat Man. Although his face was unfamiliar to the CAFE police, it did not escape their attention that he too drove a Chrysler 5th Avenue. Ralph Heyerhoff ran the man’s Ontario licence plate – YVS 595 – through the Ministry of Transport and found the 1985 Chrysler was registered to a Janice Whiteman, who lived at 450 Dominion Street in Pembroke. Her record was clean and her name meant nothing to either Ralph or George. It certainly didn’t set off any warning bells.

  By coincidence, at the same time Ralph was running his little inquiry on Janice Whiteman’s automobile ownership, the Pembroke City Police were being called to Janice’s residence in Pembroke in response to her report of a domestic dispute.

  On February 14 Walter Higginson, a civilian dispatcher with the Pembroke Police, received an anonymous phone call from a woman who reported that she was having a problem with her husband. But before she gave Higginson her name and address, she hung up. Since all incoming phone numbers were recorded by the police phone system, Higginson was able to trace the call and found it originated from 450 Dominion Street. He sent two officers, Constable Jim Toop and Sergeant Cliff Wilson, around to investigate the situation.

  When the two policemen got to the Dominion Street residence they went to the front door and knocked. No one answered and they had to keep rapping on the door for a considerable length of time. Finally, Janice came to the door, and although she appeared to be upset, she told them that everything was all right.

  “I don’t need any help,” she said. “It was just a little squabble and it’s all over now. I shouldn’t have called. It was a mistake.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jim Toop replied, “but we’re going to have to come in and make sure everything is all right. That’s required. Once you’ve called, we’ve got to check it out. We’re going to have to come in.”

  When Janice let them step inside, Robert, sitting in another room, started yelling at them.

  “What the hell are you doing in here? She told you there was no problem. Get the fuck out!”

  “We’ve got to make sure everything’s OK,” Toop called back to him.

  “Everything’s fine,” Robert shouted. “You got no business in here, now get the hell out of here.”

  The officers refused to leave. As they asked their questions and made some notes, Janice was calm and cooperative but Robert kept yelling from the other room. While she was giving the police her name and date of birth and her husband’s name, he kept insisting that she not give them anything else.

  “Tell them to get the fuck out of here,” he hollered.

  Constable Toop had had enough of Robert’s abuse and finally told him so.

  “Look, if you don’t keep quiet in there, and stop interfering with our investigation, we’re going to arrest you for `Obstruct Police.’”

  That seemed to quiet Robert down. He became much less aggressive.

  “There’s nothing wrong here,” he said. “Come on in and look around if you want. Everything’s OK. You can see that my wife’s all right.”

  The police declined his invitation.

  “Is there any place you want to go?” Sgt. Wilson asked Janice.

  “No, I’ll be all right here. Everything’s OK now.”

  “What’s going to happen when we leave?” Wilson asked.

  “I’ll be fine. He’s just got a bad temper. He’s over it now.”

  As the police were leaving they recorded the make and licence number of the Chrysler 5th Avenue in the driveway. While they were driving back to the station, dispatcher Higginson radioed them again that he had Mr. Whiteman on the phone and he wanted the police to go back to his house on Dominion Street.

  “What’s he want us to go back for?” Jim Toop asked.

  Higginson relayed Toop’s question to Robert and then came back on the radio.

  “He wants to apologize for his behaviour. He says he doesn’t usually act like that.”

  “Tell him to forget it,” Toop replied. “Tell him to send us a Valentine’s card.”

  Higginson relaye
d that message to Robert and relayed Robert’s reply back to the two policemen in the cruiser.

  “Looks like no Valentine for you guys,” Higginson advised.

  “Why? What did he say?” Toop asked.

  “He said `Go fuck yourself!’” Higginson sniggered.

  Neither Toop nor Wilson were upset by his response. When they ran the licence plate of the Chrysler 5th Avenue through the Ministry of Transportation, they found it was registered in the name of Janice Whiteman. Her driving licence was fine but they weren’t able to find a registered licence for Robert. That was not alarming. Although they weren’t impressed with Robert’s attitude, as far as they were concerned the occurrence was just another family quarrel.

  The incident was no big thing for Robert either. Oblivious to the fact that two different police forces were looking into his wife’s background, he flew out to Vancouver on March 10 and checked into the Bayshore Inn. On March 11 he held up the CIBC at 1036 West Georgia Street for $6,394. Two days later he robbed the Bank of British Columbia, just blocks away on West Georgia from his CIBC robbery. Here he got $10,264. On both occasions he pulled his gun, went behind the counter and emptied as many of the tellers’ drawers as he could.

  The same day he took a taxi from the Bayshore Inn to the airport and flew back to Ottawa where he spent the evening drinking with Tommy Craig in the Playmate Club. The next day Robert deposited some of his money in his own Ottawa bank account. Some of it he put into a safety deposit box in a Pembroke bank.

  Two weeks after that he drove to Peterborough in his 5th Avenue and, once again, checked into his favourite motel, the Holiday Inn. On March 27, he robbed his old standby, the Toronto Dominion Bank at George and Hunter, for the third time. Joanne Grieveson, one of the tellers, had witnessed all three robberies. Although she had seen him at very close range on all three occasions, his disguises were so uniquely different she never realized it was the same man.