The Flying Bandit

by Robert Knuckle

  “Yeah,” Ang replied. He was astonished at Robert’s thoroughness.

  “Ninety seconds max in the store. You understand?”

  Ang said he understood. He tried to appear calm, but inside he was beginning to feel cramps in his stomach. He needed to go to the bathroom, but he didn’t say anything.

  Robert walked him through the escape route: out of the store, into the mall.

  “We go into a crowd, not away from a crowd.” From there, they would sprint up the stairwell to the parking level, shedding their disguises and their outer clothes and wiping off their makeup as they went. Everything would be thrown in a dumpster that Robert showed him in the parking garage.

  The plan called for Robert to go to a nearby movie theatre. Ang would go back to the hotel and wait in the room for a couple of hours for Robert to return.

  The two of them rehearsed the scheme a couple of times. By the end of the second day, Ang was still taking valium for his nerves but had stopped drinking to get his head straight. He had also become very quiet and pensive and Robert suspected something was wrong.

  “Hey,” Robert said, “If you’re worried about this, you can back out at any moment, but you owe me the money I’ve laid out for expenses.”

  “No, no,” Angelo said. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right. I just need a good night’s sleep.”

  However, the night before the robbery, Angelo couldn’t get any sleep. He was beginning to realize what he was doing. He was about to cross a line that could never be uncrossed. Once he did this, he knew he’d keep on doing it until he ended up in jail.

  As he lay there in the dark tossing and turning he kept asking himself, “What the fuck am I doing here?” He figured he had a lot going for him. He was a university graduate, a professional athlete, a hard worker with lots of determination. He had a beautiful wife and a beautiful family who were all going to be crushed if he did this.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked himself.

  Finally, about three in the morning, he got out of bed and grabbed a wash cloth from the bathroom. He came back in the room and stood by the end of his bed trying to build up his courage. Then, after taking a couple of deep breaths, he ran as hard as he could toward his night table and threw his face into the sharp edge of the molded wooden top. The impact ripped a three inch gash deep into his forehead. Covering the gushing wound with the cloth, he staggered across the rug to knock on Robert’s adjoining room door.

  When Robert got him to the hospital it took over three hours to stitch up the wound. While Ang was being tended to, Robert called Tommy and told him what happened. He also told him he thought that Angelo had done this to himself on purpose in order to get out of the robbery. He checked Angelo’s room and found no blood anywhere except on the edge of the table and the washcloth. Obviously Angelo had had the wash cloth in his hand when he hit the table.

  When Ang came back to the hotel Robert told him that they could still pull the robbery off; the wig would cover his head. But Angelo argued that this was a sign that the robbery wasn’t to be.

  “I got a bad feeling about this,” he said. “Things like this don’t just happen out of the blue.”

  “That’s fine,” Robert said. “But you’re going to have to pay me $1,500 for expenses.”

  “I’ll have to take out a loan,” Angelo replied.

  “That’s OK, I can wait. You fly home tomorrow and go to the bank and make arrangements. I’m going to stay here for a couple of days. I’ll get a cheque from you when I get back.”

  That’s all Robert said. There was no rancour, no bad words. He treated it like a straight business project that had momentarily been set aside. Robert knew he’d be back again. Right now he needed some cash to cover his expenses.

  The same day Ang flew back to Ottawa, Robert went into the Mercantile Bank on West Hastings Street in Vancouver and robbed it of $2,280. After that he flew to Toronto, got a room and spent the next two days casing the Birks store in the Eaton Centre. Seeing that it was much like Vancouver, he knew he would need some help holding it up.

  Robert flew home to Janice on February 23 and no sooner had he unpacked his bags than he went looking to hire another accomplice at the Playmate Club. The man he chose was a friend of his, a small-time criminal with a record for theft, robbery and assault. He was known to be violent and considered dangerous. Most people steered clear of him because he was so unpredictable, but Robert liked the idea of working with him because he had just enough of a violent edge about him to be a good back-up man on a robbery. And Robert knew this man, who can’t be named, wouldn’t pull any disappearing tricks like Garlatti had in Vancouver.

  While Robert was making his arrangements with his new partner, Angelo Garlatti came into the club and paid Robert for his expenses to Vancouver. This was a bad time for Garlatti. He was finished with football, and was so broke, he had to take out a bank loan to pay his $1,500 debt to Whiteman. By now, most of the rounders at the Playmate knew he had lost his nerve in Vancouver and held him in derision. Angelo sensed their contempt. After he paid his debt, he walked out of the club, and from then on, made himself scarce in the Ottawa bar scene.

  Much against Janice’s wishes, Robert left home again on Monday the 24th. He and his accomplice flew to Toronto, and, for the next two days, visited the Eaton Centre and mapped out a blueprint of the job. On Monday and Tuesday Robert went into the store and examined the jewellery he intended to steal from the estate case. On Wednesday, February 26, he and his partner walked into Birks at 4:30 p.m. They went directly to the estate jewellery case and Robert asked Aino Pirskanen, a young female clerk, to show him a 7.79 carat diamond ring listed for sale at $100,000. Miss Pirskanen opened the display case, removed the ring and handed it to him. He then tossed an Eaton’s plastic shopping bag at her and said, “Put everything from the case into the bag. I’m serious.”

  Seeing that the woman was trying to stall for time, Robert said, “I’ve got a gun.” He pulled his automatic from his belt and, keeping it out of sight from the others in the store, pointed it at her.

  “I’m serious,” he repeated, “give them to me now.” While he was doing this, a security guard became suspicious and approached Robert from the side. Robert turned towards him with his gun and said, “Get over here right now and don’t say a thing.”

  His partner walked behind the guard, and pulling a sawed-off shotgun from under his long coat, trained it on him.

  “Get over there right now,” he said to the man. Then he said to Aino Pirskanen, “Give him the tray or he gets it.”

  Nervously trying to comply, the clerk slowly put one of the rings in the bag. Before she could do any more, Robert reached into the display case, took out one of the trays of jewellery and emptied it into the plastic bag. When Robert was finished, he said, “Let’s go.” His partner pointed his shotgun at the guard and said, “Stay where you are.” Then he and Robert ran out of the store and disappeared into the crowded mall.

  When the Metro holdup squad arrived and began taking statements, another clerk, Audrey Ritchie, told the investigators that a man similar in stature to the bigger thief had been in the store for the last two days and had asked to see the tray of rings that had been stolen. She said that each day the man stayed for about ten minutes examining the tray. She was able to give the police a very accurate description of the man.

  When all the statements were compiled, Metro Staff Sergeant Jim Corrigan saw there were a number of similarities between this robbery and the ones that had occurred at Birks stores in Sudbury and Winnipeg: the thief knew his jewellery, knew exactly what he was going to steal, wore a disguise, operated quickly and efficiently, disappeared into a crowded mall. The principal thief, presented the same height and size descriptions at all three stores. The fact that he used an accomplice here was not significant in Corrigan’s mind.

  This was Robert’s biggest robbery yet. The stolen contents of the tray included three rings worth $155,000, two pendants valued at $35
,000, and a diamond bracelet priced at $27,000 for a total value of $217,000. Another stolen ring worth $30,000 was found in the stairwell. It had fallen out of Robert’s briefcase, which he failed to latch in his haste to get away.

  In the same stairwell the police also recovered some of the robbers’ disguise paraphernalia and a loaded single-shot 12-gauge Winchester sawed-off shotgun. The gun had been wiped clean of prints. Robert was very upset when he found out that his assistant had left the gun behind. He knew there would be no finger prints on it because his friend had worn surgical gloves, but he was afraid the gun could be traced back to Ottawa where it had been stolen in a break-in.

  Staff Sgt. Corrigan was delighted with finding the holdup gun and set about trying to locate its origin.

  After this third Birks robbery, the national press began to refer to the primary holdup man as the Birks Bandit.

  When Robert got back to Ottawa, he kept one ring for himself and sold the rest of the jewellery for $20,000, which he split with his parner 60-40 in Robert’s favour. It was a profitable pay day, one that should have made him feel satisfied and happy. But Robert was having serious problems at home; his personal life was a shambles.

  Janice was depressed. She was troubled by his constant absences and his distant behaviour when he was home. The onset of her pregnancy made things worse, as did the dreariness of the long Canadian winter. Robert was concerned she might leave him. His solution to the problem was to offer her another trip to the Bahamas. For Janice the offer was a Godsend. A luxurious vacation in the sun was the perfect solution for both of them. Robert, too, needed a break from his nerve-wracking life.

  “What do you think?” he said to Janice.

  “Oh, it sounds wonderful,” she said. “Can Steve and Laurie come too?” she asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Robert agreed.

  Before they left for the Caribbean, Robert took care of a task that he had wanted to do for a long time. One night, when he was home alone and very drunk, he made a call to Michigan.

  The voice on the other end said, “Hello, St. Joseph County Jail.”

  Robert said, “Hi. I’m Gilbert Galvan. How the fuck are you? Do you miss me?” Then he hung up. It was typical of him: act on impulse, live on the edge, push somebody’s button.

  As usual, the week in the Bahamas was expensive. Robert’s money flowed like water. Janice, Steve and Laurie all shared in his generosity. It was a special vacation. Robert was completely attentive to his wife and she revelled in it. It was one of the best weeks they had enjoyed together throughout their entire relationship.

  While they were down there vacationing, a significant event took place back home. Early Saturday morning on March 22 the OPP got a call about a suspicious car lurking around a Beckers Store in Munster Hamlet, a little village southwest of Ottawa. Two young OPP officers, Gary Dougherty and Paul Burroughs, responded to the call and found a blue Camaro parked outside. Dougherty recognized the car because he had stopped it four nights before at three in the morning in that same general area. The driver was a young tough with a record named Pete Bond. His presence at that time of night in that area was suspicious. There had been a rash of roof-entry corner store break-ins that had been occurring in that part of the county.

  Since Bond was clean that night, Dougherty had let him go but he recognized the car as soon as he spotted it in front of the Beckers store. When he and Burroughs got out to look around, they saw Bond come walking towards them with a number of articles in his hands. Dougherty yelled at him to stop. Bond dropped the evidence and ran away like a frightened deer. Fast as he was, he was no match for Dougherty. The agile young policeman chased him through a churchyard, down a ditch and along the main road until he caught him trying to hide underneath a car.

  Meanwhile, Constable Burroughs went into the store and caught Bond’s accomplice in the Post Office section, stuffing his pockets full of stamps and coins. Both thieves were arrested, handcuffed and taken to the cells at the Kanata OPP detachment.

  For Bond, the thought of spending time in jail was worse than disturbing. He was hyperactive, and that, combined with his severe cocaine habit, made him claustrophobic. During his processing that morning, Bond made it very clear to Dougherty that he didn’t want to be held in custody. He tried to make a deal with Dougherty for his release by telling him he could give them somebody who was “really big, a guy who is doing jewellery stores from coast to coast.” Bond said he couldn’t come up with a name right now but thought he could get one, if given some time.

  Dougherty thought it sounded interesting and turned him over to the OPP detectives. George Snider was called in and interviewed Bond at length. He could see the value in establishing an on-going professional relationship with Bond. He knew he was bright and tricky but he also knew he had a great aversion to spending time in jail. George arranged to have him charged with break and enter but had him released unconditionally the next day on the promise that Bond would get back to him with some serious information in the very near future. It was a gamble that would eventually pay big dividends.

  After the Whitemans returned from their blissful week in the Caribbean, Robert remained professionally inactive for the rest of the month of March. It was a good month for him and Janice. He stayed home more, drank less and took her out to an expensive restaurant to celebrate her birthday. What pleased Janice most was that he spent more time on Melgund Avenue with Steve Veinot than he did at the Playmate Club with Tommy and his pals.

  Although his behaviour at home had improved, the way he went through money hadn’t changed. By the end of the month he had to go back to work. He’d had enough of working with an accomplice for a while and decided to go back to doing banks on his own. On April 1 he flew directly from Ottawa to Hamilton and took a room at the Sheraton in Jackson Square. The next day he walked to the other end of the square and held up the Bank of Montreal for $1,449. One of the tellers described him as having “a round face, fat looking.” Another said he resembled “Martin Mull, the comedian.”

  That same day, Robert flew to Sudbury. The next afternoon he held up the Montreal Trust on Durham Street for $2,623. It was the same branch he had robbed the previous September. Two days later he flew on the Aeroplan to Winnipeg and went into the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce at 375 Main Street. He passed a crumpled note to Louise Lucas, the teller. It said: “GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY OR I’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF, FAST!” Louise had to flatten out the note to understand what it said. While she tried to decipher it, Robert got impatient and said, “Hurry up! You’ve read enough.” When she finally got his meaning, she handed him the money from her drawer. It amounted to $2,188.

  Robert flew back to Ottawa immediately after the robbery. Two days later he did the Royal Bank in the Billings Bridge Plaza on Riverside Drive in Ottawa for $5,000. Two weeks later, he flew to Halifax and held up the Royal Trust on Barrington Street for $4,628. This was the same branch he had robbed the previous year when he had come home by train through Maine and was almost caught by the U.S. immigration authorities. This time he flew home.

  With all his travel expenses, Robert was leaving a paper trail of credit card receipts for his air flights and accommodations behind him. It was not a wise thing for a clever thief to do. Although he should have known that, he didn’t seem to care. He felt invincible. His primary concern was that April was a successful month: five banks, almost $16,000.

  It was also a very taxing month. Once again he thought about getting out of the armed robbery business. Maybe he could open a bar somewhere. Maybe in the Bahamas. That sounded like a great idea, especially with the baby coming.

  But to do that he needed more money. He knew he could take a lot more money from the banks by jumping the counter and opening the tellers’ drawers himself. He wasn’t afraid of doing that but he needed a partner to do it. As a rule, he didn’t like to use a partner for anything but jewellery stores. Where banks were concerned, he preferred to work alone. That way Robert didn’t have to sh
are the profit. And there was no danger of a partner talking too much.

  He had heard from various sources that the Civil Service Co-op on Riverside Drive in Ottawa handled a lot of cash on the first of each month. From looking the place over, Robert knew he’d need a partner to do this job. Once again he called his friend from the Playmate Club who had worked with him in Toronto.

  On May 1 they entered the co-op. His partner stayed at the entrance door with his sawed-off shotgun visible for all to see. Robert hurdled the counter and cleaned out four of the tellers’ drawers. Jumping the counter and looking inside the money drawers at all that cash was a thrill that made his heart pound. After scooping out everything in the drawers, he ran around the end of the counter and disappeared out the door with his partner. Their take was $15,041 which, once again, they split 60-40 in Robert’s favour. That was always his arrangement with a partner. As he would tell them, “It’s only fair. These are my jobs and I cover the expenses.”

  Both he and his partner liked their success in Ottawa so much they drove to London a week later and pulled an identical holdup in the CIBC at 275 Dundas Street, the same bank that Robert had robbed the previous October. When they counted the take, it totalled $7,734. According to their arrangement, the accomplice got $3,000, and Robert kept the rest for himself. He had to admit that working with a partner was better than working alone. It was safer and more lucrative.

  It was when Robert got back from this trip that Janice started talking seriously about them moving back to Pembroke. She had mentioned it several times before but had never pushed it very hard. But now, with the baby due in four months, she really wanted to get out of Ottawa and closer to her mother. Janice was tired of the big city and claimed that life would be better for all of them in Pembroke. She argued that she could get a job there and Robert could still keep his job with his father. He could fly out of the commuter airport in Pembroke. She felt she wouldn’t be so lonely when Robert went away because her mother would be there to keep her company.