Wrong Side of the Law (25 page)

The police said Rivard cheerfully answered all of their questions, but “always in an extremely clever, apparently well-thought-out, evasive manner … Rivard told us a lot, yet told us nothing.”

The Americans were delighted that Rivard had been captured. Lawrence Fleishman, the United States Customs agent who had the task of getting Rivard to Laredo, praised the Canadian police for catching him. Then he added, “You people up there don’t realize what a big fish Rivard is … The sooner we get him, the better. He’s a key big shot of organized crime in North America.”

If convicted on major drug smuggling charges in the United States, Rivard faced a term of as much as forty years in prison — a potential life sentence for a man his age. The expectation was that he would resume his fight against extradition. To the surprise of all, Rivard told his legal counsel he wanted to get out of Canada and take his chances in a Texas courtroom.

Rivard had pulled yet another trick out of his bag. At this stage, his extradition to the United States should have been a simple matter of stamping the papers. But now he faced criminal charges in Canada: escaping custody and, in the incident concerning Jacques Bourgeois, kidnapping and auto theft. Moreover, he could be an important witness in the still ongoing Dorion Inquest. In Texas, the case could boil down to a matter of Rivard’s word against Michel Caron’s.

In Ottawa, the Opposition demanded that Rivard be kept in Canada. They accused the Pearson government of trying to get rid of Rivard in what amounted to a political cover-up. The Conservatives said there was too much about the bribery attempt and Rivard’s escape and long evasion of the law that was still a mystery. They also wanted to know where Rivard got the $16,500 that was in his possession when he was captured. (That money was later identified as part of the loot from a postal truck robbery in Montreal.) Conservative MPs like Erik Nielsen inferred there were shady deals going on between the Liberals and Rivard.

In spite of Opposition protests, the Canadian government agreed to deliver Rivard into the waiting arms of the Americans. The reasoning was pragmatic. If the Texas court found Rivard guilty, he’d be locked up in an American prison and would no longer be the Liberals’ problem. Should he be acquitted, he’d still be deported as an undesirable, and could then be tried for crimes committed in Canada. That would take time, and meanwhile the uproar over the Rivard Affair would have died down.

While Rivard waited to be extradited, police searched the cottage and the grounds around it for the stolen gold. They found nothing. However, Boucher and Cadieux were held on charges of knowingly giving aid to a fugitive from the law. Cadieux was also wanted for forgery.

On July 22, a motorcade of police cars took Rivard to the Montreal airport where he was put aboard an RCMP aircraft. Accompanying him were two United States Customs agents and two Canadian police officers. At Plattsburg he was transferred to a Coast Guard plane. When the plane landed at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, it was immediately surrounded by twenty United States Marshalls and customs agents with drawn guns. The heavy security was employed not out of concern that Rivard might try to escape, but to protect him from a possible Mafia “hit.”

In a Houston courtroom, a judge read out the charges against Rivard, and set his bail at half a million dollars. When Rivard heard that, he chuckled and said, “I might as well forget it.” Back in Canada, Marie was also in jail, waiting for her sister to pay $5,000 bail. Marie had been subpoenaed as a witness in the trial of Raymond Denis, and was being legally detained due to concern she would fail to appear in court. Marie was later allowed to leave Canada to attend Rivard’s trial.

That trial date was set for September 7, and then was postponed. For much of the time, Rivard was kept in an undisclosed location out of concern that he could be the target of underworld assassins. When Rivard finally did have his day in court, his lawyer was unable to convince the jury of his innocence. On September 21, Rivard was found guilty of being the mastermind of an international heroin smuggling ring. When he heard the verdict, Rivard seemed unmoved, but he blew a kiss to Marie. Sentencing was set for a date in November.

By that time, Canada was in the midst of a federal election. From his jail cell in Texas, Rivard wrote to journalist Ron Haggart of the Toronto
Star
, and Haggart ran the letter in his column on November 11:

As you know I’ve been out of circulation since June 19, 1964, except for a couple of months last spring when there 10 million eyes looking for a $15,000 reward. Then, I was really out of circulation … I do not know the program of any of the political parties … There’s no doubt they all have a good program, but I can’t sincerely give you my predictions. I do not know what goes on outside of here, as I am kept incommunicado; even my wife does not know where they are keeping me. Canada is a big, prosperous country … it’s the best country in the world to live in, and let’s hope they will keep it that way … I suffered a lot of wrongs in Canada and very bad publicity. I do not hold a grudge against anybody. I forgive them all … many times a little lie becomes a big story, and naturally there’s always a victim.

Rivard was sentenced on November 12: twenty years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, plus a fine of $20,000. His partners Gagnon and Jones were sentenced to fifteen years each, and Groleau to twelve years. Caron, whose arrest in Laredo had sparked the whole affair, got ten years. Soon after Rivard began serving his sentence, the warden told him that he and Marie would not be allowed to correspond in French. All letters had to be in English. “Bilingualism is something they have yet to hear about in the United States,” Marie said in an interview. “It’s a good thing we both speak and understand English. Lucien writes very well in English, but I have a little trouble writing in that language.”

Marie and Rivard wrote to each other almost daily until he was paroled and deported in January of 1975, having served nine years of his sentence. Rivard made Canadian newspaper headlines again when he arrived at the Montreal airport. Marie was there to meet him. New controversies swirled around Rivard when the Quebec government decided not to press charges for escaping custody, kidnapping, or car theft. Nor would there be any investigation into Rivard’s possession of a large sum of stolen money at the time of his capture in 1966. Once again there were rumours about friends in high places.

After that, Rivard lived quietly in the Chomedey area, refusing requests for interviews. Once, a reporter spotted him in Montreal’s old courthouse and asked what he was doing there. Rivard replied that he just wanted to see what it was like to walk through that building without wearing handcuffs. Rivard died at the age of 86 on February 3, 2002, taking to the grave many secrets concerning organized crime and political corruption — or so a lot of people believed.

Rivard’s legacy was extraordinary for a Canadian criminal. In December 1965, he topped Prime Minister Lester Pearson as “Canadian Newsmaker of the Year.” He became one of only a handful of underworld figures to have an entry in the
Canadian Encyclopedia
and mention in the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
.

As a heroin smuggler, Rivard was involved in a despicable business. But his Great Escape and his cavalier bearing as a “Gallic Pimpernel” turned him into a folk hero, though he championed no cause but his own. He summed it up best himself in a letter he sent to Lester Pearson, dated March 30, 1965, when he was the most hunted man in Canada. “Life is short, you know. I don’t intend to be in jail for the rest of my life.”

Micky McArthur:

“I’d Rather Die with a Gun in My Hand”

M
itchell
Gordon “Micky” McArthur once stated that a criminal’s most deadly weapons are intelligence and charm. Only five-foot-six in height, weighing just 130 pounds, and having what police called a “baby face”, McArthur didn’t look like a hardened criminal. But the smooth-talking hoodlum had an outgoing personality with charm to spare. If cunning can be said to be synonymous with intelligence, then McArthur was gifted.

In the autumn of 1977, McArthur was using both “weapons” in a scheme to defraud Toronto jewellery stores of expensive gems and watches by means of down payments of stolen cash coupled with counterfeit certified cheques. Dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and black leather overcoat, McArthur was confident he could hoodwink any store clerk or manager. He had false identification, and he timed his visits to jewellery stores on Yonge Street to hours when banks would be closed so no one could try to verify his cheques by phone. In case of trouble, McArthur also packed a Browning automatic pistol.

McArthur spent several days setting up the scam. He opened a bogus bank account and chatted with sales clerks as he presented himself as a respectable man of means. But his plan went disastrously wrong on the afternoon of November 11, starting with his visit to Gold’s Jewelers. The saleswoman there said she’d have to get the manager’s approval before she could accept McArthur’s cheque. McArthur waited a couple of minutes. Then, sensing that something was wrong, he walked into the manager’s office and demanded his cheque back. The manager said he’d already phoned the police.

McArthur fled from the jewellery store and went to the hotel he’d been using as a base of operations. He changed into a different suit, and then walked to Chapman Brothers Jewellers, another target on his list. Unfortunately for McArthur, the word on him was already out. He found himself face to face with Constable Brian McNeil of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department’s Fraud Squad.

McArthur pulled his gun, and McNeil lunged for it. McArthur fired, and the bullet shattered McNeil’s kneecap. McArthur would later say that he had intended only to shoot at the floor as a warning to the officer. He said it was McNeil’s own fault he got wounded. “He should have let me go.”

When McArthur’s gun discharged, the recoil spring popped out, rendering it useless. Another Fraud Squad officer who was posing as a salesman drew his revolver and placed McArthur under arrest. McArthur claimed later that in the Don Jail police officers beat him because he had shot a cop. Soon he was on his way to Millhaven, Canada’s new maximum security “super prison” near Kingston. McArthur wasn’t just a would-be crook who had bungled a job, and this wasn’t his first trip to Millhaven. He was one of Canada’s most wanted men, with a long criminal record and a history of prison escapes.

Micky McArthur was born in 1952. His father had deserted the family before his birth. McArthur’s earliest years were spent with his mother and older sister living with an aunt in Galt, Ontario (now part of the city of Cambridge). Then his mother met a man named Harry McArthur who became Micky’s stepfather. More children came along as the family moved around, first to Orrs Lake, and then Paisley. Harry proved to be a violent drunk who abused his wife and “disciplined” the children with an electrical cord.

Young Micky learned to hate authority. He was often in fights at school. If the other kid was too big, Micky would pick up a rock. He was in and out of foster homes. Hard experience taught him when to fight back, and when to run and hide. By the time the McArthur family moved to Walkerton in 1964, Micky had a reputation as a problem kid.

McArthur’s first crime as a teenager was forging a cheque for ten dollars. That got him six months in the Bowmanville Training School east of Oshawa. There, he met Steve Faust, who would become his brother-in-law and partner in crime. Bowmanville did nothing to cure McArthur of his delinquency. His next stop was the Ontario Provincial Reformatory in Guelph, where he served eighteen months for three break-and-enter convictions. His pal Faust was there, too. McArthur would later blame the reformatory for turning him from “a mean little training school kid into an insensitive, totally amoral and vicious young punk.”

Not long after his release from jail in Guelph, McArthur was sentenced to fourteen months in the Burwash Reformatory for auto theft. McArthur hated being incarcerated, but he would later regard his youthful misadventures as important learning experiences for a young man who had chosen to live a criminal lifestyle. It was in jail that he learned from “experts” such skills as picking locks, hot-wiring cars, obtaining foolproof false identification, and giving police the slip.

After his release from Burwash, McArthur went to Toronto. The idea of honest work was repugnant to him. He got money from break-ins. When he wanted a car or motorcycle, he’d steal one. To deceive the police, he altered the license plates. “My artistry was almost perfect,” McArthur boasted later. Nonetheless, after a while he felt that the Toronto police were on his trail, so he moved to Galt. There, he stole so many vehicles, the local police thought a professional theft ring was in operation.

McArthur had numerous close calls with police, leading them on what he considered a merry chase. Faust was often his accomplice in break-ins and wild joyrides in stolen cars. Then one day while McArthur was visiting his mother’s apartment in Galt, two policemen came to the door with warrants for his arrest for the robbery of a convenience store in Burgoyne, a community about twenty-four miles west of Owen Sound. McArthur put up a fight before he was finally handcuffed.

The next day, two OPP constables put McArthur in a car for the trip to the Bruce County jail in Walkerton. McArthur didn’t think he would get a long sentence for the petty Burgoyne robbery, but he was determined not to go back to jail. When his escort made an unscheduled stop in the village of Harriston, McArthur took advantage of the lucky break and a lack of diligence on the officers’ part to escape from the car and flee into the woods.

A police posse with a tracking dog was soon after him. McArthur used every trick he had seen in movies to throw them off his trail. He hopped fences, doubled back on his tracks, and waded through creeks. He found the only trick that actually worked was running up the middle of a highway. Once he’d thrown the hunters and their dog off his scent, McArthur stole a famer’s car. As he put it, he was “freedom bound.” But it was the false freedom of a man on the run. He could have gone straight after Burwash. Instead, he was a wanted man.

McArthur travelled back and forth across Canada by hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, and stealing cars. Whatever he needed, he stole. To use his own metaphor, the world was a big shopping mall and everything in it was free. For a while he worked under a false name in a trendy salon in Toronto, cutting hair in the daytime and pulling burglaries at night. That rare venture into employment ended when a customer he’d known in his school days recognized him.

Worried that his old acquaintance might inform on him, McArthur got out of Toronto in a hurry. He went to Walkerton, where he continued his career as a late night thief, once again in partnership with Faust. One of their targets was a garage whose owner had once been McArthur’s landlord. McArthur felt justified in robbing the garage because the owner had never offered him a job. Again, he was the quarry of many police chases, and had incredible luck in evading capture again and again. But the inevitable happened when, in the wee hours of November 20, 1972, OPP officers burst into a cottage in Collingwood Township and surprised McArthur in bed. They took him to the Walkerton jail. Faust soon joined him.

By this time, local boy Micky McArthur had become something of an outlaw folk hero to some people in the Paisley and Walkerton areas, even though he was definitely no Robin Hood. He was implicated in more than a hundred criminal incidents in five counties that police knew of, and he had been the suspected fugitive in more than thirty police chases. McArthur seemed like a character from a Hollywood crime/action movie, and he revelled in his notoriety. He didn’t even consider himself a criminal. In his own opinion he was “just young, fun-loving and incredibly wild.” But he was still hell-bent on staying free.

On the night of April 24, 1973, McArthur and Faust became the first prisoners ever to break out of the Walkerton jail. They would never reveal who smuggled in the hacksaw blades they used to cut through bars. In spite of a search that included dogs and aircraft, the pair got away. They put plenty of distance between themselves and Walkerton, and then they cracked the safe in a grocery store in Sudbury. The swag was $11,500!

McArthur went through his share of the money quickly, travelling around the country and purchasing (for a change) a brand new sports car. He broke into a supermarket in Woodstock, Ontario, but was foiled by a safe he couldn’t crack. A few weeks later he was in Vancouver, when a tip led the RCMP to his motel room. Faust had already been arrested in Sault Ste. Marie.

Returned to Walkerton, McArthur and Faust were convicted on several charges including escaping custody, and each was sentenced to three years and three months. Then they were sent to Sudbury where they were given another two years and three months for the grocery store burglary. But McArthur had no intention of spending the next five-and-a-half years in prison.

On July 10, 1973, McArthur and Faust were in the back of a sheriff’s car, on their way to the Kingston Penitentiary. Two officers sat up front. Using a safety pin (or so he later claimed) McArthur quietly picked the locks on his and Faust’s handcuffs and leg manacles. Near Whitby, the prisoners suddenly pounced on the officers and overpowered them. They left the dazed men at the side of the road and escaped in the sheriff’s car.

Left: Micky McArthur was the first prisoner to escape from the Bruce County Jail in Walkerton, Ontario.
Right: Cell window through which Micky McArthur made his escape from the Bruce County Jail in Walkerton, Ontario, on April 24, 1973.
Edward and Jane Cobb.

Micky McArthur had done it again! But this time his “freedom” was short-lived. Four days later the police tracked him and Faust to a friend’s home in Kitchener. By the time the courts were finished with them, they were looking at nine years each in Kingston. Micky couldn’t believe it. “This wasn’t justice!” he wrote later. McArthur didn’t think he belonged in prison with
real
criminals. Nonetheless, he entered Millhaven — the Mill, as inmates called it — as prisoner number 9864. By McArthur’s reckoning, he had reached “the big time.”

As a relatively good-looking young man, McArthur knew that he would be a target for sexual predators. He put on a “weird” act to keep potential attackers away. He worked out with weights, and befriended a hard case who put the word out that McArthur was not to be bothered. McArthur began to feel a strain on his friendship with Faust, who was associating with inmates Micky regarded as “low lifes.” Eventually, McArthur was transferred to the Collins Bay Penitentiary, and Faust was sent to the Warkworth Institution at Campbellford.

McArthur never stopped thinking about escaping, but decided he would “obtain my freedom the right way and for the correct reason — on parole and gainfully employed.” But when, after three-and-a-half years the parole board turned him down because of his record, McArthur became impatient. “I had had enough of their nonsense. I had been a model prisoner and was set to go straight. I deserved a parole and I was determined to see to it that I received one — no matter how.”

On the night of December 21–22, 1976, using improvised tools such as a sledgehammer made from a broom handle and a fifty-pound weight from the gym, McArthur broke out of his cell. He managed to get over the prison wall undetected and fled on foot across the countryside. Once he was clear of the Kingston area, McArthur spent a few days hiding in the home of “a loyal family member.” All he needed, he said later, was a gun so he could pull a robbery and then rent an apartment. He broke into a Canadian Tire store in Cambridge and stole a shotgun and a supply of shells. He was just leaving when Waterloo Regional Police arrived. It was Christmas night, and Micky was in custody again. A few days later he was transferred to the Kitchener jail. He was warned not to do anything foolish.