The Flying Bandit: Bringing Down Canada’s Most Daring Armed Robber

It didn’t take long for Janice to find a place in Pembroke. When Robert looked it over, it suited his purposes to a tee. Located on Dominion Street on the southern edge of the city, the house wasn’t very impressive but it was clean and cosy. A small, frame, two-bedroom bungalow, it had a huge old maple tree shading most of the front lawn. Although there was no garage, an unpaved driveway ran beside the house. Towards the rear there was a small attached shed that could be used for storing bikes or lawn equipment.

What Robert liked most about the place was that it was private. It sat on a short block with only five houses at the end of an unpaved dead-end street. At most, the house was a fifteen-minute drive to the local airport which could easily connect him with the big airports in Montreal or Toronto. What’s more, his friends at the Playmate Club were only an hour and a half away by car and a lot less than that should he choose to fly.

Robert believed his relationship with Janice would improve in Pembroke. He knew she would be more content here. Janice was very close with her mother, and now that the two of them lived within walking distance they could spend lots of time together. Both were thrilled that a new baby was coming into the family. It was all they seemed to talk about. Robert figured if that was what made her happy, he was willing to give it a try.

There was one big problem with the Whitemans moving to Pembroke. Janice had quit her job and was on unemployment insurance. This meant that Robert was going to have to do more to support them until Janice had the baby and started working again. Robert assured her that his income would carry the load. But it put extra demands on him because he was spending his money as fast as he could steal it. He squandered much of it on cocaine. By now, he was buying several ounces a week at $1,400 to $1,800 an ounce.

He wasn’t using it all for himself. He shared a lot with his friends. Cocaine is a very social drug; people have more fun doing it in groups. What’s more, cocaine provides an instantaneous high. Users go up and come down quickly. In an attempt to stay up, they generally use all they have at one sitting. So if a person is both as generous and as reckless as Robert was, his money will soon disappear.

There are tweny-eight grams in an ounce and approximately three lines of cocaine in a gram. If Robert bought a gram for $50, he and two friends could have a line each. If he bought five grams for $250, a lot more people could have a lot more coke. And they would use it until it all ran out. The same basic math applied if he was buying rocks of crack (cooked cocaine) and smoking it. Either way the costs were excessive and increased exponentially.

To keep the cocaine coming in, Robert had to intensify his thievery. Before moving to Pembroke he apparently made a conscious decision to go on a robbery rampage. One month before their moving date, he went to Quebec City. As was his custom, he registered at the fortresslike Chateau Frontenac, insisting on an elegant room overlooking the St. Lawrence River. This was his third trip to the city, and it was his intention to rob the Royal Bank on Anne Street for a third consecutive time.

While checking out the bank on his first day in town, Robert saw that a large construction crew was working directly in front of it. This gave him the idea of changing his disguise drastically. He spent the rest of the day procuring a yellow hard-hat and some coveralls that he could use as his outer clothing. The following day, he went to the stairwell in the City Hall parking garage across from the bank and donned his construction clothes along with his wig and moustache. When he walked into the bank, he pulled out his 9 mm Browning, went behind the counter and cleaned out the cash drawers for a total of $4,500.

One of the tellers seemed to realize that Robert was the same man who had robbed them twice before in 1985. As Robert was leaving, the teller looked directly at him and shook his head in sad disbelief.

After the robbery, Robert indulged his extravagance once again by taking a taxi to Montreal. The cabbie never had so much fun. During the 160-mile trip, Robert sat up front with him and they shared a bottle of rye. Robert was in rare form with one hilarious story following another. Before they knew it, the cabbie was pulling up in front of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal. The fare was $215 and Robert threw in a healthy tip. The train trip to Ottawa was much quieter and Robert fell asleep.

Two weeks after Quebec City, Robert struck again. He drove to Peterborough, and as he had done before, took a room in the Holiday Inn. He called his wife to make sure everything was all right, then went out to have a few soothing drinks. The one thing he loved about this motel was the outdoor patio bar overlooking Little Lake. With the moon glistening off the water, the ambiance was so pleasant Robert considered it one of the nicest drinking spots in the entire country. He spent a quiet evening talking to the bartender in the gazebo and stayed until he closed up.

The next afternoon Robert went to the alleyway beside his favourite Peterborough bank, the Toronto Dominion at George and Hunter. Irritated to find a derelict loitering there, Robert gave him a five dollar bill to move along. Once the vagrant departed, Robert donned his disguise.

When he went into the bank he moved up to the counter and stood by one of the customers, Arlene Willcock, who was being served by teller, Kathy Marler. As soon as Robert threw his white plastic shopping bag over the counter and told Kathy Marler to give him the money, she recognized his disguise.

This time Robert wasn’t as cool as usual. He waved his gun around. He yelled and agitatedly prowled back and forth behind the counter among the tellers, telling them to empty their drawers in his shopping bag. At one point he aimed his gun at one of the bank employees, Betty Rooney, and said, “You too!”

While he charged about giving orders, he even momentarily misplaced his shopping bag that was being filled with the stolen money. When he discovered it was missing, he hollered to Kathy Marler, “All right, where’s my bag?”

As soon as she pointed it out to him, he scooped it up and left. The holdup took him over three minutes, which by his standards was far too long. By the time he went out the door a number of silent alarms had been sounded and the police were on their way. Robert barely had time to remove his disguise and discard his outer clothes before a crowd of on-lookers was gathering outside the bank. As if to tempt fate, Robert walked through the crowd and past the police with $4,300 of the bank’s money in his brief case. From Hunter Street, he enjoyed a very pleasant seven-block stroll to his hotel and followed that with a leisurely threehour drive back to Ottawa.

On his next visit to the Playmate Club he shared a few of his recent exploits with some of the boys but told them he still needed more moving money. This time he was going to make it easy on himself and stay in Ottawa. Six days before moving to Pembroke he went out and robbed the CIBC at 254 Elgin Street of $5,022.

The day before the move, Robert had his last few drinks with the boys down at the Playmate Club. He spent most of the night talking to Tommy Craig.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Robert replied. “But I wouldn’t mind slowing down for a while.”

“Well, that’s the place to do it. It’s nice out there. Maybe I’ll come and see you sometimes.”

“Yeah. We can have a few drinks or something. For sure, we got to keep in touch by phone.”

“No way man. I think about it all the time.” Robert took another sip on his drink. “I got to get settled first, but Vancouver is definitely in my plans.”

The following day, June 18, Robert and Janice said a quick goodbye to their neighbours and, using a rental truck, completed their move to Pembroke. Janice’s family all pitched in to help with the furniture. By nightfall, the Whitemans were settled into their new home on Dominion Street.

The Whiteman’s house in Pembroke at 450 Dominion Street

(Knuckle)

Wally’s Restaurant, Robert Whiteman’s favourite hangout in Pembroke

(Knuckle)

Two days later, Robert drove to Sudbury with another accomplice and held up the Montreal Trust on Durham Street for the third time. The partner he used this time was also a regular member of the Playmate fraternity. Witnesses described his new partner as short at 5’7”, like his other partner, but much stockier, weighing between 170 and 180 lbs. He was also observed to be right-handed when he handled his gun. Robert’s first accomplice was known to be left-handed.

The method used in the holdup was definitely Robert’s style. Robert went behind the counter emptying $5,000 in cash from the tellers’ drawers while his partner stood guard at the door. The only thing out of the ordinary that happened in this robbery was that one of the bank employees, Helen Laundry, followed Robert and his pal out of the bank and into the parking lot. As their car sped away, she was able to see that it bore an Ontario tag ending in 760. Unfortunately, her brave attempt at getting the licence number proved to be of no value in identifying the car.

Two weeks after that, Robert pulled off a robbery he hadn’t planned. He had gone to Ottawa to see the boys at the Playmate. When he walked in he received his usual warm welcome from all corners of the room. Shaking hands and chatting with his friends, he worked his way over to Tommy Craig. They were glad to see each other and sat together for some drinks at the bar. Their conversation wandered over a number of topics but quite predictably ended up focusing on the layout of a number of jewellery stores in the Ottawa area. Without any ulterior motive, the Fat Man said how difficult he thought it would be for anyone to rob Alyea’s Jewellery Store in the Rideau Centre in downtown Ottawa.

“What are you talking about?” Robert said, “I’ve seen the place. It wouldn’t be that tough.”

“Ah, bullshit. It’s too wide open. It would be like holding up a guy in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Shit, everybody would see what you’re doing. The cops would be on you like a hawk.”

“No fucking way,” Robert said. “I’d be in and out of there before anyone knew it. It’d be a piece of cake.”

“Yeah, sure, it’s a bet. Now let’s drop it and talk about something sensible.”

They chatted for a while longer, until Robert finished his drink. Then he got up to leave.

He left the club and drove directly down Montreal Road to the Rideau Centre, a huge indoor mall in the heart of the city. Upon arriving, he parked in the mall’s parking garage, found a dark stairwell, changed into a disguise, left his briefcase in the stairwell and walked to Alyea’s Jewellery Store.

Without hesitating, Robert walked into the store, pulled out his gun, handed Derek Neufeld, the clerk, a white plastic bag and told him to give him all the rings in the display case. Robert couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw how many rings were being dumped into the bag. When the clerk was finished, Robert grabbed the bag, walked out of the store, retraced his steps and in minutes was driving out of the parking garage. As he headed back out Montreal Road he started laughing out loud at how easy it had been. It was like going to the store for a loaf of bread, except his heart was pounding more.

Just as Robert was pulling back into the Playmate’s parking lot, Tommy was starting to leave.

Robert held up his briefcase and opened it to show him the rings inside. There were over sixty of them, with a retail value of $66,395.

Tommy’s jaw dropped. “Are you fucking crazy?” he said. He couldn’t believe what Robert had done. The number of rings in the briefcase was astounding. “You ARE fucking crazy,” he yelled at him.

Crazy or not, Robert insisted that Tommy come back inside the club and pay him his one hundred dollars. On top of the hundred, the rings brought him a big payday of over $13,000.

Janice was under the impression that Robert had gone to Ottawa on his father’s business and was surprised to see him home so soon. She was even happier when he said that his father had reduced his work load for the summer so that he could stay closer to home. For the next few weeks Robert was very helpful around the house. During the day, he washed floors, did the laundry, mowed the lawn. After dinner he stayed home and sat out on the porch listening to his new police-band radio. The radio served a dual purpose. He enjoyed the police calls but would also be alerted to any important information they might broadcast.

When Janice went to bed, he’d stay up watching videos well into the next morning. When he finally crawled to bed it was usually around 4:00 a.m. but he’d still be up bright and early before Janice at 9:00. She wondered how he could pack so much into a day and still be able to function the following day.

As Robert suspected, Pembroke was a quiet place where there was little to do. He got a kick out of the fact that one of the big events of the year was the Swallow Festival and Wildlife Show.

Although he wasn’t much interested in birds and wildlife, he had always wanted to do some fishing. So, with a lot of time on his hands and the big Ottawa River at his disposal, he figured it was a good time to go out and buy himself a little speed boat and some fishing gear.

When he bought the boat and demonstrated an interest in fishing, Janice was delighted. It seemed like such a wholesome thing to do compared with the way he had been spending his time. Even though a speed boat and a fishing rod seemed to make a peculiar combination, Robert thought the two of them gave him the best of both worlds. He could have fun roaring around on the river with the throttle wide open, or if he felt like taking it easy, he could stop in a quiet cove, throw a fishing line over the side and relax.

It didn’t take Robert long to find a new drinking spot in Pembroke. Almost every day while Janice had her afternoon nap he strolled down to Wally’s, a small bar and restaurant located on the Boundary Road only three blocks from his house. Robert liked to go in and stand at the bar for a few doubles and some quiet conversation. When he first started going into Wally’s, they didn’t carry his Crown Royal because it was too expensive. But once Robert became a regular they made sure they always had some on hand. He didn’t stay too long in the afternoon because he’d always go home in time to help Janice make supper. But sometimes he’d come back at night, have a few more drinks and order a pizza to take home for a midnight snack. It wasn’t long before Robert knew every waitress in the place by her first name. And he was soon friends with the owner, Danny Belland.

Like Robert, Danny was very personable. He enjoyed talking to Robert and looked forward to him coming in every day. One of the things they had in common was that Danny was a boat enthusiast too. They talked a lot about their exploits on the water and swapped tales about their favourite spots along the shore and the secret fishing holes they’d found.

Unlike Robert, Danny was an honest businessman and straight as an arrow. At no time did he have the slightest suspicion that Robert Whiteman was an armed robber. He believed what Robert told him: he was a security analyst who worked for his father in Calgary, travelling across the country on an irregular schedule. Danny had no reason to suspect him of being anything else. He never saw Robert flash his money around or act like he was someone important. Eventually Robert’s spending in Wally’s rose to over $800 a month. Although Danny thought that was a lot for one customer to spend in a bar, he had no complaints. Robert always paid his bill, usually by credit card. And he always left a reasonable tip for the waitresses. As far as Danny was concerned Robert was just a pleasant guy who was a good, steady customer.

With Robert’s addiction, his liberal spending and his new responsibility as sole provider for the family, it wasn’t long before he needed to bring in some more cash. He told Janice that he had to go on a four-day business trip to southern Ontario for his father. She was happy to hear this because it gave her a good excuse to stay with her mother during the time he was away. For her, it was like going on a mini holiday. She and her mother could spend the next few days talking and shopping.

Robert drove to Toronto on July 14, stayed overnight and then went on to Hamilton. While Janice and her mother were busy in the K-Mart in Pembroke, Robert was robbing the Bank of Montreal in Jackson Square. It was the same branch that he’d robbed only three and a half months ago. His routine was identical and he had no problems whatsoever.

Only two people in the crowded bank even knew that a robbery was taking place. One was the teller, Jane Rice, who did what she was told, dumping the cash from the tellers’ drawers into Robert’s white plastic bag. The other person who saw what happened was a customer named Anh Tai Doan who needed a Vietnamese interpreter to tell the police what he saw. By the time this was arranged, Robert was driving merrily back to Mississauga with a total take of $4,396, almost $3,000 more than the last time he was in Hamilton. Although some of the money was in British pounds, which could prove to be inconvenient to exchange, much of it was American money. Robert was delighted with the unexpected bonus.

While driving up Dixie Road, Robert looked for another bank to rob. Several appealed to him, but the one he liked best was the Bank of Nova Scotia on the ground floor of the Constellation Hotel near Pearson Airport. In order to case the bank, Robert took a room in the Constellation for the night. Before going to bed he took a trip down to the lobby to assess the layout of the building. Liking what he saw, he made a mental note to come back real soon.

The day after that, he was back at Wally’s living the other side of his double life. Danny Belland was glad to see him. As usual, Robert was immaculately dressed in slacks and a shirt, with his hair neatly trimmed and his face clean shaven. As always, he was standing at the bar laughing and regaling a little group with his lively stories. The folks at Wally’s had missed him.

As the summer wore on, Danny was ordering two or three bottles of Crown Royal a week just for Robert. As much as Robert drank, Danny never saw him become argumentative or belligerent. If someone else in the bar became obnoxious or started to bother Robert, he would just pick up his drink and find another place to stand.

By now Robert was beginning to get comfortable in Pembroke. He still tried to keep in touch with Tommy and the boys at the Playmate by telephone, but only went into Ottawa to see them when it was necessary.

He and Janice were getting along fairly well but still had major spats from time to time. Usually this happened before he left on a business trip. He would get anxious and drink more heavily, and invariably, Janice would chastise him for his drinking and an angry argument would break out. One night, late in July, they got into a wild screaming match that ended with him walking out. He spent the night in a cabin at the Pineridge Resort along the river. But, true to form, he was back the next day with a dozen roses in his hand and an apology that got him back into the house.

As the summer wore on, Robert and Danny Belland were becoming friends. They went out fishing several times on Danny’s big boat and had a lot of fun on the river. Robert was thinking of inviting him on one of his business trips. Not one of those trips where he would be doing a robbery but one where he flew to a city to case a job. He liked Danny too much to cause him any grief by implicating him in a robbery.

Although Robert enjoyed fishing with Danny, most of the time he preferred going out by himself. He’d slip down to the local marina and take his boat out once or twice a week. With his mickey of rye and something to read, he’d head out into the current and spend the day exploring the little coves and inlets along the shoreline. When he found a place he liked, he’d throw out a line and sit back to bask in the rugged beauty of the northern setting that surrounded him. Any fish he caught were an unexpected reward.

That was his idyllic world. His harsh reality was that he was trapped in an ugly double life. The imminent birth of his baby brought his charade into sharper focus and made him all the more anxious. His feelings were ambivalent; he wanted to stop doing cocaine and robbing banks, he wanted to live a normal, happy, family life, but he couldn’t. Not yet, at least. He rationalized that he’d quit after a few more jobs when he had put enough money aside to get him started in a legitimate business. In essence he was kidding himself because, from all indications, he wasn’t strong enough to overcome his addiction to cocaine, let alone his dependance on easy money.

Even more, he was addicted to the thrill of robbing banks. The money he stole seemed to be secondary to the enjoyment he got out of pulling off the job. It was almost as if he squandered his money so he would have a good reason to go out and rob some more. It appeared he wasn’t satisfied unless he had a holdup to look forward to, a robbery to plan and execute.

Nothing he cherished could make him stop, not his future, his freedom, his wife or his coming child. He couldn’t stop even though he knew that someday it was going to cost him everything. And everything he now had was more than he’d ever hoped for. Whenever those kinds of thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, Robert forced them out of his mind. He couldn’t function thinking things like that.

Now it was time to rob again. According to his plan, he was going back to Toronto to do the Bank of Nova Scotia in the Constellation Hotel, the place he had cased on his last trip to Hamilton. The bank was so close to Pearson Airport he decided to fly.

On July 31 Robert took a room in the Marriott Hotel on the airport strip near the Constellation Hotel and relaxed in the bar for the evening. As was his custom, he called Janice that evening and they chatted briefly before he wished her good night. The next day at 11:00 a.m. he walked through the lobby of the Constellation and entered the bank. With his gun drawn, he went behind the service counter and emptied $13,000 into his trademark plastic bag. As he scooped the money from the cash drawers he kept repeating, “Don’t move anyone, and no one will get hurt.” The robbery was over in minutes.

Robert checked out of the Marriott that afternoon. With his briefcase and pockets bulging with money, he hired an airport limousine to take him to the Square One Mall in Mississauga where he made a $2,300 cash payment against his American Express bill. Then he took the limousine to the Toronto Island Airport, and flew to Ottawa on a City Express commuter plane. From Ottawa he hired a cab for the 100-mile trip home to Pembroke.

The rest of the month he resumed his normal schedule. He watched videos late into the night, got up early and did the dishes and some house cleaning, then headed over to Wally’s around noon. Some days, instead of going straight to Wally’s, he went fishing first. At Wally’s he’d have a few drinks, pick up some more videos at Paul’s Variety down the street from his house and then head home to make Janice some supper.

The neighbours on Dominion Street liked the Whitemans but wondered about their strange lifestyle. Robert had told them about his travelling job, but they still thought it was strange that he worked so few days a month. And every day he was home, he either went for a walk to Wally’s or took his car down to the marina to go fishing.

With his big Chrysler and his dapper clothes, some of them assumed Robert was some kind of important executive. A few of them, because of his black car and his police band radio, thought he might be an undercover cop. Another reason they thought he was a cop was that a known drug dealer was living at the end of Dominion Street and they wondered if Robert was watching him.

Because no one said anything to the Whitemans about the presence of the drug dealer, Robert was terrified one night when he saw the glaring red lights of police cars whirling in the street in front of his house. Cops were running everywhere in a raid on the dealer’s place. It was only after Robert realized the police weren’t coming to his house that his breathing and his pulse rate returned to normal.

On August 25, with the baby due any day, Robert came home completely drunk. Janice was so furious, the neighbours could hear her screaming. The fight ended with Robert charging out of the house and heading for the cabins at the Pineridge Resort again. This time he stayed for two nights. When he finally went home, Janice let him back in.

Five days after this skirmish, early in the morning of September 2, Janice woke up with pain.

He had come to bed late and had just fallen asleep so didn’t respond intelligently to her summons.

They lay there awake for a while until her contractions seemed to go away and then both of them fell asleep again. Three hours later it was the real thing and Robert took her to the hospital. He waited with her, holding her hand as the pain increased and the contractions got closer. Then, when it was time, he went into the delivery room and watched his daughter being born. The experience was overwhelming. It made him happier than anything he’d ever experienced at any time in his life. Janice was equally thrilled. She had wanted a child for a long time and was happy to see that her little girl was so healthy and beautiful.

Robert took photographs and couldn’t wait to get them developed. He also ordered a $90 bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne that had to be shipped into Pembroke because the local liquor store didn’t carry it. The champagne arrived in time for a family celebration when they brought the baby home to Dominion Street.

The birth of the baby made Robert feel so proud that he wanted to tell his mother. He waited until he could speak privately to her then tried to get her on the phone. Since he hadn’t contacted her in over two years, he had to make a number of calls just to find out where she was located. Robert wasn’t surprised to discover she was now married to another man. They were running a trailer park in Oregon. Robert told her about his new daughter and brought her up to date on the other aspects of his life. He told her that he had gone straight, had a good job, and had gotten married to a wonderful woman that she would really like. His mother was delighted by his news, but she had difficulty believing he wasn’t involved in some sort of criminal activity.

“Ma,” he said, “once the baby’s settled in a little, a couple of weeks from now, I want you to fly up here to Canada to see for yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s a long way to go and I’ve got lots to do here.”

“Ma, if you come up here to Toronto, I’ll pay for the flight and I’ll pick you up at the airport and drive you to Ottawa. It’s beautiful here. You can stay with us for a week.”

It was strange how the birth of the baby made Robert feel closer to his mother. It seemed to give him a renewed sense of family. Through the years his relationship with his mother had been filled with anger and rejection. For a long time, Robert had no positive feelings for his mother at all. But that all seemed to be forgotten now. Somehow, in his new-found joy, Robert managed to put all those terrible, unstable years out of his mind.

For the next two weeks Robert was the perfect father and husband, helpful and considerate in every way. The baby demanded constant attention and Robert did what he could to help Janice get her rest. He curtailed his afternoon visits to Wally’s and eased up on his drinking around the house. As soon as he saw that Janice was strong enough to get around and handle the baby on her own, he started making plans to go on the road again. It had been six weeks since he last robbed a bank.

This time he flew first class to Vancouver and held up the CIBC at 1036 West Georgia Street. By now he had perfected the more lucrative method of walking behind the service counter, pulling his gun and emptying the cash drawers. This time he got over $8,000.

But it was a close call. The police arrived moments after he left the bank and several witnesses told them he’d run down the stairwell into the parking garage. The police charged after him and immediately found his wig, black rimmed glasses, blue coveralls and green cap in the stairwell. But as quick as they’d been, they couldn’t find him, and had to settle for some statements from the witnesses. A number of them described Robert as being 200 lbs., with a heavy build, a body-builder type.

They were right. Over the last few years Robert’s body had grown bigger. With all his rye and pizza, he’d put on thirty pounds and had developed a small paunch. Robert himself had noticed he was getting fat and he didn’t like it. To lose some weight, he’d taken out a threemonth membership at a fitness club in Pembroke. He’d only attended once.

When Robert got home from Vancouver he found that life with baby was wonderful. Every day something new and marvellous happened. His attention, and Janice’s, was so intensely focused on the baby they had little time to find fault with each other. But as time went on, Robert gradually began working his way back into his old routine. He started going out for walks in the afternoon and dropping into Wally’s for a few drinks. For now Janice was too happy and too preoccupied to notice or complain.

Two weeks after doing the Vancouver CIBC, Robert held up the CIBC on University Avenue in Toronto. He had been here before in 1985 and taken less than $3,000. This time he flew in with an accomplice, a small man whose identity cannot be proven. While his partner guarded the door, Robert managed to empty four of the tellers’ cash trays and make off with $16,233. Their disguises and coveralls were found in the stairwell of a nearby parking garage.

On October 17 Robert went back to the Bank of Montreal in Hamilton’s Jackson Square for the third time. This time he took a small moustachioed accomplice with him. Both of them were wearing disguises and brand-new green coveralls over their suits. As Robert went behind the counter and emptied the contents of three cash drawers into an IGA shopping bag, his partner took up a position beside the swinging door that led behind the service counter.

An unsuspecting female bank employee mistook the partner for a repair man and said, “Hi.”

She was alarmed at the sight of his gun and frightened by the mean tone of his voice. She was also surprised at how quickly the two thieves got out of the bank and disappeared into the stairwell to the underground parking garage.

Robert’s two previous engagements at this branch had netted him a total of $6,845. This robbery was worth almost twice as much at $12,681. If Robert knew how the witnesses in the bank described him, he would have been upset. One said he looked to be 215 lbs.; another said he had a puffy face and eyes; another said he looked as if he was suffering from Down’s Syndrome.

Although the Hamilton police came nowhere near catching Robert and his friend, they did manage to make an arrest in the immediate aftermath of the bank robbery. Two suspicious-looking men were pulled over in their car not far from the bank. When their vehicle was searched, the police found a sufficient quantity of cocaine to charge them with trafficking. An illegal handgun was also found in their possession which led to further charges.

When Robert got back to Pembroke he was satisfied with his share of the take but he still couldn’t get his mind off Birks in Vancouver.

It had become an obsession with him. He liked his life in Pembroke. He liked boating and fishing and drinking at Wally’s. He loved being home with Janice and the baby. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Vancouver.

CHAPTER 11

Flying High