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

Two curious events occurred in Robert Whiteman’s life immediately after he robbed the Birks store in Ottawa. Four days after the holdup, Robert rented a houseboat from Garmac Houseboat Rentals in Pembroke. He was by himself and told the people at the marina he wanted to go fishing for the day. After being out on the Ottawa River for several hours, Robert brought the houseboat back in. He had caught no fish but had damaged the vessel on the port side. Readily admitting that he was responsible for the accident, Robert agreed to pay the deductible to have the vessel repaired. This he did with no complaint.

Eventually there would be some speculation that Robert was not fishing on that day. In due time, the real reason for his winter excursion out on the frigid water would become the subject of an intense police investigation.

Then, four days after the houseboat rental, he and Janice went on what he called a five-day business trip to the Bahamas. Although the trip appeared to be spontaneous and unplanned, it is curious that this is one of the few times he travelled with his wife and took his briefcase with him. Other than that, there was nothing extraordinary about their holiday. During their stay on the island, Janice sunbathed and read; Robert para-sailed and drank. The true purpose of this abbreviated trip to the Caribbean remains a mystery. Maybe it was just a spontaneous winter get-away like the others he so often liked to arrange. Or maybe this trip and the houseboat rental had something to do with the pieces of jewellery he had set aside for a rainy day.

While Robert and Janice were sunning themselves in the beautiful Bahamas, theories were percolating in Ottawa police circles. By now the Ottawa police had determined that the shotgun left behind at the Birks store in Vancouver was stolen from an Ottawa residence in 1985. That meant if one man was responsible for all the Birks robberies, as speculated by Metro Toronto’s Jim Corrigan, it was entirely possible that the Birks Bandit was from the Ottawa area.

Also unbeknownst to Robert Whiteman, another major police development was getting off the ground in Ottawa which would have serious repercussions on his future.

Since the fall of 1986, Detectives Snider, Heyerhoff and Robertson had been looking at a more proactive way of dealing with burglaries in the Ottawa-Carleton Region. Ottawa police were charging upwards of 750 thieves per year with B & E, but arresting these people and convicting them seemed to have little preventative effect. Every year the incidence of burglary would go right back up to where it had been the previous year. Furthermore, the recovery of stolen goods was negligible. It ran at less than 10 per cent.

The B & E detectives knew the market for inexpensive stolen goods was insatiable. Although a lot of it was peddled to homes in low rental housing communities, more and more of it was going into affluent houses where the over-taxed average citizen was looking for a good way to get around paying top retail dollar plus tax for his purchases.

In almost every stratum of society there was a growing willful blindness to the questionable origin of quality goods on sale for a cheap price. As the market for these goods increased, the traffic in stolen goods became immense.

Snider, Heyerhoff and Robertson could see that the way they were doing things with B & Es was not working. They were reacting to the crimes, solving lots of them but not preventing them from recurring. It was like being on a treadmill: they were expending a lot of energy but they were getting nowhere.

At one of their monthly meetings, an interesting idea emerged from their discussions.

“We’re never going to get anywhere chasing the little B & E thief. They’re like an army of ants – they just keep coming,” said Snider. “We got to go after the source.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Heyerhoff said. “The way we’re going now, we’re just chasing our tails around in circles. If we went after the fencing operations, we could knock ‘em on their ass.”

“They’ve tried that in the States,” Robertson added, “and it works. When they concentrate their efforts and go after the fences aggressively, it can disrupt their whole system, throw it in chaos. Eventually, they spend all of their time looking over their shoulders.”

“And most of the fences deal for drugs,” said Heyerhoff. “We could grab some of them by using drug charges.”

“How many fences do you think we’re talking about in this area, Ralph?” Snider asked.

“Geez, I don’t know. There’s got to be a ton of them. Sixty, maybe seventy. Maybe more.”

“If we start watching the B & E guys, they’ll take us to their fences. Once we see the operation, we can attack it.”

“We could go undercover and buy from them, sell to them too,” Heyerhoff added.

“You start going undercover and doing what you’re talking about, it’s going to cost a lot of money,” Robertson reasoned. “You’re talking about a whole project here.”

“Well,” Snider replied, “maybe that’s what we need. Maybe we need to put together a proposal for a project. What we’re doing now is getting us nowhere. Day in, day out, it’s the same old thing year after year. I’m getting tired of this crap. Aren’t you?”

Snider’s question was rhetorical. The three of them set about formulating the basis for a proposal that they could take to management, even though they knew it was a long shot.

Proposals like the one they had in mind were seldom popular with police management because, first of all, they highlighted an area where there was a glaring lack of success. Secondly, and more importantly, a proposal such as they had in mind would cost money and resources.

Where cost was concerned, management could be a problem for the cop on the street. Often referred to as bean counters, management’s primary purpose seemed to be watching the budget rather than doing what was effective. In fairness, they were in a tough spot too. Most new proposals that were brought to them had merit, but they required more policemen working longer hours, and budgets couldn’t always absorb the cost.

The fact that the proposal would be expensive wasn’t the only knock against it. Effective investigation against fencing had proven to be extremely difficult and management had so far shown little inclination towards putting extra resources into this area.

But the three detectives were not deterred. They began to formulate their proposal. It emphasized the fact that the fence was the foundation of the B & E empire. Without him, stolen property had little value. The break-in thief didn’t have the time, the energy, or the inclination to go around peddling all the goods he stole to many different individuals. He also couldn’t afford to be caught with it and needed to get it off his hands immediately. He had no use for it himself; how many televisions could he watch, how many VCRs could he use? Without the fence to buy his goods, the thief’s crime of break and enter was almost pointless.

Besides that, most B & E thieves were strung out on cocaine and counted on the fence to buy their goods with dope. This would give the police the opportunity to make some drug busts as well.

As the detectives drew up their proposal, they identified eightyseven fencing operations in the Ottawa area. They had names and addresses for all of them. These fences weren’t just working out of Ottawa bars and taverns. Their tentacles spread out through corner variety stores, grocery stores, jewellery stores, pizza outlets and restaurants. Most of the fences were high profile people, well known by the customers they served. Their popularity stemmed from their connections. They could provide a fabulous deal on anything a person wanted, from a car to imported French wine.

Snider, Heyerhoff and Robertson proposed to get all the police forces in the area involved. They knew that if they combined resources they could cover the entire region and go after all the fences in one fell swoop. Their idea was to create havoc on the streets by sowing distrust among the criminal element and disrupting the underworld’s way of doing business. If they could do that, they believed that the whole illicit system would fall into disarray.

Although their project would cover the entire Ottawa-Carleton region, its primary target would be Vanier, which was known in police circles as one square mile of hell.

Convinced that such a project would be worthwhile, the three detectives took their idea to Dave Rollins, head of the B & E squad with the Ottawa City Police. Rollins thought their plan had merit and talked it over with Snider’s Crime Unit Supervisor, OPP Corporal Bill Paterson.

As the proposal evolved it became clear that the OPP would have to fund the project, and all the other police departments, including the OPP, would be expected to commit manpower and such technical resources as vehicles.

When Paterson talked to Snider he was not completely encouraging. Although he saw some value in their idea, he did feel there were better places to put police time, money and energy. The best he could do was to say, “George, I’m not going to say it’s a dumb idea.” Then he added, “I’ll send it on.”

Paterson was responsible for putting their idea on paper. He structured their proposal into a simple four page document that outlined a joint forces operation that would:

It further outlined the project’s requirements for manpower, vehicles, equipment, accommodations and financing. The proposal recommended the project commence in early spring and last for six months.

Paterson forwarded the proposal to the Criminal Investigation Branch at General Headquarters in Toronto. There it worked its way up the line to Deputy Commissioner William Lidstone. Accustomed to reading elaborate and detailed proposals up to two inches thick, Lidstone was so pleased to receive such a concise document he is reported to have reacted by saying, “At last! A proposal I can read on the john.”

Lidstone liked the proposal and sent it to Detective Inspector Lyle MacCharles, head of the CIB in Kingston, for development. MacCharles, using Paterson’s proposal as a guideline, wrote a thirty-four page operational plan for a proposed joint forces operation and sent it back to Deputy Commissioner Lidstone for his approval. The operational plan was called CAFE, an acronym for the phrase Combined Anti Fencing Enforcement.

The operational plan that MacCharles drew up for CAFE was well organized and highly detailed. It was based on his communications with inspectors and superintendents from the Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester police. Using intelligence information supplied by Snider and his colleagues, the plan named the nine major fences who were to be targeted. Tommy Craig was number one on the list.

Photo of Inspector Lyle MacCharles taken in 1980. He is reluctant to allow the use of a more recent photo because of his continuing investigations among the criminal element.

The CAFE team, February, 1988. Top row (L to R): Bill Van Kralingen, John Gardiner, Ralph Heyerhoff; Middle row: Jim McGillis, George Snider, Jack Richard, Mel Robertson; Front row: Dennis Tremblay, Scott Hogarth, Dan Mulligan, Bill Paterson.

The plan stipulated that the OPP and the Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester police forces were to contribute two men each to the project. The detectives would work in pairs made up of combinations from various forces.

Two other OPP undercover police officers would be sent out to sell goods to the fences. Several of these items would be equipped with an electronic tracking device so that the police could trace the movement of the stolen property through the criminal network. Stolen goods were also to be purchased from the fences.

All operatives in CAFE were to be sworn to secrecy. No one, including their colleagues on the various police forces, were to know of the project’s existence. Because of the confidential nature of the work, CAFE could not afford to operate from a regular police office where their day-to-day activity could be observed by inquisitive officers who might compromise the secrecy of the project. Accordingly, a safe house was to be rented and used as a centre of operations. The safe house, whose existence and location was known only to CAFE members, would be furnished and equipped with state-of-the-art audio and video surveillance equipment. All relevant data pertaining to CAFE was to be entered into computers for information storage and retrieval.

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.”

“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?”

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.

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:

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!”

“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.

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

“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.”

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.

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

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.

The first two times Joanne felt that everything went smoothly and quickly for him, so there was no reason for her to be fearful. But this time, when Whiteman went to leave by the back door, he found the door was locked. It was then, Joanne told the police, “I was never so afraid in all my life.”

Joanne thought the thief might feel trapped, and in his panic, start to shoot at people in the bank. Her fears were soon allayed when Whiteman calmly turned the lock on the door, opened it and walked out to Hunter Street. From there he quickly disappeared using his customary route in the adjacent alley behind the bank.

The experience of the locked door evidently didn’t faze Robert at all. After the robbery he went back to the Holiday Inn, showered, changed into some comfortable slacks and then went sight-seeing. He drove to the world-famous hydraulic lift-lock that boaters use as they navigate the Trent Canal. Like any other tourist, he stood and watched the towering mechanism function while he chatted with a number of folks that had travelled miles to see it.

When he tired of that, Robert drove through the tunnel under the locks and crossed the canal to Liftlock Golfland. Although it was barely spring, the driving range was open and Robert spent the next hour or so hitting golf balls. While he swung away, a police cruiser went by. He kept an eye on it but it didn’t even slow down as it passed. That confirmed Robert’s belief that no one would be looking for a bank robber driving a Chrysler 5th Avenue who had stayed around town after the robbery to hit golf balls at the driving range.

One of the unfortunate consequences of this Peterborough robbery was that an innocent man was charged and arrested for the holdup. Two days after the robbery, the police arrested Robert Sobel, a local man from nearby Warsaw, who was known to the Peterborough police because he was on a peace bond for threatening his girlfriend. Although Sobel had no criminal record it was assumed he had a working knowledge of banks and police procedure because he had once worked as a security guard. The police based much of their probable cause to arrest him on a composite drawing sketched from a description provided by one of the bank tellers. Two of the investigating officers felt the drawing closely resembled Sobel. One of the tellers went through a book of mug shots and, seeing Sobel’s picture, said, “That’s him ... I think.”

With this evidence, the police were able to get a warrant from a Justice of the Peace to search Sobel’s house. Thirty-two-year-old Sobel was flabbergasted when the police arrived and began scouring his house. In their search, they found seven handguns in the house, and several twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen counter that made him look all the more suspicious. Against his strong protestations of innocence, the police read Sobel his rights and took him to the city cells. There, he once again professed his innocence and offered to take a lie detector test to prove it. When the Crown Attorney heard of Sobel’s offer he asked that taking such a test be made a condition of his bail. The results of his lie detector test were inconclusive.

Even when he was released, Robert Sobel had a very bad time of it. Some of his friends and most of his neighbours shunned him because they thought he was a dangerous armed robber who had brazenly held up their friendly neighbourhood bank. Sobel’s predicament was a nightmare; it took him months to prove to people that he was not guilty of such a horrible crime.

Meanwhile Robert went about his business in Pembroke, still unaware that most of his closest associates were under the searching scrutiny of a special police task force.

CHAPTER 13

Cafe