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

MacCharles gave OPP officers Twomey and Sharpe a recent photograph of Whiteman so they could identify him, and sent them out to the Pembroke Airport in an unmarked grey Pontiac to await his arrival. He assigned Shawn Smith to supervise the takedown at the airport, and at 3:45 p.m., sent him and officer Tim Sheppard out in another unmarked car to join the two TRU team members at the airport. All four of them were dressed in plainclothes.

In the airport parking lot the four policemen discussed the procedure for the takedown and then Smith and Sheppard circled away from the airport building and pulled back out of sight.

The police had been briefed that Whiteman would probably be picked up by his wife, who was known to be pregnant. This complicated the takedown. They knew Whiteman was dangerous and probably armed, but because of the presence of his wife, they had to be extremely careful. If at all possible guns were not to be drawn in the arrest. The plan was to take him by surprise and neutralize his hands so that he couldn’t get at his guns.

Twomey and Sharpe watched for the arrival of Whiteman’s wife in her Chrysler 5th Avenue. At 4:25 p.m. they saw the big black car pulling into the parking lot.

The two OPP watched with mild surprise as Whiteman’s wife lifted a small child from the car. They realized the presence of the infant would make the arrest all the more delicate. Carrying the baby, the woman walked briskly towards the terminal building and entered.

The airport parking lot where the Flying Bandit was finally grounded

(Knuckle)

At 4:36 p.m. a small plane landed from the southwest and taxied to the terminal. A few minutes later the woman and child exited the terminal with a man carrying luggage in both hands. Checking the photograph, Twomey and Sharpe determined the man was Whiteman.

They immediately got out of their car and began casually walking towards him. As Whiteman approached, Twomey and Sharpe split apart as if to pass him on either side. Both of Whiteman’s arms were extended downward holding his luggage. As the policemen drew even with Whiteman they each slipped a forearm through his extended arms, grabbed his wrists with their other hand and forced his arms up behind his back. As they did this, the cases in Robert’s hands went flying and he shouted, “Hey, what the hell is going...” But before he could finish the sentence, he was flung forward, face down on the tarmac.

Janice jumped back out of the way with the baby and let out a scream of surprise: “Hey! Hey!, what’s going on?” She hugged Laura tightly and yelled, “That’s my husband! What the hell are you guys doing?”

By then, Robert was handcuffed and immobilized. It was all over in a matter of seconds.

Twomey identified himself as an OPP officer and told Whiteman he was under arrest for armed robbery.

“Armed robbery!” Janice screamed. “What the hell are you talking about?” Everything was happening so quickly that Janice was dumbfounded. She began to think the whole thing might be a practical joke.

Then Shawn Smith and Tim Sheppard drove up and hopped out of their car. Smith identified himself as an OPP detective, and showed Whiteman the warrant for his arrest. He then read Whiteman the right to counsel card and the prisoner caution.

Now Janice could see that it was definitely not a practical joke. She demanded to know what was going on. The four policemen were too busy to pay much attention to her. All she could make out from what they were saying to Robert was that he was being arrested for armed robbery in London and Winnipeg.

Armed robbery! In London and Winnipeg! She couldn’t believe her ears. She blurted out exclamations like, “Under arrest! Oh God!” and “Armed robbery! My God!” and “What do you mean? There’s got to be some mistake! How can this be?”

Whiteman didn’t pay much attention to her protestations either. After the police read him his rights, the only thing he said while lying on the ground was, “I don’t want to say anything.”

As soon as the police lifted him to his feet, they searched him. They found a lot of money in his wallet and two huge rolls of cash jammed in his pockets. Smith counted it in front of Twomey. It totalled $1402 in American money. While Smith was counting, he told Tim Sheppard to go and check with the pilot to see how Whiteman had paid for his chartered flight.

He ran through the terminal building and out on the tarmac where the plane was still sitting. When he found Grant Milburn inside the aircraft, he asked him to step outside for a minute.

“That’s stolen money,” Sheppard said. “I’ve got to confiscate that.”

Milburn didn’t understand what Sheppard was talking about and the policeman had to explain the entire sequence of Whiteman’s illicit activities for that day. Once Milburn understood the scenario he painfully realized he had no choice but to hand over all the cash that Whiteman had paid him.

“Just not your lucky day, I guess.” Then Sheppard added, “Thanks for being so understanding.”

Milburn walked away, shaking his head. Once he began to realize the enormous irony of what had just taken place, he brightened and hurried out to the plane to tell his co-pilot.

“Hey, Ian,” he called out, “you are not going to believe this! Hey Ian!”

By the time Sheppard got back to his partners Robert was locked in the back seat of a police car with Smith and Twomey seated up front. As soon as Whiteman got settled he asked Shawn Smith, “How did you get me?”

Robert said, “I’ll bet it was that fat Tommy Craig turned us all in. The RCMP probably got my licence plate when I was parked in front of Tommy’s place last month.”

Janice was still thunderstruck. She couldn’t believe what was going on and protested so vehemently that at one point Robert told her, “Janice, just get in the car and go home.”

When she went to do that Smith told her, “You’re not going anywhere in that car unless a police officer goes with you.” Smith directed Sheppard to go with Janice in her car and follow him to the station.

The three car cavalcade departed for downtown Pembroke. Janice and the baby rode in her Chrysler with Tim Sheppard driving. Sharpe followed the two cars in his unmarked cruiser. To MacCharles’ utter delight and relief, the convoy arrived at the Pembroke OPP station at 5:30 p.m.

Gilbert Galvan at the time of his arrest in Pembroke

Galvan at the time of his arrest. His sleeve has been rolled up to display his panther tattoo.

Ever since Robert’s arrest Janice had been protesting that her husband was a courier working for his father in Calgary. At the detachment office the police assured her that no such father or company existed. They explained that her husband was a bank robber and they were sure the evidence to prove it was in his luggage.

When they opened Robert’s briefcase, its contents were astounding. There was $4102 in American cash and $11,261 in Canadian cash. Included among the Canadian cash was $100 in bait money. The bait money was a series of registered ten-dollar bills whose serial numbers matched the serial numbers forwarded to Pembroke by the London Police. The total amount of money recovered from Whiteman was $20,749.

In his garment bag they found a blond wig, spirit gum, black leather gloves, his baseball cap, a blue T-shirt and a kit for making fake skin. In his shaving kit, the police found a Browning 9mm automatic and a .38 Smith and Wesson Special. Both guns were loaded.

Once it was revealed, Janice was taken away and put in a separate interrogation room.

Also in his luggage, they found a Canadian passport in the name of Bradley Kent Stafford. Whiteman’s photo was on the document. From what Pete Bond had told them, the police had reason to suspect that Robert Whiteman was not the bank robber’s real name. When they questioned him about this, he let it be known he had nothing to say and asked to call his lawyer, Scott Milloy.

When he got Milloy on the phone Whiteman told him he was being charged with an armed robbery in Winnipeg and London. He also complained that they were questioning his wife and told Milloy, “She has nothing to do with anything.”

Milloy told Robert he would speak to the investigating officer and get back to him. Until then, he was not to say anything.

After the phone call, mug shots were taken and Whiteman was fingerprinted. Because the police could not establish Whiteman’s background in Canada beyond three years, they believed his identity was questionable. Consequently, Snider and Smith took the extraordinary step of sending his fingerprints to the FBI and to Interpol as well as the RCMP. Then he was locked in a small detachment cell with a guard nearby.

It wasn’t long before Robert asked his OPP guard, “What are my chances for bail?”

The constable replied, “I don’t know. They shouldn’t be very good, but anything’s possible in this country.”

“You’ll probably appear before a J. P. tomorrow, but you won’t likely have a bail hearing until Monday.”

Whiteman knew the Canadian courts were lenient and felt there was a slim possibility he might be able to get bail. After all, he had a wife, a child and a fixed address. If his false identity held up and he could convince the court that he wasn’t a flight risk there was an outside chance he might be released.

Whiteman kept up a barrage of questions and comments to the guard. He talked so much that, considering his dire predicament, it was almost comical. He asked the guard his opinion about Scott Milloy as a lawyer. They chatted about that for a while. A little later, Whiteman told him the story about the pilot losing the charter money and commented on the fact that “you guys really fucked those pilots up taking that money back.” Fabricating stories about himself to the very end, he talked about his work in the welding trade and how he had to move around a lot from city to city to follow the jobs. He wanted to know if he could see his wife tonight. He asked why they took his cigarettes away. He said he didn’t have a criminal record. He asked if he would be staying in the Pembroke Jail. He asked why he wasn’t being held in a jail cell over there. He said if he was in a normal cell he could at least have some room to walk around. The guard did his best to answer his questions.

While Whiteman was being searched and processed, Janice was interrogated in the other room. She was much more upset about Robert’s arrest than he was, furiously asking all kinds of questions in an attempt to understand what was going on. Because she was so terribly distraught, the police took it easy on her, trying to calm her down while they answered what they could. They were also trying to assess how much she knew about her husband’s activities and to determine if she was involved in any way. From what they could tell, she appeared to have been completely unaware of what her husband had been doing.

Janice’s interrogation went on for almost three hours. During all this time she kept Laura with her. At one point in the questioning, at her request, a police officer was dispatched to her house to bring back some diapers and formula.

Throughout her interrogation she agonized and cried and became fiercely defensive, when MacCharles told her he had difficulty believing that she had no idea about her husband’s illegal activities.

At one point, when he told her that she didn’t appear to be sufficiently shocked at her husband’s arrest, she argued vehemently against his allegation.

“I might not be showing it,” she said, “but I am totally devastated by his arrest. Here I am with one child, another on the way, and my whole family life has just blown up in my face before my very eyes. I feel like I’m being crushed to death.”

In the end, she satisfactorily answered every question the police put to her. The only conclusion they could reach was that she seemed to be unaware of what her husband had been doing. Nevertheless, the Chrysler 5th Avenue, which was in her name, was seized as material evidence and Inspector MacCharles ordered that first thing Monday morning Robert and Janice’s bank accounts were to be frozen.

While Janice was being questioned, arrangements were made to execute search warrants on 450 Dominion Street as well as 350 Trafalgar Street, Janice’s mother’s house. Tom Murray’s OPP police dog was brought in to assist the searches. At Whiteman’s house, letters were found addressed to B. F. Stafford at 450 Dominion Street. Also a phone book was discovered on top of the fridge that had B. F. Stafford’s name circled in it. The listing showed Stafford lived at 43 Hemlock Street in Hull. OPP Ident. took photos of the house inside and out. The grounds outside the house were searched with a metal detector. Nothing of any value was found outside. The search of Mrs. McKenzie’s house on Trafalgar Street also yielded nothing.

Just after 8:30 p.m. Janice and the baby arrived home to find the police going through her house with a fine tooth comb. During the search Shawn Smith confiscated three rings from Janice which he turned over to the Ottawa police. These would be taken to Birks for possible identification. Subsequently the manager at Birks declared that the three rings were not stolen from the Ottawa store but were of a quality of ring that Birks would handle. He also said that they may have come from other Birks stores that had been robbed.

During the course of the search Sgt. Gord Weir saw Tommy Craig and his wife, Linda, drive onto Dominion Street in their Chrysler 5th Avenue. They stopped in front of Robert’s house. Weir asked Tommy what he was doing there.

Tommy told him that he had received a call from Robert’s lawyer, Scott Milloy, who said that Robert’s child was sick. Tommy said he was there to check on the condition of the child. Weir told Tommy they were conducting a search on Whiteman’s house and Tommy was not permitted inside. He was advised he could come back and enter the house in about three hours when the search was finished. Tommy didn’t argue. He and Linda left the scene.

At 9:15 p.m. in the detachment office, Whiteman was escorted to the main office and appeared before a Justice of the Peace who remanded him in custody for a bail hearing on Monday. Then he was put in an OPP cell and Inspector MacCharles came around to have a brief conversation with him. Robert made it clear he had nothing to say about the robberies. He did say, “I want to thank your officers for being cautious when my wife was around.” Later he quipped to MacCharles, “You guys ruined that pilot and co-pilot’s whole day. They’re going to be in a lot of trouble with their company, you know.”

Around 9:45 p.m. Robert rolled over and went to sleep. He’d had a long, busy day. While he slept, George Snider kept an eye on him. They had seen each other briefly in the detachment office but, as yet, George hadn’t introduced himself to Whiteman. George was in no rush to talk to him; he knew they would be spending lots of time together in the future.

That night Janice put Laura to bed two hours later than her normal time. Then she fell exhausted onto the couch in her living room and drifted into a fitful half-sleep. Just before midnight, her brother Peter and his wife, who had just heard the news, came in to console her.

On Saturday morning Ottawa Sgt. John Zoschke filmed Whiteman with a video camera. The London evidence against him was solid but he was also the primary suspect in the Winnipeg holdup two weeks earlier. The OPP wanted to make a video lineup and send it to Winnipeg to see if the bank tellers out there could pick him out of the lineup and identify him.

When the first fingerprint results came back from the FBI, Smith and Snider knew they had a problem. Whiteman’s prints were an exact match with a Vincent James Mears, DOB October 25, 1959, who had been charged with burglary in Las Vegas in June 1983. The notification from the FBI had Mears’ weight, height, eye colour and hair colour matching Whiteman’s. The report, however, did not list any distinguishing scars or body marks on Mears. Whiteman had large panthers tattooed on his right and left upper arms and noticeable scars on five different parts of his body. Smith and Snider thought Whiteman might have gotten his tattoos after the 1983 charge in Las Vegas but they couldn’t understand why his scars weren’t listed. Something didn’t add up. They suspected they might be heading in the wrong direction with the Mears’ identity.

The two detectives decided to play a bluff and went to Whiteman’s cell. Smith announced, “We know who you are now!”

Whiteman, sitting on his cot, turned laconically towards the detective. He seemed bored.

Smith announced, “You’re an American named Mears – Vincent James Mears.”

Whiteman said nothing; he just smiled. The disdainful expression on his face said, “You’ve got me now. Oh, yes! You guys are so good, so smart.” The look of mockery in Whiteman’s eyes convinced Snider that they didn’t have the correct solution to his identity.

Smith tended to agree. He went back to Whiteman’s cell alone and grilled him for over an hour but Whiteman would not admit to being Vincent James Mears. He wouldn’t admit to anything.

When Smith rejoined Snider in the front office he told him that Whiteman wouldn’t budge.

As they sat pondering their problem another notification from the FBI came in. It indicated that there was a second set of prints that matched Robert Whiteman’s. This time the panther tattoos and body scars were listed and they matched up with Whiteman’s tattoos and scars identically.

ALIASES:

GLAVAN, GILBERT
MOSKAL, JOHN
DOBBIN, SHANE
COLLINS, SHANE
MEARS, VINCENT JAMES
SWANSON, DALE

This time Snider and Smith knew they had the right identification. From his fingerprints to his tattoos to the scar on his leg, Robert Whiteman was Gilbert Galvan. The lengthy printout indicated Galvan was an American criminal with a long record who had been unlawfully at large for the last three years, having escaped from a Michigan jail in 1984. One of the counts on his record showed that, at one time, he had been charged in Las Vegas under the alias Vincent James Mears. This explained their previous problem with his identity.

“Will you look at this guy’s record,” Snider said. “It’s unbelievable! He’s been active all over the United States.”

“How could a guy who looks so clean get into so much trouble in so many places?” Smith remarked.

They went back to Whiteman’s cell. Smith said, “We’ve just come to say good night, Gilbert. We had it wrong before, but everything matches up now. We know you’re Gilbert William Galvan.”

Snider said to himself, “Gothcha!” He was positive they had the right man. He was also very satisfied knowing they had not only snared a major criminal, but one who was also an escaped convict.

Once Whiteman’s true identity was known, he seemed resigned to his fate. He asked the police to let him tell his wife about his identity and his past. They agreed he could do that.

When Janice came to visit him in the Pembroke County Jail that afternoon she opened her conversation by saying, “OK, asshole, I am not at all happy about all this.”

“How could you do this to me, Robert?” she sobbed. “Christ, they told me yesterday your name probably isn’t Robert Whiteman. They said you might not even be a Canadian. What the hell is going on here?”

Robert was hesitant. He didn’t know quite where to begin. Before he could say anything, Janice whimpered, “Yesterday ... was the worst ... day ... of my life.” She gasped for air as she spoke. “Last night ... when I went to sleep ... I hoped ... it would all be a bad dream ... that it would go away in the morning. But ... it didn’t.” She looked at him expectantly.

As gently as he could, Robert began to untangle his life of deception. He told her about his background and the circuitous route that brought him to Ottawa and into her life. It was difficult for both of them. The more he revealed, the more distraught she became. Before long, she was weeping uncontrollably. Robert tried to calm her down but nothing he said could stop her crying.

Even though he suspected their conversation was being recorded, Robert tried to be as honest as he could.

“And it’s going to get worse, Janice,” he said. “It’s going to be ugly ... that’s all I can tell you. There is more to this and it’s not good news. Maybe we should just break this off.”

“It might be best if you didn’t have to go through all this. I’m really sorry for everything and I can understand if you walked out and never returned.”

Janice wanted more information. At that point he was reluctant to tell her very much about his criminal activities because he was hoping to use that information to bargain with the police. The best he could do was to keep apologizing and ask for her forgiveness. She was immobilized with disbelief.

Over the next few day Robert’s confession to her continued. As torturous as it was for her to hear about his deceit, Janice realized she still had strong feelings for him. Throughout their rocky relationship she had never stopped loving him. Now, although she felt lost and abandoned by his betrayal, she also felt Robert was desperately alone and needed her. She couldn’t walk away and leave him at a time like this. Besides that, he was the father of her children.

Together they had created one child and a second was well on the way. They were a family. How could she abandon him? It was all very painful and confusing for her, and in the end, she resolved to stick with him and see him through his ordeal.

In the meantime, Gilbert Galvan had other problems to contend with. When his lawyer, Scott Milloy, arrived on Saturday, Galvan implored him: “Listen, just see if you can get me bail, any type of bail. Let them set it at anything, but get me out of here on bail.”

Milloy tried but there was no way Galvan was getting bail, not even for a million dollars. No judge in his right mind was going to release an alleged major criminal, an alien with a record, who would likely flee the country as soon as he was let loose. The way the police presented their case to the court, Gilbert Galvan, alias Robert Whiteman, might as well have been Jack the Ripper.

When the news about Robert’s arrest became public the Whitemans’ neighbours couldn’t believe it. Much like Danny Belland and the waitresses at Wally’s Restaurant, they thought Robert’s arrest was a practical joke or, at worst, a case of mistaken identity. They could accept that he might have outstanding parking fines or speeding tickets, but to conceive of Robert Whiteman as an armed robber? That was too much.

As a result of Robert’s arrest the police obtained a search warrant for Tommy Craig’s house at 1701 Boyer Street in Orleans, a suburb of Ottawa. Monday morning June 15, Tommy answered a knock on his door at 7:30 a.m. to find George Snider standing there with a retinue of twelve policemen behind him. The street was lined with police cruisers. Tommy let them in and woke up his wife, Linda, and their young son.

Craig asked Snider if Linda and his boy could be excused from the house during the search and Snider, after Linda’s purse was searched, agreed to let them go. While the uniformed men spread throughout the house, Tommy poured himself a drink and sat at the kitchen table.

“This is not a doghouse,” he called to the police. “There was no crap in here when you came in and I don’t expect to find any when you leave.”

Tommy was confident that they wouldn’t find anything in the house because everything he had of value was stashed in a secret compartment he’d had built into the wall of the basement family room when the house was originally constructed. Out in the back yard, the only thing the metal detector discovered was a rusty old auto wrench that had been buried there before the time of Henry Ford. As Tommy had demanded, the police left the house as neat as they found it.

That same day Tommy’s sister’s house was searched as well. Nothing incriminating was discovered in either investigation.

Janice’s Chrysler 5th Avenue was impounded and thoroughly searched. All of her bank accounts were frozen and her credit card documents were seized. A hold was put on her chequing account which contained a balance slightly in excess of $10,000. In effect, she had become destitute overnight.

“Robert,” she advised Galvan, “they’ve taken the car, they’ve taken the cash. What am I going to do?”

Galvan thought he knew a way to make a deal with the police to get both the money and the car back to Janice. Snider and Smith had been repeatedly asking him about a Brinks armoured truck robbery in Quebec and Galvan had been telling them he had nothing to do with that.

Now Galvan agreed to take the lie detector test but only if they gave Janice back the car and access to her bank account. Snider got MacCharles to agree on condition that Galvan pass the lie detector test. MacCharles felt this was a good deal because they couldn’t hold the car or the money much longer anyway. Time was running out when these items could be legitimately held as a part of their ongoing investigation.

An OPP specialist was brought in and administered the lie detector test, which Galvan passed. This freed him from any further suspicion in the Quebec Brinks heist, and gave Janice her car and her money back.

This type of quid pro quo exchange between the police and Galvan was a harbinger of things to come. Many long hours of manoeuvering and negotiating lay ahead.

CHAPTER 16

The End of the Runway