Galvan outside the “love hut” at Collins Bay Penitentiary, 1991
Project CAFE officially came to an end on February 4, 1988. The safe house was cleaned and closed and its furniture and equipment returned to their original police detachments. Besides taking down the Flying Bandit, CAFE arrested eighty-four other persons on a total of 402 charges. Stolen property worth $397,595 was recovered from a reported loss of $2,798,467. This included video and stereo equipment, firearms, restricted weapons, alcohol, cigarettes and furs.
The project was terminated due to financial constraints but the results were so good that it clearly established a need for similar efforts in the future.
Its biggest prize, Gilbert Galvan, is at this writing imprisoned in the maximum security confines of the Oxford Correctional Institution near Oxford, Wisconsin, forty miles north of Madison. Galvan was transferred there in June, 1994 to serve the remaining fifty-one months of his sentence for crimes in the United States. He received a three- to five-year sentence for his last crime in Michigan but that sentence is running concurrently with his other sentence so, in effect, he received no time at all for that Michigan offence. He also received no time for his 1984 escape from the Michigan jail. Galvan will be a free man in June of 1998. He will be forty-one years old at that time.
When Gilbert Galvan was sentenced to twenty years in Canada in 1988, based on the sheer number of crimes he had committed he would have been eligible for mandatory release only after serving two-thirds of his time, or thirteen years. Thus, he normally would not have been let out of the Canadian penitentiary system until the year 2001. After completing that sentence, he would have been deported to the U.S. to finish his fifty-one months owing. On this sentencing scheme he would have been released from prison in 2005 at age forty-eight.
Galvan outside the “love hut” at Collins Bay Penitentiary, 1991
Tommy Craig visiting Gilbert Galvan at Collins Bay Penitentiary, 1990
However, that is not the way things worked out. Galvan claims he wrote a letter to Sergio Marchi, the Minister of Immigration, and advised him he was eligible for parole and deportation to prison in th U.S. after completing one third of his Canadian sentence. Because Marchi was extremely sensitive about ridding the country of aliens who had deportation orders hanging over their heads he signed an order to deport Galvan at the end of one third his sentence. Thus, Galvan boasts, he saved himself an extra six years in the Canadian penal system and reduced his time to serve by that same number of years.
After Galvan was sentenced in Pembroke in March 1988 he was sent to the reception section of Millhaven Penitentiary for a period of months. Once he cleared reception, he was transferred to Collins Bay Penitentiary in Kingston to serve his time.
Janice moved to Kingston to be near him and continued to visit him, often accompanied by the children, for the next two years. Then, in 1990, she obtained a divorce and moved back to Pembroke. Neither Galvan nor Janice will comment on their reason for the divorce, but it must be assumed that, as a relatively young woman, Janice wanted to get on with the rest of her life. In any case, their rocky relationship officially ended at that time.
Not long after his divorce from Janice, Galvan married a waitress he had known at Pepe’s, a bar on Bank Street in Ottawa. This second marriage took place in the prison and ended two years later in divorce.
In 1992, Galvan made an abortive attempt to escape from Collins Bay by clinging to the undercarriage of a garbage truck and trying to ride it out of the prison. Caught in the act, he was sent back to the more secure confines of Millhaven, a prison with one of the most dangerous inmate populations of all the penitentiaries in Canada. In 1994, after his letter to Sergio Marchi, Galvan was deported to the federal prison in Wisconsin. There he will remain until his release in 1998.
Whether Gilbert Galvan will ever rob again is an open question. Galvan himself has sworn to Ed Arnold that his life of crime is over and he will lead the straight life when he gets out. George Snider says that Galvan promised him he would be back to rob again: “Galvan told me he’s coming back to Canada to rob another bank, and when he does, he’s going to leave his fingerprints on the window of the bank as a calling card, to prove that he’s returned.”
Neil McLaren thinks he’ll be back to rob again. He says, “For Robert, it’s easy pickins here in Canada.” Neil insists that what the Flying Bandit likes best about Canada are the easy banks and the decent prisons. McLaren says that Galvan was reluctant to commit any armed robberies in the United States because the penalties there were so much more severe.
Tommy Craig, too, thinks he’ll come back to Canada. He says Galvan loves it here and he can’t imagine the Bandit giving up what he knows best.
“He was very good. He had everything down pat but he went wrong with drugs. I can see to steal to live, to survive ... but not to hurt people or to do drugs. Drugs makes them fall apart.” Then Tommy waxes philosophical. “I respect a good thief, as long as nobody gets hurt and he doesn’t ask anybody for anything. Insurance rakes the people for enough money, let them pay out a little bit.”
George Snider agrees with Tommy on Galvan’s talent. George says, “Gilbert Galvan is the best I’ve ever seen. He may well be the best bank robber in the history of the country ... and that includes Paddy Mitchell and his Stop Watch Gang from Ottawa.”
Paddy Mitchell’s career was the reverse of Gilbert Galvan’s. Mitchell is a Canadian from Ottawa who, with his gang, went to the States and robbed American banks.
No one can predict what Galvan will do when he gets out of jail, but U.S. authorities have described him as a stone criminal, meaning he is so entrenched in criminal activity, he’s like a rock, he can never be changed.
One of Galvan’s claims is that, in the commission of his armed robberies, he never hurt anyone, never fired a gun. Both MacCharles and Snider respond to this assertion by saying that, in their opinion, Galvan never shot anyone because he was never cornered and had no reason to shoot anyone.
“Make no mistake,” MacCharles insists, “If he had to, he would have shot his way out of being captured. I don’t think he’d go back to jail without a fight.”
Galvan wasn’t the only one of the 5th Avenue Gang to go to jail. In November 1991 Tommy Craig was interviewed by Victor Malarek on CBC’s Fifth Estate. On the program, Tommy, who had been drinking heavily, admitted that the police had often accused him of being a major fence in Ottawa but said they had never been able to make their accusations stick. Tommy also applauded Robert for not bartering for a lesser sentence by naming Tommy as an accomplice in his jewellery robberies.
“What do I call a man like this? A friend!”
Tommy’s cavalier performance in front of the television camera infuriated the brass of the Ottawa Police. Tommy says he never intended to belittle them or upset them.
“The reason why I went on the Fifth Estate was because Robert asked me to go on to explain to the public and the parole board that there was no money left. I told Robert that me going on TV was crazy – it would bring heat like a forest fire. But he said, `That’s OK, go ahead, tell them there’s no cash left.’ So I did. I was only trying to help Robert. I thought he was solid. Little did I know how much trouble it would bring me.”
What Tommy didn’t know is that after the program the police set up a special project called SMOKER which was specifically established to bring down Tommy Craig. Two of the primary operatives in SMOKER were detectives George Snider and Ralph Heyerhoff. Now, more than ever, the two detectives were determined to convict the indomitable Fat Man who had been so elusive down through the years.
This time Tommy Craig didn’t have a chance. Snider and Heyerhoff had Pete Bond and Angelo Garlatti plus a host of others who were prepared to give statements against Tommy on a series of twenty-nine offences ranging from conspiracy to commit murder, to possession of stolen goods, to conspiracy to commit arson.
Tommy was taken into custody on July 29, 1992, and did two months’ dead time in the county jail waiting for his trial. Tommy’s lawyer, Don Bayne, after considering the case the police had against him, recommended he plead guilty in the hope of receiving a lighter sentence. Bayne’s strongest argument against fighting the charges was it would cost Tommy $100,000 for lawyers’ fees alone. Also, while awaiting his trial, Tommy would be held in the county bucket for over two years doing dead time.
Craig reluctantly agreed to plead guilty. He is still bitter about his friends turning against him and he is unhappy with the injustice of his treatment by the authorities.
“I’m not saying that I was not guilty of any charges,” he complains, “but I was charged and convicted of crimes that I did not commit.”
Among the charges, Tommy was accused of putting a $10,000 murder contract out on Ang Garlatti for ratting on Galvan. Tommy steadfastly maintains that he never did such a thing.
“That is just a fucking figment of Pete Bond’s imagination. I know him (Bond). He gets rolling and starts exaggerating and before you know it, everything’s blown way out of proportion. Yeah, I will admit for a while I thought it was Garlatti who ratted on Robert and I was very upset about that. But I never put no killing contract out on him ... or anybody. And I shouldn’t have gone to jail for that.”
But go to jail he did. Tommy pleaded guilty to all charges against him and on October 6, 1992, at forty-five years of age, was sentenced to eight years in prison. Eight days later he was shipped to Millhaven where he spent the next five months in reception, being assessed prior to his penitentiary placement.
By then Galvan had attempted his abortive escape from Collins Bay and had been shipped back to Millhaven. During their time together at Millhaven, Galvan and Craig never spoke to each other because inmates in reception are not allowed to mix with inmates in population. They saw each other in the visiting area once but didn’t speak. That suited Tommy fine because, by this time, he was very unhappy with Galvan for reasons that cannot be pursued in this book.
After reception at Millhaven, Tommy was transferred to Collins Bay, where he spent the next twenty months. In May 1994 he was sent to work at the minimum security Pittsburg Institution which serves as a slaughterhouse and meat supplier for the prisons of Correctional Services Canada. In December he was transferred to a half-way house in Hull and then finally released on parole.
Wherever he was sent Tommy was well-liked by his fellow inmates. That is entirely understandable because Tommy is always honest with people and usually jovial. He’s an interesting person and the other prisoners liked to hang around with him.
“I know what I am, who I am,” Tommy explains. “I can look them in the eyes.”
The one constant companion of Tommy Craig’s life is his wife, Linda. She has stuck with him through thick and thin.
Tommy Craig down to a svelte 220 pounds after his release from the half-way house in 1995
(Knuckle)
“We’ve had our ups and downs,” Linda says, “but he’s got such a good heart. He’s had to get rough with some people, but he’s never ever hurt an innocent bystander or a person for no reason.”
“It was his idea to adopt a family every Christmas and feed them and give them a few gifts. That’s not a bad person that does something like that. And look at all the money he helped raise in Collins Bay for the handicapped kids. Tommy’s not a bad guy. He just grew up on the streets and that’s all he knew to survive.”
Tommy finds life after prison a difficult adjustment.
“It’s very hard for anybody coming out of jail,” he says, “because society doesn’t believe that people can change. People still think I’m into the fast lane ... and I’m not.”
Being on parole is not an easy thing for a free spirit like Tommy Craig. He has to check in with his parole officer regularly and can be subjected to drug testing at their discretion. If he wants to go on a trip out of town he has to apply for permission.
Tommy is so well known to the police, he can’t go anywhere without being spotted. Since he’s forbidden to consort with known criminals, he has to be careful who he stops and talks to on the street. Because most of his aging cronies are rounders, he cannot spend any time with them, even at home.
Forbidden from entering bars and hotels, he is denied access to the only community he has ever known. Although he now makes his living selling legitimate gold jewellery which he buys from Toronto wholesalers, he can no longer sell it to the people in the bars where he spent his life.
“I miss going in the bars the most,” he says. “I been in the bars so long, there were years I never seen the sun go down.”
Tommy has a little black book which he has kept for the last thirty years. In it, he has kept notes on the significant incidents in his life, and has also maintained a record of most of his major business transactions. He says, “I’ve kept it to make sure my accounts are straight ... and to cover my ass. It’s going to be destroyed when I die.” Then he adds, “Now, everything I put in the book is legal.”
The Fat Man hopes to use his notebook as a basis for a future book on his life. However, producing such a book poses a problem for Tommy because, as he says, “I can’t write a book, and I don’t want to show my notebook to anybody else. So, who’s going to do it?”
Although he’s often bored with his present existence Tommy says he has no choice but to learn to like it.
“I’m done doing time. And I’m tired of the hustle and all the bullshit that goes with the street life. I’m tired of being on a pedestal for the rounders. `You want this, see Tommy! You want that, see Tommy!’ I’m supposed to have all the answers ... which I don’t. I want the name of Tommy Craig to die out.”
Craig lost a lot of weight in prison and for a while was down to a svelte 220 pounds. But the weight is slowly coming back and that’s a concern for him because he’s had a heart problem for a number of years. Although he doesn’t drink much anymore he has found it difficult to give up smoking cigarettes.
As always, Tommy still maintains a strong aversion to drugs and feels it was cocaine that was the downfall of both Robert Whiteman and his one-time protègé, Pete Bond.
“Drugs made them fall apart,” he says with sadness in his eyes.
“I wasn’t surprised that Robert got caught. He was more and more into the drugs. I watched him go downhill in the last two months. I didn’t like the idea of him hanging around with someone like Lee Baptiste who used a lot of cocaine.” The senselessness of it seems to distress him.
But he brightens when he remembers the exploits of his one-time friend.
“There was nobody as big as Robert Whiteman. He was a real pro. The best I’ve ever seen. Nobody was better at his job. I’ve never seen a more professional guy. He dressed well, talked well, he was always cool. He could back up what he said.”
“If he said he’d do something, he would. Sometimes he’d come into the bar and someone would ask him for a sawbuck, and it might be his last ten dollars but he’d give it to him, no questions asked. There was nobody better. He’s a legend in every bar in Ottawa. You mention his name and heads will still turn.”
Even after Gilbert Galvan was convicted and sent to Millhaven, no one in the underworld knew it was Pete Bond who had rolled over on him. Everyone still thought it was Angelo Garlatti who had ratted because Garlatti had left Ottawa so suddenly and disappeared into thin air.
The mystery of who did rat was cleared up two years later. In February 1989 Pete Bond was charged with assault, possession of stolen property, and 46 B & E s. He was convicted and received a total sentence of three and a half years in the penitentiary. About halfway through his sentence, Bond couldn’t take life on the inside and decided to inform on his old mentor, Tommy Craig.
The reason for the animosity between the two old friends is complicated and difficult to understand. Bond says that while he was in prison he heard that someone in Ottawa was telling people he was a rat who was squealing on people in Ottawa. Bond says, “That kind of information can get a guy killed in jail.”
Bond believed it was Tommy who was sending the information into the prison; Tommy vehemently denies that. Independent third parties say that Bond wanted out of jail badly and the only thing he could trade to get himself out was to give the police Tommy Craig.
In any case, Bond, thinking the Fat Man was trying to do him in, decided to roll over on Tommy and in December 1991, he told George Snider everything he knew about Craig. His testimony was instrumental in putting Craig in jail for eight years.
“I was tired of this (criminal) life,” Bond says. “I wanted to straighten out, but most of all I wanted to get back at Tommy Craig. I know that sounds bad, but that’s the way it is.”
When Bond testified against Tommy it soon became clear it was Bond who had turned on Robert too. As a consequence, with his life in jeopardy on both counts, Bond was put into the witness protection program. Because he is now living out his existence under an assumed name, he was given an alias in this book.
Since going into the program, Bond hasn’t had a drink or a touch of cocaine. He says, “I stay out of bars because I know if I go back there, I’ll be right back into the drug scene.”
Being in the program is a difficult life for him because, on the one hand, he’s not welcome in the criminal community, and on the other, he’s not very comfortable in the straight world. He finds it difficult to relax and take people at their face value since he has to be cautious about any new friends and neighbours he meets. Although Bond misses the money and the excitement of his former life he’s glad to be free from the tension and hassle of the shady underworld.
“I’m glad I’m out of it and I don’t want to go back. I’m living a normal life for the first time in years. I got my own little business, and I’m doing OK. I can play a little golf when I want to. And it’s nice to know the police aren’t watching my every move.”
He’s not really afraid of someone coming after him, but if someone does, he says he’ll have to handle that when it happens. Bond has heard through the grapevine that as far as Tommy is concerned, all is forgotten. Bond says, “I’ve heard that Tommy says it’s over ... it’s a thing of the past. If he feels that way, I’m glad because it’s certainly over for me. Tommy was good to me; he treated me like a son. I don’t know how things ever got all twisted around like they are. I hope it’s over and we don’t have to go through any more of this shit. We’ve all done our time, now let’s live and let live. Everybody live a normal, decent life. That’s what I want.”
Janice Whiteman’s life has also been difficult. Immediately after her husband’s arrest she moved in with her mother for a brief time. Then, when Robert was imprisoned at Collins Bay, she moved to Kingston and remained there for two years.
On Galvan’s recommendation, she was initially receptive to talking with Ed Arnold about the possibility of his writing a book. To this end she granted Arnold a number of interviews. However, when Janice divorced Robert in 1990 and moved to a rural home in Wilberforce Township outside Pembroke, she became more reclusive and less willing to talk with anyone about her life with the Flying Bandit. In 1993 she moved back into the city of Pembroke. A year later, possibly to escape the notoriety that surrounded her there, she moved to southern Ontario.
Whether or not she is still bitter about her painful experience with the imposter Robert Whiteman is unknown. What is known is that it took her a long time to get over the hurt. Probably, she will never entirely get over his betrayal. Before her divorce she told Ed Arnold in Pembroke, “I’m still paying the price. I was really abused and angry. I feel used. It was so unfair of him to do that to me and the kids. I can live with all this shit, but these kids have nothing to do with it. He (Robert) is a good person, he’s gentle and caring. I believe in destiny. This has been done for a reason.”
Now, with her children approaching their teenage years, it’s easy to understand why she wants no interviews or publicity about a time in her life that is best forgotten.
Angelo Garlatti feels the same way about that time in his life. He was given an alias in this book because he deserves not to be identified. Since fleeing Ottawa with a contract apparently on his head, he has managed, through determination and hard work, to turn his life completely around. He is now a successful manager of a legitimate business and a solid member of his community. When contacted by the author for an interview he was very reluctant to get involved with this book since that part of his life is a nightmare from the past that he only wants to forget.
However, since his adventure in Vancouver was such an interesting part of Galvan’s story he was told it was going to be included in the book whether he consented to be interviewed or not. With that realization, he agreed to cooperate. Then, considering Garlatti’s successful reformation, the author thought it was only fair that he receive the anonymity of an alias.
Garlatti admits that at one time he was absolutely an alcoholic. He says, “My alcoholism was impairing my judgement.” He confesses to having been a mean, aggressive, confused young man with a chip on his shoulder. But he says that’s all behind him now, thanks mainly to his wife.
With her help he hasn’t had a drink since July 9, 1987, about three weeks after they fled Ottawa for his being falsely accused of “rolling over” on Robert Whiteman.
“When we ran out of Ottawa and hid, I knew I wanted to stop my drinking ... it was killing me ... getting me into nothing but trouble. I decided to stop “cold turkey” and it was hell. I had the shakes, I couldn’t sleep, I had the sweats. It was agony. My wife sat with me every night for six weeks, rubbing my back, rubbing my arm, helping me get through the night ... and with her help I made it.”
Lee Baptiste, like Tommy Craig, ended up going to jail. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit armed robbery for his part in the Vancouver holdup of Birks in 1986. On a plea bargain, he was given a one-year sentence which was bundled with an assault causing bodily harm conviction for which he received another six months to be served concurrently. Baptiste had already served five years for a previous armed robbery in 1987. The reason he got off so lightly for the Vancouver robbery was that the charge was outdated and his conviction was more a matter of house cleaning than retributive justice.
Since being released from jail Baptiste has kept a rather low profile around the bars and strip joints of Vanier and Ottawa. Now forty years old, he is an aging rounder in the twilight of a long and violent criminal career.
Unlike Lee Baptiste, Neil McLaren never engaged in any criminal activity whatsoever with the Flying Bandit. Neil was just a very social person who met Robert Whiteman and liked the excitement of being around him. He was aware of what Robert was doing but never made any attempt to join him as an accomplice in his nefarious pursuits. He and Robert stayed close friends even when the Flying Bandit moved to Pembroke. On one occasion Neil went to watch Robert participate in a small-time rodeo that was being held in Pembroke. He says, “Robert was phenomenal on a horse. He could ride around those barrels like the wind. It must have been something he learned as a kid from his father.”
The allure of the fast life with Robert was partly to blame for Neil becoming dissatisfied with his job. After he and Robert lost touch with each other Neil tired of being a mechanic and gave up his work with Southbank Dodge. His personal discontent led to stomach and intestinal problems and ultimately caused a rift between him and his wife. When they split up in 1992, Neil moved to Kitchener and his wife went to Toronto to pursue a career of her own.
The last few years have been tough for him. He has recently completed an eight-week training course where he learned to drive a tractor-trailer which, he hopes, will provide him with a steady income in the future.
Lyle MacCharles is still an inspector with the OPP Criminal Investigation Branch out of Kingston. Now in his thirty-third year of service, he intends to stay on for another two years until he retires. Since much of his work deals with investigating homicides, Lyle still finds the work fascinating. He says that as long as his job stays interesting, he will give little thought to retirement.
Being a hands-on investigator, Lyle can seldom be found in the confines of his office. Much to his delight, he spends his days roaming from courtroom to crime scene in the counties of eastern Ontario. Although he enjoys his work, the demands of his job are oppressive. Often he puts in 80 to 100 hours of overtime a month and he hasn’t taken a holiday in the last two years. Understandably, the workload has been hard on his personal life. He too has been visited by the anguish of divorce.
Now remarried, his family sanctuary is a thirty-five acre spread in the rugged terrain north of Kingston. It’s a solitary place surrounded by bush, where during his few free hours, Lyle can amuse himself by feeding the dozen or so deer who come to call.
Like MacCharles, George Snider is busier than ever. He’s still a detective with OPP Criminal Intelligence Branch for eastern Ontario. For two years after CAFE closed down in February 1988 George worked in the frustrating silence of the Ottawa oriental community attempting to investigate organized Asian crime. After that, he went on to a number of other projects. The first of these was SMOKER; he and Ralph Heyeroff were part of a team that was responsible for putting Tommy Craig behind bars in 1992.
In 1993 George worked with Lyle MacCharles on Project TOY which led to the prosecution of two notorious Ottawa drug dealers and their enforcers who were charged with an execution-style killing in Cumberland Township just east of Ottawa. Nineteen ninety-four brought Snider to FLATBED ONE which was a successful project pursuing Ottawa bikers that saw six imprisoned for a variety of narcotics offenses. In 1995 he was involved in FLATBED TWO which led to the conviction of an ex-Ottawa policeman who was involved in theft and illegal liquor and cigarette sales in the Arnprior area.
Recently George has been working with MacCharles again. The ongoing trial that resulted from Project TOY required more investigation and called for Snider’s assistance in handling some of the very difficult witnesses involved in the case.
George is forty-seven years old now. He can retire in five years but loves his work so much, he’s prepared to stay on longer. He keeps himself in good shape by playing hockey, jogging and weight lifting and feels he can still be effective working the streets and running informants. Since he hates office work and is not interested in either being promoted or working in police management, his hope is to be a street cop until the end of his career.
Although George’s professional life as an investigator is full and rewarding, his personal life remains unsettled.
When Ralph Heyerhoff returned to his duties with the Ottawa Police after CAFE, things went badly for him. There was an element in the Ottawa force who seemed to resent his success in CAFE. For the first time in his police career he received bad reports about his attitude and demeanor. Although these reports emanated from one particular Staff Sergeant, he also received some bad vibrations from detectives in major crime. It seems they weren’t happy that he, a lowly B & E cop, was involved in the capture of such a high-profile criminal as the Flying Bandit.
Ralph Heyerhoff after he was sent back to traffic duty in 1989
They were even less impressed when they were told that Gilbert Galvan would only deal with Shawn Smith and George Snider. Because Galvan had committed so many robberies in the Ottawa area, they wanted immediate access to him so they could interrogate him about the whereabouts of any remaining cash or jewellery. When they insisted that Heyerhoff get them this access, Ralph refused to do it because he didn’t want to upset Galvan’s relationship with Smith and Snider. This made the Ottawa detectives wonder if Heyerhoff was more loyal to the OPP than to his own Ottawa force. As one police officer put it, “It was as if Ralph had pissed in their corn flakes.”
Their concern was compounded when Ralph pushed to have CAFE extended beyond its February 1988 termination date. Seeing that the project was still very effective, Heyerhoff wanted it to continue until it had completely run its course. Heyerhoff’s antagonistic staff sergeant thought he was again being resistant and uncooperative. He demanded that CAFE be shut down as planned and insisted that Heyerhoff return to his work in Ottawa. The more Heyerhoff opposed him, the deeper grew the staff sergeant’s resentment.
When CAFE finally closed and Heyerhoff returned to Ottawa, he was sent to the penalty box. Ralph was given a two year stint in uniform, first walking a beat on Bank Street and then riding a patrol car around the city. In 1991, he was transferred to the traffic division where he was assigned to ride a motorcycle. His days were spent directing traffic, giving out tickets and escorting VIPs or funeral corteges. This was a long, hard fall from grace for a man who thought of himself as an accomplished detective.
Then came SMOKER. When George Snider was approached by Ottawa management to be part of a project to do Tommy Craig, Snider would only agree to work on the project if he had Heyerhoff working with him. Snider realized that to take Craig down they needed Pete Bond’s help as an informant. Since Bond was so elusive and difficult to handle, Snider knew it required him and Heyerhoff, working in tandem, to control Bond. Ottawa management resisted sending Heyerhoff on the SMOKER project. They maintained this resistance until high level discussions took place between the OPP and their Ottawa counterparts.
After Craig was convicted, Heyerhoff was allowed to remain as a detective in the intelligence division. He still works in that capacity today, doing highly sensitive and secret work throughout the Ottawa community.
Ralph’s marriage is in good shape although he will admit that the demands of CAFE took a heavy toll on him and his wife. With three sons aged eleven, nine and six, Ralph is kept more than busy driving them to hockey, karate, soccer and swimming.
At one time Ralph was a heavy drinker. After the closing party for CAFE he got so drunk they had to carry his limp body out to a taxi to get him home. That experience frightened him, and, since that date, February 5, 1988, he has not had a drop of hard liquor and only the occasional beer. His one remaining vice is smoking good cigars. A connoisseur with his own humidor, Ralph collects premium cigars from around the world. When the stress of the detective’s world starts closing in on him he can always lose himself in the smoke of a fine cigar.
Mel Robertson is now executive assistant to an inspector in the patrol division of the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police. He involves himself in special projects, staffing problems, research and public relations. Mel is no longer involved with the police diving team, but still does some sport diving on the weekends. Many of his dives take place in the St. Lawrence River near Brockville where there are a number of shipwrecks from the early 1900s resting on the river bottom.
Mel is also a member of the critical incident stress management team for the regional police. This is a group that has been organized and trained to help defuse and debrief officers involved in violence or shooting incidents.
As stable as ever, Mel is still very much a homebody who likes to spend a lot of his time with his two sons, age fifteen and eleven. In the winter they do a lot of snowmobiling or ice fishing together. Although he was recently offered a position with major crime in Ottawa, Mel turned it down because of the time demands such a job would have placed on his home life. He’s at a point in his career where he is looking forward to an opportunity of working either in surveillance or police management.
Six years after helping to catch the Flying Bandit, Shawn Smith was promoted to the rank of detective sergeant. With his promotion, he was transferred to the Perth District Crime Unit but continued to work out of the OPP detachment office in Pembroke. Then on August 24, 1994, while playing softball, he died suddenly of a heart attack. He was forty-five years old.
Shawn Smith (on the left) at the scene of an investigation in 1990
(Eganville Leader)
The funeral of Detective Sgt. Shawn Smith in Pembroke, 1994
(Eganville Leader)
His death was a terrible shock to his family and the community at large. Although Shawn was separated from his wife he had been a constant visitor in her home, helping her, supporting her, and maintaining a close relationship with his two teenage children. After his separation Shawn lived in an apartment in Petawawa, but when his mother became ill, he moved into her house in Renfrew to help her through her long and fatal bout with cancer.
Although athletic and physically robust, Shawn suffered from an irregular heartbeat. In the spring of 1994 he went for tests to analyze and treat his problem. With the doctor’s consent, he continued to play softball throughout the summer. The night before he died he told his son about getting very dizzy in a recent game.
The next night, Tuesday, August 24, in the course of a game at Pembroke’s Riverside Park, he came to bat and hit a long ball between the outfielders. Running hard into third base, Shawn collapsed. He was given CPR on the field and attended to in the ambulance on the way to Pembroke Civic Hospital. All efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
Ed Arnold, managing editor of the Peterborough Examiner
(Peterborough Examiner)
A large group of mourners attended his funeral, including over 100 police and military personnel. The local newspaper, in reporting Shawn’s funeral, referred to him as a “local OPP legend.” From the outpouring of grief in the community and the accolades proffered by his peers, it’s clear that Shawn was an effective policeman with a special knack for solving problems among the people he served.
Ed Arnold interviewed Shawn on several occasions and remembers him as a vibrant and fun-loving individual. He was stunned to learn of his death.
Arnold is still the managing editor of the Peterborough Examiner. After all his hard work on the Flying Bandit, it must have been difficult for him to set aside his intention to write a book on such a tantalizing subject. As time passed he saw that the demands of his job made it impossible for him to devote the time and energy required to complete such a demanding task. He was willing to contract his research to the author because, as he said, “I believe this is a story that should be told ... it’s got everything. In a way, it’s almost too strange to believe. But it happened, and people should be told about it.”
Ed continues to take great pride in his newspaper work and cherishes the awards he has won for investigative reporting. He was the one who dubbed Gilbert Galvan the Flying Bandit and was the first reporter to break Galvan’s story over the news wire in North America. Once he sent the story out, the media went into a frenzy. Calls flooded in to Arnold at his desk at the Examiner. They came from every conceivable international source, including the National Enquirer. Everyone wanted more information and photographs of Galvan and his betrayed wife; all of them sought immediate access to Gilbert and Janice for interviews and video footage. The Flying Bandit was the hottest story of the day and to his credit Ed Arnold was the newspaper man who got the story first.
Does Galvan have any of the money or the jewels stashed away so he can live off them once he gets out of jail? Lyle MacCharles thinks he may.
“I think he was like a squirrel ... stuffing the cash into his cheeks.”
George Snider says, “I don’t think he’s got anything left because he could have turned it in, especially the jewellery, to get himself a lighter sentence. But he had nothing to offer.”
Janice Whiteman says no.
“If he still has any, he’s not telling me about it. I’m certainly not getting any of it.” Her modest lifestyle seems to support her contention. She admits that sometimes she has had a hard time managing alone; for a while Tommy Craig helped her out by giving her cash.
Tommy Craig says, “No, he’s got nothing left. I never met a man who could go through money as fast as Robert Whiteman. He put most of his money up his nose, then he gambled, went on a lot of expensive trips, treated his friends like he was a king. Shit, he’d take a lot of money with him on a trip and I’d still have to wire him more. I told him over and over to put his money away for a rainy day, but he lived life to the hilt, spent every Goddamn cent he had. Nah, he’s got nothing left. It’s a shame, but that’s Robert.”
At the end of the CBC television interview on the Fifth Estate, host Victor Malarek asked Galvan: “With a straight face, you can say you have no money left?”
Galvan answered with a grin, “I can say it with a straight face or one with a smile on it; I don’t have any money.”
Galvan seemingly contradicted that position in a prison interview with Ed Arnold. Arnold asked him, “Do you still have some of the jewels?”
Galvan smiled coyly, but said nothing.
That’s Gilbert Galvan: always the rogue, always the con man, always wanting to be in control. Even as he languishes in prison he’d like you to think he was so clever that he still has some of the loot hidden away.
And maybe he has.