They pulled off the biggest gold heist in Canada’s history and more than 100 bank robberies—usually in under two minutes.
QUITE THE RÉSUMÉ
Stephen Reid was a born criminal. By the age of 21, in 1972, he had put together a pretty good resume of criminal activity—shoplifting, drug dealing, and robbery. A series of robberies earned him a 10 year sentence in Warkworth Penitentiary in Campbellford, Ontario. A year and a half into his stretch Reid had earned points for good behavior setting up athletics programs for the other inmates. His good deeds earned him a day pass to attend a seminar on prison fitness programs. On the way back he asked the guard to stop for some Chinese food. Food in the prison was pretty bleak after all. During the meal he excused himself to go to the bathroom, slipped out a window, and escaped. It was a bold first step on what proved to be a truly audacious career.
THE GREAT GOLD HEIST
Reid settled in Ottawa and teamed up with Paddy Mitchell and Lionel Wright, two well established criminals. In an Ottawa bar one night the three of them overheard an Air Canada employee describing how gold bars that were being shipped from an Ontario mine to the Royal Canadian Mint were often left unattended overnight at Ottawa International Airport. The three professional robbers hatched a plan. Mitchell knew a petty thief who worked at the airport and could get them inside. Reid led the way, disguised as a baggage handler. The three men waylaid the guard, slipped a hood over his head, and handcuffed him to a pipe, gaining access to the gold room. But they didn’t carry anything out of the airport. In yet another audacious move, they simply shipped the gold bars to themselves. They boxed them up, slapped a shipping label on them, and left them in the cargo area. “Air Canada very generously delivered them to us in Windsor the next day,” said Mitchell. The six gold bars were worth $700,000—the biggest gold heist in Canadian history.
The Hudson’s Bay Company once owned over 10% of the earth’s surface.
The three men went on a crime spree that has become the stuff of legend. They robbed over 100 banks. Their robberies were both spectacular and meticulous. Their tactics were so clever that Hollywood often copied them, notably in Beverly Hills Cop II and Point Break. Reid came up with the idea of phoning in a bomb threat across town to distract the police. Mitchell came up with the disguises they wore, including, famously, masks of ex Presidents. But their most famous tactic was the stopwatch. Reid would wear a stopwatch around his neck and keep time during a heist. They would be in and out of a bank, usually, in under 90 seconds. Although they used guns, they were extremely polite to the people they robbed. Their motto was “nobody gets hurt,” and nobody ever did, earning them the nick name The Gentle Bandits. But it was the name given them by the FBI that eventually stuck. They were called The Stopwatch Gang.
In 1975 Reid and Mitchell were pinched and sent to Millhaven Maximum Security Prison. Three years later, Reid was transferred to a minimum security penitentiary where he was captain of the prison hockey team and studied to be a hair stylist. In 1979, Reid got another day pass and he escaped again in the very same way. He convinced the guard to stop for fish and chips and then slipped out the back of the men’s room. He was so cheeky this time that he had arranged to be picked up at a nearby Holliday Inn beforehand.
About two weeks later, Mitchell suffered an apparent heart attack and was rushed to a hospital. Two attendants wheeled him from the ambulance into the emergency room, and then came running out to tell the guards that Mitchell had jumped off the gurney and fled down the hall. The guards gave chase. In a few minutes, the two attendants wheeled someone out of the hospital and into the same ambulance. Then they drove away. The attendants were Reid and Wright, and Mitchell was on the gurney. Once again, the gang’s daring had beaten the hapless police.
SOUTH OF THE BORDER
Canada being too hot for the gang now, they headed for the States. They settled in Arizona and began the final leg of their legendary spree. At this time there was a series of bank heists going on up and down the West Coast, and the Stopwatch Gang became the most notorious bank robbers in a crowded field. They were extremely careful and methodical. Mitchell would search death records for people who were about the same ages as them and then order duplicate birth certificates. They would carefully pick a bank and begin to case it. Using their fake IDs, they would open bank accounts, gaining access to the banks methods and systems. Nobody was suspicious of three new customers coming in, chatting with the tellers, and watching the guards. They would figure out the schedule of the armored cars. When they had the routes and timing down, they would strike. They rented cars and then stole license plates to hide the vehicles identities. They entered the bank ahead of time and waited for the armored cars to arrive. They would wait for the first bags, with the coin, to pass and then strike when the bags of cash were brought in. They would pull their guns and make everyone lie down on the floor, grab the bags and the guard’s gun, and then split. They were the quickest heists ever. Once they had fled the scene they would strip out of their disguises and drop them into a garbage bag. Lionel Wright would dump it into a dumpster that was about to be picked up while Reid and Mitchell switched the license plates back. Then they would just drive away.
File under “Hard to Verify”: A dog sled team can kill and devour a man in under 3 minutes.
Their run of success was amazing. They lived for years in Arizona under the guise of successful concert promoters, giving them a good reason to travel. Reid even befriended the local sheriff and once, when the Sheriff asked him what he did for a living, Reid replied “I rob banks.” The Sheriff thought that was funny.
THE END
In September 1980 the Stopwatch Gang pulled off its biggest bank heist, hitting a Bank of America in San Diego when two armored cars were making a morning delivery. They made away with $283,000, but they were sloppy. Wright dumped the disguises into the wrong dumpster and the police found them before the garbage truck picked it up. They soon found where the cars had been rented. This led to a tip as to the gang’s whereabouts. They were busted and sent back to prison yet again.
While locked up this time, Reid wrote a novel titled Jack Rabbit Parole. A copy made its way to Canadian poet Susan Musgrove, who was so impressed with the writing that she arranged to meet Reid. The two fell in love and ultimately got married and had a baby girl. In 1986, Reid busted loose again. He was serving time in an Arizona prison when he escaped through an air conditioning vent, but He was recaptured not long after. In 1987, Reid got parole and reportedly enjoyed his family life for 12 years. By 1999, addicted to heroin and deeply in debt, another bank robbery landed him back in prison. He was paroled in 2008. Mitchell died of lung cancer while in a prison in North Carolina. Lionel Wright’s whereabouts are unknown.
You needed me (to make you hustle): Anne Murray once worked as a gym teacher.
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BETTER WEAR NEW SHOES
The emperor may need new clothes, but the Canadian Minister of Finance must have new shoes. In an unusual tradition, the Minister of Finance is supposed to buy and wear new shoes on the day he or she delivers the country’s budget. This occurs on a day aptly named Budget Day. The first mention of new shoes appeared on March 31, 1960, when Donald Fleming was finance minister. A newspaper report refers to the new shoes as a budget tradition, but mysteriously there seems to be no other mention of it prior to Fleming.
Finance ministers have since gotten a little creative with the tradition—John Crosbie wore used mukluks to present the budget in 1979. In 2008, Jim Flaherty wore resoled shoes to show he was being financially conservative. The tradition has spread to the provincial finance ministers. In 2005, Colin Hansen in British Columbia sported new running shoes when presenting the budget. In a twist, Stockwell Day, Alberta’s treasurer in the late 1990s, showed off inline skating gear and a crash helmet to highlight his budget’s new direction. Nunavut finance minister Kelvin Ng donned a new pair of caribou-skin boots when he unveiled his government’s first budget in 1999. That same year, British Columbia’s Joy MacPhail wore a pair of second-hand shoes to sell a bad-news budget when she was the New Democratic Party’s (NDP’s) finance minister. Her successor, Paul Ramsey, bought discounted suede loafers to deliver the NDP budget. He thought the economical shoes made a statement about the budget, which would serve the needs of families.
Actor Brendan Fraser’s-grandfather was a member of Royal Canadian Mounted Police.