CHAPTER 2

November 15, 1995

The past 12 weeks had been anxious ones, with Michael Syrnyk constantly checking over his shoulder, certain the police were going to come calling. But they hadn’t. Syrnyk had been very careful inside the two banks and clearly hadn’t left much behind for police to work with. It had been close, especially his first failed attempt when he heard the alarm call come over the police scanner which he had stuffed inside his jacket attached to an earpiece he was wearing. Without the scanner, he likely would have been caught on the spot, unaware one of the clerks had managed to call for help while he foolishly stood in line looking like a stereotypical example of guy about to rob a bank. He realized now what a terrible disguise it had been and how obvious he must have looked. Thankfully, the mistake hadn’t come back to haunt him.

******

The idea to become a criminal surfaced about a year earlier in the back room of the family butcher shop. Syrnyk was working with his dad cutting meat. He felt most comfortable in the back room; away from the customers he struggled to serve during eight-hour shifts which always seemed much longer. He would develop headaches, anxiety and panic attacks – not unlike the feeling described by people who suffer heart attacks. Tingling arms. Chest pains. Profuse sweating. Blurred vision. Even incidental contact with people would set Syrnyk’s heart racing. He had trouble making eye contact. When people around him would laugh Syrnyk assumed he was the butt of their jokes. He regularly told himself people hated him. But he never knew why.

Syrnyk usually went straight home from work and grabbed his dog, Odin. They would go for long walks and runs, often for hours at a time. It was the highlight of Syrnyk’s day. Syrnyk always hoped to clear his head during these private times with Odin but usually returned home more confused and worried about the world than ever.

One morning, Syrnyk awoke to his alarm clock and needed every ounce of strength he had to get up out of bed. “Fuck!” He slammed his fist down on the clock. Life had never seemed less pointless. After more than three long years at the shop, Syrnyk was ready to quit – even if it meant incurring the wrath of his father. He slowly lumbered into work, taking the usual spot behind the counter that quickly lined up with customers. A nervous Syrnyk went through the paces, the clock seeming to move slower than ever. Lunchtime finally arrived. Syrnyk retreated to the backroom and began leafing through a newspaper sitting on the table. A small story on one of the back pages caught his eye. A daring heist had occurred the day before in Ontario. Two masked, armed men pounced on an armoured car guard, assaulted him and then walked away with a bag full of money. Police and witnesses described the men as extremely calm and obviously prepared. They had made off with nearly $250,000. A light bulb went on in Syrnyk’s head that day. It wasn’t long before he told his dad he was quitting. To hell with what the old man thought.

******

The plan was to start small. Syrnyk picked the early morning hours of August 20, 1994 to test the waters, finally winning a tug-of-war with his conscience. Syrnyk convinced himself he needed to do this. There were no other options. The days of honesty were over. His fate was sealed.

Like every tradesperson, a good criminal needs quality tools. Syrnyk knew the S.I.R. outdoor supply store on Ellice Avenue was a great place to load up. Armed with a drill and chop saw, he went to the Winnipeg gun shop just after 3 a.m. He wore rubber gloves on his hands, careful not to leave fingerprints behind. Syrnyk went to the back of the store, wanting to be protected from any vehicular traffic that happened to pass by. The door had two steel deadbolts that Syrnyk immediately went to work on by drilling through the keyholes. He sawed through the lower bolt and gained entry to the store in no time. Syrnyk was greeted by the shrill sound of an alarm. He jumped in surprise.

Syrnyk worked fast, heading straight to the glass display cases housing the weaponry. He smashed through it quickly and grabbed whatever he could, knowing there wasn‘t time to waste. There were a few neat toys, including five sets of binoculars, two night vision scopes and two handheld global positioning units. Syrnyk took some serious artillery in the form of 14 handguns of just about every make. Glocks, Smith and Wessons, Rugers. Syrnyk also stole three shotguns and a Chinese assault rifle that appeared to be antique. He fled the building with the alarm still blaring, thankful to find the back of the store still clear of any cars or people. Syrnyk escaped safely before police arrived.

What had he done? Syrnyk’s conscience wasn’t done fighting and took a serious round out of him in the weeks following the heist. Plagued with guilt and remorse, Syrnyk began disposing of several guns by dumping them into the Assiniboine River near the St. James home where he was living.

******

Elementary school at Lord Roberts was so “normal” that Syrnyk now looked back and wondered whether he was even the same person. He actually had a few young friends and always seemed to be able to make other kids laugh. Not bust a gut type laughing, but enough to know he was appreciated. Syrnyk would do goofy things, just making faces or voices that always seemed to get a response. He remembered going to childhood birthday parties, getting laughs from other children by acting like he had a disability or talking in a stupid voice. It was lowbrow humour, but they were all young and silly so it didn’t seem to matter.

The first sign of trouble came around age 14 when Syrnyk began having unusual fantasies. He dreamed about becoming a cocaine smuggler, like the people he heard about on television or read about in the newspapers and magazines he would read cover-to-cover. But he wouldn’t be an ordinary drug mule. No, Syrnyk wanted to ply his trade in a submarine. He would build it with his own hands. Never mind that Winnipeg was smack dab in the middle of the country making drug trafficking by boat or submarine a somewhat far-fetched plan. Syrnyk thought he could find a way to make it work. He also dreamed of becoming a safecracker, which would test both his brainpower and willpower and allow him to work alone. What exciting work it would be!

Syrnyk had never seen a psychiatrist but he considered himself somewhat of an expert in the field. He had read numerous pamphlets and brochures on schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and other mental ailments and often felt like he was reading a synopsis of his life. At bare minimum, Syrnyk believed he was manic-depressive. How else to explain the wild mood swings which had bothered him since his early teens. At age 15, Syrnyk had frozen as he tried to board a crowded transit bus. He couldn’t make the short walk up the stairs, drop his coins in the till and take a seat. He hated the thought of being confined in a small space with so many people. The bus incident marked a major turning point in Syrnyk’s life.

He was also becoming increasingly obsessed about his health as he got older, believing death was just waiting around the corner to take him. He was convinced he had cancer by age 15. The glands in his neck felt lumpy and Syrnyk figured they must be tumours. He kept his worries private, never sharing them with his family or any doctor. He suffered in silence. Cleanliness was another obsession and Syrnyk went to absurd lengths to put his mind at ease. There were times as a child when he used a razor blade to scrape skin off his hands, believing it was the only way to get them clean. This painful procedure would be repeated for years. Syrnyk would wash his hands dozens of times in a day, rubbing them raw and leaving them red and wrinkled. His room was always tidy and organized. But sometimes, it would start spinning. Paranoid thoughts would consume his mind, leaving Syrnyk to believe people wanted to hurt him. He often thought about his own initials, and came up with his own personal meaning – M.D.S stood for Manic Depressed Sociopath.

Junior high school at Churchill High was an emotional roller coaster. An eager, fresh-faced Syrnyk gave way to the troubled teen that would isolate himself from his peers. He became his own entity; a one-man crew that nobody seemed to be able to figure out and everyone was content to just leave alone. Most people thought Syrnyk was a nice guy who was just shy, a bit of a loner who always seemed to do well on tests. Teachers loved him because he was a model student in many ways, doing good work and causing no problems in the classroom. Syrnyk never had problems with his classmates and this peace and tranquillity he imposed on himself spared him some of the typical teen trauma he watched others go through. He always believed kids who tried too hard to fit in were just asking to be picked on. Some did try to befriend Syrnyk, but he wasn’t interested and simply brushed them off. Syrnyk worried about offending people, believing he would open his mouth and say the wrong thing. He was meek, usually speaking in a quiet, emotionless voice that people strained to hear. He found himself second-guessing the occasional routine, mundane conversations he would have with classmates.

Syrnyk would lay awake at night replaying things he said and get angry with himself, thinking he’d come across like a fool. He also worried kids would hurt his feelings, so his solution was to avoid conversations with others at all costs. Syrnyk had trouble trusting anyone, believing they must have an ulterior motive for wanting to be his friend. How could somebody want to be friends with someone like him? What did he have to offer? Syrnyk regularly asked himself these questions and never could provide answers. The result was a self-imposed loneliness that haunted him into adulthood.

Syrnyk never played organized team sports because he didn’t see himself as a team player. A couple girls, pretty and relatively popular, had asked Syrnyk to go see a movie in his teen years. He declined. He feared he was being set up for some cruel joke or that the girls were simply taking pity on him. Besides, he never felt like he would know what to say or how to act in their company. Simply cutting himself off was the easiest solution.

Syrnyk had a spotless youth record, easily resisting any temptation to get involved in trouble. He never smoked cigarettes or did drugs and was brutally honest. At 16, Syrnyk was standing inside a 7-Eleven store browsing through magazines when he saw a wallet lying on the floor. He rushed over, picked it up and could feel it was thick with bills. He had no hesitation in bringing it to the store clerk and turning it in, not even pausing to open it for a curious glance. It’s not like he really wanted the money - Syrnyk never considered himself materialistic. His tastes in clothes were basic - jeans and t-shirts. If he needed new clothes, a trip to the nearest thrift store or Salvation Army would do the trick. He never worried about keeping up with the latest fashions, or whether he had the hippest brand names. It all seemed so artificial, and Syrnyk couldn’t stand the thought of being a walking billboard.

High school was a personal hell for Syrnyk. His inner turmoil was much worse and caused his grades to tank but a natural intellect stopped a “C” from becoming an “F”. He would often skip classes, but not to go hang out at the mall or the movie theatres. Instead, he would take long walks or runs. It was all part of wanting to be in his own world, free of the complications and burdens that come with relationships and responsibilities to others. Syrnyk wanted to like school but found he was no longer being challenged. His mind would drift during class and a need to be isolated in his own world consumed him.

He never fit in, not that he ever made much of an effort. Virginia and Mike Syrnyk Sr. didn’t say much about Syrnyk’s faltering grades, content to leave him be just so long as he passed. And he did, graduating from Churchill High School in 1989. Not surprisingly, Syrnyk didn’t go to his grad party.

Religion and spirituality were constant sources of inner-debate with Syrnyk, who would argue with himself about the role they played in his life and society as a whole. His parents never went to church, but Syrnyk and his brother, Brent, were sent to a Winnipeg parish for a couple of years while both boys were still in elementary school. A big bus would come by their home Sunday mornings – Syrnyk and Brent called it “The Joy Bus” – and they would board along with several neighbourhood children. Most kids shuddered at the sight of the bus with the big crosses painted on the sides. But unlike the others, Syrnyk actually enjoyed going to Sunday School services, where he would listen intently and give deep thought to what was being said. He wanted to believe in God and Syrnyk definitely felt like there was a higher power controlling everyone’s fate. But he remained as confused at age 25 as he did at age 10, searching for proof of God’s existence but not finding anything that satisfied him.

John Milton bestowed his great masterpiece upon the world in 1667. It arrived in Syrnyk’s hands some 325 years later. According to Milton, his collection of books titled Paradise Lost were about “man’s disobedience and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed; the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan the serpent, who, revolting from God and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by command of God driven out of heaven with all his crew into the great deep.” Syrnyk felt a deep, spiritual attraction to Milton’s work, one that led him to read Paradise Lost too many time to count. Essentially, it was the ultimate battle of good versus evil. Syrnyk found himself often questioning which side of that battle he was on.

Syrnyk began escaping reality through movies, but hardly the pop-culture fluff that seems to drive most teens. He first saw Clockwork Orange in his mid-teens and immersed himself into moviemaker Stanley Kubric’s messed-up world of futuristic London, where criminals run rampant on the streets. The main character, Alex, is a bright but extremely violent and sadistic teen gang leader who, along with his fellow gang members called the Droogs, roam the city at night in search of victims to terrorize. Their crimes include random beatings, robbery and rape. Alex narrates the story, referring to their practices as “ultra violence”. His fellow gangsters begin to question Alex’s authority and set him up to be caught in the act by police. Alex is eventually convicted and sentenced to prison, where he learns of an experimental psychological treatment being sanctioned by the government that guarantees an early release from prison. Alex – the government guinea pig – is supposedly “cured” by the treatment and released back on the streets. In essence, he no longer controls his own mind and the people he has harmed return to seek revenge. Syrnyk found the groundbreaking, 1971 movie overwhelming at times but would watch it repeatedly, seeming to learn something new each time. The violence was brutal, almost unbearable. And while he sometimes would abruptly shut the VCR off, it wasn’t long before it was back on. Syrnyk was fascinated with Alex. He wished he could trade places with him in life, to have his power and find his own group of Droogs to lead. Alex didn’t control his own mind. And Syrnyk felt his was slowly slipping away as well.

Apocalypse Now and The Grapes of Wrath were two other favourites. Syrnyk would morph himself into the various characters, often wishing he could escape his own tortured world and join theirs. How neat it would be to become a rebel soldier devoid of thoughts and emotions. Syrnyk had no time for comic books, entertainment magazines, video games or computers. Instead, he would bury himself in magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, a pro-military, pro-American journal that believes everyone has a right to bear arms. S.W.A.T. was another favourite, filled with insightful news on the latest in weapons, tactics and training. Syrnyk had no desire to join the military but was fascinated to read about the world outside his locked bedroom door. He also enjoyed the sanctity and peacefulness of libraries and was excited by the seemingly never-ending wealth of material they had to offer. He tried to absorb as much information as possible, often spending full days at a desk, a large pile of books spread out in front of him.

Straight out of high school, Syrnyk was at a crossroads. With the urging of his parents he enrolled in criminology at the University of Winnipeg, not really knowing why. As a small child he had thought about becoming a police officer or fire fighter, probably not unlike most kids his age. But it was no longer something he desired. Syrnyk dropped out of university after only a few weeks. The people were getting to him, the classes much bigger than high school. He couldn’t concentrate, and wasn’t enjoying it. He felt paralysed with fear. So he quit and began working for his dad at the butcher shop.

Syrnyk’s first sexual experience came at age 19. It was money well spent. Who knew what her name was. There had been so many others that it all seemed somewhat blurry. It was part of the deep loneliness Syrnyk felt, an inability to connect with others on what shrinks would likely call a normal human level. So he found comfort in the arms of prostitutes, women who would treat him like the most important man in the world for 10 minutes, half an hour, or however long he was paying for. Then he’d walk away. No commitment, no attachment, no problem. There were times, when the depression would seem to be out of control, that Syrnyk felt disgusted with himself. He knew what he was doing was pathetic. But Syrnyk grew to like bought sex. He felt a type of high, not unlike running. It was a matter of power and control. Syrnyk knew Winnipeg’s massage parlours inside out and there were very few where the only thing on the menu was truly just a back-rub. For the right price a man could have just about anything he wanted. The frequency of Syrnyk’s visits depended on his mood. There were weeks he‘d go three times, and other times he‘d stay away for months.

With no social life to speak of, Syrnyk managed to save some money. He cashed it in during his early 20s when the criminal lifestyle began to appeal to him. Syrnyk read on the back of Soldier of Fortune about an American company called Palladin Press which specialized in how-to manuals for making silencers, detonating bombs with cellular phones and stealing cars. He took out about $1,000 from his bank account and ordered nearly every book they had.

Syrnyk was worried the books would draw suspicion from overzealous Customs officials if he tried to have them sent into Canada. So he sent a cheque by mail and put a return address for a postal box in the American border town of Walhalla, North Dakota, just over an hour south of Winnipeg. He cleverly devised a plan to drive near the border late one night, park his car near a field on the Manitoba side and walk across into the U.S. without being detected. He hiked at least 15 miles that night, both ways, through the bush. The books weighed 50 pounds, so the return trip was even harder. But Syrnyk persevered, anxious to return to Winnipeg to begin reading. He had a lot to learn. Syrnyk also began watching as many true crime programs as possible, shows like Unsolved Mysteries and City Confidential. He had always been a good student and now he was becoming a student of crime.

******

November 1995

Winter was about to start placing its grip on Winnipeg, but a little cold air wouldn’t keep Syrnyk inside. He was out for one of his regular strolls in a residential area near his home and was seriously considering doing a break-and-enter as a means to further challenge himself and his criminal desires. It certainly wasn’t about stealing someone else’s property. Syrnyk was dressed in black, carrying a dark backpack. Inside was a semi-automatic replica pistol loaded with several rounds of blank ammunition. He also had some common tools and a canister of pepper spray, in case he found himself in any trouble.

By mid-evening, Syrnyk saw a home that appeared to be empty and approached it, crouching down in the front yard to get a better look. Suddenly, a police car pulled up behind with their lights shining directly on him. Syrnyk was frozen with fear. He couldn’t move. Two uniformed officers got out, holding their flashlights and quickly walked over. “What’s your name?” the officer asked sternly. Syrnyk panicked, refusing to give his name. He didn’t know what to say or how to act. Police grabbed his backpack and opened it up. They began searching the contents, pulling out the tools, the pepper spray and the semi-automatic pistol. Syrnyk was ordered to turn around with his hands behind his back. “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”