Canada | Lorna Poplak

FARE AND FOUL: A Christmas Nightmare in Six Parts – Part 2

Dec 26, 2021 | Don Jail, Historical Moment, Ontario

Part 2: The Rogues’ Gallery (Dec 26)

Ranked from bad to worst, the four criminals who scaled the wall of Toronto’s Don Jail and hopped into a conveniently idling cab on the night of December 25, 1981, were Randolph “Randy” Garrison, Brian William Bush, Andre Hirsh, and Terrance “Terry” Derek Musgrave. All of them were in their 20s. All had based their criminous activities in Toronto or neighbouring cities like North York (not part of the city of Toronto at the time), and their combined rap sheets contained more than 80 offences.

Randy Garrison of Toronto, aged 23, had received a three-year prison sentence for robbing a Kingston Road service station in 1979 and was facing a further trial at the time on charges of robbery and assault causing bodily harm.

Brian Bush was a 27-year-old Scarborough man awaiting trial on charges of armed robbery and possession of a restricted weapon. Bush’s claim to fame — or infamy — was his membership of the Dirty Tricks Gang, so called because of the creative diversionary tactics they adopted while carrying out their heists. Their preferred modus operandi when making a getaway by car was to scatter planks or lengths of hose studded with nails on the roadway to puncture the tires of pursuing vehicles. Bush was arrested after an abortive robbery at a Royal Bank branch in Leaside. Metro Toronto Police had received a “vague tip” that something might be going down, and they were waiting outside the bank as the masked bandits fled with their haul of around $24,000. In the firefight that ensued, police shot one of the robbers dead and wounded two others. Bush was arrested in Yorkville after a high-speed car chase through the city.

Andre Hirsh of Toronto, aged 24, was awaiting trial on a charge of first-degree murder after a bungled holdup at a Weston Road jewelry store in May 1981. When confronted at gunpoint during the robbery, the store owner, 38-year-old Frank Abrams, had flatly refused to hand over any money or jewelry. He was shot outside his store while trying to wrest the firearm from his attacker. A group of bystanders chased Hirsh as he fled and brought him down. Hirsh told police that Abrams “had it coming to him,” adding, “the guy had to play Joe Hero.” Abrams had threatened to fetch his dogs, “so I unloaded on him…not in the head or heart but in the stomach.” The truth was starkly different: Abrams was shot three times, including once through the heart.

And at the top (or bottom) spot, at very worst, was self-confessed killer Terry Musgrave, a 25-year-old from North York. The brutal murder had horrified the city back in January 1981. The victim was Catherine Maruya, the 43-year-old owner of a ceramic studio in North York, who was found bound and gagged at her workplace. She had been stabbed 28 times with a pair of scissors and strangled. Musgrave, described by the prosecutor at his trial as “a cold-blooded killer,” had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He had received an automatic life sentence and was being held at the Don pending the judge’s decision as to the minimum time he would serve.

FARE AND FOUL: A Christmas Nightmare in Six Parts – Part 1

Dec 25, 2021 | Don Jail, Historical Moment, Ontario

Part 1: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time?

The front page of Toronto’s Saturday Star on December 26, 1981, recorded the heartwarming story of a Rexdale couple who received the Christmas gift of twin boys. The new parents were understandably overjoyed, as the article put it, when the stork “dropped in” on them not once, but twice. Much less overjoyed was a Toronto taxi driver who had four men drop in on him on Christmas night. This report also appeared on page 1 of the Star, beneath the bold headline “Murderer three others flee Don Jail.”

As 28-year-old Leslie Peter Sheppard of Pickering explained, it was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was Sheppard’s first day on the job, moonlighting as a cab driver for Diamond Taxis in Toronto. He had just dropped off a fare at Riverdale Hospital on Broadview Avenue north of Gerrard Street East, and, in the spirit of Christmas giving, had escorted the wheelchair-bound patient to the entrance door of the hospital. Returning to his cab, parked on the narrow roadway between the hospital and the red-brick wall of the Toronto (Don) Jail to the south, he began writing up his trip sheet. That was when several men “in the biggest hurry of anyone you ever saw” piled into his cab. The first guy, he told reporters, “was huffing and puffing and said, ‘Help us — the bikers are after us. They want to knife us.’” As if to underscore this statement, he noticed that another of the men was shirtless, with a large slash across his chest and stomach. “Go! Go! Go!” they yelled and he took off, heading west along the laneway, before turning onto Gerrard Street and dropping them off at Sherbourne Street. The fare for the two-to-three-minute ride was $1.70, and he scored a 30-cent tip.

Sheppard told the media that he was gob-smacked to learn, when police stopped him 12 minutes later, that he had inadvertently helped four “extremely dangerous” inmates to escape from the Don Jail.

The desperadoes had squeezed through a narrow ventilation shaft, sawed through a steel bar with a hacksaw, and used a rope of blankets and bedsheets spliced together to reach the yard of the adjoining old Don Jail, closed since 1976. They then scaled a 20-foot wall to freedom — and that conveniently idling taxicab.

A Canada-wide alert was issued, with Metro Toronto Police out in force to follow up on every lead. They warned the public not to confront the escapers or “get them upset in any way.”

On December 29, an astonishing new development hit the headlines: police had charged the so-called “30-cent-tip” cabby with being an accessory after the fact and assisting in an escape. He was to appear in court early in the new year to have a trial date set.

Leslie Peter Sheppard’s long Christmas nightmare had begun.

CANADIAN EH?

Feb 22, 2021 | Canada, Death Penalty, Don Jail, Historical Moment, Ontario

Following the publication of The Don, I was pleased to receive an invitation for an interview from Craig Baird, host of Canadian History EhX, one of the top podcasts on Apple Podcasts Canada. After a few days’ delay (“thanks” to the effects on Craig’s internet connection of a snowstorm in rural Alberta, where he lives), we finally got together for a zoom chat. Craig’s questions ranged from what inspired me to write The Don to what I hope readers will take away from the book. And he was very interested to hear about George Hedley Basher, who governed the Don Jail with an iron fist between 1919 and 1931!

You can listen to Craig’s podcast on Apple podcasts or on Craig’s podcast website.

Drop Dead: The Puzzle

May 23, 2020 | Canada, Death Penalty

“Puzzles flying off the shelves as COVID-19 keeps people at home,” announced CTV News.

And a jigsaw puzzle maker joked: “It’s almost like it’s the next toilet paper.”

Have you been bitten by the jigsaw bug, and can’t wait to start your next one? The good news is that you won’t have to wait as long for it as you would for your next toilet paper order. Help is on hand.

Here is our “Drop Dead: The Cover” puzzle.

If you need a preview, click the “picture” image.

If you need a guide, click the “ghost”.

MEMORABLE MAY MOMENTS

May 26, 2019 | Don Jail, Historical Moment, Louis Riel, Ontario

To mark the May rollout of my new website, here are a few memorable May moments from my Horrible History of Hanging in Canada:

- May 3, 1867: Ten thousand people turned up at the public hanging of Modiste Villebrun of St-Zephirin, Quebec, convicted of poisoning his lover’s husband. Even though this execution took place two months before the actual date of Confederation on July 1, 1867, it is officially listed as the first hanging in the newly formed Dominion of Canada.

- May 12, 1885: Métis and First Nations rebel forces led by Louis Riel were defeated by Canadian government troops at the Battle of Batoche in Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Rebellion was over. Louis Riel was arrested by the North-West Mounted Police a few days later. He was tried for high treason, found guilty and hanged in November of that year.

- May 2, 1923: Emilio Picariello and Florence Lassandro were hanged for the murder of Steve Lawson, a constable with the Alberta Provincial Police. Lassandro worked for Picariello, a notorious rum runner during the dark and desperate days of Prohibition in Canada. She became the first, and last, woman ever to be hanged in Alberta.

- May 10, 1962: Arthur Lucas, an African-American gangster, was convicted of the murder of Therland Crater, a police informant from Detroit. In spite of the fact that the case against him was purely circumstantial and seriously flawed, all appeals failed. Lucas was executed in a double hanging at the Don Jail on December 11. This was the last execution ever to take place in Canada.

THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN

Feb 1, 2019 | Black History, Ontario

BLACK HISTORY AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN CANADA

On July 22, 1903, the townsfolk of Picton, Ontario, were enchanted. The circus was in town! The Great Pan American two-ring circus, museum and menagerie had transformed the main thoroughfare into a grand street parade. But after the music stopped and the lights dimmed and the tents were being packed up, the provincial detective keeping an eye out for the odd pickpocket or other suspicious characters found himself facing a much more serious problem: murder.

One of the Black tent workers, Edward “Yellow” Johnson, lay bleeding to death from a stab wound to the heart. Fellow workers suspected another Black labourer – Edward Clarke, also known as “Side Show Shorty” – and the hunt was on. Clarke was soon found on Picton’s Main Street, clutching a pocket knife, and was fingered by an eyewitness as being the man who had killed Johnson. Others had heard him issuing threats.

The next day, the circus rolled out of town, but another show just as sensational was soon to begin: the murder trial of Side Show Shorty. Throngs of people crammed into the inquest and the police investigation, and the two local papers, the Gazette and the Times, categorically pronounced Shorty guilty.

The trial began in October. On the prosecution side stood Roger C. Clute, QC, an experienced trial lawyer from Toronto, who had won a guilty verdict in an 1883 capital case in Picton, leading to the hanging of the two local men charged with the crime. Edward Clarke was a Black man and, as a citizen of the United States, a foreigner. He had no funds to hire a lawyer, so the local county clerk, E. M. Young, volunteered to take on his case pro bono. Shorty was tried before a white judge and a 12-man all-white jury. Things looked grim.

But gradually Young, David against Clute’s Goliath, chipped away at the prosecutor’s case on the grounds of mistaken identity. His aim was to insinuate a measure of doubt into the jury’s mind.

The judge was totally convinced of Shorty’s guilt, and made his view clear in his charge to the jury. The jury deliberated for 2 hours. On their return to court, the foreman read out the verdict: not guilty. The crowds cramming the courtroom erupted into cheers.

The prosecuting authorities were incensed. The man was guilty! Why was he going to escape the gallows? For their part, the townsfolk were elated to see that this lowly Black American circus worker had been given a fair trial.

But, as in so many of these cases, things were not that simple. Some of the reasons for Clarke’s acquittal did not necessarily have anything to do with the law. In a thoughtful article entitled “Spectacular Justice: The Circus on Trial, and the Trial as Circus, Picton, 1903,” Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo give a detailed analysis of these reasons.

The townsfolk of Picton were in principle opposed to the death penalty. This was partly because they had been traumatized by the previous capital case that had led to the hanging in 1883 of Joseph Tompsett, 35, and George Lowder, 23. It was believed that the investigation had been flawed and the evidence contaminated; the jury’s plea for mercy was disregarded; and the actual hanging was horribly bungled. Also, locals strongly suspected that one of the men executed, George Lowder, may have been innocent. Roger C. Clute had been the prosecutor, and as a result his name was tainted. So the jury in the Clarke case strongly resisted Clute’s efforts to put another man to death.

Further, as the community saw it, the circus murder had been of one Black alien by another. These were not local people, and their fate did not engage or affect the community. The townsfolk saw it as pure coincidence that the murder had taken place in Picton. And they were simply not prepared to take responsibility for it.

Also, in the early 1900s Picton was just taking off as a tourist attraction, and the powers-that-be were very concerned about the town’s reputation. They had no desire for a hanging in the community to derail its economic development.

And so, Strange and Loo conclude, this poor Black man was acquitted, “not because he was innocent, but because a lowly county clerk had worked on the sympathies of a jury that was dead set against capital punishment.”

This was yet another unexpected twist in the tale of capital punishment in Canada, which Strange has referred to elsewhere as “the lottery of death.”

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