Wrong Side of the Law Read online

  Visibility was poor in the dense fog. At the intersection of Second and Durham Streets, the bandit car collided with a milk-delivery truck. The dazed milkman stumbled out of his vehicle and saw three men flee the scene of the accident on foot and disappear into the fog. An examination of the car showed that Dunn had hit it twice. The occupants had been very lucky, because one of the constable’s bullets had pierced the back window and shattered the rear-view mirror above the driver’s seat.

  The getaway car was registered to a local man, John Roy Godbolt, age twenty-five. Godbolt had a criminal record and had only recently been released from prison. He was soon identified as the driver. Police issued a warrant for his arrest on a number of charges, including the attempted murder of Constable Gunn.

  At 11:35 on the morning of December 23, the same two gunmen who had tried to rob the jewellery store burst into the Royal Bank of Canada on Commercial Drive. One of them said, “This is a stickup!” While they made the three clerks and six customers line up against a wall, another bandit entered the bank. All were armed with automatic pistols.

  Branch manager J.W. Logan was in his office with the door locked, unaware of what was happening. He heard a pounding on his door. He had only partially opened it when he saw a gun in the hand of the man on the other side. Logan tried to slam the door shut, but the robber threw himself against it, sending the manager sprawling. Logan then tried to kick the door shut, but the gunman smashed the glass with the butt of his pistol. Logan made no further resistance. This wasn’t the first time his bank had been robbed. He joined the rest of the staff at the wall.

  The bandits cleaned out the drawers of one teller’s cage of about $2,000. The second teller’s cage was locked and they wasted no time trying to open it. They backed out of the bank and made their escape in a taxi driven by a fourth member of the gang. He had circled the block while his companions robbed the bank.

  Twenty minutes later, the taxi was found parked on a side street. On the floor of the back seat, with his hands tied behind his back and adhesive tape over his mouth, was cab driver Bill Perry. He told police that two men had walked into the Star Cabs office and hired him to drive them to Stanley Park. Along the way they had hijacked his cab at gunpoint and bound him. En route to the bank, they’d picked up two more men. The driver, he said, wore horn-rimmed glasses.

  The robbers had not been masked. They all wore dark overcoats and fedoras pulled down to hide their eyes. Even so, witnesses could see that one rather tall man had red hair and freckles. The robbers all appeared to be in their late twenties. The Vancouver police had the witnesses go through stacks of mug shots and wanted posters, but apparently to no avail. Several known underworld characters were picked up for questioning, and then released.

  Vancouver’s first bank robbery of 1936 took place at 10:45 a.m. on January 13. Two bandits, one of them a tall redhead, strode into the Bank of Montreal at Prior and Main Streets and told the five people within to “Stick ’em up!” Each bandit wielded two pistols. While one covered the people with his guns, the other rifled the teller’s cage of about $1,000. Then he told manager G.W. Richardson to open the vault.

  Like Mr. Logan at the Royal Bank, Richardson had been the victim of bank robbers before. On that occasion, the thieves had locked him in the vault. This time, he said he couldn’t open the safe. With no further words, the robbers fled, taking with them a .38 revolver that was in a teller’s drawer. The bandits wore mufflers to partially conceal their faces, but several times during the holdup the mufflers slipped, allowing witnesses to provide police with good descriptions. The day after the robbery, British Columbia Provincial Police arrested two suspects in Port Coquitlam and sent them to Vancouver. They were interrogated and placed in a police lineup, but finally proved to be the wrong men. Within twenty-four hours, the real culprits struck again and this time the raid was bloody.

  So far, there had been no casualties in the holdups pulled by the still-unidentified hoodlums. Witnesses had even commented on the relatively quiet manner in which they had gone about the business of armed robbery. That changed when just before noon on January 15, the gang hit the Canadian Bank of Commerce at the corner of Powell Street and Victoria Drive in Vancouver.

  Hugh Gibson, one of just two customers in the bank, was cashing a cheque at William Hobbs’s teller’s cage when three armed men dashed in through the front door. One of them yelled, “This is a holdup!” A bandit shoved Gibson aside, levelled a pistol at Hobbs, and barked, “Stick ’em up!”

  Before Hobbs could make a move, the bandit shot him in the throat. Hobbs collapsed with blood pouring from the bullet hole. Another bandit fired a shot at manager Thomas Winsby, but missed. Winsby rushed to the vault and grabbed an automatic pistol. He managed to get off a couple of wild shots before a bandit’s bullet pierced his arm and shoulder, knocking him out of action.

  The bandits ordered the ledger keeper, D.A. McRae, to open the cage. McRae obeyed, and the bandits stepped over the prone figure of Hobbs, who lay in a spreading pool of blood. They cleaned out the cash drawers of about $1,200. Then they exited the bank to the street, where a taxi driven by a fourth gang member picked them up. McRae immediately phoned the police, who arrived within minutes. They found Hobbs on the floor with Gibson crouched beside him, holding up the wounded man’s head in an attempt to slow the flow of blood.

  “I thought it was a joke,” Gibson told a Vancouver Province reporter after an ambulance had whisked Hobbs and Winsby to a hospital. “But when I saw the gun in the man’s hand, I knew it was a holdup all right. I was watching the bandit and I don’t know if Hobbs did put up his hands, but almost at once he fired. As I looked up I saw Hobbs fall. It was a dirty low trick. He didn’t give the poor fellow a chance.”

  Some men in a beer parlour across the street from the bank had been drawn to the doorway by the sound of gunshots. They had seen the bandits come out of the bank. One of them, a tall red-haired man, put his gun in his pocket and then calmly lit a cigarette. When he noticed the men at the tavern door, he pulled the gun out again. The men ducked back inside and didn’t see the thieves make their getaway in the cab. A man named L.P. Gordy had just come out of the nearby Hamilton Café. He saw the bandit wave his gun at the men and heard one of the other bandits say, “Shoot the son of a bitch.” When the taxi arrived and the robbers climbed in, he heard one of them tell the driver, “We had to shoot a guy.”

  A motorist coming down Powell Street had seen men come out of the bank with guns in their hands and get into the cab. Realizing at once what was happening, he followed the cab to a location on Clark Street where the gunmen jumped out and ran around a corner. The man knew better than to try following them further. He hurried to the nearest telephone and called the police. Radio squad cars arrived quickly, but the robbers were gone. No doubt they’d had another getaway car parked nearby. While officers were questioning people in the bank and scouring the downtown area for any sign of the hoodlums, Vancouver police headquarters had a phone call from Daniel Warnock, the taxi driver whose car the bandits had used.

  At about a quarter past eleven that morning, Warnock had stepped out of his cab company office and found three men sitting in his taxi. They said they wanted to be driven to Coal Harbour. Thinking them to be legitimate passengers, Warnock got behind the wheel. As they neared the destination, one of the men stuck a gun in Warnock’s side and growled, “Keep driving.”

  The hoodlums made him stop on Pipeline Road, about a quarter of a mile from the Vancouver Police Department’s horse stables. They ordered him out of the car, bound his hands and feet with tape, slapped tape across his mouth, and dumped him in the bushes. Then they drove off in his cab. One of them wore horn-rimmed glasses.

  Warnock managed to struggle to his feet and hop to a tree. He rubbed his face against the trunk to get the tape off his mouth. Then he hobbled to the road. He was rescued by a passing driver who freed him from his bonds and then took him to the police stables where he phoned to report the theft of h
is cab.

  Thomas Winsby’s wounds were not life-threatening. But the bullet that had torn through Hobbs’s throat had struck the top of his spine. Even if he survived, he’d be paralyzed. Hobbs spent the last night of his life in an oxygen tent in Vancouver’s General Hospital, fighting for every breath. At 8:45 on the morning of January 16, twenty-five-year-old William Hobbs died. Now the fugitives were wanted for murder. Only one bandit had shot Hobbs, but under Canadian law at that time, if two or more people set out with the intention of perpetrating a criminal act, and one of them committed murder, all were held equally responsible.

  At a special meeting of Vancouver’s City Council, Mayor Gerald McGeer speculated that the bank robberies and murder had been the work of American criminals “of the most dangerous and vicious type” who had been driven out of their country. In the United States, McGeer said, the forces of law and order co-operated in a crackdown on bandit gangs. But in British Columbia, the provincial police and the various municipal police departments lacked the funding and the organization required to be effective. McGeer said the situation left Vancouver’s city police “under handicaps that work to the advantage of the criminal element … It should be fairly clear to everyone that we cannot prevent the operations of twentieth-century criminals with nineteenth-century police methods.”

  Vancouver Police Chief William W. Foster assured City Council and the press that everything possible was being done to apprehend the culprits. Suspects were being rounded up and questioned. Routine police work had been set aside so officers could concentrate on the manhunt. Roadblocks had been set up throughout Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Police were watching the bus terminals and train stations. No motor launch could leave the docks without inspection. Police in Alberta and the states bordering British Columbia had been alerted. The Canadian Bankers Association posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bandits.

  Meanwhile, the press reported that William Hobbs’s shocked and grieving parents were en route to Vancouver by train from Edmonton. Reporters had learned that Hobbs had briefly regained consciousness in hospital. He’d managed to gasp to detectives, “He did not give me a chance to put up my hands. He fired first thing.”

  What the press didn’t know yet, and Chief Foster was keeping quiet for the sake of the investigation, was that the Vancouver police already had some strong leads. Witnesses from the bank robberies had in fact pointed out three faces in the Vancouver Police Department’s “Rogues Gallery” of photographs: George “Blackie” Lawson, age thirty-five; Charles Russell, age twenty-five; and Jack “Red” Hyslop, age twenty-three.

  These men all belonged to a pack of thieves and troublemakers the Vancouver police had labelled “the Hyslop Gang” because the tough young redhead appeared to be the leader. Although Lawson was much older, he had only recently slipped into a life of crime. A native of Melita, Manitoba, he had worked for several years in the logging camps of Vancouver Island. Men who had known Lawson there recalled him as a hard worker who was friendly and well liked. It was a mystery to most of them why he had suddenly gone bad. Others suspected it was because he had caught what newspapers of the time discreetly called a “social disease,” which affected his mind.

  Jack Hyslop was born in Scotland in 1914. His family immigrated to Vancouver when he was ten years old. Jack’s father fell ill with chronic asthma and couldn’t work. His mother’s only income was a small pension. Jack had to quit elementary school and take a job as a delivery boy. He gave his pay to his mother. Jack was known as a good, honest kid who attended church and Sunday school. But like many youngsters growing up in poverty, he made some bad choices.

  The trouble started with some minor brushes with the law. Then early in 1933, Hyslop was sent to the Oakalla prison farm for three months for being in possession of a stolen car. He hadn’t been out of jail for long when he participated in an armed robbery. He was caught and sentenced to two years in prison. By the time Hyslop was released, he’d become embittered toward society in general. He had a bad temper, and police had him marked as a “dangerous character.” There had been several incidents in which he’d been arrested for allegedly shooting at people without provocation. Investigating officers had found witnesses unwilling to testify against him, and had therefore been obliged to release him. Hyslop had supposedly said on several occasions that he would “shoot to kill” before he’d go back to prison.

  Jack “Red” Hyslop (left) and George “Blackie” Lawson (right): Vancouver bandits who started out as honest kids but made some bad choices.

  Vancouver Public Library.

  Detectives were told to keep a lookout for two other members of the Hyslop Gang: William Davies, age thirty-one; and Earl Dunbar, age thirty-two. They learned that Dunbar had a room in a boarding house on Cambie Street. A pair of detectives watched the place for a while, but when Dunbar didn’t show up they searched his room. They found a handgun and a mask. There was also a postcard from a western American city. From it, detectives gleaned a clue that implicated James Lawler, age twenty-six; and David Anderson, age twenty, in the botched jewellery store heist. Both men were known Hyslop associates.

  Then police had received a tip from a woman who, after hearing about the robbery and shooting, remembered seeing two men walk away from a car parked in a back lane. The car was still there. Detectives found the key in the ignition. The car was registered to a man named Donald McNeill, who had reported it stolen several hours after the robbery.

  Two detectives went to McNeill’s home to question him. He seemed nervous and his answers weren’t at all satisfactory. When the detectives pressed him to tell the truth, McNeill changed his story. He said some friends who lived in a house on East Tenth Avenue had borrowed his car. When they didn’t return it at the agreed time, he went to their house to see them. They told him they’d had some trouble and the police were looking for the car, which they’d left in a lane two blocks away. That evening, McNeill said he’d read about the robbery and shooting in the newspaper. That’s when he phoned the police and reported his car as stolen. The detectives were sure McNeill wasn’t telling them everything. They took him to police headquarters for further questioning.

  McNeill had given the police an address, but they didn’t want to just barge in and risk triggering a gun battle. They also had to be sure McNeill was telling the truth. Plainclothes detectives discreetly questioned neighbours. People told them several men and two women had been going in and out of the house for about two weeks. One day, two men were seen carrying in what appeared to be a heavy club bag. The day after the robbery and murder, two of the men had thoroughly scrubbed down the verandah, even though there had just been a heavy rain. It looked as though they were trying to cleanse the place of evidence. Neighbours didn’t connect the suspicious behaviour with the bank robberies. They thought the strangers were bootleggers.

  The local grocery store owner told police the women did all of the shopping for the people in the house. They were very frugal at first and paid for their purchases with handfuls of change, as though they didn’t have much money. After the first bank robbery, the women suddenly had plenty of paper currency. They bought large quantities of food and cigarettes. Police searched for the house’s owner, a forty-one-year-old taxi driver named Fred Healy. He had disappeared.

  At ten o’clock on the night of January 16, police cars converged on the house on East Tenth Avenue. Chief Foster personally directed the raid. Twenty-four officers surrounded the house, which was in darkness. Superintendent Harold Darling and Detective Inspector Gordon Grant took the considerable risk of going to the front door and ringing the bell.

  William Davies answered the door, opening it just a crack. The officers shoved their way in and one of them pressed the muzzle of a revolver against Davies’s stomach before he could bolt. Quietly, Grant ordered the bewildered Davies to lead him through the house and not make a sound. If at all possible, the officers wanted to pull off the raid without a gunfig
ht. As it turned out, there was no fight in this bandit gang.

  Officers swept through the house and met no resistance at all. Davies claimed he was just a visitor. Earl Dunbar was trying to hide behind the living-room door. When he saw a gun in an officer’s hand, he threw up his hands and cried, “You don’t need to use that!” Charles Russell was hiding under a bed. He meekly surrendered without trying to use the three pistols he had on him.

  A search of the house turned up several hundred dollars from the bank robberies. Among a cache of guns and ammunition was the revolver that had been stolen from the Bank of Commerce. A roll of tape of the same type that had been used to bind and gag the unfortunate taxi drivers was added to the mounting evidence. Dunbar and Russell were charged with murder, and Davies as an accessory to murder.

  At a luncheon the next day, Mayor McGeer congratulated Chief Foster on the success of the raid. He was confident that the rest of the gang would soon be in custody. Foster told the press that officers not directly assigned to the manhunt were “scouring the city for all undesirables and underworld characters with a view to placing them in jail or driving them from the city.”

  The police learned that most of the gang members had rooms in boarding houses and had been using the Tenth Avenue house as a hideout. Fred Healy had evidently rented it to them, knowing that they were plotting and carrying out bank robberies. The morning after the raid, Healy walked into the police station with his lawyer and gave himself up. He was charged with being an accessory to murder.

  At a coroner’s inquest held on January 20, five witnesses identified Charles Russell as the bandit who had gunned down William Hobbs. Earl Dunbar was identified as the one who had shot Thomas Winsby. Throughout the four-hour hearing, Russell, who was known to have a taste for fine clothes and was nattily dressed, seemed amused at the proceedings. According to the Daily Province, he was “ice cold.” Dunbar, on the other hand, frowned often and “showed decided reaction to the evidence.”