Wrong Side of the Law Read online

  In the autumn of 1977, McArthur was using both “weapons” in a scheme to defraud Toronto jewellery stores of expensive gems and watches by means of down payments of stolen cash coupled with counterfeit certified cheques. Dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and black leather overcoat, McArthur was confident he could hoodwink any store clerk or manager. He had false identification, and he timed his visits to jewellery stores on Yonge Street to hours when banks would be closed so no one could try to verify his cheques by phone. In case of trouble, McArthur also packed a Browning automatic pistol.

  McArthur spent several days setting up the scam. He opened a bogus bank account and chatted with sales clerks as he presented himself as a respectable man of means. But his plan went disastrously wrong on the afternoon of November 11, starting with his visit to Gold’s Jewelers. The saleswoman there said she’d have to get the manager’s approval before she could accept McArthur’s cheque. McArthur waited a couple of minutes. Then, sensing that something was wrong, he walked into the manager’s office and demanded his cheque back. The manager said he’d already phoned the police.

  McArthur fled from the jewellery store and went to the hotel he’d been using as a base of operations. He changed into a different suit, and then walked to Chapman Brothers Jewellers, another target on his list. Unfortunately for McArthur, the word on him was already out. He found himself face to face with Constable Brian McNeil of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department’s Fraud Squad.

  McArthur pulled his gun, and McNeil lunged for it. McArthur fired, and the bullet shattered McNeil’s kneecap. McArthur would later say that he had intended only to shoot at the floor as a warning to the officer. He said it was McNeil’s own fault he got wounded. “He should have let me go.”

  When McArthur’s gun discharged, the recoil spring popped out, rendering it useless. Another Fraud Squad officer who was posing as a salesman drew his revolver and placed McArthur under arrest. McArthur claimed later that in the Don Jail police officers beat him because he had shot a cop. Soon he was on his way to Millhaven, Canada’s new maximum security “super prison” near Kingston. McArthur wasn’t just a would-be crook who had bungled a job, and this wasn’t his first trip to Millhaven. He was one of Canada’s most wanted men, with a long criminal record and a history of prison escapes.

  Micky McArthur was born in 1952. His father had deserted the family before his birth. McArthur’s earliest years were spent with his mother and older sister living with an aunt in Galt, Ontario (now part of the city of Cambridge). Then his mother met a man named Harry McArthur who became Micky’s stepfather. More children came along as the family moved around, first to Orrs Lake, and then Paisley. Harry proved to be a violent drunk who abused his wife and “disciplined” the children with an electrical cord.

  Young Micky learned to hate authority. He was often in fights at school. If the other kid was too big, Micky would pick up a rock. He was in and out of foster homes. Hard experience taught him when to fight back, and when to run and hide. By the time the McArthur family moved to Walkerton in 1964, Micky had a reputation as a problem kid.

  McArthur’s first crime as a teenager was forging a cheque for ten dollars. That got him six months in the Bowmanville Training School east of Oshawa. There, he met Steve Faust, who would become his brother-in-law and partner in crime. Bowmanville did nothing to cure McArthur of his delinquency. His next stop was the Ontario Provincial Reformatory in Guelph, where he served eighteen months for three break-and-enter convictions. His pal Faust was there, too. McArthur would later blame the reformatory for turning him from “a mean little training school kid into an insensitive, totally amoral and vicious young punk.”

  Not long after his release from jail in Guelph, McArthur was sentenced to fourteen months in the Burwash Reformatory for auto theft. McArthur hated being incarcerated, but he would later regard his youthful misadventures as important learning experiences for a young man who had chosen to live a criminal lifestyle. It was in jail that he learned from “experts” such skills as picking locks, hot-wiring cars, obtaining foolproof false identification, and giving police the slip.

  After his release from Burwash, McArthur went to Toronto. The idea of honest work was repugnant to him. He got money from break-ins. When he wanted a car or motorcycle, he’d steal one. To deceive the police, he altered the license plates. “My artistry was almost perfect,” McArthur boasted later. Nonetheless, after a while he felt that the Toronto police were on his trail, so he moved to Galt. There, he stole so many vehicles, the local police thought a professional theft ring was in operation.

  McArthur had numerous close calls with police, leading them on what he considered a merry chase. Faust was often his accomplice in break-ins and wild joyrides in stolen cars. Then one day while McArthur was visiting his mother’s apartment in Galt, two policemen came to the door with warrants for his arrest for the robbery of a convenience store in Burgoyne, a community about twenty-four miles west of Owen Sound. McArthur put up a fight before he was finally handcuffed.

  The next day, two OPP constables put McArthur in a car for the trip to the Bruce County jail in Walkerton. McArthur didn’t think he would get a long sentence for the petty Burgoyne robbery, but he was determined not to go back to jail. When his escort made an unscheduled stop in the village of Harriston, McArthur took advantage of the lucky break and a lack of diligence on the officers’ part to escape from the car and flee into the woods.

  A police posse with a tracking dog was soon after him. McArthur used every trick he had seen in movies to throw them off his trail. He hopped fences, doubled back on his tracks, and waded through creeks. He found the only trick that actually worked was running up the middle of a highway. Once he’d thrown the hunters and their dog off his scent, McArthur stole a famer’s car. As he put it, he was “freedom bound.” But it was the false freedom of a man on the run. He could have gone straight after Burwash. Instead, he was a wanted man.

  McArthur travelled back and forth across Canada by hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, and stealing cars. Whatever he needed, he stole. To use his own metaphor, the world was a big shopping mall and everything in it was free. For a while he worked under a false name in a trendy salon in Toronto, cutting hair in the daytime and pulling burglaries at night. That rare venture into employment ended when a customer he’d known in his school days recognized him.

  Worried that his old acquaintance might inform on him, McArthur got out of Toronto in a hurry. He went to Walkerton, where he continued his career as a late night thief, once again in partnership with Faust. One of their targets was a garage whose owner had once been McArthur’s landlord. McArthur felt justified in robbing the garage because the owner had never offered him a job. Again, he was the quarry of many police chases, and had incredible luck in evading capture again and again. But the inevitable happened when, in the wee hours of November 20, 1972, OPP officers burst into a cottage in Collingwood Township and surprised McArthur in bed. They took him to the Walkerton jail. Faust soon joined him.

  By this time, local boy Micky McArthur had become something of an outlaw folk hero to some people in the Paisley and Walkerton areas, even though he was definitely no Robin Hood. He was implicated in more than a hundred criminal incidents in five counties that police knew of, and he had been the suspected fugitive in more than thirty police chases. McArthur seemed like a character from a Hollywood crime/action movie, and he revelled in his notoriety. He didn’t even consider himself a criminal. In his own opinion he was “just young, fun-loving and incredibly wild.” But he was still hell-bent on staying free.

  On the night of April 24, 1973, McArthur and Faust became the first prisoners ever to break out of the Walkerton jail. They would never reveal who smuggled in the hacksaw blades they used to cut through bars. In spite of a search that included dogs and aircraft, the pair got away. They put plenty of distance between themselves and Walkerton, and then they cracked the safe in a grocery store in Sudbury. The swag was $11,500!
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  McArthur went through his share of the money quickly, travelling around the country and purchasing (for a change) a brand new sports car. He broke into a supermarket in Woodstock, Ontario, but was foiled by a safe he couldn’t crack. A few weeks later he was in Vancouver, when a tip led the RCMP to his motel room. Faust had already been arrested in Sault Ste. Marie.

  Returned to Walkerton, McArthur and Faust were convicted on several charges including escaping custody, and each was sentenced to three years and three months. Then they were sent to Sudbury where they were given another two years and three months for the grocery store burglary. But McArthur had no intention of spending the next five-and-a-half years in prison.

  On July 10, 1973, McArthur and Faust were in the back of a sheriff’s car, on their way to the Kingston Penitentiary. Two officers sat up front. Using a safety pin (or so he later claimed) McArthur quietly picked the locks on his and Faust’s handcuffs and leg manacles. Near Whitby, the prisoners suddenly pounced on the officers and overpowered them. They left the dazed men at the side of the road and escaped in the sheriff’s car.

  Left: Micky McArthur was the first prisoner to escape from the Bruce County Jail in Walkerton, Ontario.

  Right: Cell window through which Micky McArthur made his escape from the Bruce County Jail in Walkerton, Ontario, on April 24, 1973.

  Edward and Jane Cobb.

  Micky McArthur had done it again! But this time his “freedom” was short-lived. Four days later the police tracked him and Faust to a friend’s home in Kitchener. By the time the courts were finished with them, they were looking at nine years each in Kingston. Micky couldn’t believe it. “This wasn’t justice!” he wrote later. McArthur didn’t think he belonged in prison with real criminals. Nonetheless, he entered Millhaven — the Mill, as inmates called it — as prisoner number 9864. By McArthur’s reckoning, he had reached “the big time.”

  As a relatively good-looking young man, McArthur knew that he would be a target for sexual predators. He put on a “weird” act to keep potential attackers away. He worked out with weights, and befriended a hard case who put the word out that McArthur was not to be bothered. McArthur began to feel a strain on his friendship with Faust, who was associating with inmates Micky regarded as “low lifes.” Eventually, McArthur was transferred to the Collins Bay Penitentiary, and Faust was sent to the Warkworth Institution at Campbellford.

  McArthur never stopped thinking about escaping, but decided he would “obtain my freedom the right way and for the correct reason — on parole and gainfully employed.” But when, after three-and-a-half years the parole board turned him down because of his record, McArthur became impatient. “I had had enough of their nonsense. I had been a model prisoner and was set to go straight. I deserved a parole and I was determined to see to it that I received one — no matter how.”

  On the night of December 21–22, 1976, using improvised tools such as a sledgehammer made from a broom handle and a fifty-pound weight from the gym, McArthur broke out of his cell. He managed to get over the prison wall undetected and fled on foot across the countryside. Once he was clear of the Kingston area, McArthur spent a few days hiding in the home of “a loyal family member.” All he needed, he said later, was a gun so he could pull a robbery and then rent an apartment. He broke into a Canadian Tire store in Cambridge and stole a shotgun and a supply of shells. He was just leaving when Waterloo Regional Police arrived. It was Christmas night, and Micky was in custody again. A few days later he was transferred to the Kitchener jail. He was warned not to do anything foolish.

  To McArthur, “foolish” meant staying behind bars. Once again, he somehow obtained hacksaw blades. On the evening of February 22, 1977, McArthur and two other prisoners escaped. The other two were soon caught, but McArthur burglarized a car dealership and then fled all the way to Montreal.

  McArthur now decided he would go straight and stay out of jail. He registered under an alias with an employment agency, and for a while supported himself as a labourer earning minimum wage. Then the work dried up and he found himself unemployed and broke. As McArthur put it, “I’d rather die with a gun in my hand than starve in the streets.”

  McArthur fled Montreal after a shoplifting incident almost landed him back in jail. He went to Saskatchewan, where he helped a friend escape from the Prince Albert Penitentiary. All the while, he kept himself in funds through robbery. McArthur then went to Toronto where he paid a cosmetic surgeon the hefty price of $1,000 to alter his facial features.

  Satisfied with the results of the surgery, McArthur returned to Saskatchewan. On November 2, he drove a stolen car to the little community of Hague, north of Saskatoon. The prairie town had a bank that he’d been wanting to rob for a long time. McArthur casually walked in, showed a pistol to the manager, single teller, and lone customer, and walked out with $7,000. After his unpleasant experience with the employment agency in Montreal, the ease with which he pulled the Hague robbery convinced McArthur once and for all that working was for fools. Nine days later, he was apprehended in Chapman Brothers Jewellers in Toronto.

  McArthur spent the next six years behind bars. He generally behaved himself, though he made a suicide attempt by slashing the arteries in the crooks of his arms. He tried to alter his fingerprints through a painful self-

  administered procedure involving a razor blade and drain cleaner. McArthur was shunted around from Millhaven, to Collins Bay, to the Frontenac Minimum Security Institution adjacent to Collins Bay, and to the Pittsburgh Farm Annex outside Joyceville. He participated in the Save the Youth Now Group (STYNG), a volunteer organization of inmates who spoke to young offenders about “the cruel realities of a criminal lifestyle or career.”

  In 1983, McArthur became eligible for parole. As a reward for his good behaviour, he was released. McArthur was elated to be out of jail at last, and this time without having to constantly look over his shoulder or worry about a knock at the door. But past lessons didn’t seem to sink in with Micky McArthur.

  By this time, McArthur’s sister Janet had been married to Steve Faust for several years, but the marriage had gone bad. Faust was unemployed and broke, and told McArthur he planned to rob the Royal Bank in Hepworth, near Sauble Beach. McArthur later claimed that he tried to talk Faust out of it, but to no avail. McArthur himself had been, in his own words “robbing banks like they were going out of style.” However, he didn’t think Faust had the competence to pull a bank robbery on his own, so he decided to go with him to make sure he didn’t get caught.

  McArthur planned the holdup carefully, and told Faust to follow his instructions without question. No one was to get hurt, he said, as he gave Faust a 30-30 carbine. McArthur would be armed with a sawed-off shotgun. They stole a Datsun station wagon and a motorcycle. McArthur picked the morning of August 8, 1983, when the bank would have a shipment of cash ready for pick-up by a Brinks truck. Using theatrical make-up, McArthur disguised himself to look like a black man, and Faust to look like a “mutant.” They had a scanner that allowed them to pick up police radio communications so they’d be warned of approaching cops.

  They entered the bank at 10:15. McArthur shouted, “This is a stick-up! This is the real thing! We’re here for the Brinks pick-up. Open the treasury. We’re not leaving without the money. If the police come, we’re taking hostages. We mean business.”

  The head teller opened the vault, and McArthur made bank employees fill a backpack with bundles of money. While they were doing that, he heard over his scanner that police were already on the way. Either a bank employee had pressed a button, or someone outside had realized something was wrong in the bank. Faust, who was a bundle of nerves, cried, “Let’s go! We’re running out of time.”

  With the backpack stuffed, the bandits fled from the bank and jumped into the Datsun. As they roared along Hepworth’s main street, they saw a pick-up truck in the wrong lane, coming straight at them. The driver was clearly trying to block their escape. McArthur swerved up onto the curb to get around the truck
. Then he saw in his rear view mirror that the truck had turned and was following them. He jammed on the brakes and yelled to Faust, “Hit him!”

  He meant for Faust to get out of the car and put a bullet into the truck’s engine block or a front tire. Instead, in his panic, Faust turned in his seat and fired a shot that blew out the Datsun’s back window. Exasperated, McArthur stepped out from behind the wheel and pumped three shotgun blasts into the front of the pickup.

  Rae Patterson, the truck driver, later reported, “I hit the floor of the truck, and by the time I crawled out the passenger door, they were gone.” His windshield was smashed, and the front of the truck’s body was peppered with buckshot marks. “I feel pretty stupid now, “ Patterson said. “A guy could get killed doing that. The next time I’ll think twice. I now know what a target feels like.”

  Four miles from Hepworth, McArthur and Faust ditched the car and retrieved the motorcycle from a hiding place in the bush. They wiped off the makeup, changed clothes, and made a successful getaway. Their take was $80,000.

  McArthur buried most of the loot. He allowed himself and Faust $5,000 each to live on for a few months until things cooled down. His plan was to use the money to open a couple of salons in Western Canada so they both could go straight. He advised Faust to lay low and not make himself conspicuous by spending a lot of money.

  But in an attempt to save his crumbling marriage, Faust blew his $5,000 buying Janet expensive gifts, like a fur coat. Of course, the police wondered where an unemployed parolee got the money. One night they picked a drunken Faust up in Toronto’s Union Station. It didn’t take them long to get a confession out of him. Faust told them where the money from the Hepworth robbery was hidden, and that he had pulled the job with his brother-in-law, Micky McArthur. Bitter over this betrayal, McArthur later wrote, “When he (Faust) was arrested, the police had to slap him twice: once to get him talking and once to shut him up.” On October 13, 1983, McArthur was back in Millhaven. He had barely set foot inside his cell when he began to plan another escape.