Pubdate: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: 2003 The Vancouver Sun Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: William Boei CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE Crime takes place every day, but what is the impact on our communities? The Vancouver Sun brings you a month-long series that puts a human face to the statistics, looks at the complex issues around crime and puts forward some solutions. The series begins April 26, only in The Sun. As The Vancouver Sun continues publishing its Crime and Consequence series, we would welcome any thoughts or observations you have on the topic. *LETTERS: Include name, municipal residence and daytime phone number. *Maximum length is 200 words. *Writers whose letters are being considered for publication will be contacted. Send to: Crime, c/o Wendy Nordvik-Carr, The Vancouver Sun, 1-200 Granville Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6N 3C3. *E-MAIL: (no attachments) *FAX: 604-605-2522 *PHONE: 604-605-2188 - ----------------------------------------- Crime and Consequence Exclusive News Series: Six years after reaching for an addict's shotgun during a terrifying robbery, Mayor Larry Campbell recalls the nightmares in which he found himself ready to kill William Boei Vancouver Sun Campbell was tied up at gunpoint in the 1997 holdup of a west side Vancouver ski shop. He had dreams about it -- that he struggled free while the robbers looted the store and was about to reach for a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun they had left on the floor. In real life, one of the masked bandits walked into the room before Campbell could make a move, and the moment passed. In his nightmare, Campbell grabbed the shotgun. Then the thieves came back. "In the dream," Campbell told The Vancouver Sun, "I knew that if they came back while I had the 12-gauge and they didn't do what I said, they tried to take it away from me, then I had to kill them. "I was a coroner trying to prevent death, advocating a change in how we deal with people who are addicted, and finding myself in the position where I had to kill one." The 1997 stick-up was the first of a string of 18 robberies linked to one or more members of a group of 12 criminals, some of them heroin addicts, according to veteran Crown counsel Winston Sayson. Their story is a fitting introduction to a major Sun series called Crime and Consequence, which begins today and will explore the changing faces of crime, law enforcement, the courts, prison and parole for the next five weeks. Sun reporters found that while the crime rate is down and continuing to fall, crime still exacts a frightful toll of death, injury and loss. In the ski shop robbery, Campbell judged the perpetrators were amateurs. Sayson, a prosecutor for 14 years, says that by the last robbery, they were using techniques that marked them as seasoned criminals. The string eventually ran out. Five men were arrested. Three are doing hard time in prison and a fourth is on trial; no charges were laid against the fifth for lack of evidence. But Sayson said society has to go farther than just putting the bad guys away. "Crimes will continue to be committed and we must address the root causes of criminal offences," he said, urging the community to do some serious soul-searching to find ways of breaking what he calls "the cycle of crime." Like many crimes, the robberies were closely tied to drugs: Sayson says all four men involved in the last robbery were heroin addicts. And like so many crimes, theirs would have lasting consequences, especially for the victims. The 12 robbers would take $5 million worth of goods and money from their victims from November 1997 to August 2001. But, in time, some of them would be caught and charged with more than 100 counts covering all 18 robberies. Each robbery was not so much a single crime as a grotesque collage of offences. The culprits stole cars, drove without registration and insurance, carried unregistered guns, masked themselves, aimed guns at people and threatened them, fired at a bystander, tied up and robbed employees and customers of stores and banks, smashed jewellers' display cases and stole the contents, possessed stolen goods, fenced them and throughout it all, were fuelled by the rush of heroin in their veins. They were finally caught after the 18th robbery, thanks to a bystander who risked his life, a remarkable coincidence and diligent police work. Sayson, who with colleagues Melissa Gillespie and David Sim has spent a year and a half prosecuting the cases, says it is more than a tale of bad people doing bad things, getting caught and being punished. It is also a message to society to examine where crime comes from and to change what can be changed so as to prevent future crime. The gang targeted mostly Lower Mainland businesses but also did hold-ups in Saanich, Kelowna and Prince George. They hit three branches of the Bank of Hong Kong (now known as HSBC), two Safeways and the ski equipment store, but it specialized in jewellery stores, robbing an even dozen of them. Larry Campbell looks back on that first robbery, on Nov. 12, 1997, as "a pretty significant life experience," and scarier than anything he encountered when he was a cop. Campbell, then the province's chief coroner, was about to try on a jacket in Westside Sport and Ski on West Broadway when at least three men rushed into the shop, one of them carrying what Campbell instantly recognized as a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun. The man with the gun ordered everyone in the store -- Campbell recalled seeing at least two employees and two other customers -- down on the floor. "So we got down on our faces. And a guy came along and duct-taped our ankles and our hands." Something Campbell had learned as a cop came back to him. "If they're going to bind you, put your hands out like this," he said, touching the backs of his hands together, palms facing out. In that position, he explained, you can often lever your hands free of the bindings. The robbers, apparently inexperienced, taped his hands that way, "and then they grabbed us by the ankles and dragged us back" under some clothing hanging on a rack. They locked the front door and began exploring the store. "My impression was that we were in a really dangerous situation, that these guys were not professionals, that they were probably drug addicts, and that they were really jittery," Campbell said. "The planning was lousy, which scared me. The second thing that scared me is that they didn't blindfold us, and I was worried that suddenly they might," he paused a moment in private thought, then continued, "decide to do something to us." Meanwhile, he busied himself doing what a cop would do, "mentally keeping track of who they were." Trying to look at their masked faces would be risky, but "I knew what kind of running shoes they had on, and what kind of pants they had on. When I could look up, I could tell what kind of jackets they had on . . . . "That was my training that kicked in. There was absolutely nothing I could do if they decided to get violent. When you're handcuffed or duct-taped like that, there's nothing you can do. Just stay calm . . . just stay calm." As he watched, he worked at loosening the duct tape binding his wrists. After a time the men left the room, Campbell heard the back door open and close, and it grew quiet. He called out, "Have they gone?" and there was no response. "The shotgun was lying maybe 15 feet in front of me on a black leather coat. And so I flipped my hands through the duct tape, and I took out my pocket knife and I had just started cutting the duct tape on my ankles, and I was going to get the 12-gauge. "And I heard this voice say, 'Where the -- profanity -- do you think you're going?' "And I sort of slipped my hands back into the duct tape as near as I could, and lay face down. The guy came back and got the shotgun and got the leather coat, and went past me and grabbed some snowboards, and out the back they went." The 12-gauge was "the dirtiest weapon I've ever seen. It was filthy, just disgusting." He now estimates the whole thing must have lasted no more than five to 10 minutes, but "it seemed like hours. Time does stand still when you're a victim, I can confirm that." The moments when he was about to reach for the 12-gauge would repeat time and again in Campbell's dreams. "My nightmare from this was that I actually got the shotgun. And the nightmare that I had, I had a very difficult time with this, very difficult. Not immediately, but about two or three days after, I had a pretty good meltdown. "And I kept seeing that I had the shotgun, and that I would use it." Could he have used it? "I would have used it," Campbell answered without hesitation. "That was my nightmare, that I would want them to get down . . . and if they tried to take it from me I would have no choice. "That's where I always woke up . . . . It was so real, and I was always so glad to wake up and . . . it hadn't happened. I was always relieved at that." Back in the ski store, more time passed and Campbell thought he heard a van or car starting up in the back. He called out again, "Are they gone?" and when no one answered, finished freeing himself from the duct tape around his ankles. He noticed he had cut into his trouser cuff with his pocket knife. Once free, "I got up and first of all I tried to break the front window. I threw a snowboard at it. It just about took my head off -- it came off that window like a spring. Then I went and locked the back door and called 911 and the police came down." That was the first of the 18 robberies. This was the last: It was quiet in the stolen black GMC Safari van, and the two men riding in the front could hear the click of metal on metal as someone in the back loaded a nine-millimetre Glock handgun. Court documents reveal Bruce Kenneth Kiloh was one of two men in the back while Timothy Mark Thiessen rode up front in the passenger seat. The Crown alleges the man with the gun was Brandon Shane Spencer, now 31, whose trial on 94 charges (four more were stayed) covering all 18 robberies wound up on Thursday in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster. A verdict is tentatively set for May 22. Spencer is the one common factor in all 18 robberies, according to Sayson. He is accused of carrying out some of the robberies by himself and others aided by one to four other men. It was 12:30 p.m. on a Thursday in late August 2001 when the van pulled into a parking space near Murdoch Jewellers in the South Point Exchange Shopping Mall in Surrey. The mall, on 152nd Street between Highway 99 and the King George Highway, is anchored by a Save-On-Foods supermarket, a Staples office supply store and a Canadian Tire outlet. There is also a Starbucks franchise. Stores on three sides of the mall face inward to a central parking lot. Kiloh and Thiessen had poked around the jeweller's the day before, pretending to be customers. They had pumped a gemologist for information about merchandise and prices, noted the most expensive gems and watches, observed how the security lock on the front door worked. They got out of the van, three of them already masked. All four wore gloves. The fourth man -- Thiessen --walked ahead and rang the jewellery store's doorbell, and store manager Charlene Pataky used a portable buzzer to release the lock on the front door. Thiessen put his foot in the doorway, pulled a bandanna over his face and pushed the door open. The other three men appeared behind him and rushed into the store. One of them wedged a bicycle seat in the doorway to keep the door open. There were three employees in the shop. The man with the gun pointed it at Pataky's head and ordered her to get down on the floor. One of the others herded watchmaker Souriya Vongnakhone and employee Ryan Murdoch, the son of owner Amanda Murdoch, from a back room into the front of the store, where the gunman ordered them to get on the floor. The other three, swinging tools including a hammer and a tire iron, began smashing glass display cases and scooping up watches, gems and jewelry. The most expensive piece was a $10,000 diamond necklace from a glass obelisk at the front of the store. The cheap stuff, including gold and silver necklaces and pearls, was left behind. THE WITNESS Outside, computer technology worker Mark Sanders, driving into the parking lot to grab a coffee at the Starbucks, was startled by the masked men getting out of the black van. He parked his car in front of the van, partly blocking it, and called 911 on his cell phone. Moments later, the four men burst out of the jewellery store and piled into the van. The driver slammed the van into reverse, avoiding Sanders' Ford Taurus, and steered through the middle of the parking lot to the rear of the Staples store. Sanders followed in his car, watching the men park the van, leap out and run up a flight of stairs to a townhouse development. Sayson says they were using a favoured technique among experienced robbers. "When crooks do these kinds of things they usually use a stolen car to do the heist, they drive away, abandon the vehicle, and then by foot they travel to a secondary location, where a 'cool' car (one that has not been stolen) is located," the prosecutor said. The route from the hot car to the cool car has to be accessible only by foot. "So if the police are chasing them, they would have to go on foot. And when they reach the secondary location, the cool car is there so the crooks take off, and the police are without a car." Behind the Staples store, the robbers had mapped out a route up the stairs to a pathway, through a gap between two fences, and into the townhouse parking lot, where they had parked a dark blue Ford Thunderbird. But they hadn't shaken off Sanders, who had recruited an off-duty firefighter having lunch at a kiosk behind the Staples store. Both men ran after the robbers as they piled out of the black van. Then the man with the gun turned around, pointing the weapon toward Sanders and opened fire: first one shot, then two more. All missed. One bullet lodged in the wall of the Staples store. Another fell harmlessly to the pavement beside a mechanic standing beneath a Canadian Tire sign. Police later found three spent shell casings. The firefighter backed off when the gunman opened fire, but Sanders kept running after the robbers, up the stairs, along the path, between the fences, into the townhouse parking lot. He arrived just in time to see the shooter dive into the T-Bird, which immediately sped away. But it stopped for a moment to pick up another of the robbers, who was running along the sidewalk. And that was nearly that. The bandits were well on their way to a spot where they had parked a third vehicle, where two of them would drive off on their own. But Sanders got just close enough to the T-Bird to read its licence plate. His cellphone battery had run out and he had lost his connection to 911, but he shouted out the plate number -- HLB 694 -- and a resident in one of the townhouses who had come out to see what the commotion was, wrote it down on a piece of paper. When Surrey RCMP checked the licence number, it was long expired. Dead end -- but for coincidence and police work. The computer query also brought up the information that someone had checked the police database the previous day for information about the same expired licence number. The cops on the robbery file contacted the RCMP constable who had made the check, who had noticed the plate number on a Ford Thunderbird while doing surveillance on an unrelated case. They staked out the address where the T-Bird had been spotted and they found a car that fitted the description -- but with a different set of plates on it. They figured the cop doing surveillance must have seen the car after its regular plates were replaced with the expired plates in preparation for the robbery. The stakeout paid off in spades. Two men who turned out to be Thiessen and Kiloh got into the T-Bird. Police followed them home, where they met two other men who would also become suspects. Arrests soon followed. - - - - QUICKLY FENCED The final tally in the Murdoch Jewellers heist was $127,400 in stolen jewellery. Court documents in Thiessen and Kiloh's cases indicate most of the loot was quickly fenced in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, much of it to a jeweller and that the robbers got $10,000 for it, which they split four ways. Most of the jewellery was never recovered, although police did find a few bracelets and earrings, a pendant and 53 wristwatches from the Murdoch store in one suspect's home. That was modest compared with the take in the James Haworth & Son Jewellers robbery in Kelowna. On Jan. 23, 2001, a day when there was snow on the ground in Kelowna, staff at the Haworth store had locked the shop's front door as usual at 5:30 p.m., had loaded all the high-end display stock into seven cardboard boxes on a trolley, and were doing paperwork in the back before rolling the trolley into the walk-in vault. Three men wearing track suits, gloves and masks burst through the unlocked back door. One of them pointed a gun at owner Heather Anne Haworth and goldsmith Tony Lam and forced them to get down on the floor. The other two carried the boxes of jewellery out the back door. "The approximate retail value of the stolen items is approximately $2.4 million," says an admission of facts that was entered into evidence at Spencer's trial. The loot included wedding bands, engagement rings, precious stones such as diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and various pieces of jewellery. Spencer's trial, before Justice Ronald McKinnon, was told that one of the seven boxes, containing $100,000 worth of jewellery, was eventually recovered from a van that had been illegally parked not far from the jewellery store, towed away and left in the towing company's parking lot for several days until Kelowna RCMP connected it with the robbery and searched it. A year and a half after the Murdoch Jewellers heist, Charlene Pataky, the manager who was forced to the floor at gunpoint, isn't over it yet. "I was scared for my life," Pataky said in her victim impact statement to the court, filed earlier this year. "The gun was pointed right at me throughout the robbery ... I am familiar with guns, and I know the one pointed at me had a loaded clip. I was terrified." She still has nightmares in which she relives the robbery, "the smashing of cases, the yelling, and the pointing of a gun." Whenever she was in the store after the robbery she felt on edge, not knowing if the next customer would be a robber. "I just want it to be over," she said. "I don't want to think about it any more." Ryan Murdoch also had nightmares. "Any of us could have died," he said in his victim impact statement. "Nobody should have to go through something like this." His mother, store owner Amanda Murdoch, wasn't there during the robbery and that has weighed heavily on her. "I felt that I should have been there to protect my son and my dedicated staff," she said in her statement. "I had trouble sleeping at night. I kept having nightmares about the robbery. I used to wake up during the night sweating and worrying that it would happen again." - - - - LINGERING DREAD Murdoch not only lost business after the robbery because customers thought her store unsafe, but also she couldn't eat and lost weight, felt somehow ashamed of what had happened, started avoiding friends and relatives, and dreaded getting out of bed in the morning to go to the store. "I thought the robbers would come back again," she said. Sanders, the man who went for a cup of coffee and nearly caught a bullet, did not want to be interviewed. "He has been to court at least four times now and he has had enough," Sayson said. "It is very exhausting for him." Without Sanders' actions, he added, the Murdoch robbery would have been just another successful heist. The masks, the gloves and the get-away scheme would have made it almost impossible to catch the culprits. Sanders has been commended by the Surrey RCMP for his courage and bravery. Kiloh, who pleaded guilty to armed robbery in the Murdoch heist and to having his face masked with intent to commit the robbery, was sentenced to seven years in prison. He is serving a concurrent four-year sentence for the robbery of Penner Goldsmiths in Richmond in January 2001. When Justice Anne MacKenzie sentenced Kiloh last February for the Murdoch heist, when he was 28 years old, she said he had expressed "a genuine motivation to embark upon what will be a lifetime recovery, a lifestyle change from the heroin addiction which drove this offence and the robbery." Thiessen, then 29, was sentenced in March to six years for the Murdoch robbery. Trevor Lee (Red) Barembruch is serving six years for his role in the October, 2002 armed robbery of Gold Room Jewellers in Surrey. The 94 charges still facing Spencer include several that carry maximum sentences of life in prison. "What is fuelling all this criminal activity?" Sayson asked. "And what can we do to prevent crimes?" Emphasizing that he was speaking for himself and not necessarily for the attorney-general's ministry, Sayson said he believes crime can be beaten back if society strives to reach certain goals: - - The first, he said, has to be a collective return to basic spiritual and moral values such as loving your neighbour, treating others as you want to be treated, not killing and not stealing. - - We also need to support and strengthen the family, Sayson said, using the suspects in the armed robberies as examples. "They come from very difficult family upbringings where there's broken families. "This is not to say that broken families create criminals, that's not true. But by strengthening the family unit, which is the core support group of an individual, we can prevent a lot of issues that lead to criminal activities." - - Drug, alcohol and chemical addictions must be addressed. In the Murdoch robbery and many others, the culprits' actions "were fuelled by their need to get their next fix," Sayson said. What's needed is education, prevention and enforcement "at the very top levels," he said. - - Meaningful punishment must follow crime. "The criminal justice system is struggling with its limited resources to do its best job, and we need to continue improving it to ensure that there is swift and certain punishment for offences." - - Another catalyst for crime is poverty, Sayson said. "We as a community need to address the issue of poverty. When people are without food, without health, without education, without shelter, they are more vulnerable to criminal activities. "It does not mean that if you're wealthy you will not commit crime, or if you're poor you will commit crime. But poverty is a significant contributing factor, and something that we as a community must address if we are to see a serious dent in the criminal activities that happen around us." As part of their sentencing, Thiessen and Kiloh both wrote letters to the court that Sayson said illustrate his points. Thiessen, who had been attending Bible studies while awaiting trial, told the court, "I really had no values to guide my choices before. The (Bible study) discussions have awakened an interest in acquiring a set of values that would give my life direction and meaning." Kiloh, in his letter, told the court: "I grew up in a troubled home with a father who was a very violent alcoholic. After my parents separated, my sister and I went to live with my mother, who could not handle the stress of supporting two children, and after a short time, abandoned us with a baby sitter, not to be heard again until I was 16 years old. "When she left, the burden of raising us fell upon my father who I believe resented having to take the responsibility for us." DON'T THINK ABOUT IT Kiloh also admitted: "I have been severely messed up with some very hard core drugs, and that has made me do some pretty awful things." Larry Campbell's nightmares about the ski store robbery are long gone. "I don't think about it," he said. "I was in two shootouts. I don't think about them either." (In one of the shooting incidents during Campbell's police career, the gunman shot and killed himself; in the other, the culprit was shot by another RCMP officer as he ran out of a bank. The man lived but was paralysed.) But Campbell admits the memory of the ski-shop robbery can still upset him. He declined to be photographed in the store. He hasn't been inside since that day in 1997. Even when he has business in the area, "I don't go near it," he said. "I tend to drive by and park past it." His advice to civilians who may be tempted to intervene in a robbery: Don't. Campbell said he wouldn't have done anything himself if he hadn't thought the robbers had left. "I was going to get the shotgun because that then gives me control of the scene," he said. "But it was on the assumption that they weren't coming back. "I wasn't going for the shotgun to shoot somebody. And if I'd have known they were coming back, I probably would have done nothing." Campbell now faces another real-life nightmare of crime. He's mayor of Vancouver and chairman of the city's police board and has a strong personal commitment to the Four Pillars strategy of fighting drug use and associated crime in the Downtown Eastside. His political future may well be tied up with the success or failure of that strategy. The jury's still out on that one. CRIME IS DOWN, FEAR IS UP. Experts point to further crime-rate declines to come. Yet many citizens do not feel safe in their own homes. Why? In a month-long series starting today, The Vancouver Sun explores the humanity and the statistics. VANCOUVER'S CRIME RATE IS DOWN... City of Vancouver crime rate dropped 9.4% over all 2000 to 2001; violent crimes 5,997 in 2001, 7,395 in 1997 .AND SO IS BRITISH COLUMBIA'S. crime rate in 1992 = 1 crime for every 5.8 persons in 2002 = 1 crime for every 7.3 persons) MORE MONEY IS GOING INTO POLICING. $211 spent by City of Vancouver per resident in 2001, $198 in 1998 Canada: up 10 per cent to $1.1 billion in 5 years to 2000-01 YET MORE OF US WORRY ABOUT OVER-ALL SAFETY. Personal security 'perception index' for 2001 shows West Coast residents suddenly become the most pessimistic group of six west-to-east regions. (Variance from index baseline of 100) SYNOPSIS: A CYCLE OF CRIME A group of criminals, several of them heroin addicts, illustrate the cycle of crime by going on a robbery rampage, holding up stores and banks all over British Columbia, grabbing $5 million in loot, taking shots at a bystander, victimizing B.C.'s chief coroner and Vancouver's future mayor, and ultimately getting caught and being sent to jail. ABOVE AVERAGE BUT NOT WORST Violent crime incidents per 100,000 of population British Columbia: Approx 1250 Third-highest in nation Canada: Approx 1000 Saskatchewan: Approx 1700 Highest - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens