Pubdate: Wed, 1 December, 1999 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Page: A3 Copyright: 1999, The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Author: Bill Schiller, Toronto Star Feature Writer REID GAVE UP `FAIRY TALE' FOR HEROIN Bank Robber Turned Author Pleads Guilty To Attempted Robbery And Kidnapping VICTORIA - His voice is reedy, and comes down the telephone line like long whiffs of smoke. He's hesitant and struggling. Stephen Reid, the 49-year-old writer and bank robber speaking from prison, says he doesn't have easy explanations as to why one day last June he gave away his ``fairy-tale'' life in pursuit of heroin. But he robbed a bank. He exchanged gunfire. He got arrested. ``I had glimpses of grace,'' Reid says on the phone. ``I have two wonderful children. I'm married to one of the most interesting people in the world. I lived in a vine-covered cottage by the sea . . . I'm not a stupid person. How could I end up in this catastrophe? ``I'm as confounded as anyone.'' Yesterday in court, Reid admitted he attempted to rob a Victoria bank in June. But he pleaded not guilty to four counts of attempted murder in a wild car chase and a standoff with police But police and a witness saw it differently. Constable Bill Trudeau described how Reid ``ambushed'' him during the pursuit and Trudeau crashed his motorcycle trying to get out of the way. Another officer, Eric Ooms, exchanged gunfire with Reid. He said Reid pointed his gun ``directly at my head. He pulled the trigger and I saw smoke from the barrel.'' House painter Sherri Smith recalled how Reid nearly killed her. ``I was holding my paint tray and I jumped out of the way and rolled to the ground. I felt a breeze like something went by me real fast.'' Her van was shot up and her paint tray had a hole from from a shotgun blast. It was submitted as evidence. Reid was on a heroin and cocaine binge. He'll testify today. But in a telephone interview, Reid says that in the six months leading up to this summer's failed bank robbery, he ploughed through $60,000 in savings. He spent all of it on cocaine and heroin, ``just getting loose. I spent all the savings. I cashed in bonds. And I sold everything I had in a little stock portfolio.'' He'd worked hard for that money. Emerging from prison in 1986, a redeemed Reid cashed in on the bizarre life he thought he had left behind as a famous and successful bank robber. He wrote a best-selling book, sold it and his life rights to a film company, did the screenplay and managed his money responsibly. And all of that now is long gone. ``I'm at the bottom,'' he says down the line. ``I'm as low as I can go right now, in how I feel about myself.'' There was a time in the summer of 1998, when Reid was convinced he had it beaten for good. He was meeting prisoners inside the very prison he sits in now, counselling them and watching them try to struggle to explain ``the madness and the cause'' of their addiction. ``I said, `Never again will I get addicted and allow my life to swirl down the drain . . .' '' But now here he is: busted, broken, trying to re-assemble the pieces, straining to explain. There was pressure, he says. In the past dozen years as a free man he had become ``a poster for people'' yearning to believe in redemption. But within that poster world, there was discomfort, maybe even a feeling of phoniness. ``Sometimes I played into that - and felt the equivalent of an Uncle Tom. I'd go to cocktail parties and act the role and be a bit of a clown.'' His success brought him into contact with some of the nation's leading lights, including Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson and her husband John Raulston Saul who visited him before she took up her posting. On his 1986 release, Reid had to struggle, he says, to get a handle on what he calls, ``the toxicity of being known publicly.'' But he did so successfully and learned to live with it. What he wasn't successful with, was his addiction. In 12 years of living outside, he managed only about 2 1/2 years totally clean: no drink, no pills, no joints, nothing. And those years were blissful, he confides. Earlier this year he started to doing what he calls, ``ever prodigious amounts of heroin and cocaine. Speedballs.'' In the six months prior to his arrest, Reid says he overdosed six times. And in the week before the failed robbery, he overdosed another four. Those who saw him in his first court appearance following his arrest, said he looked liked the walking dead. He insists he can foresee a life finally free of heroin. A key motivation, he says, is the love and support he has been shown to him by his wife, the poet-novelist Susan Musgrave and daughters Charlotte, 17 and Sophie, 10. ``Sophie is a piece of magic.'' As for his bankrobbing days, they're truly over, he says. - --- MAP posted-by: allan wilkinson