Wrong Side of the Law (16 page)

Forensic evidence revealed that Hiscox had deliberately detonated a bottle of nitroglycerine. The Polka Dot Gang “machine gunner,” who had beaten the rap while his companions went to prison, had committed suicide. Police detectives who kept an ear to Toronto’s underworld grapevine learned that Hiscox had often told his friends that if he ever found himself cornered by the police, he would kill himself rather than go back to the Kingston Pen.

A month and a half after Hiscox’s dramatic demise, Green and Constantine were involved in yet another plot to break out of prison. The Toronto
Star
reported on May 19, 1948, that the attempt was made “within the past few days.” Other inmates who were in on the scheme were Allan Baldwin, serving thirty-four years for bank robbery and manslaughter; and Lawrence Burns and Albert Stoutley, sentenced to fifteen and twelve years respectively for armed robbery. Stoutley had been part of the failed human pyramid escape attempt at the Don Jail.

The atmosphere in the Kingston Penitentiary had been volatile due to a crackdown following the escape of three inmates in August of 1947. Long-term prisoners had allegedly been stirring up trouble among the other inmates. Increased security in the form of additional guards and stricter enforcement of regulations only stoked unrest and resentment.

Constantine, Baldwin, Burns, and Stoutley had somehow procured tools that they used to cut through the bars of a door and get into a corridor that would lead them to freedom. Three of them hid in a recess and then jumped a passing guard and tied him up. They were on their way out of the cell block when another guard confronted them with his revolver. He held them at gunpoint until help arrived. The four men were all tossed into the “hole,” the Kingston Pen’s dreaded solitary confinement dungeon. Green followed them when prison authorities learned that he had helped plan the escape.

That was the last attempt by any of the Polka Dot Gang to escape custody. Kenneth Green was not fated to leave prison alive. Late in June 1954, he fell ill with viral meningitis. He was taken to the penitentiary hospital while a section of the prison was placed under quarantine. Green died on July 4 with his father and two brothers at his bedside. He was twenty-nine years old.

By the time of Green’s death, Bruce Kay had been released and his whereabouts were unknown. American authorities had deported George Dobbie, not to Canada, but to his native Scotland. Only George Constantine remained behind bars.

Constantine served out his sentence and was released, but it wasn’t long before he was once again treading on the wrong side of the law. In July 1958, he was arrested in Minden, Ontario, for passing counterfeit U.S. twenty-dollar bills. That landed him right back in the Pen. Constantine had been out on probation less than a year when in March 1969 he was arrested for breaking into a Toronto department store. Doing what a judge called “the thing he knows best” earned Constantine yet another prison term, this time for three and a half years.

Throughout the 1950s, armed robbers — most of them small-time hoodlums — carried on in the dubious tradition of the Polka Dot Gang by disguising themselves with polka-dot bandanas. Some even copied the original gang’s practice of senselessly beating up night watchmen. In the autumn of 1960, the urban legend of Polka Dot Gang loot buried in the ground near the site of their old hideout in Richmond Hill arose again. As often happens with tales of outlaw booty, the amount of the swag had grown from $25,000 to $250,000! Treasure hunters equipped with a metal detector went over property that development had radically altered since 1945. They dug one shallow hole, found nothing, and gave up the search. In time the legend was forgotten. The gang that had been the terror of southern Ontario slipped into obscurity.

Stanley Buckowski:

The Long Road to the Gas Chamber

J
uly
30, 1949 would go down in the annals of the Toronto Police Department as the beginning of one of the most horrific chapters in the city’s history. The story opened with an armed robbery, and ended in an American gas chamber. In between lay a series of murders. Three of the victims were Canadians, as was the killer.

On that Saturday afternoon, a man walked into the Loblaw Groceteria on Parliament Street in Toronto. Dozens of shoppers were in the store and no one paid him any attention. When he passed by employees Agnes Tustin and Lucy Clark, he smiled graciously and said hello as he headed for the stairs leading to the office of the store’s manager, Adam Stoddart. The two women thought he was making a business call and didn’t even catch the scent of the belt of whiskey the man had downed just minutes earlier.

When the visitor entered the office he pulled a revolver and ordered Stoddart to open the safe and then lie down on the floor. Stoddart had no choice but to obey. The robber stuffed his pockets with money, warning the manager to be still, or “You’ll get it.”

While the gunman was robbing the grocery store, not far away on Gifford Street, twenty-four-year-old Alfred Layng had just finished repairing some screens for his house. A Second World War vet who had served in the RCAF, Layng was married to his boyhood sweetheart, Shirley. They had a daughter named Patricia, age four. With the screen repair done, Alfred and Shirley took Patricia for a walk down Parliament Street to treat her to a soda. They stopped at a shop where Shirley bought a piece of cloth and then continued on their way.

In the grocery store, the bandit fled from the manager’s office with about a thousand dollars in a money pouch. Stoddart shouted for help. A clerk named Ron Barrett dove for the thief’s ankles, but wasn’t able to hold him. However, another clerk, nineteen-year-old Leonard Leftly, tackled him around the waist as he reached the front door. The man dragged Leftly out to the sidewalk and then shot him in the leg. Leftly fell to the ground, but the robber dropped the money pouch. The Layngs were just then approaching the corner of Parliament and Carlton Streets. “That’s when it all happened,” Shirley said later.

They could see a commotion in front of the grocery store and a man running toward them. Somebody shouted, “Stop that man!”

Alfred pushed little Patricia into a doorway and then stood in the man’s path with his arms opened wide. The thief ran right into them. The two men grappled and fell to the pavement. “I stood there terrified, watching the struggle,” said Shirley afterward. “Other people stood around with their mouths open, just gaping. I shouted for help, but there wasn’t any help from any of the spectators at all. They just stood there.”

Suddenly two shots rang out. The thief scrambled to his feet and ran down Carlton Street. No one else tried to stop him.

Shirley saw Alfred slowly get to his feet while Patricia cried, “Daddy! Daddy!” He reached toward his wife, took a couple of steps, and said, “Don’t worry, I’m all right, hon.” Then he fell dead at Shirley’s feet. Alfred had been shot in the stomach and the heart.

“No person came forward to help me even then,” Shirley told a Toronto
Star
reporter. “I had to leave him there and run into a store to phone for help. When I came out of the store, people were just standing around repeating the words, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead.’”

Toronto Chief of Police John Chisholm quickly dispatched every available constable to the vicinity of Parliament and Carlton. Off-duty officers were called in to help search the neighbourhoods. But the robber-turned-killer was moving faster than word of mouth could spread news of the crime through the streets.

At first he tried to lose himself in the crowds on Carlton Street. But when he drew attention, he took to alleyways and backyards, leaping over fences and desperately looking for places to hide. A woman went into her garage, opened her car door, and was startled to see a man crouching on the floor. Threatening her with a gun, he got out, shoved her against the wall, and fled.

John Vancott of Seaton Street hurried into his kitchen when he heard his six-year-old daughter call out that a man was in the house. Vancott, who didn’t know about the robbery and shooting, confronted a stranger who was sweating and breathing hard. He took the man for a lost drunk.

“I asked him what he was doing in my house and he replied he was just trying to get through to the street. I told him to get out.… Just as he disappeared from my sight, a police cruiser rounded Carlton and Seaton and came up to me. They raced back to find this chap, but he had gone from sight.”

The police did find a bullet the fugitive had dropped in Vancott’s house, but there were no fingerprints on it.

Albert Hailes of Ontario Street was washing his car when a stranger suddenly stuck a gun in his face and demanded the keys. Hailes handed them over, but when the man tried to start the engine, it wouldn’t turn over. The gunman told Hailes to get behind the wheel and drive. Hailes refused, and the man dashed away on foot.

Somehow the fugitive managed to evade the police patrols and escape. Chief Chisholm called in every off-duty detective and put them to work chasing down leads. They questioned suspects from as far away as Niagara Falls. Chisholm replaced the detectives’ .38 service revolvers with more powerful .45s. Police posted a reward of $2,000 for information leading to the killer’s arrest. The Loblaw Company offered an additional $1,000. Telephone tips were coming into police headquarters at the rate of twenty-five an hour.

In the neighbourhoods through which the suspect had fled, Detective Sergeant Adolphus Payne literally crawled on his hands and knees in search of clues. He looked under porches and back steps, and at a house on Sherbourne Street his perseverance paid off. In a hasty attempt to change his appearance, the fugitive had taken off his suit jacket, fedora, and tie, and stuffed them under a rear stoop. The jacket’s label had been removed, but in the pocket Payne found a pair of white gloves and two .38 cartridges. Under the back step of a neighbouring yard the detective found a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses.

Initially, these items gave no clue as to the fugitive’s identity. But Payne believed they could be crucial in leading police to the man. He had the hat, coat, and tie put on a mannequin and placed in the window of a store near the murder scene in hope that someone might recognize them. A police detective was on hand to take down any information anyone might have. Meanwhile, Payne went to work tracking down the makers of the jacket and the glasses.

Dozens of witnesses had seen the suspect’s face. They went through stacks of mug shots, but to no avail. However, the descriptions they provided enabled a police artist, Detective Maurice Inglis, to draw a likeness that was sent to the newspapers for publication. The uncanny accuracy of the pencil sketch was to have dramatic results. But more than two years would pass before the Toronto police would finally locate Alfred Layng’s killer. By that time, he had added to his score in homicide.

The man the police were looking for was Stanley Buckowski, age twenty-three. He was born in a remote part of Saskatchewan to Polish-Canadian parents. While still a boy, he moved to Toronto where he attended Essex Street Public School. Young Stanley fell in with bad company and started hanging out on street corners, particularly at the intersection of Bloor and Bathurst Streets, which at that time was a tough part of town. His first crimes were break-ins. He had an interest in chemistry and stole electrical devices.

At the age of fifteen, Buckowski pulled his first “armed” robbery. Using a cap gun, he stole a car from a motorist in High Park. He was caught and sent to juvenile court. Instead of handing Buckowski a stint in reform school, the judge released him to the custody of his father, with instructions that the elder Buckowski give the boy a sound thrashing. Stanley got that thrashing, but it didn’t do any good.

Newspaper artist’s sketch of the suspect in the Alfred Layng murder. The accuracy of the likeness caused Buckowski to panic.
The
Globe & Mail
.

Buckowski continued to mix with bad characters. He had developed the attitude that working for a living was for suckers. He and a partner held up a gas station. This time Buckowski had a real gun, but no bullets. They got away with it, so Buckowski decided to hold up a clothing store on Bloor St. The proprietor resisted and Buckowski struck him on the head with his empty gun. The man still put up a fight and the struggle took them right out the front door to the sidewalk. Buckowski was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He was still only fifteen years old.

By the time Buckowski was released, he was a hardened criminal and considered himself a big shot. He went back to the gangs that hung out at Bloor and Bathurst. Burglary was his main source of income. Buckowski did, however, make one attempt to turn his life around.

When Canada declared war on Germany, thousands of young Canadian men enlisted to fight Hitler’s Nazis. Buckowski joined the RCAF and was posted to a base in Saskatchewan. Instead of redeeming himself, though, he took a personal turn for the worse when he discovered narcotics and became addicted. He convinced a nurse to supply him with drugs and took advantage of his relationship with her to steal from the dispensary. He had learned that he could make easy money selling drugs.

Buckowski was transferred back to Toronto. He was still in the Air Force when he got married. After he left the RCAF, Buckowski and his wife Jean settled into an apartment in Toronto. Jean worked as a waitress and Stanley burglarized homes. He still didn’t like the idea of getting a job himself, and he had an expensive drug habit.

The police were soon on to Buckowski. One night in April 1945, they picked him up while he was walking along Yonge Street. They searched his home and found a stash of jewellery, cameras, and seven bottles of whiskey that had been stolen from a house on Castle Frank Drive. Buckowski was convicted on two charges of burglary and sentenced to eighteen months at the Burwash Industrial Farm, a provincial correctional institution near Sudbury.

“I didn’t get along very well there,” Buckowski recalled later. “Out in the woods you had cold dinners in twenty degrees below zero. The warden was a tough guy. All he knew was the strap.” According to Buckowski, Burwash made him “paranoiac.”

Buckowski had trouble with a hip injury he’d received as a boy and Burwash didn’t have the medical facilities to treat it. Jean made frequent trips to the parole board on his behalf. He was finally released on the condition that he check into Toronto’s Christie Street Veterans’ Hospital.

Buckowski’s stay at Burwash had cured him of his drug dependency, but the series of operations he underwent on his hip increased his emotional problems. When he got out of the hospital he resolved to stay away from his old hang-outs and “the boys.” Jean tried to make him stay home in the evenings, but she was now doing shift work as a hotel switchboard operator, and couldn’t always be there. Sitting alone, Buckowski would drink heavily. By his own admission, Buckowski “got nasty” when he was drinking, and would beat his dog.

Restlessness and booze finally got the better of him and Buckowski started hanging out with his old crowd. Soon he was robbing again. Among the plunder from his burglaries was a pair of pistols. He kept them in a locker at the College Street YMCA so Jean wouldn’t know about them and they wouldn’t be in his home if the police came snooping. Buckowski got the idea that with the guns he could make a lot of money fast, and then “retire.”

Buckowski’s first target was the Alhambra Theatre. He stuck up the manager and got away with his pockets stuffed with cash. It had been too easy! Not long after, one night while Jean was at work, Buckowski got drunk and then robbed the Downtown Theatre at gunpoint. He easily made his getaway in a cab, with more than $4,000.

Buckowski bought a new car. He had several thousand dollars in his bank account. A smart professional criminal might have lain low and enjoyed the swag. But the two successful robberies had gone to his head. Buckowski had seen how busy the Loblaw Groceteria was on a Saturday and thought a holdup would net him $4,000. On that fateful July afternoon, he picked up his guns from the YMCA locker, braced his nerves with a few shots of whiskey, and then headed for Parliament Street.

It was through sheer luck that Buckowski escaped the police after shooting Alfred Layng. When he got home that night, Jean was at work. Thoroughly shaken over what had happened, Buckowski drank until he passed out. Early the next morning he got into his new car and drove to Wasaga Beach and rented a cabin. He thought it would be a good place to hide out until things blew over.

While Buckowski was holed up in Wasaga Beach, a few miles away, Robert Smith McKay and his wife Gloria were enjoying a “working holiday.” Twenty-five-year old Robert was an RCAF veteran who had served in India during the Second World War and was now employed as a mechanic and electrician. Gloria, twenty-three, worked in a financial office on Bay Street. Because they were saving up to make a down payment on a house, the young couple didn’t go out much. However, on weekends they liked to drive up to the hamlet of Minesing, where Robert’s uncle, Nicholas Langelaan, owned a farm. Mr. Langelaan had injured his back and was in a cast, so Robert did farm work for him. To the McKays, the weekend trips to the farm were a welcome opportunity to get away from the city for a couple of days.