Wrong Side of the Law (5 page)

There was still lamplight in the main cabin window. Carroll crept aft and peered inside. The seven crewmen were all dozing in their bunks. Carroll sat by the window and watched them. The one thing he couldn’t afford to do now was fall asleep himself.

At about midnight, Captain Cormier came out on deck. He asked Carroll if he’d seen any sign of the
Acadia
. Carroll said he’d just seen her lights flickering in the distance. Cormier looked across the dark, heaving sea and saw nothing. A light wind had come up and he decided to take advantage of it. Convinced now that Carroll had been bluffing, Cormier shouted orders in French to his men. Jolted awake, the men leaped out of their bunks.

“What’s the idea?” Carroll demanded.

Cormier said they were weighing anchor and going back to Saint Pierre. That’s when Carroll drew his revolvers and aimed them at Cormier. “Get back in your cabin, or I’ll shoot,” he ordered.

Taken by surprise, Cormier hesitated. Then, looking down the muzzles of two pistols, he realized Carroll meant business. He withdrew to his cabin and closed the door.

Carroll turned to the crewmen at the door of the main cabin. None of them spoke English, but they understood Carroll’s meaning when he used his guns to wave them back inside and into their bunks. Spotting a rifle hanging on the cabin wall, Carroll took it. The gun was fully loaded with six cartridges. If one of the sailors had thought to grab it earlier, Carroll’s adventure aboard the
Four Sisters
might have ended in an unsolved mystery of the sea.

Carroll tied the captain’s and the crew’s cabin doors shut with cords. He also shoved a piece of deck machinery against the main cabin door. Then, with the rifle cradled in his arms, Carroll paced the deck, fighting off sleep and waiting for dawn. He still didn’t know how he was going the get the
Four Sisters
to a port where Cormier and his crew of smugglers could be taken into custody.

At sunrise, Carroll saw a small boat approaching from Grosse-Îsle. He shouted and waved his arms to get attention. The boatman was a lobsterman heading out to retrieve his traps. Carroll gave him five dollars to go back and send a telegram. The message was for Mr. Joncas, the customs collector at House Harbour Island. It said, “Aboard seized schooner Four Sisters bay Grosse-Îsle.”

About noon the lobsterman returned with Joncas’s response. He was on his way and he wanted Carroll to hold the
Four Sisters
. The lobsterman also brought the hungry detective some sandwiches and a bottle of milk, courtesy of his friend O’Brien.

Later that afternoon Joncas arrived with seven men, much to Carroll’s relief. He undid the cords securing the captain’s door, and Joncas went in to talk to Cormier. The captain must have been furious when he finally knew for certain that the
Acadia
wasn’t in the vicinity at all. The
Four Sisters
’ crew were kept locked in their cabin. The sailors who’d accompanied Joncas got the schooner underway. Since one windlass brake was missing, they had to use a crowbar as a substitute.

The
Four Sisters
arrived at House Harbour at eight o’clock the next morning. Carroll helped Joncas’s men unload the contraband liquor and carry it into the Customs House. Records showed a previous smuggling charge against Cormier and the
Four Sisters
. That time, Cormier had gotten off with a fine. Now he’d used up his last chance. His schooner was officially confiscated by the Canadian government. She’d be sold at auction the following spring. Captain Cormier and his men were fined for smuggling. No doubt they cursed the name of Detective Carroll all the way back to Saint Pierre.

The seizure of the
Four Sisters
meant a handsome reward for Carroll, not to mention a boost to his prestige as a private detective. But he hadn’t forgotten the case that had taken him to the Magdalens in the first place. Carroll went back to Grand Entry to resume his investigation concerning the missing boots.

Carroll had sensed something dishonest about Mr. Fly, so he went to the office of the Portland Packing Company to talk to him. He was told that the manager was away. Using his authority as a police constable, Carroll demanded to look at Fly’s account books. The ledger showed that Fly had sold forty-eight more pairs of fishermen’s boots than he had ordered from Richards & Company.

When Fly returned, Carroll confronted him with the evidence. Fly admitted to stealing the boots. To avoid prosecution, he gave Carroll the money the owners of the
St. Olaf
had lost, to be passed on to them. He also paid Carroll’s expenses.

Of course, the age-old game of cat-and-mouse that smugglers played with the law continued along Canada’s east coast. The lure of a cash payoff was too great for many fishermen and other sailors to resist. Five years after his single-handed capture of the
Four Sisters
, Carroll was involved in the seizure of another liquor smuggler right in Pictou harbour; the schooner
Union
, commanded by Captain Lawrence Lavache of Cape Breton. However, it was the story of the night he stood alone on the deck of a smuggling ship in the Magdalen Islands that helped make Peachie Carroll a Nova Scotia legend.

The Newton Gang:

Texas Bandits in Canada

W
illis
Newton stood on a corner in downtown Toronto one July morning in 1923, and could hardly believe what he saw. Five pairs of men were coming down the sidewalk from a building at the corner of Yonge and Wellington Streets, each pair carrying a large leather bag. The bags appeared to be heavy. Behind each pair walked a guard with a holstered pistol. As Willis watched, the little groups split up, heading off down different streets. Willis followed one of them because he had a strong hunch those bags contained money. Sure enough, the men went into a bank.

It seemed almost unbelievable to Willis that bags fat with money were conveyed through city streets by men on foot, protected only by guards armed with weapons he considered mere pop-guns. In the United States, money shipments went by armoured car. Willis’s bewilderment gave way to the excitement of a man who has just struck gold. Willis Newton was the leader of one of the most prolific bandit gangs in American history. He had just lost a lot of money in oil speculation in the United States, and had gone to Toronto to scout possibilities for recouping his finances the way he knew best — robbery!

Over the next few mornings, Willis followed the men with the bags, studying their daily routine. He learned that in addition to Canada’s official currency, Canadian financial institutions like the Bank of Commerce, the Bank of Nova Scotia, and the Standard Bank each issued their own paper money. The banks all honoured one another’s bills when customers brought them in. Every morning at nine o’clock, the banks in Toronto’s downtown core sent messengers with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to the clearing house at the corner of Yonge and Wellington for sorting. Less than an hour later, the messengers carried bags full of bills back to the banks to which they belonged. Some of the banks had started using cars to transport the money, but others still employed foot messengers. Sometimes one man carried a bag, but if it was especially heavy, two men would carry it between them. Willis thought it was the silliest system he had ever seen. But it looked like a bank robber’s dream come true. Willis sent for his brothers: Joe, Wylie (Doc), and Jess.

Born to a large, hard-working, but dirt-poor Texas family, the Newton boys had known tough times all their lives. The family roamed around south Texas earning a meagre living picking cotton and other crops. Sometimes they had a shack for a home; other times they lived in a covered wagon. James, the boys’ father, taught them to hunt rabbits and deer to put meat on the table. Once a year their mother, Janetta, bought material from which she made their clothes by hand. Education was a luxury the Newtons couldn’t afford. Willis didn’t see the inside of a school until he was twelve. He learned to read and write, but within a year he stopped going to school because he was embarrassed by his ragged pants. Joe and Doc didn’t have much more schooling than Willis, and Jess was illiterate.

Janetta told the boys stories about Frank and Jesse James and the Dalton gang. To the young Newtons, these legendary outlaws were Robin Hood–like folk heroes. In the summer of 1902, the notorious desperado Harry Tracy broke out of the Oregon State Penitentiary and became the object of a highly publicized manhunt. Thirteen-year-old Willis followed the unfolding drama day-by-day, thrilled by newspaper accounts of the outlaw’s defiance and narrow escapes. Then, after being on the run for almost two months, Tracy was wounded in a gunfight and cornered. To avoid capture, he committed suicide. Willis Newton wept at the news.

In spite of their fascination with Wild West outlaws, the Newton brothers weren’t troublemakers growing up. Then in 1909, eighteen-year-old Doc stole a bale of cotton worth about fifty dollars. When the local sheriff couldn’t find Doc, he decided that Willis, age twenty, was an accomplice and arrested him instead. A “tough on crime” judge felt it was in the best interests of society to make an example of Willis and sentenced him to two years’ hard labour in the Texas State Penitentiary. Soon after, Doc was arrested for pilfering stamps from a post office. Again, the punishment was excessive for a minor offence. Sentenced to two years, Doc joined Willis in prison.

The Texas State Penitentiary was a brutal place where prisoners were starved and beaten. Medical facilities were non-existent. Willis and Doc didn’t want to end up like the many inmates who were buried in the prison’s large cemetery, so they escaped. They were recaptured, and had time added to their sentences. In four years of incarceration, the young men mixed with criminals of every sort. If they weren’t hard cases when they entered the prison, they were by the time they got out. Moreover, once they’d been released they found it difficult to get honest employment because they were “jailbirds.”

Bitter over spending four brutal years in prison for a petty theft he hadn’t committed, Willis was determined to get even. He and a partner robbed a train and got away with $4,700. Now Willis Newton really was an outlaw like Jesse James and Harry Tracy. Doc also walked out of prison and into a life of crime.

Over the next few years, both brothers were sent to jail several times and then escaped. Willis once obtained a pardon by means of a series of forged letters. They also found that some sheriffs and judges could be bribed. Willis usually operated as a burglar, stealing clothing from stores at night and then selling it at bargain prices to people who asked no questions. In 1916 he joined a gang for a bank robbery in Oklahoma and made his getaway on horseback. He then joined a gang of bank burglars and learned the art of blowing safes and vaults open with nitroglycerine.

While Willis and Doc were running afoul of the law, Joe and Jess were earning honest livings as cowboys and bronc busters. It was gruelling work that didn’t pay much. In 1920, Willis convinced them to join him in forming an outlaw gang. He’d been unimpressed with most of the criminals he’d worked with, considering them reckless and stupid. He thought his brothers would be more reliable and trustworthy. That year Doc broke out of prison where he was doing time on a robbery conviction and joined the gang. From time to time Willis would bring one of his ne’er-do-well cronies in on a job if he thought the boys could use an extra hand.

The Newton Gang plundered banks in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. They also stole company payrolls and robbed trains. In later years, Willis and Doc would boast that the Newton Gang robbed six trains and at least eighty banks. They stole more money than the James-Younger Gang, the Dalton Gang, and Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch combined. In their heyday, the Newton boys lived in a manner their parents had never dreamed of. They wore expensive suits and diamond tie pins. They bought new cars every year. They stayed in the best hotels. As Willis put it, “We wasn’t thugs. All we wanted was the money. Just like doctors and lawyers and other businessmen. Robbing banks and trains was our way of getting it. That was our business.”

The Newton Gang usually preyed on small-town banks. In the dead of night they would cut the telephone and telegraph wires, shutting off outside communication. Night guards and interfering sheriffs or deputies were waylaid and then tied up. Breaking into the banks was easy. Then, while the robbers on the inside worked on the safe, the others waited outside in case the noise of the exploding nitro attracted attention. If it did, the men standing guard warned the people to keep away. A shotgun blast fired into the air was usually enough to send them scurrying back indoors. Then the gang made its getaway in a fast car. However, on one occasion, some of the townsmen grabbed guns and began shooting. The four brothers escaped without a scratch, but a man who was with them was killed. Because they preferred to avoid shootouts, the Newton Gang only occasionally pulled daytime stick-ups. Looting a bank at night was less troublesome and there was less chance of being identified.

For a long time police didn’t know who was behind the rash of bank burglaries. After all, the Newtons weren’t the only bandits who were blowing safes at night. The Texas Bankers Association, enraged at the frequency of the robberies and frustrated with the failure of the law to apprehend the culprits, eventually had a notice posted in every bank in the state:

REWARD

FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR DEAD BANK ROBBERS

NOT ONE CENT FOR LIVE ONES

The trip Willis Newton took to Toronto in the summer of 1923 wasn’t his first visit to Canada, nor even to Toronto. The previous September, the Newton boys, posing as tourists on a fishing vacation, had rented a cabin at Pelican Lake, Manitoba. It was their base while they raided banks in local communities. A colleague had told Willis that Canadian banks used old-fashioned safes that were easier to blow than the tough new models that American banks had started to install.

“We never worried about the Mounties,” Willis said years later. “Canadian Mounties don’t amount to a hill of beans … Mounties can do no more than anybody else, and anyway, they couldn’t put guards on the banks because they didn’t know what bank was going to be robbed.” It’s worth noting that Willis was just as contemptuous of the Texas Rangers.

From their lair at Pelican Lake, the Newton boys pillaged the banks in Melita, Manitoba, and Moosomin, Saskatchewan. They might also have been responsible for the robbery of the Bank of Montreal in Ceylon, Saskatchewan, on September 27. The
modus operandi
would have been familiar to American police: communication wires cut, safe blown with nitro, quick getaway by automobile. In the Melita job, the brothers learned of the Canadian bankers’ practice of having someone sleep in an upstairs room. This was supposed to discourage robbers. When the nitro blast brought cries of alarm from upstairs, Willis shouted, “You go back to bed and stay put, and you ain’t going to get hurt.”

According to Willis, because of the robberies he and his brothers pulled, “They quit having people sleep up over them places. They took everybody out. At least in that country they did.”

The few people who had encountered the bandits reported that they had American accents. Police picked up several suspects and then let them go. After three weeks at Pelican Lake, the Newton boys drove to Winnipeg. They had their automobile loaded into a boxcar and then travelled separately by train to Toronto.

To avoid drawing attention, the Newtons got rooms in different Toronto hotels. That would also make it more difficult for police to trace them later. Then they scouted the small towns near the city, looking for a promising target. Willis later recalled, “First day we was out, we found a good one. Good location and everything, wasn’t but
twenty-five miles outside of Toronto there. We drove the getaway, working out a route so that we wouldn’t run into nobody and could stay off the main roads.”

On the night of October 24, the Newton Gang hit the Standard Bank in Stouffville. They cleaned out the safe and then drove back to Toronto. The robbers were dropped off at different locations to take streetcars to their respective hotels, with the exception of the driver, who left that very night for Detroit. Over the next couple of days, the bandits boarded trains for different American destinations. The brothers soon got together in Chicago to divide the loot.

The Stouffville bank robbery was a big news story in Toronto. More than $100,000 had been taken. However, $90,000 of it was in registered Dominion of Canada bonds, which were utterly valueless to the bandits. They had no way of fencing them the way they did stolen, unregistered American bonds. Nonetheless, the boys were pleased with the cash they’d taken; between ten and thirteen thousand dollars. Willis’s fond memory of Stouffville was, “It was a pretty good little town.”

Ontario Provincial Police investigated the crime, assisted by the Toronto Police. They had no idea who had pulled the robbery. They believed it was the work of American professionals who had learned about Canadian banks through bootlegging connections. The police were certain, however, that there was no connection between the Stouffville robbery and the bank robberies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Those western robberies, the police said, had probably been committed by American border bandits who had also robbed a bank in Alberta before running back to the United States.

Willis had no worries about returning to Toronto less than a year later. He went there with the intention of scouting another small-town bank that he and his brothers could knock over without any trouble. Instead, he saw the golden opportunity of bags of money in the bank messengers’ hands, ripe for the taking.

Joe, Doc, and Jess answered Willis’s call and put up in Toronto hotels. They watched the bank messengers and agreed that the pickings should be easy. But they didn’t want to rush things. The brothers took a side trip to Montreal just because they’d never been there before. While he was there, Willis bought a Browning automatic twelve-gauge shotgun. Back in Toronto, Willis sawed “six or eight inches off of it so it would be short and I could handle it easy.”

Besides firepower, the gang also needed a getaway car. They had always favoured the Studebaker, with its big six-cylinder engine. By sheer luck, Willis happened to be on the street when he saw a man park a maroon Studebaker Big Six at the curb and dash into a store. Willis looked inside and saw the key in the ignition. He hopped in and drove the car to a garage the gang had already rented. There he removed the licence plates and put on a stolen set.

On the morning of July 24, the Newtons were ready to strike. For their ambush they had chosen the intersection of Jordan and Melinda Streets, a block east of Yonge Street and a block south of King. The brothers were all armed with pistols and two of them had shotguns. Willis had planned for them to grab five big money bags.

The foot messengers left the clearing house and headed north on Yonge Street, soon to be followed by two cars carrying money for the Molson’s Bank and the Standard Bank. They turned left on Melinda and proceeded toward Jordan Street. At 9:45, the usually staid Toronto streets suddenly resembled the OK Corral. The account given by Joe and Willis years later differed in some details from those that appeared in Toronto newspapers within hours of the holdup. The one point they had in common was that the robbery wasn’t the easy job the gang thought it would be.