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.

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*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