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.