TRACKING VANCOUVER’S 1960S DRUG CRIMINALS

One of the things that Ken McIntosh and I have been trying to do in our investigation of the MacLauchlan Murders is to establish a factual link between Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan and the 1960s West Coast drug trafficking organization that supplied him. According to deceased print and television journalist Dennis Bell, off-the- record police sources had told him (Bell) that MacLauchlan had been the Number 2 man in the West Coast drug trade. When he was arrested in late December 1965, MacLauchlan had been in possession of about $200,000 worth of heroin. Two of MacLauchlan’s underlings/accomplices (and we believe there were probably more) were Joseph Sperling and Burnaby waitress Thelma Mosier. Unlike Sperling who had a previous criminal record for drug-related offences, Mrs. Mosier’s arrest was the first time she had been in trouble with the law.
In a news report concerning her sentencing to seven years on March 3, 1966, it was reported in the Burnaby Courier that one of the people that Mosier had been selling to was a well-known trafficker and drug addict, who in the several weeks previous had been sentenced to a lengthy term in prison. Thus far, Ken and I have searched in vain for a newspaper report giving the name of this “well-known” (at the time) felon.

Our readers might be interested to know that, in our search for this possible link between MacLauchlan and Vancouver’s criminal underworld of the 1960s, we tracked the crimes and misdemeanours of approximately 250 criminals who had been active at various levels of the drug trade. By carefully reading old newspapers – and with the aid of one of our faithful blog readers – we have managed to establish that more than 100 of these men (plus a few women) had connections through other criminals that led upward to a certain gentleman who, in Vancouver during the 1960s, was reputed to be a major and influential figure in various criminal activities in the Metropolitan area. This man began his criminal career in the very early 1950s, pursued it right up to the 1980s and served time in prison several times. Given that this man (now quite elderly) has served his time, Ken and I feel that he might be a very good “off the record” source of information on the background to the MacLauchlan Murders.