A MARKETING BREAKTHROUGH

Another breakthrough today in the marketing effort that Ken McIntosh and I are making in support of our recently-published book "NO DOG BARKED: Who Killed the MacLauchlans?". A professor in the Simon Fraser University Department of Criminology was very impressed by our book and our research, and told me he will be encouraging use of both by some of his students. He also bought a Library Edition copy. (Thus far we have sold about 60 copies!)

BC Book Look review -- "Crime and no punishments in New West..."

Ken McIntosh and I received a quite favorable review today in Alan Twigg's BC Book Look. In describing "NO DOG BARKED: Who Killed the MacLauchlans", the "Sky Box" come-on sentence beside the masthead was nicely catchy and a bit ironic: "Crime and no punishments in New West. After six years of research into Metro Vancouver’s drug underworld of the 1960s, the unsolved murders of an abortionist and his wife have been extensively re-examined with a non-fiction inquiry."

Ken and I like the sound of "extensively re-examined" for sure!

In the main page of the story, reviewer Beverly Cramp described our book as "(containing) characters [who] are reminiscent of a film noir thriller from 1940s Hollywood. Dr. Robert Henry MacLauchlan made a lot of money smuggling heroin and performing abortions. The good doctor ‘gone bad’ was about to be put on trial for smuggling heroin when he was murdered gangland style in New Westminster – shot in the head and the abdomen." Ms Cramp did seem to think the book was a bit long at 395 pages. 

Remember, readers, YOU can get your very own review copy of either edition by contacting rpdrown@hotmail.com

PRICES: Library Edition (495 pages) $30. Basic Edition (398 pages) $25. 

SALES BRISK!

"NO DOG BARKED: Who Killed the MacLauchlans?" the new book on the MacLauchlan Murders by Ken McIntosh and me, has been available for about two weeks now. Sales have been brisk! Between us, Ken and I have sold nearly 50 books! Once again, we thank New Westminster Public Library for buying one for their collection. We also have orders from Burnaby Public Library and interest from Vancouver Public Library.

This book comes in two versions – a Basic Edition (397 pages) and a Library Edition (495 pages). The former tells the basic story of the MacLauchlans’ demise and comes with footnotes, photographs and charts. The Library Edition has the same information as the Basic Edition but also has a 100 page “Succinct Directory to Certain Crimes, Criminals & Interested Observers with an emphasis on Vancouver & the Province of British Columbia during the decades of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s & early 1980’s.” The Basic Edition sells for $25 per copy and the Library Edition for $30.

For more information on this book (which comes in two versions) and how to get it for your own crime collection contact us via rpdrown@hotmail.com

NO DOG BARKED: Who killed the MacLauchlans? is now available for purchase!

YES, our story of a long unsolved March 1966 double murder in New Westminster, British Columbia, NO DOG BARKED: Who Killed the MacLauchlans? is now ready for sale.

To recap: this book, by Ken McIntosh and me (Rod Drown), is about the reputedly Mafia-inspired murder of thrice-married abortionist and heroin smuggler Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan and his wife, Woodlands School teacher Margaret Ann “Nan” MacLauchlan.

The former “Nan” Herring, Margaret Ann MacLauchlan was a daughter of one of New Westminster’s most prestigious pioneering families.

Graduating in 1919 as a prize winner from Montreal’s McGill Medical School was probably the best thing Robert Henry MacLauchlan ever did. The greatest tragedy he ever inflicted was when, late in the 1950’s, he seduced and misled Margaret Ann “Nan” Cunningham, a quiet and modest teacher from New Westminster’s Woodlands School for the Handicapped. She died alongside him when MacLauchlan was murdered in cold blood

Following his initial academic triumph at McGill, MacLauchlan’s life had taken a much less heroic path involving drug addiction, illegal abortions and heroin smuggling. Along the way he charmed and philandered his way through 1920’s San Francisco, 1930’s Shanghai (the "Paris of the Orient") and the exotic settlements of the French overseas community. After his first wife Montrealer Mamie Hoy died, the doctor hooked up with a prominent Calgary stage actress, Evelyn Hambly. She dumped him when he was arrested in Calgary for performing abortions in the late 1950’s.

After serving jail time in Alberta, MacLauchlan showed up in New Westminster, where Margaret Ann first passed him off as her “uncle”. Meanwhile the RCMP had had him tabbed for several years as a heroin smuggler operating between Hong Kong and Vancouver.

Thus shock rippled through placid New Westminster twice – first, when a few days before Christmas 1965, the doc tor and “Nan” were arrested for heroin smuggling and again when, on March 21, 1966 in the couple’s small 5th Street bungalow, MacLauchlan was executed Mafia style – a shot in the face just to the side of the nostril and another in the stomach. Nan, who he had recently married, met the same fate. Newspapers called it a Mafia hit, speculating the underworld had silenced him just in time for his upcoming trial, a suggestion undisputed by the police. Dead men tell no tales.

Ken and I have spent six years thoroughly probing the murders and the drug trafficking underworld of Vancouver during the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. We have tried to answer certain important questions: just how high up in the international drug trade was MacLauchlan, with his award for a “million miles of flying” from United Airlines? Was “Nan” something more than a modest schoolteacher? (After all, her former husband was rumoured to have had her tailed by a private investigator). Who were the likely suspects in their murders?

Reading this book, you will get to meet 1960’s and 70’s Vancouver underworld luminaries like Joe Gentile, Fats Robertson and the Palmer Gang. You will become somewhat familiar with local hit men like Mickey Smith and Murray Allan Boyd. You will shake your head over basic tough guy Andy Bruce.

You will become acquainted with MacLauchlan’s little crew: fallen Sechelt socialite Thelma Mosier, lifetime loser Joe Sperling and the others who existed on the fringe of the Lower Mainland Underworld. You will hear of tough 1960’s prosecutors William Heffernan and Oscar Orr. Police Officers like RCMP Drug Squad Sgt Steve Bunyk will cross your path

Our book comes in two versions – a Basic Edition and a Library Edition. The former tells the basic story of the MacLauchlans’ demise and comes with footnotes, photographs and charts. The Library Edition has the same information as the Basic Edition but also has a 100 page “Succinct Directory to Certain Crimes, Criminals & Interested Observers with an emphasis on Vancouver & the Province of British Columbia during the decades of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s & early 1980’s.” The Basic Edition sells for $25 per copy and the Library Edition for $30.

If you are interested in buying a copy of either edition, please contact the following email address rpdrown@hotmail.com for further information.

Fifty Years ago this evening, the MacLauchlans were living their last hours

Fifty years ago late this evening, Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan and his third wife Margaret Ann (the former Margaret Ann Cunningham and before that the former Margaret Ann Herring) were murdered in their modest New Westminster bungalow at 912 Fifth Street. The execution was carried out in what newspapers of the day described as an execution Mafia style – a bullet in the face for each of them, followed similarly by one in the abdomen.

The murders followed their arrest on the previous December 22^nd after investigation by a drug squad composed of members of the New Westminster, Vancouver and Royal Canadian Mounted Police forces during which heroin worth $200,000 was discovered in their possession. At the time, this was enough to buy about twenty houses in New Westminster. Their arrest was a cause celebre in New Westminster, given that previously MacLauchlan had been regarded as a harmless retired Albertan doctor and Margaret Ann as a modest, quiet and extremely capable teacher at Woodlands School for the Handicapped.

The MacLauchlans’ murder came but a few days before their trial was to start. Ken McIntosh and I have spent a few years researching these murders, for which no one was ever arrested or charged. We now have a pretty good idea who ordered the hit and have a fistful of possible suspects for the shooter. We are aiming to publish the results of our research by the end of the summer. Watch this space for further information.

Thelma Mosier: From Sechelt Society to Live-in Housekeeper for Vancouver gangland figures?

Thelma Mosier’s granddaughter Contacts Us

As Ken McIntosh and I have noted on more than one occasion, we have sometimes received unexpected information about the March 1966 MacLauchlan Murders in New Westminster, and about the victims and their associates. Such an incident happened a few weeks ago when Sheena Tucker from Newfoundland contacted us. She introduced herself as the granddaughter of Thelma Mosier, one of the four members of the MacLauchlan Gang busted for narcotics trafficking four months earlier. 

Frequent readers of this blog will remember Thelma as one of the women arrested on December 22, 1965 when Dr MacLauchlan was charged with trafficking, along with Margaret Ann Cunningham and Gerry Sperling, in the late afternoon of that day. 

Sheena Tucker is the daughter of Daniel Mosier, the son from Thelma Mosier’s marriage to Ben Profit, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot lost in a bombing mission over Europe in June 1944. She introduced herself as follows:

“My dear father Daniel [passed away] from lung and liver cancer September 22, 2004. My mother, Caroline Profit, is still living close to me here in Newfoundland. She is 73 years old.”

“My father… was Benjamin James Profit’s son with Thelma, and Brad (his brother, Richard Bradley Mosier) was Richard Mosier and Thelma's son.” 

(This latter reference to Brad Mosier, who died in May 2014 in Surrey, British Columbia, clears up a misconception of Ken’s and mine: we had assumed that Richard Mosier had been married before his liaison with Thelma and that Brad had been the son from that putative earlier marriage.)

Sheena has lived up to her promise that her mother Caroline “…would have a lot of information regarding Thelma.” One of the things that Mrs. Profit’s information has done is add nuance to our previous understanding of Thelma Mosier as having been, essentially, an innocent lured into a life of crime. Given that Caroline Profit is closer to Thelma’s age than any of our previous informants and knew her when she was married to, and then divorced from, Richard Mosier back in Sechelt, BC, it is likely her information is pretty accurate. In Sheena’s words:

“Richard Mosier- Mom only remembers him as a logger. He and Thelma were divorced before my mom met my father (i.e. previous to 1963). Thelma used to always try getting money out him for Bradley. She tried to make his life miserable.”

Leaves her husband for the owner of a shingle mill

According to Sheena and Caroline, after Thelma left Richard Mosier, she became involved with a Sechelt area guy she believed had more money than her former husband. This fellow owned a shake mill but came to a bad end – either committing suicide or getting shot (Caroline is not sure which). Thelma then moved to Burnaby to stay a short while with Frances Parnell, the second wife of Burnaby resident John Albert “Andy” Anderson, the first husband of Rachel Anderson, who had left Anderson and gone cooking in logging camps in Sechelt. It was in this BC coastal community where Rachel had met Bill Kolterman, an ambitious and hardworking logger -- and the father of Thelma.

Subsequently, Thelma, after the death of her RCAF pilot husband, met and married Richard Mosier. 

Richard and Thelma Mosier first appear together in the public record in 1953, in the federal voting list for that year, when they are living on Fell Avenue in Burnaby and, again in 1957, in the federal voting list, when they are living in Half Moon Bay, near Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. In the 1953 list Richard Mosier is listed as a truck driver and, in the 1957 one, as a logger. 

It had appeared to Ken and me that the couple had separated at some point after 1957 because, by the time of the 1965 voters list, only Thelma Mosier appears. Sheena Tucker’s information confirms our impression.

Sheena Tucker recalls that her parents lived in Merritt in 1965. Her mother remembers that Thelma (by this time separated from Mosier)  and Richard’s son Bradley came to visit in 1965 and that Thelma had a car. 

Cooking at White Spot

By this time, Thelma had found employment cooking at a White Spot, according to Sheena. At this  time, there were  two White Spots in Burnaby on Kingsway: one at the Eldorado Hotel in the Dining room at 2330 Kingsway at Victoria Drive and another at 2201 Kingsway. There was also a White Spot in New Westminster at 6^th Avenue and 12^th Street. Ken and I wonder which one of the three she worked at.

Before 1965, Daniel and Caroline Profit went to Vancouver to visit Thelma who was a “live-in” housekeeper for a man and woman who she had met before moving away from Sechelt. Caroline’s recollections:

“[On one occasion] Thelma was shocked that my parents came to this house unexpectedly to visit [but] they never stayed long as they were made to feel very uncomfortable. This man and woman had high priced prostitutes walking around their beautiful home.”

 According to Caroline Profit, all her mother-in-law Thelma cared about was money. After that Thelma was living in a house in North Burnaby where Sheena’s parents and her brother also visited her. Sheena:

“She asked my father to take her to the drugstore where she never bought anything but used the phone to call someone. Mom thinks she was calling to tell someone not to come over because my parents were there. Mom thinks this is when the heroin started -- in 1965.” 

“I’m in jail!”

The Profits were living by then in Quesnel, BC and early in 1966 they received a letter from Thelma saying she was in jail in Burnaby but without giving any explanation. The Profits found out via some relatives of Thelma’s by marriage that the police had taken an axe to Thelma's door and arrested her. Thelma wrote letters to the Profits but never discussed the heroin. 

Upon being released from prison, Thelma lived for a time with the Sheena’s parents, the Profits, who by this time had moved to Burnaby. An anecdote from Sheena about her mother’s recollections:

Thelma got out of jail and asked my parents to pick her up at the airport and asked to live with us. She didn't live with us for very long. A couple days after Thelma was with us she told mom she was going for a walk. Mom was watching her from the window and saw Thelma talking to a man. The next day this man contacted my father, asking him if he wanted to start making some money and get involved with him [pushing] drugs. This is the same man Thelma had worked for housekeeping. Dad said no and mom and dad never seen him again. Thelma never spoke of why she had been in jail with my parents. 

Eventually, after living with her step-sister Rachel Roberts in Harrison Hot Springs for a time, Thelma was hired to work at Seventh Step Society. Ken and I have previously reported on this blog that this facility for recently released prisoners was located in New Westminster. This is true but a recent informant, who knew Thelma back in the day, said he met her when the facility was earlier located in Port Moody. He was a recently-released convict at the time that, over the past three decades, has gone straight.

Suicide Attempts: Shame to the very end?

Sheena’s mother’s recollections indicate that Thelma never really did get over her crime and it seemed to affect her for the rest of her life:

“Thelma was starting to take medications from the guys at 7 steps society trying to end her life. Mom remembers of two times receiving calls from the hospital where she had tried to overdose. Thelma would come to our house stoned on drugs in front of us kids which upset my parents. This is when mom and dad started to give up contact with Thelma. She was always trying to manipulate my parents.”

Ken and I would like to know the following: 1. Brad Mosier, who died in May 2014, was reported to have been married to an Asian lady. If anyone knows the whereabouts of this lady, we would like to hear from them. 2. (And this is a much more remote possibility): It is reported that Thelma had met the people she was a “live-in” housekeeper for when they holidayed in Sechelt. These people sound as if they might have been in the upper echelons of the Vancouver’s crime world in the late 1950s, given the nice house and the prostitutes working out of it. Anyone with information on either of these two questions may contact us through this website. 

DR ROBERT HENRY MACLAUCHLAN’S NEPHEW, MICHAEL, BRIEFLY LIVED IN QUEENSBORO, NEW WESTMINSTER DURING THE EARLY 1980s

I’ve used this quote, from the movie Dr Zhivago before but I’ll use it again now. Spoken by Zhivago’s half-brother, a policeman of the early Russian revolutionary regime, it goes as follows:

 “If you want to know about a man, getting to his brother is half the battle won,” or words to that effect are spoken by Yevgraf Zhivago.

That this truth perhaps can be applied in the case of different relatives is something my colleague Ken McIntosh and I have learned a few times in our pursuit of the truths of the lives of Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan and his third wife Margaret Ann (nee Herring). Sometimes it even applies to the results of hearing from step-relatives, as has happened recently to us, in relation to one of Dr MacLauchlan’s siblings.

About a month ago, out of the blue (as the saying goes), we received an email from a man whose mother had once been married to the son of Lieutenant Colonel Donald George MacLauchlan, a former World War II commander of the Calgary Highlanders and the younger (and only) brother of Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan. Although we were well aware that Lieutenant Colonel MacLauchlan had married a member of the minor British aristocracy, Elizabeth Loder Johnson, during the war, we had always wondered if that coupling had resulted in any offspring. Our searches on that score had always been without results.

Then arrived the letter and it was from a man whose stepfather, Michael MacLauchlan, had been the son of the Lieutenant Colonel. According to this informant, whose name we will not reveal at the present time, Michael MacLauchlan had a previous wife who, during the middle 1980s at least, had lived in Victoria and his name was Brett MacLauchlan. 

What was very interesting about this man’s (our  source) information is that it provided us with some fascinating details about how Michael MacLauchlan’s professional and personal character differed quite substantially from those of his father and those of his father’s siblings. Educationally, at least, the accomplishments of the MacLauchlan siblings were quite impressive for their time. The brothers held high qualifications in medicine and in the military, respectively ; the several sisters were nurses and even nursing supervisors in some cases.

Michael MacLauchlan, on the other hand, seemed a bit of an under-achiever. According to his step-son, Michael was a mostly itinerate truck driver who seemed to have a hard time holding a good job. Among other failings, he appeared unable to provide his new wife and two step-sons with proper furniture or, on some occasions, a properly sympathetic parental ear. As he wrote in an email to us:

“He was impatient with children and he was verbally, and at times, physically abusive with my younger brother and I. He was very frank in telling us that he didn't like children.”

In the early middle 1980s, the small family moved westward, eventually ending up, of all places, in New Westminster – on Salter Street in Queensboro, where our informant attended Queen Elizabeth School for a brief time before moving to East Vancouver.

Of importance to Ken McIntosh and me is our source’s memory of  Lieutenant Colonel MacLauchlan. We had always read, in the accounts of his WW II service as a leader of men, that he was somewhat remote and distant to his underlings in the officer and enlisted ranks. Simply put, he seemed to have been somewhat of a martinet. Contrary to these images, our source (his step grandson) remembers him this way:

“Donald was an absolute joy to be around. He was always welcoming; always smiling and joking; and was quite fond of my mother, brother and I. Every time we visited him at his … apartment in Ottawa, he had "Sesame Snaps" that he would share with my brother and I. Donald taught me how to play cribbage and how to properly tie a neck tie, all before I was through grade 4. Donald was one of the most wonderful and likable people I have ever met and I regret not having spent more time with him while he was alive, despite the fact that my mother and Michael split up after (I think) 5 years of marriage.”

What is of immediate interest to Ken and me is the fact that Michael MacLauchlan had a former wife, and a son named Brett, who lived in Victoria during the middle 1980s. We are very interested in hearing from anyone who may have known of a Brett MacLauchlan who, during the early 1980s, would have been between the ages of 10 and 14. His mother, whose name our informant does not recall ever having heard from his stepfather, would have perhaps been in her middle to late 30s. Please feel free to contact us via the information on the home page of this website.

 

 

ARE SOME DOTS ALONG KINGSWAY BEING CONNECTED?

Alert readers of this blog concerning the March 1966 double murder of Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan and his wife Margaret Ann in New Westminster may remember that three months previously both had been arrested for trafficking in heroin. One of their associates, Thelma Mosier, was also picked up in the same raid (but in Burnaby) along with another one, Joe Sperling. Both Mosier and Sperling were Burnaby residents, and Mosier was variously described in press articles as either a waitress or an employee of an un-named Burnaby hotel or motel.

Seeking always to “connect the dots” between MacLauchlan’s group and the larger criminal organization that Ken and I know he must have been part of, we were pleased recently when Ken appeared to find a reference in a January 1966 issue of the Vancouver Sun newspaper to a pair of married street level heroin pushers who had been arrested in a police raid on a Kingsway motel. We have their names but, wanting to protect our information at this point in our research, let’s just say that they were not native to Vancouver but may have been from Eastern Canada via Alberta. 

Ken, being a retired police officer and thus aware of some of the intricacies of the narcotics trade during that era, is of the opinion that these two people were almost certainly linked to the MacLauchlan group. Remember, we have previously reported that Thelma Mosier was employed on occasion in motels and hotels along Kingsway.  During the era of the 1960s, Kingsway on some blocks was motel after motel after motel. In any case, we have sent an email off to our correspondent with the massive index of Canadian criminals to see if that person can find out if these two people have any “priors” or “after”, in terms of drug charges.

We invite our readers to offer their suggestions as to the least savory hostelries along Kingsway during the decade of the 1960s. Just go to our home page, check out the contact information and send us an email or a snail mail -- whatever suits you best. We always honour requests for confidentiality.

(Pictured below is one of the classier 1960s accomodations along Kingsway -- the Kingsway Motor Hotel.)

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8020/7125510465_25055496da_b.jpg

NEW WESTMINSTER’S ROYAL TOWERS – A DRUG AND BAGMAN TRANSFER POINT IN THE 1960s?

As I mentioned in our last blog posting on April 24th, Ken McIntosh and I have always wondered why Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan (murdered in New Westminster, British Columbia, in a likely Mafia hit on March 21, 1966) had no big amounts of cash in his possession when he was arrested a few days before Christmas 1965. After all, according to deceased journalist Dennis Bell (who had his contacts within the police forces involved in MacLauchlan’s bust for narcotics trafficking ), MacLauchlan was the Number 2 Man in the West Coast narcotics trafficking organization. So why was no vast amount of money found in the little bungalow at 912 Fifth Street shared by the doctor and Margaret Ann Cunningham?

After all, it was reported that he had $200,000 worth of heroin in his possession when he and Margaret, along with associates Joe Sperling and Thelma Mosier, were arrested on December 22^nd. However, the only money anywhere in sight on that winter afternoon was $2700 that Sperling had on him when he was taken down by Sgt Bunyk (RCMP Narcotics Squad) and Constable D L Roberts (Vancouver Narcotics Squad). None of the press reports mentioned anything about money being found by the police -- on MacLauchlan, in his possession or in the house that he and Cunningham had shared for almost a decade (first as “uncle and niece” and later as husband and wife).

Then one of our regular correspondents, a person who over the years has amassed an impressive knowledge of Canada’s criminal elements through steady and painstaking research, suggested that perhaps Ken and I have been wrong to think of MacLauchlan as being the Number 2 man in the organization in the ordinary sense.

Our correspondent wondered if, rather than being Number 2 in the west coast hierarchy, the doctor had been the Number 2 representative of the “powers that be” out of Montreal. By that phrase he was referring to such men in Montreal as Lucien Rivard, the Cotroni Brothers, and Paolo Violi. 

Somewhat contradicting such an explanation, however, is this reality: wouldn’t Sperling have had to pay for what was found on him -- “ten one ounce bundles of brown powder which analyzed as fairly good grade of 63.5 per cent heroin with the potential value of $120,000”,  as reported in the Court testimony of Sgt Bunyk?

Our correspondent counters this line of reasoning by presenting the possibility that MacLauchlan, for all his alleged stature in the organization, never had money at 912 Fifth Street. 

“Getting back to the bust at the house I think either the money was never held there or, by some twist of fate, it had already gone to pay the bill. Perhaps the money collected by [Thelma Mosier] and [Sperling] was ... kept at a remote location for some [similar] reason...” With this statement, our correspondent is referring to the fact that Thelma Mosier had no money in her possession either when she was arrested.

Our correspondent also raised another point, mentioning that, in the 1976 book Canadian Connection, Author Jean-Pierre Charbonneau relates how Greyhound was sometimes used to transport drugs from Montreal to the West Coast. He ends his letter by wondering if the New Westminster bus depot, which for years was located in the Royal Towers on Sixth Street, might have been a convenient location to send a bagman east or drugs west during the 1960s.

 

 

 

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.  

OUR AUDIENCE – SOME FACTS AND QUESTIONS

The blog that Ken McIntosh and I have created to popularize, and to attract comment and support about our research toward our book on the murder of Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan and his wife Margaret Ann on March 21, 1966 in New Westminster, BC has now been in existence since October 2013 – nearly 18 months. During that time, we have attracted a certain amount of attention on the Internet and our total numbers of page visitors approaches a few thousand. From that few thousand viewers we have received several dozen queries and tips, which have led us further into our story.

Ken and I always expected to get most of our viewers from the United States and Canada. After all, the Mafia-linked murders of which we are writing took place in Canada and, during the time they occurred, many of the criminal organizations that were thought to be responsible had their centres of influence in the United States. So when our statistics began to show that nearly 90% of visitors to our site were from Canada and the USA, we were not surprised. 

What has been surprising are the rather significant numbers of visitors from other countries in Western Europe (Germany, France and the United Kingdom), Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Romania and Ukraine), Asia (Taiwan) and even Oceania (Australia). Several hundred of our regular visitors come from these four geographic areas. This particular blog is addressed to them: we would like to know what led you to our website, what you find interesting (or not) about it, and if there is anything you would like to know about the MacLauchlan Murders that Ken and I have not mentioned. Feel free to drop us an email. Our contact information is listed on our home page.

THELMA MOSIER – REWARDED FOR HER SILENCE?

“She never talked.”

Of the four known members of the MacLauchlan Gang – Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan, Margaret Ann MacLauchlan, Joe Sperling and Thelma Mosier – it could be said that only Thelma went “straight”. The MacLauchlans, of course, never had the chance to show what their future lives might have been, since they were murdered on March 21, 1966 in a Mafia-style hit a few days before their scheduled trial. Veteran criminal Joe Sperling served his time, got out and a few years later served 12 more for a further trafficking charge. Thelma Mosier, it appears, saw not only the errors of her ways but also understood that the best way to avoid meeting the same fate as the MacLauchlans or Joe Sperling was to keep her nose clean, her head down and her mouth shut.

“During her trial,” said her niece, Cheryl Freeman (daughter of Thelma’s step-sister Laverne Roberts), during a recent conversation we had, “My aunt never talked.” According to Cheryl, Thelma, in a way, was rewarded for her discretion.

A somewhat welcoming arrival in Kingston Pen

One of the rewards appeared to be waiting for her when she arrived at Kingston Penitentiary to begin serving her seven years. According to Cheryl, Thelma had been “terrified” of what she might experience in Kingston. However, she found instead, rather mysteriously, an indication that her incarceration might be a little more genteel than average. Her cell – unlike the usual ones waiting for “new arrivals” – had been equipped with a nice carpet and had some pictures on the wall. It wasn’t the Ritz but it was better than a cement floor with a bucket in the corner. It was not clear to Cheryl Freeman how or why this had been arranged beforehand but it was.

Thelma for the most part appears to have been treated with “kid gloves” by the other inmates. For example, there was an incident when another prisoner approached her threateningly, knife in hand. All Thelma had to do was quietly raise her hand and say, “Put it down” and the inmate backed off. It appears that someone or some organization was looking out for her.

It’s the thought that counts!

And there was more of this rather exceptional treatment. Because, according to Cheryl, Thelma had not “talked” (about the doctor or anyone else in the gang) during her Burnaby trial, a substantial amount of money had been promised to her. The source of these funds was not known for sure by Cheryl or her mother Laverne Roberts but the money was said to be held in trust by a certain lawyer. However, in that particular instance, the exceptional treatment proved more theoretical than actual. This was because, according to Cheryl’s recollection, the lawyer who was supposed to be holding the money in trust for Thelma went instead to the US and disappeared. But it’s the thought that counts, you know!

Another curious detail: Upon Thelma’s release – after serving only three years of her seven year term – when she moved out to Chilliwack to stay with her step-sister Laverne, both Thelma and the Roberts family were placed under surveillance by the police. It seems to have been the case that, upon her release from Kingston, Thelma was not forgotten by the police. Nor was she forgotten by old associates still thankful for her silence. For, after staying with the Roberts family in Chilliwack for awhile upon her release from Kingston, Thelma moved to Vancouver. Cheryl’s brother told Cheryl that, when “moving day” arrived, a black “gangster-type” limousine came to the house and gave her a lift.

 

THELMA MOSIER – A TERRIBLE FALL FROM APPARENT GRACE

Before there was a double drug-related murder (of the MacLauchlans) in 1966 in New Westminster, there was what might be termed a quadruple drug bust in December 1965. 

As Ken and I have related previously, when 72 year old Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan was arrested for drug trafficking on Wednesday, December 22, 1965, three other people were also arrested – Margaret Ann “Nan” Cunningham, 50 (with whom he lived at 912 Fifth Street in New Westminster), Joe Sperling, 45 and Thelma Mosier, 40. Mosier has always struck us as being particularly mysterious; unlike Sperling and the doctor, she had no criminal history, and we have searched far and wide for some previous mention of her on the Internet and elsewhere. We have often wondered how she had adapted to life and a seven year sentence in Ontario’s Kingston Penitentiary following her transfer from Oakalla. 

Ken and I discover a niece (With help from a friendly source...)

And now some good news: In recent weeks, through the gracious assistance of Thelma Mosier’s niece, Cheryl Freeman, we have gained a minor avalanche of new information on Mosier. “But how did we find Cheryl Freeman?” our readers might ask. The answer will demonstrate how, like on several other occasions, our research has recently benefited from the multiplicity of sources that can be found on today’s Internet – and from those who cruise the World Wide Web looking for people and things whose stories interest them. Our discovery of Cheryl Freeman is a case in point.

Over the last few months, Ken McIntosh and I have benefited from information sent to us by a person  who lives in British Columbia’s West Kootenay region. About two months ago, he sent us an email attachment containing a number of digitized newspaper clippings, one of which related to an obituary for one Laverne Roberts, who was described (among other accomplishments) as being a former three-time City Councillor from Chilliwack, BC. What really caught our attention, though, was that among Mrs. Roberts’ relatives Thelma Mosier was listed! The document of course also listed her other relatives, including a daughter, Cheryl Freeman. Tips like these, coming at us from the ether, are of great assistance to us for one thing leads to another: searches through online lists such as telephone directories cause letters to be written to names pulled from the White Pages. Some such letters are never answered and yet the one to Cheryl Freeman was. 

Mrs. Freeman has graciously provided Ken and me with a lot of detail on her Aunt Thelma’s early life, how she ended up in drug trafficking and the life-long effect of her prison sentence. In her most recent letter to us she said this about Thelma’s 1966 incarceration:

She was so terrified going to Kingston. When she came out she was broken in spirit. She had toughened up in order to survive and from what I understand she became a respected person amongst the other women. I laughed that she still was able to maintain her No Swearing mantra while inside. When I was at BCIT I used to see her occasionally for tea but we never spoke of the past.

The quote above refers to Cheryl’s initial assessment to us of Thelma Mosier always having been, in her experience, a very gentle and quiet spoken person. It also occurred to us, upon reading that assessment, that there appeared to be a good deal of similarity to the other “female accomplice” in the MacLauchlan case – Margaret Ann Cunningham, whose Woodlands School co-workers also described as quiet, gentle and modest. 

Thelma Mosier – a background in Sechelt

According to Cheryl Freeman, she and Thelma are connected in the following manner: Cheryl’s grandmother, born Rachel Robson in 1908 in Durham, England, married and lived with her first husband, John Albert Anderson, in Burnaby. Unhappy in her marriage, she left him sometime during the 1940s. Taking up the life of cooking in logging camps, Rachel moved to the Sechelt Peninsula on the BC Coast, met an ambitious logger and sawmill owner from Halfmoon Bay, and married him. Her new husband, Wilhelm “Bill” Kolterman, had been married before and, from that union, he had a daughter named Thelma Kolterman, who later became Thelma Mosier. However, before she became Mrs. Mosier, she was for a time Thelma Profit. Whatever her last name, Thelma in the strictest sense was Cheryl Freeman’s step-aunt.

Expanding the story of Thelma Mosier -- as it relates to the contribution of Ken McIntosh and me to Cheryl Freeman’s knowledge of her aunt – has become quite “interactive” one might say. When we first heard from Cheryl, the essence of her message was simply that Thelma and her mother, Laverne Roberts, had been sisters, and that, yes, she remembered when Thelma had been arrested and the awful feeling of shock and dismay that had enveloped the Roberts family and her grandmother, Rachel Kolterman: 

Her arrest and circumstances took everyone by surprise. My grandmother was so upset as was my Mom. Thelma had been abandoned by everyone in her family.

The last sentence in the above quote was very provocative and it automatically led to the question of how and why had Thelma had come to such a low point in her life where she felt she had no choice but to act as a drug courier for the MacLauchlan heroin trafficking organization. As we have mentioned before, Ken and I have often wondered how Thelma came to be involved in this crime. 

Thelma – an early marriage and an airman husband lost in the war

Cheryl gave us some background. She told us that, after Thelma’s first husband, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot named Ben Profit had been lost in a bombing mission over Europe in June 1944, leaving her with an infant son named Daniel, Thelma had married a well-respected, hardworking logger and truck driver named Richard Mosier, of Halfmoon Bay. “Dick” Mosier also had a son, Brad, from a previous marriage. 

As the decade of the 1940s turned into that of the 1950s, it appears that Bill and Rachel “Rae” Kolterman prospered – as did Richard and Thelma Mosier. By the late 1950s, the Koltermans owned a mill, a combination gas station and restaurant, and a building supply store – all located on the highway leading into Halfmoon Bay. 

Politically, Bill Kolterman was a supporter of the Liberal Party both federally and provincially. It seems also that his daughter Thelma moved in the same circles, which at times featured rather prestigious visitors to Halfmoon Bay. For example, in the middle 1950s, the Sechelt local newspaper, The Coast News, related that Thelma Mosier had acted as the hostess of a gathering to honour MP James Sinclair, the leading federal Liberal Party warhorse on the West Coast, as he toured his riding of Vancouver North. (Alert readers of a certain age of course will recognize Sinclair as the father of Margaret Sinclair and grandfather of today’s current leading Liberal light, Justin Trudeau. (Margaret Sinclair later married Pierre Trudeau, Liberal Prime Minister during the period 1968 to 1984, with one interlude 1979 to early 1980.) 

So how did Thelma Mosier, who once hosted teas for a Liberal bigwig like James “Jimmy” Sinclair end up falling into such a state of penury that she turned to making a fast buck through drug smuggling? Ken and I believe that the answer to her fall from grace may lie in the unhappy fate of her stepmother Rachel Kolterman, following the death of her husband Bill. On February 19, 1960 Wilhelm Kolterman died, after what the Coast News described as “a brief illness”. In the few years preceding, the mill owner had been briefly hospitalized at least once. One suspects a heart attack may have felled him.

Thelma’s father – a prosperous Sechelt logger and businessman

From reports in the News in the years previous to Kolterman’s death it appears that Kolterman and his extended family had prospered. For example, it was reported in the July 29, 1954 issue of the newspaper  that he had taken on as partners his son-in-law Dick Mosier, his brother-in-law Ken Anderson (Cheryl Freeman’s uncle) and Doug Roberts (Cheryl’s father) in running a combination sawmill and building supply business located on the highway leading to Half Moon Bay.

However it appears that, following Kolterman’s untimely death, disaster struck -- quite possibly in the shape of one Herman Uswell, who Rachel Kolterman had married a year or so later. As Cheryl Freeman puts it:

She only married [Uswell] as she needed help to run the Shell station and restaurant. Bill and she owned a shell station which he ran, and the restaurant was her domain. It was a devastating blow to her. She also had to sell her two house properties from what I remember.

The “devastating blow” referred to by Cheryl relates to some bad business dealings that Rachel’s new husband entered into. Her grandmother’s fortunes, following her marriage to Herman Uswell, went downhill because Uswell took out loans using her property as collateral and ultimately bankrupted her. Uswell seems to have been somewhat of an unreliable sort, as demonstrated by a story I found by searching through the Coast News: On October 18, 1962 Uswell was arrested for being drunk.

It seems to Ken and me that Thelma’s financial problems may have been connected to those of Cheryl’s grandmother Rachel. Contemplating a “timeline” of events and people, I come up with the following possible sequence: 1. Rachel Uswell (formerly Rachel Kolterman) loses her income and moves to Harrison Hot Springs in 1962; 2. Thelma Mosier and Brad Kolterman come to Harrison Hot Springs in the same year, perhaps because they were following Rachel; 3. By 1965 Thelma has moved to Fell Avenue in Burnaby, where she is listed in the voting register as sharing a house with the Bullerwells. (Cheryl has no knowledge of who the Bullerwells may have been to Thelma.)

An “old high school friend” “helps” Thelma out – and into prison!

In any case, it appears that later Thelma moved to Burnaby and eventually fell into dire financial straits. And, in a deep departure from character, she fell for a financial invitation from an acquaintance from the past. As Cheryl Freeman puts it:

My mother had told me that an old high school friend of Thelma's had convinced her to get involved in the drug business as she was having dire financial difficulties. I have very fond memories of my aunt, she was very soft-spoken, didn't stand for swearing around her, and seemed so respectable in appearance etc.

When we [Laverne and Doug Roberts and their family] moved to Burnaby, I saw her several times. I went to UBC then BCIT and then my mom left my Dad and we moved back to our house in Chilliwack. (Summer 1972). [I] heard Thelma was working in New West and just how she was having health problems over the years.

My mom, and grandmother would get phone calls from Thelma and that was pretty much the only contact they had over the years. In 1992, my mother had a stroke and my family moved down from the north and brought our Mom to live with us in Nanaimo. I spoke to Thelma several times on the phone as at the time I was caring for my grandmother and mother and kept Thelma up to date.

Ken and I have further questions (of course!)

The reminiscences of Cheryl Freeman have been very helpful to Ken and me, and we appreciate her contribution very much. Of course we also greatly appreciate the contributions of the person who first brought her to our attention. Perhaps as with any good detective story, more questions are raised. Here are a few we can think of:

1.    Who was the “old high school” friend who introduced Thelma to the MacLauchlan organization?

2.    Is there anyone out there in Internet-land who knows of a Thelma Kolterman that he or she may have gone to school with – perhaps in Sechelt, perhaps elsewhere?

3.      Daniel Milton Profit was Thelma’s son by RCAF wartime pilot Benjamin Profit. Daniel Profit was a truck driver who died in a traffic accident in Alberta in 2003. Before moving to Alberta, he and his wife, who was probably named Caroline, lived in Burnaby. Ken and I would be interested in hearing from anyone who knew Daniel Milton Profit, his wife or -- assuming they exist – children.

MEMBERS OF THE 1966 VANCOUVER POLICE DEPARTMENT NARCOTICS SQUAD – SOME NAMES PLEASE!

Yesterday we spent several quite helpful hours with Kristin Hardie, Curator of the Vancouver Police Museum, who kindly assisted us in running down some possibilities. One angle we were particularly interested in pursuing was the fact that the investigation into the December 22, 1965 take-down of MacLauchlan and his coterie of drug traffickers was three-pronged, involving the RCMP, the Vancouver Police Department and the New Westminster Police Service. Although we will be following up on Kristen’s suggestion that we find out who the members of the 1965 VPD Narcotics Squad by contacting that agency directly, we are also throwing the question out to our readership. Does anyone in our far flung audience (Canada, United States, Germany, France, Romania, South Korea, Russia, China, Ukraine, Mexico etc) know any of the surviving members of that group of police officers? If you do, please contact us via our home page information.

Somewhat of an aside: an interesting document from 1969 that we came across yesterday was part of a presentation by the Vancouver Police Chief and his senior staff for a budget increase for all the major squads, including the Narcotics Squad. The brief featured two sets of statistics in support of a budget increase – crime figures from 1960 and the same from 1969. In the case of the Narcotics Squad, drug arrests had increased from 333 to 1232. Drug charges had increased from 347 to 879, a rise of 154%. VPD senior staff were pushing for an increase in staff from 11 detectives to 17. The VPD Narcotics Squad in 1969 consisted of one Staff Sergeant, one Sergeant and 11 detectives. The document estimated that the average drug addict was responsible for about $180 worth of theft per day.

1966 RCMP REPORT ON ORGANIZED CRIME EMPTY OF NAMES

As we mentioned in our posting of June 20, 2014, there was an important Ottawa conference on organized crime held in early 1966 for all the provincial ministers of justice of the day. The meeting took place in Ottawa on January 6^th and 7^th and, according to the press of the day, a major RCMP report was presented. 

The report, which we have now received through inter-library loan from the National Archives and which, at the time raised prominent Page 1 headlines in the Vancouver Sun, is rather disappointing upon reading. 

We had been hopeful that a report which generated such newspaper headlines as “Crime rings grow” and “Fear, payoffs aid syndicates” would have named some names. We had hoped that the RCMP report would have told the gathered provincial justice ministers and attorneys general the names of at least some of the people involved with organized crime  -- especially in Ontario and Quebec (the provinces which the report said harboured most of Canada’s organized crime). We had wanted names. Alas there were no names. Or, at least, not in the document which we have received; however it is likely that, given some of the comments in the news stories of the time clearly referring to certain individuals, during the private sessions of the conference names may have been mentioned. Probably libel laws prevented their publication. 

Some interesting definitions occur in the report: Organized crime, for example, is described “as a social organism within the social body, whose business is crime and (whose) purpose or objects are criminal.” 

Syndicated crime was described as “[an association] of criminals which is so highly organized that it has exclusive control of crime over a given area – in other words a monopoly.”

It is interesting to note that about six years earlier United States Attorney-General Robert F Kennedy had the Bureau of Narcotics draw up an 800 page dossier (one criminal per page) on organized crime in the United States. The Bureau, however, did not confine its investigations to the USA. The dossier also covers Canada and in its pages (all of which were published in 2007 under the title “Mafia” by Harper Collins) appear 21 names of people (all men except for one Grace Pine) who either lived in Canada or had business dealings there of a alleged criminal nature. The names contained in the book are Antonio Rocco CAPONIGRO, Vincenzo COTRONI, Guiseppe COTRONI, Earl CORALLUZO, Jean Baptiste CROCE, Antonio D’AGOSTINO, Frank DIOGUARDI, Dante GASBARRINI, Salvatore GIGLIO, Ange Dominique LUCIANI, Harold MELTZER, Pasquale MONACHINO, Saverio MONACHINO, Paul Damien MONDOLONI, Peter PELLEGRINO, Grace PINE, Salvatore Peter RIZZO, Salvatore SALLI, Francois SPIRITO, Antonio SYLVESTRO and Guiseppe VECCHIO. Note the preponderance of Italian-sounding names.

Then refer back to the RCMP report, which says:

...these groups [i.e. the individuals described as “an association of criminals”] maintain a close working relationship and personal ties with many of the USA based syndicates, and it is significant that many of these USA groups have recently been labelled as “Mafia” by the US Senate Sub Committee on Organized Crime. The Canadian groups also maintain connections with criminal elements in Southern Italy and Sicily, which the Italian authorities call “Mafiosa”, and with criminals in other urban areas of Canada where commercial development and high population density offers potentially fertile breeding grounds for development of lucrative crime.

The RCMP report noted that organized crime had existed in Canada for many years, particularly in narcotics trafficking, bootlegging and smuggling. It had begun in Montreal and had, for a number of years starting in the early 1950s, been run by American gangsters who, however, had been pressured out of Canada – according to the report -- on a wave of public indignation, a combination of police work and efforts by certain federal government departments. Our own research has shown us that many individuals in drug trafficking organizations in Vancouver during the 1950s, 60s and 70s had connections to Montreal, which was the port of entry for much of the heroin flowing into North America from Marseilles – the so-called “French Connection”.

The RCMP Report took a somewhat sociological approach and described organized crime as made of three levels (“a fairly efficient and well organized administrative system”):

1.      Directors

2.      Administrators (often called Lieutenants)

3.      Labourers (the common criminals)

In a comment that seems perhaps particularly appropriate to Dr Robert Henry MacLauchlan who, for the approximately eight years between his release from jail in Alberta and his arrest on drug trafficking charges in late December 22, 1965, lived a quiet and apparently respectable life, the RCMP Report notes that:

The leaders seldom conform to the usual concept of the common criminal. Many pose and are accepted as members of the business world, or as members of reputable professional fields. Many have never been charged with a criminal offence. Some possess only very minor criminal records, although they have led a persistent life of crime for many years past. 

Most of the 21 people named four paragraphs above had their Canadian connection in Montreal. It is thus worth noting then that, a little over five years later in the Columbian of Monday, June 18, 1971, New Westminster Det. Sgt. Ray Thompson recounted the details of the MacLauchlan Murder case. He stated that the police had managed to pinpoint the route taken by the “executioner” from Montreal to Vancouver and back to Montreal again. He said the route had involved flying from Montreal to Chicago, then on to Detroit, Seattle and Victoria.

So, it is entirely reasonable to assume that one or more of the 21 people named above either knew the executioner or knew of him.