The Mastermind of Canada s Biggest Jailbreak - The Flying Bandit - Ken Leishman Crime Documentary

He was up-tempo, he was an A personality, he was gregarious, he was charming. As a challenge to an investigator, he rated very, very high. And he was not a violent man, he wouldn't have hurt anybody. He had no problem stealing from the rich and enjoying that. What I really liked about him was that he's so romantic. He seemed to be the type of person that needed to do the impossible and then make sure that he got caught so that he could tell everybody that he did it. Even though he wasn't educated and he educated himself in jail, he was still a tinker. Criminal mastermind? Or just an amiable sociopath who didn't know his limits? Bear in mind, Ken Leishman did an awful lot of time in prison. Everyone who met Ken Leishman seemed to like him. Even his victims. Even the cops. Even when he pulled off the biggest gold robbery in Canadian history and then led the biggest jailbreak in Manitoba history. He lived for drama, until the drama caught up with him. And in the end, he was a genuine hero. Despite his life of crime, his only serious victims were his family. Especially the woman who stood by him for more than a quarter century. Through it all, he was a favourite of the media. Because, whatever else he was, Ken Leishman was always entertaining. You were known by the police and by many of us who read newspapers and things as the guy who got on an airplane from, I don't know why I'm laughing, I want to explore that in a moment, got on an airplane in Winnipeg, checked into a Toronto hotel, correct me where I'm wrong, went down to a bank, said give me $10,000. Took out a loan, yes. Took out a loan, with a gun to the manager's head. Oh yes, that's right too. In another interview, Leishman will describe himself as under-qualified and over-ambitious. Leishman was a guy who wanted his money today. He was impatient to have money. He told his grandfather when he was a child that I want to have a lot of money like you do, Grandpa, but I don't want to have to work as hard as you do. For a farm boy born on the prairies in 1931, just growing up is struggle enough. Young Ken hates it all. The depression, the poverty, the dusty, never-ending work. Things only start to look up when he meets the pretty Elva Shields, the love of his life and the girl of his dreams. Ken, I guess, was standing behind me and he saw my red hair. And that's the start of it. He wanted to meet me. Second red hair. Yeah. He didn't see the front of me very good, but he really wanted to meet this girl with all this long red hair. It's 1950 when he asks her to marry him. And Elva says it's the best present she's ever been given. Poor Ken just wants the gifts to keep on coming. But with nothing but a small-time job fixing elevators, he can't even buy furniture for their apartment. Then one night, opportunity reaches out her soft, white hand. All the staff had gone and he found himself alone in this furniture store and he had the bright idea to hire a truck and come and pick up some furniture. He was just about to get married and didn't have very much money and so he loaded a moving truck full of furniture and moved it and surprised his wife. His first heist had been a piece of cake. But Ken has a fatal flaw. He can't resist going back for seconds. Ken doesn't know it, but he's staring at his future. Overconfidence meets the high price of crime. And there you had his wife Elva. I think she was pregnant and just been married and suddenly living on welfare and her husband is in prison. He only gets four months, but it breaks poor Elva's heart and gives Ken the criminal record. For the rest of his life, everyone will hear how hard it is for a man with a criminal record. I could enumerate five or six times when I had achieved a goal in life in terms of vocational pursuits and had the box kicked out under me because of the record, because of the record, because of the record. Ken makes Elva a solemn promise to go straight. And all through the mid-fifties he keeps it. As their family grows toward the seven children Elva will eventually bear him, Ken sells pots and pans to farm wives. But being Ken, he adds a special twist. He decided he wanted to learn to fly, so he went and took a couple of lessons and then he went out and he bought a plane and just started flying. So he didn't have the license, he didn't have the necessary hours or anything, but that's the way dad was, he just, he'd figure something out, he knew he could do it and he'd just go and do it. To the untrained eye, selling door-to-door from a light plane might not seem the surest way to maximize return. But for Ken, profit is never the only object. I think he had desires to be prominent, both wealthy and figuratively. He liked the limelight. Ken Leishman liked the limelight. It gets him the limelight, as these scenes from a 1956 TV show testify. But it doesn't support the free and easy lifestyle he's building for Elva and the kids. No matter. For that, he has schemes, inventions, bright ideas, like this airbag to catch people leaping from burning buildings. And according to Ken, only lack of money keeps him from scooping the world with the hula hoop and the skateboard. Leishman always needed money, it seemed, because he had big plans and big dreams. One of those dreams was to build a fishing lodge up north. But he also had debts and he liked to live fairly flamboyantly. By late 1957, he's drowning in debt, and the pots and pans business goes belly up. Unless he finds a backer with deep pockets, Ken Leishman is staring into the maw of financial ruin. The financial people I spoke to seemed to be very favorable when I first went there. After the investigations, you know, I suppose the character investigations, credit investigations, whatever, they always backed away on me. And the record just seemed to be the answer at all times. So I sort of got the bone in my teeth and decided I'd go do my own banking. A few days before Christmas 1957, Leishman flies to Toronto, where he hits up the folks at the TD Bank for a loan. This time he's brought a friend to vouch for him, and the manager sees his point immediately. The polite, well-spoken bandit earns smiles all around, and even sends his benefactor a Christmas card. His only regret is that he didn't ask for $50,000. Everybody seemed so eager to please. In Toronto he became known as sort of the gentleman bandit because he was so polite and, you know, well-spoken and gentlemanly, which Leishman always was in his whole life. But his problem again was it worked so well the first time that he thought, well, why not try it again? Ah, that fatal second slice of cake. This time his polite request for a loan is most impolitely refused. The two robberies earn him the nickname the Flying Bandit and 12 years in the Crowbar Hotel. His protests that he hurt no one are ignored, they're also not true. He said he would never really hurt me, but of course he did. In the pen, Leishman sets out to win the hearts and minds of his jailers. In no time they're giving him weekend passes to visit Elva. Then, less than four years into his sentence, he shows up at her door with a special surprise. You know, I was just so excited because he was home for the weekend. And all of a sudden he took some money out of his pocket and he gave it to me. And I looked at him, I looked at the money, and I said, you're home for good! And I just cried and cried and cried. Ever willing to promise the moon, Leishman swears his desperado days are behind him and sets out resolutely on a straight and narrow path. Three years into this journey, it's 1965 now, he's in business with a young lawyer named Harry Backland. Harry was a very likable person. I mean, he was very gregarious, outgoing, an excellent speaker. And Ken, I guess, sensed some sort of bond that there was. He immediately took to Harry and they kept up something of a connection between that time and the time when Ken was paroled. There was an element of the... being attracted by their own ability to manipulate people. They both had that in a way. I say that because in my own career as a defense lawyer, I've acted for con people, and they're so charming, you just love them. When the two charmers stop conning each other long enough to taste the watered whiskey, they discover that each is as flat broke as the other. I think Leishman hoped that Backland could addy up some of the money, but it wasn't doing that well. I think maybe on the verge of bankruptcy. And so, gee, Harry, I can't rob banks anymore, but I got an idea. I've got a wonderful idea. In 1966, still on parole for bank robbery, Ken Leishman has no job and a business on the skids. If bank doors were closed to him before, now they're locked tight. His legitimate dreams are going nowhere. So Leishman starts looking for opportunity outside the strictly legal. About 500 klicks up the road from Winnipeg, Red Lake, Ontario boasts the most productive gold vein in Canada. Security is laughable. Gold shipments go to the airport by taxi. Leishman suspects it's not much better at the Winnipeg end, where the gold changes planes for the trip east. A few weeks of haunting the airport confirms his sweetest fantasies. He hatches a plan. Wait till his partner Harry hears this. This one will be a piece of cake. He could walk into an office in Air Canada and talk to whoever was there and get, even without surreptitiously doing so, bills of lading. And, of course, he knew what the uniforms were like, so it wasn't difficult to buy some parkas and to stencil maple leaves on. For three young salesmen, Rick and Paul Grenco and John Berry, Leishman's proposal is a great lark. The three of us, we were almost cut from the same cloth. Laughing and screaming, having a good time. Maybe a little crazy, wild. Lots of girlfriends. Laughing, dancing, singing. Good time. The best time. Best time of our lives. Sent to Red Lake to watch for the next shipment. Paul Grenco can't believe his eyes when the taxi shows up with 12 gold bars. Actually, what I did was pretty cool. I called him and I told him that my dog had puppies. 12 puppies. Ken said he was interested in buying a puppy and I knew that it was going to happen that night. Ken was astounded when there was 12 because there had never been a 12 shipment before. He ordered the van to go and he left. He knew that his physical appearance was too easily identified. So they had bills of lading. They had the availability of a truck. No point going to all of this trouble just for one measly bar of gold when 12 are headed your way, nicely packaged for you in wooden boxes. It's a gift from mammon. The night of the gold robbery, I was working a 3 o'clock to 11 o'clock shift at the airport for Transair. That was our last flight of the evening and an Air Canada truck pulled up and a couple of fellows got out. These two chaps dressed in Air Canada uniforms had said that they'd come to get the gold and made some comment that they wanted to get it out of town that evening. A shipment that big, about $4 million at today's prices, makes everyone nervous. That was probably reason enough that they were going to leave that night with the gold one way or the other. And the only weapons in sight are the bandits' steel nerves. It was certainly never Ken's idea and certainly not Harry's that any violence would be used. But a clever scheme in which people would actually hand you over the gold. After we signed it off, the last we saw them was heading on down the tarmac right between the terminal building and the line of Air Canada aircraft and around the far corner. The bandits are ready to part and they will just as soon as they hand the booty off to the boss. Springs groaning ecstatically under almost half a ton of gold, Leishman's car drags its cargo to Harry Backland's house. Backland's mother-in-law was looking after the little boy and Backland had said that he would drop around some night to make sure everything in the basement, the furnace and everything was right. So what he did, he took the 12 bricks and put them in the deep freeze. The idea was that with Harry and his wife and children going off on a vacation that Harry's place would be the place to temporarily house the gold in Harry's deep freeze. Leishman was able to contact Backland I think in San Francisco and to say, Harry I've got good news for you, the moose meat is in your freezer. In the days following the robbery, Leishman relaxes, certain he's not even on the police radar. Once again, his confidence is sadly misplaced. This was an offence that right away many, many policemen knew was above the average type of crime that happened in the Winnipeg, Manitoba area at that time. The RCMP, the St. James Police and Winnipeg Police all convened in the RCMP headquarters in Winnipeg and they had a brainstorming session. Each officer was handed a pad and pen. They sat down and made a list of who they thought the suspects might be and unfortunately I was the top of everybody's pad and this is after a number of years of very honest clean living so you figure it out. He set up these other businesses and did this other stuff and was selling but he was also starting a bunch of night trips that we started to watch. It appeared that he had followed a pattern of establishing in the police eyes I'm rehabilitated, everything's fine and he was using that as a shield for something else. It just so happened that the morning of March the 2nd he had his parole this morning. Sign the paper but do not question him about the gold. Ken Leishman came in to have his parole paper signed. They exchanged pleasantries and he walked out of there and subsequently I know very, very well that when he went down the steps of the city police station he felt he was home free. Two days after the heist the sweet kiss of winter literally blows it off the front page burying it under the biggest gold robbers have ever seen and that's saying something. Nothing moves in or out. As the city's kids celebrate liberation from school Leishman frets. Imagining all the people who might have reason to look in Backland's freezer before he can get to the gold he seems to feel every ounce of it in the pit of his stomach. Four days after the biggest gold robbery in Canadian history Winnipeg is buried under the infamous blizzard of 1966. The gold is still in Harry Backland's freezer but for Leishman it might as well be in Fort Knox. I remember standing with him in the living room as we were looking out on the street and seeing nobody. There were no cars, no vehicles because we were snowed in so badly and of course he had already taken the gold and he was just kind of waiting for the roads to be plowed. By Sunday when Harry arrived back from his vacation the road to the airport was open so that Ken was able to be there to meet Harry and say to Harry, Harry's mouth falling open, Harry I got some bad news from you, the moose meat as they called it is still in your deep freeze. For the next period of days and I go from the 2nd to the 7th, those days were all straight inquiry legwork type of thing by many, many policemen with everything coming in from Winnipeg and from further afield. Leishman gets in touch with Backland and says Harry bring a bar of the gold and we'll file off a sample and one of us is going to have to go to Hong Kong to peddle it. They file off about 3 pounds in the office and then they put the remnants in Harry's briefcase with his initials on it and other Backland papers and leave that briefcase in his reception area underneath a clothes tree. At this point Leishman makes the 2nd biggest mistake underestimating the cops he decides to break parole and take the gold sample to Hong Kong himself. On the 9th we got a bulletin through from Vancouver that Leishman had been found at the Vancouver airport. Bright as they can be they get on the PA system will Mr. Leishman please report to the RCMP officer thank you very much. Knowing the jigs up at the airport terminal. There are varying stories but Leishman was smart enough to get rid of the gold. Metal detector buffs take note that shiny little paperweight has never been recovered. We had to arrest Ken Leishman and we did it on the basis of the forfeiture of the parole requirements. We then prepared the search warrants for as many residences as the evidence supported. Twigging as to who is involved in this thing execute the search warrant in Harry's office. One of the first things they see is a briefcase and they take a look well a bar of gold. It was holding his door open it was it was detective George Bernie that picked it up and Bernie you know he almost stopped right there never in his whole career in Winnipeg police and Harry being garrulous begins to try to talk his way out of this which was a silly thing to do but after all what defense are you going to have if they ultimately as they would find they've already found one bar of gold in your office. That you might fabricate some kind of explanation for but how are you going to explain another 10 or 11 in your backyard. So Harry begins to talk about his backyard and he kind of maybe is suspicious that somebody was doing something nasty and not nice in his backyard. It's not interesting Harry and basically said get me in the car take me out to my house on Balfour Street. I want to show you something. No one will ever own up to removing the gold bars from Backland's freezer but someone had to do it this morning. The cops dig up their golden eggs one by one. Mr. Leishman was arrested in Vancouver after the robbery and they put him into jail waiting for him to be transferred back to Winnipeg and the RCMP who arrested him placed an undercover agent an RCMP officer in his cell and he was represented as being somebody charged as well. He was just a perfect rounder. You could never have suggested that he was an RCMP. I knew that Mr. Leishman had done time before and so I used psychology on him I guess you could call it pen psychology to try to get him to talk. And this is the point if you've been waiting for it when Leishman commits the biggest blunder of his criminal career. And Richard suggested and that means writing bad checks, Mr. Leishman told him that he was charged with the greatest robbery that had ever been committed in Canada and Mr. Richards then flattered his ego which is the correct way to deal with Mr. Leishman and Leishman started telling him the whole story about his involvement in the robbery from beginning to end. He was charged and in jail such as he was and we could put Al Richards in there Al Richards would probably or anyone else never got a thing. Leishman wanted to brag and at that was his Achilles heel. Leishman goes to his preliminary hearing with his customary confidence intact completely unaware and he was front and centre and what was going to happen to him was clearly going to be not good. I was right next to the prisoners dock where Ken Leishman was seated and he said to me just about the time the preliminary hearing started he said well Paul you're going to see how a real professional operates and I said alright. And one of the first witnesses that came out that wasn't seated amongst the police caused Leishman to lose all of the blood in his face. When I came into the courtroom and read Surge it was something to see the looks on their faces and as they partially stood up all of them and so the con men got conned. I have never seen people so flummoxed as they were when Richards took the stand and the Crown said take the Bible and give your name Alan James Richards state your occupation. Royal Canadian Mounted Police now in my 14th year. You could have seen they were senior lawyers. It was a horrendous amount of evidence against you. I always imagined a boy who was attempting to plug the dike and the water kept falling in all over the place. It was impossible to stop the holes. It was a case where they had not just some evidence or evidence beyond reasonable doubt. It was beyond any doubt whatsoever. Leishman, the boy, was sent to the remand centre in Headingley Jail. But if the cops are counting him out, they're in for a major shock. In the fall of 1966, Ken Leishman is in jail near Winnipeg awaiting trial for stealing almost a thousand pounds of gold. Naturally when he he has a Leishman charm. Me in these days, you'd say, let's rub it back. I'd say, come on, let's go, walk in, just rub the place, just do it, big balls, no brain. Ken was a lot more of a schemer, a planner, a superstar. All the action started in the basement where the remands were and once the basement was taken over, we moved to the main floor. All of a sudden we have control of the prison. Then we go back to where the guys are and we tell them all the doors are open to the front, a whole bunch of keys to the car in the parking lot. Do what you want, guys. As the rest of the prisoners tear madly off with no thought but escape, Leishman, LeClaire and two others know exactly where they're going. Cuba. Cuba. To fly. And join Fidel. Well, who knows, I had some abilities and sort of a backward country down there so we thought they could perhaps use me. Cuba would be a good place for us to go, you know, we could establish ourselves there and maybe go still in the state and fly back to Cuba. I had dreams of kids. Leishman has given authority another finger in the eye and it's smarts. But the police have more immediate problems than public embarrassment. When Ken escaped, he went out with some men who had very, very violent records. And there was a very, very real concern that there was going to be danger. Looking for their ride to Cuba, they ditch the car near a small airport, only to find the cops are way ahead of them. All of a sudden, we see the SWAT team coming and I'm in the middle of the field. They're checking all the airports. Now we're screwed, okay? Can't go there, the cops are there now so now we're on foot. Young lovers Heather Jackson and Ross McKenzie are doing what comes naturally when out of the night comes a whole new kind of excitement. Reassured by Leishman, who they'll describe as very nice, McKenzie and Jackson are soon caught up in the game and having the time of their lives. By morning, they're helping buy the fugitives gas. I put an order out for every private aircraft from Manitoba West be immobilized. Right away, I said, this man will fly. Somebody in the small town of Steinbach doesn't get the message. The men find a four-seater Mooney all gassed up and begging to be hot-wired. Leishman asked the young couple to give them half an hour before calling the cops. Such a nice fella, who could say no to him? I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, the poet says, and danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings. George Leclerc is no poet, but this morning there's a song in his heart. When we got off the ground, we felt like, I don't know, we'd been paroled. I put my hand outside the plane and fired the pistol that I had. I remember, Ken, I said, what are you doing? This thing falls down on people, you know, like you're stupid or something? I said, no, I just want to know what it feels like it's been so long, eh? Staying literally under the radar, the fugitives fly out of Canada and into the popular imagination. They became folk heroes because, after all, there was no violence. A huge number of Winnipeggers sincerely hoped that they wouldn't get caught. Landing where he needs gas, Leishman plays hopscotch across the U.S. Midwest. By this time, the stories hit the wires and their little plane is getting hotter than the noonday sun. Finally, Leishman puts them down for the last time on a farm near Gary, Indiana, and LeClaire starts collecting the guns. But Kenneth always kept saying, leave these things behind. We don't need it. I said, we don't need it. We're escapees. We're most wanted men. We need it more than ever, all right? In Gary, the men check into a dive called the Baltimore. The manager tries to act cool, but LeClaire smells a rat. This guy's nervous, nervous like hell, eh? While the manager tries to hold down his lunch, the cops surround the place. Exhausted and overconfident, Leishman has let himself be trapped. All of a sudden, there's a scream. It's Barry Duke. They kidnap him, okay? With a hallway full of heavily armed police, LeClaire demonstrates his defining characteristic. Just do it. Big balls, no brains. All of a sudden, I'm looking like this as they come. Now the shot came and hit me. This guy says to Kenneth, you come on out. The great escape has lasted 52 hours. Both George LeClaire and Joe Dale are injured. They were fortunate to get out of there alive because one of the state troopers had, one week earlier, been shot and killed on the road. Brought back to Winnipeg in handcuffs, Leishman and friends are greeted like rock stars. They take Leishman off to an old city jail where he'll be the only prisoner. Only with him isolated do the authorities feel safe from further humiliation. Ken lets them enjoy that feeling for about three weeks. But you know Ken. He just can't say no to a second piece of cake. Incredibly, Leishman is on the street again. I said, my gracious, how many times do I have to go after this guy? The only prisoner in a supposedly escape-proof jail, Leishman has once again outwitted his keepers and fled into the night. Now what? Does he have no one to turn to? No shelter from the storm? Or does he finally take a look at his life, the mess he's made, the pain he's caused his family, and decide that the only way forward is to accept his fate and face it? At any rate, three hours after the escape, he surrenders voluntarily. This is small comfort to Scotty Gardner. We took a look at Vaughan Street and said, how could he get out of this secure lock? And Ken was in his glory showing us how he beat that lock. Admitting defeat at last, Ken pleads guilty to everything. His sentence is a lenient eight years, but this time there'll be no parole. I was never and I never will be sympathetic for Ken Leishman. I will be for his wife and family. For Leishman's greatest victims, Elva and their seven children, it's a long, long eight years. She really worked hard to make a go of it, you know, and I marvel that she did as well as she did. I mean, I go back to our house on Morley now and I see where, you know, my five brothers and I, you know, were jammed into a bedroom with kind of an annex off of that bedroom, you know, and she made things work. Once I tried to leave camp and I put in for divorce, I did, and I couldn't follow through on it. I had so much pressure from everybody and they were saying that I was being selfish to put my kids through waiting for their dad and that I wasn't thinking of them. And from the pressures I was getting there, I almost, I almost tried to do the break and then I saw Kenny again and it just, it's just, you know, I just love him too much. There's just nobody could take his place. While Elva's soldiers on, Ken passes his days getting his high school diploma, taking college courses, making the system work for Ken. Outside the 60s are going by. The summer of love passes. John and Yoko make love not war and Vietnam divides the generations. But Ken Leachman sees none of this. When they finally open the gates, it's May 3rd, 1974. Once again, Ken Leachman is free to do whatever he wants. Alright, if I come into your home and I say, Ken, I've got the perfect one. I mean, this is fail safe. We're all going to be able to retire for life. What do you say to me? Are you with me? Lots of luck, guy. I'll read about it. It's a question on a lot of lips. What will the flying bandit do next? The answer will stagger everyone. He pulls up stakes and with the ever-faithful Elva and the kids moves to Red Lake, Ontario. Say what? This is the home of the mine he robbed eight years ago. Ignoring clucking tongues, Ken and Elva set up in business. By all accounts, Ken enjoys his notoriety. Certainly, he has no trouble joking about it when a TV crew comes to town. He's elected President of the Chamber of Commerce and comes within a very few votes of being mayor. The flying bandit becomes K. Leishman, Esquire, solid citizen. For excitement, he's flying again, this time with a license. He flies the air ambulance into remote communities. These mercy flights bring him the attention and praise he so loves. How Elva feels about their new life is written all over her. She was thrilled to be, to have a home and to have Ken home, but on the other hand, she was very aware that the flying was important to him. He was flying sick people and he was flying them at night and he was flying them in inclement weather and they were proud of that and I think she felt that it was necessary for Ken to have this certain amount of danger and a certain amount of excitement in his life still and he was doing it by helping people. Then, on December 14th, 1979, a routine flight brings the old drama back into their lives. He told me, he says, hey, I got a medevac and he said, but I'll be home between 9 and 9.30. I think he went into Sandy Lake and then he says, I'm going to Thunder Bay and then I'll be home. Didn't make it home. Somewhere en route to Thunder Bay, the plane with three aboard vanishes. An intense ground and air search is mounted but as the days pass with no results, the inevitable rumors fly. Ken Leishman is seen in the Caribbean, in Mexico, South America, New Zealand. He's seen flipping burgers at a McDonald's in Fargo. But the family knows they aren't true and when the wreckage is finally spotted, five months later, his sons express only grief. Not surprise. Ken Leishman dies a heroic death, performing a genuine service to his community. And though his remains are found with his plane, some will never accept that such a character could be forever gone. They'll go on watching for him. Sure, he's as alive as Elvis and that's probably the way Ken would want it to be. For the rest of us, there's only idle speculation on whether he'd really mended his ways. Or was this just another rest period before his next eye-popping caper? I think that he would have probably, maybe a bit of wishful thinking, gone straight, as the word is. I also harbor the thought that if the opportunity came along to make a very, very fast dollar some way, and he found with his skill that he could maybe make it there, even if it was bending the rules a little bit, he might do it. I've got good memories of Ken. Like, I wouldn't want him for a partner, but I wish to hell he was here tonight and we'd go out for supper and we could shoot ---- about some of the things that he'd done after he left me. What has he done with his flying these people up north? Why did he do that? Like, I've always thought of him as a schemer. What was the scheme behind that? And for the pretty redhead, who hung in through a little thick and a lot of thin, and ignored family, friends, and plain common sense to stick by him, there is some comfort from that last phone call. When he told me on the phone, like he always did, I love ya, and I'll be home shortly. And he said to me, and work hard. He said, I always hope I'll go when I'm flying. He said it would be quick and then gone. But I never thought that that would really happen. You know?