Dead Ends
Authors: Paul Willcocks
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© 2014 University of Regina Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any meansâgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or placement in information storage and retrieval systems of any sort shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright.
Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens.
The text of this book is printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with earth-friendly vegetable-based inks.
Cover and text design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press.
Editor for the Press: David McLennan, University of Regina Press.
Copy editor: Anne James.
Cover photo: “portrait,” © Grabi /iStockphoto.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Cataloguing in Publication (
CIP
) data available at the Library and Archives Canada web site:
www.collectionscanada.gc.ca
and at
www.uofrpress.ca/publications/Dead-Ends
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| University of Regina Press, University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, TEL WEB |
The University of Regina Press acknowledges the support of the Creative Industry Growth and Sustainability program, made possible through funding provided to the Saskatchewan Arts Board by the Government of Saskatchewan through the Ministry of Parks, Culture, and Sport. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
GangsterResearching this book provided a reminder of our shared debt to the people who gather our history while it happens, preserve the records through the years, and come up with new ways to make the information accessible.
Newspaper reporters and editors across British Columbia think of their jobs as providing information for readers of the next edition. But since 1858, they have been creating an invaluable historical record of events, and of society's attitudes.
Archivists, librarians, and historians have preserved and organized the original documents that make work like this possibleâthe court judgments, letters, wanted posters, scrawled notes, and photos.
We all owe them thanks.
Thanks also to Donna Grant and David McLennan and the University of Regina Press for the chance to work on this book.
And, most importantly, to Jody Paterson, for her encouragement, sharp editorial eye, and ability to make every day a new adventure.
I was twenty-five when I spent six months as the police and court reporter for the
Red Deer Advocate
, and had a glimpse into another world. The stories were intense, tragic, funny, surprisingâsometimes all at the same time. The characters, on both sides of the criminal divide, were compelling and complex, the best and worst of humanity on display every day.
And the crimes I covered sometimes turned out to reveal a great deal about the rest of us, and the society we live in.
The stories in this book span more than 150 years, from the high-profile and infamous to the almost forgotten. British Columbia has a rich tradition of outlaws, wrongdoing, and evil. The challenge was narrowing the list to forty crimes.
It was tempting to leave out people like Clifford Olson as too horrible or well-known. But it has been more than three decades since that summer of terror. We should not forget.
I looked for crimes that told us something about ourselves. Just as we should not forget Olson, we should not forget the entrenched racism that allowed a young man to be kidnapped by police agents because he was Chinese. Nor should we fail to recognize our shared role in denying the help that would have kept some of the people in the book from becoming victims, and others from becoming criminals.
And mostly I looked for crimes that were just darn good stories. That was the easy part. Bank robbers, con men, killers, and thieves lead fascinating, sometimes repellent, lives in a world most of us rarely get to see.
R
ene Castellani stood above the city of Vancouver in the summer of 1965. Literally, as he waved to people on busy West Broadway from a car atop the twenty-nine-metre neon sign at BowMac Motors.
Within two years, he was sentenced to stand on a different kind of platform. A gallows.
Castellani was a star with
CKNW
. He was the Dizzy Dialer, king of prank calls and stunts, broadcasting live when the Beatles made their only Vancouver appearance in the summer of 1964. He fooledâand outragedâVancouverites with another stunt, pretending to be an Indian maharajah who wanted to buy British Columbia, swathed in robes, surrounded by bodyguards and beautiful women.
In June 1965, he pledged to stay in a car atop BowMac's landmark neon sign until every vehicle on the lot sold. It took eight days. (The dealer's sales manager was a young go-getter named Jimmy Pattison, who went on to become a billionaire and one of British Columbia's most successful entrepreneurs.)
But while Castellani was waving to the crowds, his wife, Esther, was stricken in a hospital four blocks away, suffering from symptoms that baffled doctors.
By July 11, she was dead.
Who knows how Castellani, married almost nineteen years, got the idea. Maybe it was the times. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who all released their first albums in 1964. Protests against the Vietnam War broke out. Ken Kesey and
the Merry Pranksters set out in an old bus to bring
LSD
to America, and long-haired young people started arriving in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. Castellani was forty, and no hippie. But maybe he decided the old rules didn't apply any more.
Or maybe it was just a more familiar story. A man wanted out of a marriage because he had met someone new, younger, prettier. And decided on a deadly solution.
And Rene almost got away with it.
It should have been a good time for the Castellani family.
Rene's career had finally taken off. Two years earlier, things had looked bleak. The family had to leave Campbell River, where Castellani was assistant manager of the Willows Hotel, when the historic building burned to the ground, killing four people. (Even then, Castellani was a promoterâwhen a resident reported seeing a “sea monster” off the city's waterfront, Castellani quickly offered a fifty-dollar reward for a photo, hoping to increase business at the hotel.)
In Vancouver, he found his niche. He was promotions manager at
CKNW
, the “Big Dog,” as it billed itself, as well as an on-air personality. His wife, Esther, described as happy and upbeat by her manager, worked in a children's clothing store. With their twelve-year-old daughter, Jeannine, they lived in a tidy, one-storey duplex on a pleasant street in Kerrisdale, a pleasant neighbourhood then and now.
But behind the picture window that overlooked West 42nd Avenue, things were going terribly wrong.
Early in 1965, Esther received late-night anonymous calls from a woman who said her husband was “going around with someone else.” He left early for work, but when she called, he wasn't there. And she found a love letter in his pocket from someone named Lolly.