Dead Ends (13 page)

For Klatsassin, it was a day of victories on the field of battle. But when the news reached Victoria almost two weeks later, the
Daily Colonist
headlined the story with two words—“Deadly Massacre.” Over the next month, a homesteader and three men running a pack train were killed by the Tsilhqot'in.

In Victoria and New Westminster, officials of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia saw the uprising as a real threat.

Two Royal Navy ships and almost 150 men were sent to put down the rebellion.

The forests and mountains defeated the colonial force, largely composed of paid civilians. Progress was painfully slow, and provisions quickly exhausted. The Tsilhqot'in seemed to vanish.

But Klatsassin and his party, which included women and children, were suffering as well. Summer would soon end, food was scarce, and the group was ill-prepared for winter.

On August 15, eight Tsilhqot'in warriors, including Klatsassin, walked into the Chilko River camp of one of the colonial expeditions. They believed they had been promised a chance to meet British Columbia governor Frederick Seymour and discuss terms of surrender. Seymour had arrived to take up his post just two weeks before the killings, and insisted on joining the expedition.

Instead, they were arrested.

The Tsilhqot'in were taken to Quesnelmouth, as Quesnel was then known, and brought before Matthew Begbie — later known as the “Hanging Judge.” In fact, Begbie spoke several Native languages and had, four years earlier, found a California man guilty of assaulting an Aboriginal man solely on the basis of testimony from other Natives, an unprecedented ruling.

Begbie was troubled by the way the men were persuaded to surrender. In the south, critics—including Waddington's business and political rivals—said Brewster and the road crew created the problems by mistreating the Tsilhqot'in.

Ultimately, none of that mattered. Five of the eight, including Klatsassin, were found guilty of murder. They were hung together on October 26 at dawn on a cold morning. About 250 people showed up to watch the wooden trap doors open as one, and the ropes snapped tight.

The Tsilhqot'in never gave up on defending their territory, though the battlegrounds evolved, moving from the forests of British Columbia's northwest into the wood-paneled courtrooms of the cities.

In 2014, the Tsilhqot'in emerged victorious from a 21-year legal battle, as the Supreme Court of Canada granted them title to their traditional territories. The court found the Tsilhqot'in—like many British Columbia First Nations—had never signed treaties or ceded the right to their land. The precedent-setting ruling granted the Tsilhqot'in title to 1,700 square kilometres, the same land Klatsassin set out to defend.

B
ritish Columbia has seen some extraordinary con men.

But no one quite like Christopher Rocancourt.

Rocancourt duped victims with the most implausible claims of riches and celebrity, donning identities like most people change their clothes. For the young Frenchman, it was a game. If the people he swindled couldn't see that he was lying, they deserved to lose their money and be humiliated. If he was caught, it was just a challenge to escape and start again.

Rocancourt was already a wanted man when he breezed into Vancouver in early 2000. He was thirty-three, and a veteran of scams and cons on two continents. He had survived a rough-and-tumble childhood in northern France, his father an alcoholic house painter and his mother a young prostitute. He spent time in an orphanage.

Still in his teens, Rocancourt set out to recreate himself. He moved to the bright lights of Paris, found friends with money, and told the world he was, implausibly, Prince de Galitzine, a rich Russian aristocrat. (He spoke no Russian.) He settled into a life of crime—cons, forgery, thefts, and even, according to police, a role in a violent $400,000 robbery of a Geneva jewelry store in 1991.

When things got too hot in Europe, Rocancourt, just twenty-three, took his act to the United States.

He landed in Los Angeles, and used charm, his French accent, and a series of fake identities to line up new victims. He was a cat burglar, he told some people. A rich international
businessman. A nephew of movie producer Dino De Laurentiis. The son of Sophia Loren. Whatever worked.

And he lived the part, sharing a house with actor Mickey Rourke for a while, living in a $75,000-a-month Beverly Wilshire Hotel room, negotiating to buy a mansion, a jet, and luxury cars.

None of the deals ever closed. But they all impressed people who advanced money to invest in business deals that never seemed to happen.

So did the beautiful women who always seemed to be at Rocancourt's side. Not just his wife, Pia Reyes, a former Playmate of the Month. Girlfriends too.

He wasn't particularly good-looking. He was short—“five feet nine and a half,” he always insisted—with a high forehead and prominent nose. Expensive haircuts added a certain style. “He's not an attractive man,” a woman friend observed. “So I always wondered how he had his way with the ladies.”

But in 1998, things were growing complicated in Los Angeles. Rocancourt went to a police station to report he had been shot at, and police discovered he was using a forged passport. He was charged, released on bail—and promptly skipped for the East Coast.

He ended up in the Hamptons, summer resort for the rich of New York, both new money and old, and wonderful hunting ground for a charming French con artist.

And between Los Angeles and the Hamptons, Rocancourt became Christopher Rockefeller, part of the famously wealthy family. He lived the part, travelling with an aide, chartering helicopters to make grand entrances, spending evenings in expensive restaurants and days shopping for a mansion.

It was easy to persuade people to loan him a little money or invest in a scheme, to dodge bills for the champagne-fuelled nights and expensive hotels and inns. He was a Rockefeller. The money was no problem.

Not everyone was fooled, though. Why would a Rockefeller have a heavy French accent? And those aides and hangers-on seemed thuggish for a wealthy young man of the
world. More like crooks. Creditors inevitably grew impatient with the stories, and victims got tired of waiting for returns on their investments.

Rocancourt was arrested, facing a raft of larceny and fraud charges. He posted bail, and promptly fled with his wife and Zeus, their son.

Wanted on both coasts, Rocancourt decided a trip to Canada might be wise in 2000. And Whistler, the booming ski town with visitors from around the world, seemed just the place to find new prey.

He adopted a new identity—Michael Van Hoven—with a wonderfully brazen backstory. He was, he told new acquaintances, the son of a reclusive Dutch billionaire businessman, and was himself worth some $250 million.

But his love was car racing, and Ferrari had just signed him to a $28-million-a-year Formula One contract.

It was breathtakingly bold. Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing. Ferrari's two F1 drivers are international celebrities. The story would have crumbled with the tiniest bit of checking.

Rocancourt turned creating his new character into an artistic exercise.

“For the look: small glasses and slicked back hair,” he wrote in a memoir. “Classic, serious, sporty. Obvious character traits: high self-esteem, modesty and kindness. Of course. I tried testing out my new identity on women to observe the reaction. I remember a gorgeous saleswoman in the cashmere shop of the shopping arcade of the hotel. What a beauty! She was very impressed with Van Hoven.”

The new look alone was not enough. He took a $1,500-a-night suite in the Westin Resort and Spa, and made sure he was noticed. Sometimes that meant tipping lavishly, a $100 bill for a small service. Other times, Rocancourt pushed in front of other clients and demanded special treatment, acting out the entitlement of the rich.

The trap was being set. “I established my hang-out at the Bearfoot Bistro, a fine dining restaurant with one of the best
wine cellars on the continent,” he wrote. He bought expensive wines, talked about his wealth, how much he loved Whistler, and his desire to buy property. It always worked.

“Usually, a real-estate agent will show up within 48 hours. And the other offers follow: ‘You should invest in my business, Mr. Van Hoven—I can make you lots of money, Mr. Van Hoven.' All you have to do is choose.”

It worked. A real estate agent showed Rocancourt the Chateau du Lac, a partially completed home that would be the most expensive in Whistler. I'll take it, said Rocancourt, writing a cheque for a $100,000 deposit that somehow never cleared.

That was enough to let him show off “his” new house to acquaintances, even directing the builders to make changes. Who could doubt the wealth of a man who had just bought the most expensive home in the famously high-priced Whistler real estate market?

Not Robert Baldock. The Vancouver businessman was trying to launch a company that would market a promising but unproven tool to assess mental illness by monitoring heart rates. It was a high-risk investment, and a tough sell. He was no neophyte. Baldock was about sixty, with a serious business background.

Baldock and his wife, Norma, were introduced to Rocancourt in Vancouver. He quickly came to be the white knight who would solve all the problems in launching the company.

Rocancourt assured the Baldocks that his father would invest $5 million. And they began helping him while the deal came together, advancing him money, renting him cars, buying him a $5,000 laptop, letting him use Robert's credit card. Baldock paid a mysterious lawyer to work on the deal; the “lawyer” was really Rocancourt.

Baldock even bought a $26,000 Rolex and gave it to Rocancourt, who said his father collected watches and would be delighted by the gift.

The $5 million never came. The excuses should have set off alarm bells. Rocancourt told Baldock he missed one meeting because he had to fly to Brazil to race for Ferrari.

But Baldock wanted to believe. So much that he twice flew to Geneva for meetings with Rocancourt's non-existent father, and accepted his excuses when the meetings never took place.

Rocancourt liked to cast himself as a kind of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and greedy.

In fact, he preyed on anyone who crossed his path.

Katie Olver was a twenty-four-year-old front-desk clerk at the Westin when she crossed paths with Rocancourt, who befriended Katie and her boyfriend, Jon Reader. She was Australian; her boyfriend was British. Rocancourt was a generous friend, picking up the tab for fancy dinners and nights on the town and letting them stay in his suite when he was away. He and his beautiful wife seemed like real friends.

So when Rocancourt said he had connections and could help them get green cards so they could travel and work in the United States, they were glad to hand over their passports and $475 each for the fees.

And they didn't think it odd when Rocancourt, saying he had to rush to the United Kingdom on business and didn't have time to exchange money, asked if they could give him a few thousand pounds. They gave him almost all their money—about £3,000, some $6,500. Rocancourt said he'd have $10,000 deposited into their account, a nice return.

Olver and Reader needed the money. They were about to head to the United States (though without green cards). As they drove toward Los Angeles, they kept checking their bank balance. And slowly, painfully, the couple realized they'd been had.

But they didn't yet know how badly. Until Reader tried to use his credit card and found Rocancourt had somehow obtained the number and run up $22,000 in charges. Those lavish dinners and expensive wines—they were charged to Reader's own credit card.

The Baldocks—out more than $150,000—were also growing suspicious. When they learned Rocancourt's deal to buy the Whistler mansion had fallen through, they called the
RCMP
.

Rocancourt could have taken off. The scam couldn't run forever. But he was greedy, calling the Baldocks, supposedly from Geneva, telling them the $5 million was almost ready.

RCMP
traced the cellphone call to the Oak Bay Beach Hotel across the water in Victoria, fading but grand, and in a ritzy neighbourhood with some spectacular oceanfront mansions.

But Rocancourt wouldn't get the chance to find new victims. On April 26, 2001, Rocancourt left the hotel at 11:30 p.m. The police emergency response team was waiting.

Even in jail, Rocancourt was unrepentant, welcoming media attention, working on a book, and insulting his victims. Celebrity, it seemed, was a new kind of scam. He spent a year in a Victoria jail and used it to begin constructing a new legend—this time using his real name. He pleaded guilty to the charges in Canada and was deported to the United States, where he was sentenced to almost four years in jail.

Rocancourt used his jail time well. He revelled in a wave of publicity—
TV
profiles, magazine and newspaper articles. He called media—collect—from his prison cell to encourage them to write about him. And they did. He told new stories—no more likely to be true than the old ones. He became the daring, dashing gentleman thief.

It was, perhaps, Rocancourt's greatest reinvention. He claimed to have conned people out of $40 million. Even if exaggerated, that represents terrible damage to hundreds of innocent people.

But Rocancourt emerged from prison as a self-created, charming rogue and international celebrity.

Within months of his release, he showed up on the red carpet at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, supermodel Naomi Campbell on his arm.

Rocancourt didn't have to pretend to be someone else any more.

A
catalogue of criminal types passes through the courts. The drunks. The addicts. People with mental illness. The bewildered first-time offenders. The career criminals.