Practically Perfect (24 page)

Within minutes the police set up roadblocks and temporary headquarters at a local community hall, and a search for the bank robber began in earnest. As night was falling Red, a bloodhound owned by the Monroe State Reformatory and used by Washington State police, arrived to aid in the search. The dog and its two handlers no sooner started out when word was received that a woman spotted a man wearing a tan shirt and dark pants duck into bushes near her home south of the former guard’s residence, about ten kilometres from the Canada–United States border. Darkness and dense brush made a night search difficult, so the pursuit was called off until the next morning, when Red and a posse of trackers quickly picked up a scent in a strawberry field. Armed with a machine gun, sawed-off shotguns, rifles, and service revolvers, officers pushed through the field to a gravel road, where Red lost the trail.

The hunt for Pavlukoff throughout the fields and forests of Surrey was the largest in the province’s history and the cause of considerable subsequent embarrassment when it was learned that the elusive bank robber was never in the area. At times the search seemed more farce than serious police work.

The Friday following the robbery was typical of the frantic nature of the search. At 6:30 p.m. police were informed that a man matching Pavlukoff’s description was sighted crossing a field near a Surrey residential area. Officers promptly rushed to the location of the sighting, and combed the area without finding any evidence of Pavlukoff’s presence. Before their search was completed a second call came in, advising that a suspicious character was seen near a railway bridge. Searchers immediately stopped in their tracks, and then took off in a run for their vehicles. Minutes later they reached the bridge. They were just starting to form up to begin their second search of the evening when another call came in. Cars wheeled around, and in a scene more reminiscent of a stockcar race than a police manhunt, tore along gravel roads to yet another bogus sighting.

At 11:00 p.m. a fourth report was received, and minutes later a fifth, when two young women told officers they saw a man in dirty brown clothes peering out at them from a bush. A squad of searchers barely arrived to check out their report when two young males said that they saw Pavlukoff get out of a car. According to the teenagers, the killer asked if there were any police officers in the area.

So many calls were coming in that exhausted officers no sooner arrived at one location when they were called to another. The most exciting report came in around 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning, when the police were advised that a family roused by the barking of their dog believed that they saw Pavlukoff near their acreage. Hilda Hall told officers that as soon as she heard the noise she woke her oldest son, and the two went to the back door of their home. They decided not to go out when they saw their dog backing away from something, or someone, outside their line of sight.

Everett Hall found the revolver the family kept for protection, and finally opened the door. About seventy-five metres away he saw a man standing in the middle of the gravel road. “When he saw me coming towards him he pulled down his head and ducked into the bush. I fired three shots from my revolver into the air because I didn’t want to hit people in the houses behind him.”
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Almost as soon as the Halls sounded the alarm a flood of police cars swept into their yard. Officers under the command of “Machine Gun” Thompson walked and crawled across nearly a mile of fields in pouring rain and near total darkness. On one occasion, a searcher, startled by a sound behind him, swung around to shoot when he found himself face to face with three cows.

Just before noon Saturday yet another sighting sent a posse on a mad scramble. A fifteen-year-old bicyclist was riding along a road bordered on either side by bush. Although the young man never actually saw anyone, he convinced the police that he at least heard the man everyone was after. “I was riding along on my bike following a police car. Suddenly I heard two steps in the bushes and someone fell down. There was a sound of him getting up and then I heard three more steps.”
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The number of leads that yielded nothing was a source of frustration to Vancouver police officials, and six days after the murder of Petrie it was becoming apparent that Pavlukoff was not in Surrey, and likely never had been. The search was called off, but by the time Vancouver detectives advised police forces across western Canada to be on the lookout for the fugitive, the killer was already in Ontario. Although investigators could not find Pavlukoff, they at least located the room he occupied during the four days between his release from prison and the bank robbery. While sifting through the sand along Kitsliano Beach near the spot where Pavlukoff dumped his suit coat and vest, investigators found a key. Within hours they were searching his room.

Pavlukoff spent slightly more than five years on the run, and during the last four he lived in Toronto. The fugitive never stayed in one rooming house for long, and invariably wore every article of clothing he owned, prepared to flee at a moment’s notice. When apprehended he was wearing so many clothes that arresting officers had difficulty determining whether he had a tattoo on his arm. Although Pavlukoff changed rooms frequently, he stayed most often in the area of Toronto where many of the city’s immigrant day labourers resided. According to his last land-lady, the killer avoided contact with others as much as possible and kept his blinds drawn day and night. “He never spoke to anyone and nobody spoke to him.”
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After living hand-to-mouth for a year, working on construction whenever he could get a job, Pavlukoff was hired on a semi-regular basis by an oil heating company. His boss said the killer called himself Ralph McRae, and when they first met, Pavlukoff was dressed in rags. But “he was well spoken, and I took a liking to him. He was hired on a job-to-job basis. We all knew he had something terrible on his mind all the time we worked with him. But he never said anything.”
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Although Pavlukoff was offered lots of work, he turned down most jobs, preferring the anonymity of a part-time labourer. The trade-off meant the bank robber often went hungry. A year before he was caught, he called the owner of the heating company and told him he was sick, and asked for help. The man was worried about Pavlukoff, and after taking him to see a doctor, dropped him off at a city hospital. “When he was recovering from his sickness he worked here alone at nights building an office for me. There was often money left around but there was never a cent stolen.” Only once did the secretive killer talk to his boss about his background, and “then I knew something bad was on his mind. He said he came from the West, but he couldn’t go back.”
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In the five years between his crime and his capture Pavlukoff was never far from the minds of Vancouver detectives, and every year they arranged to have the fugitive’s photograph published in newspapers across the country. A picture of Pavlukoff appeared in Toronto area papers on May 23, 1952. A little over a week later the police received their first solid lead in years. An anonymous caller told police he saw pictures of Canada’s most wanted fugitives in a weekend magazine, and recognized Pavlukoff as the man who periodically window shopped in front of his north Toronto store. The caller even directed police to the street corner in North York where the fugitive often loitered. By the time detectives arrived Pavlukoff was nowhere in sight, but investigators continued to monitor the street corner for months. In early January 1953, the tipster called a second time. “The man you are looking for is standing outside my store right now.” This time the Good Samaritan kept the escaped killer in sight until police showed up.
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Sergeant Arthur Varley was one of two officers sent to find Pavlukoff. Although the killer put on a lot of weight since the bank robbery:

There was no mistaking Pavlukoff. He looks just like the picture of him that was sent all over the continent following the murder. He seemed relieved that it was all over. He looked drawn — I guess being hunted all over the continent for five years would make anyone look that way. From the few remarks he made I could see he had been leading a lonely, secluded life. His clothes were rather poor. He told us he had been living in Toronto and doing odd carpenter jobs around Willowdale. Apparently he never stayed in one place long. He was always on the move, in the uneasy way of a hunted man.
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After nearly six years on the run and a long trial, Walter Pavlukoff was finally convicted of murdering a Vancouver bank manager during a botched robbery attempt. He spent his last days on death row in British Columbia’s Oakalla Prison.
Couttesy of Vancouver Sun.

Before arresting officers took him to the North York station, Pavlukoff insisted he was Ralph McRae, and that he had done nothing wrong. When he was formally taken into custody the fugitive was searched several times. The police seized a seven inch knife, six hacksaw blades, and two letters. One was addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” and the other to his mother.

In his letter to his mother, Pavlukoff made it clear that he viewed himself as a victim, despite spending the greater part of his life victimizing others.

I was doomed when I was still in my cradle. And it is as certain that I shall be killed. They want to hang me. I expect them to do so. I do not wish to hide my mind from reality. When they go to hang someone the victim sees it so that his becomes a terror-stricken hysterical life. Sometimes they see it so that they go to the gallows quietly. I dread it. To me it is an agony beyond all experience. Death and destruction has overwhelmed our family. Not because of what we did but because of what others did. We looked upon fellow human beings and all we saw in them was our own goodness. But they were evil and cruel and selfish and greedy.
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Pavlukoff described thirty years of what he referred to as a life of hunger, taunts, and beatings. I have, he said, been deprived, frustrated, and abused:

“Explain. How can I explain. It is like asking a dead man to explain what it is like being dead.” He noted that when he was fourteen he

was supposed to have the second highest IQ of all the schools in Vancouver. But even then I could feel that I was not as fast mentally as I should have been. And then they began to starve me.

My father worked at pick and shovel in a ditch. In all my life I have never seen anyone with the callouses as he had on his hands. I remember how deep and raw the cracks in his hands were and how he would put Vaseline on them to try and stop them from hurting…. I remember him being tired and how his sweat had stained his undershirt red from the dye in his sweater. I remember how he put wooden boards under the mattress of the old bed that had sagging springs in an effort to help his aching back and to try and sleep.… He died. He tried. He suffered. Now he is dead. I can remember the look in your eyes from starvation and strain.

There is nothing in the future for me. I have lived better in the past four or five years than I have since I was a child. But I have been hungry and cold and wet and done without a good sleep many times … three years ago I had pneumonia and pleurisy.

I will be carrying a note with me saying I want to be cremated when I am dead. I want to die alone. If you want me cremated in Vancouver it is of no difference to me.… If money cannot be obtained to do this then burn me in a garbage incinerator if necessary. But burn me so that there is nothing left of me as quickly as possible.

My life has been so miserable I wish I had never been born. There just doesn’t seem to be any point in having lived it. I have tried to do what was right and decent but I seem to have suffered in the same proportion. I would rather be dead than rot in jail.

From the time they were hunting me to kill me I gave myself five years. Five years in which I would try to live my life as my life wanted to in an effort to get back to my normal self and gain a control. And to prepare so that I could give people some of their own back before I was killed. And to arrange so that when I died I was blown up by explosives into nothing. It has been four years now. People have laughed at me and drove me so hard that I feared for my life … and so I wanted to wait one more year. Now I don’t care. Do not worry about me. I am sorry I could not help you. I wish you all well. Goodbye. Your son. Walter Pavlukoff.
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As soon as Pavlukoff was officially identified, a detective from Vancouver flew to Toronto to escort the killer home. When the officer advised Pavlukoff that he was being charged with murder, the distraught escapee broke down in tears. When he regained his composure he told the detective: “I don’t know what to say. I want to get back and get it all over with. I want to see my mother once more. I have nothing to hope for and there is nothing that I can say that will help me.”
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