April 23, 2025 • 34 mins
After a series of jail breaks, Roger heads to the bank-robbing capital of Canada for his biggest score yet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
In the summer of nineteen fifty nine, Roger was free
as a bird, well free as a bird on parole.
He was out of the Kingston Penitentiary. He was living
in his parents' home in Cornwall, Ontario, and he was
determined to not just pull his weight, but to help
his parents with their financial woes. His dad's cancer was
(00:26):
getting worse and his mortgage and hospital payments were falling behind,
so Roger decided that he was going to help out
in the only way he knew how, which is why
a few weeks later, he found himself five hundred and
(00:47):
fifty five miles away from home in Fredericton, New Brunswick,
behind bars again. But Roger wasn't too concerned to be here.
Being hind bars in the literal sense was sort of
best case scenario, because the thing about bars is you
can cut through them. From iHeart podcasts and Campsite Media,
(01:19):
I'm Sam Mullens and this is Go Boy, Episode three,
Legend of the jail Breaking bank Robbery. When Roger was
(01:40):
first brought to the Fredericton County Jail, the guard search
had failed to discover two very important items that he
always tried to have on his person no matter what.
Number one, the soul of his right boot contained a
hacksaw blade, and number two, the soul of his left
(02:02):
boot also contained a hacksaw blade.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I got this hat that pattin bars all the time.
I cut so many right in my life, So I
went to county jail and handed paptain bars. I always
got actual ways hidden in his soul by shot.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
When Rogers set out to help his dad get some money,
he didn't expect to be cutting bars in a prison
cell two provinces over less than a month later. But
there was a score he'd heard about in his hometown.
There was a rumor that at a nearby Cornwall general
store there was a safe chalk full of the owner's savings.
(02:41):
So the plan was simple enough. Typically with these kind
of scores, he'd physically remove the safe and take it
away to a private barn or garage somewhere so that
he could blow towards his way in. But when he
was in the act, something went sideways and the place
(03:01):
was surrounded by police before he even got the thing outside.
How bitter he must have felt that on his very
first foray into the robbing arts as a graduate of KP.
He couldn't even get a safe from a general store.
How hopeless it must have felt to know that he'd
be back behind bars again for likely a much longer stint.
(03:25):
This time, it was game over right, Not so fast,
as the Ontario Provincial Police were leading him to a
cell in the Cornwall police station, Roger suddenly broke free,
and still handcuffed, dove headfirst through a window, falling two stories.
He disappeared before anyone with a badge could even figure
(03:48):
out which way he went. And from there it was
a summer to remember. He stole a car and drove
two provinces over to Fredericton in Atlantic Canada, where he
spent most of the summer working at a carnival. When
the carnival gig was over, he stole another car and
headed to Montreal, where he immediately got into a high
(04:10):
speed chase with the police, was arrested and sent back
here to Fredericton, the city he stole the car from,
and he was booked into the county jail where he
was awaiting his trial. Roger didn't like awaiting anything, so
he started cutting the bars right away. When they arrested him.
(04:32):
He gave them a bogus name and claimed to have
never been in trouble with the law before, But he
knew it was only a matter of time before they
figured out who they had a kid that was a
bona fide go boy, so he had to work fast.
The Fredericton County Jail was just a small operation with
(04:54):
a handful of holding cells, a boutique purgatory for those
on their way to much larger prison, or the gallows,
which were still a thing. Cutting bars is a lot
more complicated than you'd think. It's more of an art form,
one that Roger eventually became a master of and would
talk about often. You need to choose the right ones,
(05:18):
learn how to evaluate which section of the welding looks
the weakest, the quietest, and figure out which direction one
should saw.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And don't cut the bar in an angle, because you've
got to keep putting the back and take us a
week to cut you all day.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Trying to cut a prison bar with a hacksaw blade
is a lot like trying to cut the strings of
a violin with a spoon. It can make an awful
amount of racket and take a long time to get through.
Its bar. And at the end of a successful night
of sawing, you of course need to hide your work.
It's not like you can throw up a construction cone
(05:54):
and walk off the job. You need to find something
to hold the bar perfectly in place.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I take the bar I grew from the library books,
and some scotch tape from the library books and soap
and all that, and I take the bar in place.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The shave soap would be the glue, and then he'd
take a small strip of tape off the spine of
the library book and finish it off with a coat
of shoe polish for color.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So when using the seam scotch tape for a week now,
it's starting to let out.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
The time in between the first cut of the first
bar and the final cut of the final bar is
an extremely stressful time. Every time a guard would walk by,
Roger's entire being would clench.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Then like the garden com walk down this hall pass
all the cells go into the washington and come by
the steel barrier of ent into the hanggun room, and
you give the barrier shake And every time he'd shake
that game my heart just a bus stop that gate along.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And if it wasn't the guards fraying his nerves, there
was the bar cutter's other greatest foe, gravity.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
And it's heartbreaking when you work on a bar for
a week, and at three o'clock in the morning, while
you're waiting to wake up in the morning to work
on it and more, it falls down in the middle
of the night.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Back in the Frederickton County jail, Roger had made some
real headway. He only had one or two bars to
go before he could fit all the way through, and
he was determined to get the hell out of here
so that he could get back to the mission at
hand and find a way to score some cash to
help out his folks. Everything was going according to plan
(07:29):
until one of the guards work in the graveyard shift
must have heard roger sigh. They slammed the door open
suddenly at three am and caught him blade in hand.
The guards wrestled him out of his cell and put
him into a different, more secure one. Roger still had
(07:52):
the other hacksaw blade taped to his foot, but the
joke was on him because in the new drum they
threw him in, there wasn't a bar to cut, just
four cinderblock walls with a solid door. The next day,
the guards added a series of extra locking mechanisms to
(08:12):
the other side of his door, confirming to Roger that
his time was up. They had finally figured out his
real name and thus his reputation. And this is where
things got weird. Picture Roger in this new coffin like cell,
(08:33):
sulking about this considerable setback, just feeling lower than ever,
waiting for them to transport him to his next slice
of hell. When he hears it, someone was tapping on
the side wall of his cell. When he stood up
to investigate, he heard that the taps were moving in
(08:55):
a pattern. They begin in the back corner and move
slowly to the front of his cell. He started following
the percussive sound as it moved, when he discovered that
he was being led to a tiny hole in the
wall about knee height that was stuffed with toilet paper.
When he dug the paper plug out, he got down
(09:17):
on all fours to peer through when he saw staring
back at him but two feet away, a very pretty eye,
the eye of a young woman halfway through a six
month sentence in the cell beside his She said her
name was Ninni excitedly. Roger gestured for her to step
(09:40):
back so he could have a look at her. Roger
describes meeting Ninny in his book as read here by
an actor.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
By midnight we were fast friends, and things got informal,
to the point where she would strip down to her
bra and panties and roll around teasingly on her bunk.
The thought that I would be returning to the penitentiary
still a virgin troubled me very much, and that thought
inflamed the passion in me for a girl. When she
smiled wickedly and arched her back, I'd clowt the plaster
(10:10):
and break out and sweat. If you want me, Roger,
she'd murmur, silkily, why don't you find a way to
come over and visit me.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Ninni obviously didn't know that she was talking to the
one man who could accomplish just that. Roger and Ninni
hatched the most naive of plans. She slid him a
butter knife that she'd hidden from the guards, and he
was to use it to chisel through the wall so
that he could cut the bars in her cell, and
(10:40):
then they could run away together. Roger worked frantically desperately
in the way only a virgin young man could. He
got the first cinderblock out of the wall.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I became so obsessed with my little project that I
had very little inclination for small talk, and Ninni was
beginning to pass. To keep her spirits up, I would
fill her mind with happy thoughts about what we would
do together after we escaped. But the excitement started wearing thin,
and the dire consequences dawned dark and threatening.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Roger was only a few hours from getting all the
way through when suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of
her cell door swinging open. Roger froze and pressed his
ear to the hole, just in time to hear his
dear Ninny's voice shout. And he has a hack saw
blade too. He staggered to the center of the cell,
(11:36):
his face buried in his hands, disbelieving what he'd just heard.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Out in the corridor, there was a wild stampede of
confused activity and hysterical yelling as the sheriff and his
powerful trustees started fumbling with the locks.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And this is where you need to understand something about
Roger Karan. When he is totally cooked, when he is cornered,
it is never over. As the three guards prepared to
open the door, they had no idea what was waiting
for them on the other side an explosion. When the
(12:11):
door swung open, the guards didn't know what hit them.
Roger came at them ferociously, fists swinging.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
My assault was so fierce and unexpected, I momentarily had
the edge. As I struggled to my feet, Roger saw
a stairwell and leapt down them a flight at a time.
With the guards in hot pursuit, he ran into an office,
and most people would have hidden, would have realized that
they were cornered and had no choice but to come
(12:39):
out with their hands up.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But that's not Roger's style. At the instant of the
guards burst into the office, Roger dove headlong through a window,
hit the ground, and limped away, with a guard shouting
at him through the open window. Roger made his way
to the highway, where he hitched a ride bound for
(13:04):
the US Board. The painful part about being on the
run that summer was that Roger knew the one place
he couldn't go was the place he wanted to be
the most home. Roger would call his dad on the
(13:25):
phone in the middle of the night to tell him
that he was okay. Since he last saw his father,
he'd been pursued by police in three provinces, had stolen
two cars, and had escaped custody twice. It had been
less than a month. Roger was surprised that his dad
never told him to turn himself in, perhaps because he
(13:48):
still had that bootlegger spirit in him. Roger thumbed a
ride from some teenagers who took him to the main
border where he crossed undetected, and he thought he was
home free. But then in one of those this could
only happen to Roger Strokes of profound bad luck, one
of the guards from the very prison he just escaped from,
(14:12):
was on a road trip with his family when who
should he pass hitchhiking on the main highway but the
young man the rest of the country was looking for.
He immediately called it in and Roger was picked up
by the highway patrolman, delivered to the RCMP, or, as
Roger called him, the Horseman, and before he knew it,
(14:34):
he was back in maximum security with a fresh two
and a half years to serve. Summer was over, Roger
was sent to serve his time in a new Brunswick
prison called Dorchester. Up until this point, when Roger entered
a new institution, he would lay low at first and
(14:55):
suss things out for a time. But he decided that
he was going to things a little different this time.
This time, he decided he was going to check's notes,
fight everyone.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
You could fight with your best friend and be best
friend at one guy in the next time you just
looked back to fighting. We could be fighting as like
at Jungle.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
The toughest guys in prison, three guys in one day.
It didn't matter. He just wanted to throw his hands.
He needed to.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
My fists would act like demented playmates, with mind and
temper of their own. It was as if all the
hate and frustration of being a born loser had seeped
down into my fists. Sick at heart being pushed around,
I lashed out viciously at anything that was cool to me.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Roger got into so many fights in Dorchester that they
had to move him to another province, to Saint Vincent
de Paul in Quebec, where his fists picked up right
where they left off. And it was during this toxic
time that Roger got a left her from his sister
Sue from back home, sharing the unfortunate news that their
(16:05):
father had passed away, and it was too much for
Roger to process, so he snapped. When my father died
when I was in prison, I was in the cell.
I went berserk. He destroyed every possession he had, and
by the time he was done, even his own body
had been smashed to pieces. The last bit of hope
(16:26):
he'd held on to was gone.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
That Roger was devastated when my father passed away. He
was inside because I remember writing to the warden. You know,
it was worth a shot to see if he could
attend the funeral, and that was not granted. But I
did try, you know, hoping maybe you know that that
(16:52):
might be a closure for Roger whatever. But he did
not get to see that. I don't think that was
easy for him.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Roger's final months at Saint Vincent were spent not in
a rage, but in quiet reflection, turning over an inescapable
thought he had failed his father. He wasn't there for
him when he died, and he certainly hadn't been there
to help out with the bills like he said he
would to help keep his father comfortable at the end.
(17:28):
Roger was never guided by any faith or ideology, but
one animating force that he did hold on to was
that one day he was going to make his father proud.
One day he was going to clean up his act
and turn into the man his father believed he could become.
(17:49):
But now he'd never have the chance. And with this
devastating realization came in a lusive bit of clarity. When
he got out this time, there truly be nothing to
hold him back now. When he got out of Saint Vincent,
Roger said.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
I no longer have any intentions of going straight about
my release.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I have wasted all those years I kept saying to myself,
I can get that one big score. I'll prove to
them that they're wrong.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Roger was paroled in nineteen sixty two, and he was
hungry to make a name for himself. This wasn't going
to be like the other times he'd been let out. No,
this time he had a plan, and he knew exactly
where he wanted to go.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
America.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
France and Britain have influenced the growth of Montreal, capital
of Canada's Quebec province.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
In the nineteen sixties, Montreal was the place to be
if you wanted to be a thief, and not a
small time thief. Montreal was where you went to become
a bank robber. So the plan for Roger was this,
build a solid bank robber crew and start hitting banks.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I must admit when I first got out, I used
to look at things like some guys look at girls
and miniskirvis.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
There were so many bank robberies happening in Montreal that
the police let it be known that there would be
serious consequences to anyone they caught pulling a job, that
they were going to show up shooting if they had to.
But that didn't seem to deter Roger in his gang.
The only thing that did seem to stop them was
if the bank they pulled up to was already in
(19:33):
the process of being robbed by another crew.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
And I've nearly walked thanks. I'm trying to to went
to all that's a good good day. We pulled up
to a bank and bank arbor Tres running out and
he said, oh, Dan, you're here first.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
No. Roger was grateful that he'd been accepted into a
group of professionals like this. Things were going well at work,
and would you believe it that, in between robberies Roger
managed to finally fall in love. Denise was the sister
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of one of the guys on his crew, a single
mother and cocktail waitress who was a little older than Roger.
She got a kick out of him right away. He
was rough around the edges in the way most ex
cons are, but he was also surprisingly chivalrous, gentle, and funny.
While he had experienced more things than other twenty some things,
(20:27):
it was clear that he was delayed in other areas,
and she loved seeing how hard he'd blush when she
flirted with him.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Roger wrote, it took me twenty three years to finally
lose my virginity, and when it did happen, it was
as wonderful and fulfilling as the literature on the subject
had prepared me to experience.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
After their first night together, Roger showed up the next
day at Denise's with a bunch of boxes and announced
that he was moving in.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
I moved in with all my belongings, accepting the responsibility
of caring for loving both her and her daughter, Diane,
who was at boarding school.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You see, Roger never half ascidly does anything it seems
like Denise coming into Roger's life when she did change things.
Whereas before he walked into these banks, they were knocking
off like he was invincible, he suddenly had something to lose.
And I guess it was only through this first hit
(21:24):
of romantic love that he finally grasped how risky and
unsustainable this life he was living was, and if he
kept going like this, it was only a matter of
time before he got pinched or worse shot.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So I burst into I remember running in the bank
and he looked kind of empty, and I'm saying, stick
him up, arroy lyon the floor. All of a sudden
a half a dozen big policemen popped up and behind
the town of both group vets and sheet and got
into shotguns. He said, do stick them up, and I
said no, no, no, I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Soon as he said you stick him up, I was
about take feet off the groundling the ringstrake through the
lake glass window.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
By this point, jumping through a window was almost a
normal occurrence in Roger's life. What was new was the
bullets whizzing past his head.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Running down the street, the machine guns, shotgun bullets, Everything's
winding around by years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
It was only when Roger made it back to the
getaway car that he realized he had badly injured himself
on the broken glass and was bleeding everywhere. Making matters
worse was that his crew had a rule, if the
first bank doesn't work, we hit a different one before
calling it a day, even if you're bleeding out in
the back seat.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
We pulled up to our secondary bank about two miles away,
and getting behind the car, I'm all gloody, we're going
all He ran.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
To inspect the banks, big banks, boom boot without being weight.
He zoomed the way.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
He took me to it. N behind the world doctor.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
The underworld doctor had his work cut out for him
that day.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
He's putting all these meadow plants, about one hundred and
baggy meadow plants, always said on the skin to get
you know, is that kind environment?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
With all these close calls with the Montreal police, a
sense of anxiety was creeping into Roger and his gang's psyche.
The city was getting too hot, even for a crew
as skilled as theirs.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
The jug patrols were so well organized that it was
suicide to remain inside of a bank for longer than
ninety seconds with a countdown restriction on each heyst. The
take was small whatever was in the teller's cages, and
so the ambition of the gang I joined up with
was to hit that one big score.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Roger and his crew got to thinking that instead of
making off with all these small scores from the tellers,
what if they instead made plans for something really big.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
I was living in bliss with Denise when our gang
was offered that one big score. We'd all dreamed of.
An ex con in the city of Saint John in
New Brunswick set he had a score that was worth
almost a quarter of a million dollars and wanted to
know if we were interested. So we immediately set out
by plane to check it out personally.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
By no means was it going to be an easy tank.
It was a job where everything would have to go
perfectly on account of the geography of the place. The
city of Saint John, New Brunswick is surrounded by water,
the Atlantic Ocean in the Bay of Fundia on one
side and a treacherous river on the other. The only
(24:32):
way to get back to where their hideouts would be
was via bridge. So more so than any job in
the past, They needed to be one hundred percent positive
when they took control of the bank that no one
pushed the silent alarm. The police station was only a
few blocks away, and Roger's crew came to understand that
(24:52):
the police could close the bridge in just a minute
or so, thus trapping them. It was risky, but the
thing that set this job apart from every other one
that they pulled was that they weren't just going to
empty the safe. Every second Thursday between eleven and eleven
twenty five am, an armored truck with just two armed
(25:16):
guards would deliver one hundred ten thousand dollars cash to
the branch, making the job in irresistible two four. So
the plan was this, secure the bank without the alarm,
empty the vault, wait for the armored truck to arrive,
disarm the shotgun guard at the moment he walks in,
(25:37):
empty the truck, and high tail it over the bridge,
where the five of them would be split up in
separate hideouts while things cooled down. After that, they could
head back to Quebec victorious and chop up the score
of their dreams.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
My dream at the time was to make just enough
bread to invest in a health Gym, thus joining the
land Lunchbucket Brigade and maybe even marrying Denise to complete
the picture.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Thursday morning, March first, nineteen sixty two, the bandits checked
their weapons and went over the plan one final time.
It had been decided that Roger, the only member of
the crew who spoke without a French dialect, would be
the one doing all the talking. They didn't want anyone
to know that they were a Montreal gang. Roger pulled
(26:28):
up at the downtown bank of Nova Scotia just before
eleven am. He watched as the first two members of
his crew went inside posing his customers, and moments later,
Roger shifted a shotgun into his coat and got out
of the car. Gripped with adrenaline, he stormed into the
bank wearing a ski mask gun in hand.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
The next most danger spotted when you first out of
the bank and you expect them to say put your
hands up on then, oh I'll never win.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
You just black to be as it said exactly. That's
how he secured macrones up and kill at least one
of them.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Two members of the crew got all the bank employees
away from the alarm buttons and onto the floor Roger shouted,
hold up, this is a hold up, then jumped on
the counter and said to the tellers below, touch that
alarm and I'll blow your feet off. With a bank
secure and everyone in position, the crew took a small breath.
(27:26):
The most important part was done. They took the manager
to open the big safe in the rear and throw
the cash into some pillowcases, while another member of the
crew kept an eye out for the arrival of the
truck and slickly took hostage anyone who unknowingly entered the bank.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
By eleven twenty am, two pillowcases were overflowing with money.
As yet, there was also no sign of the armored truck,
and we were all becoming increasingly anxious.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
About this time, an old lady in her seventies entered
walking with a cane. She was thin and wore a
flowery dress and gold spectacles. Upon seeing the crew, she exclaimed,
oh my. As Roger came over to tell her that
everything was going to be okay. He led her over
to a chair in the manager's office, where he quickly
(28:15):
pulled the telephone cord out of the wall and told
her to sit tight. At eleven twenty eight am, the
armored truck was now officially late, so in a panic,
the gang started making preparations to get out of there
while they still could. They began hurting what had become
a sizeable crowd of hostages, about thirty people into the
(28:39):
big vault so that they could lock them in quickly.
I ran over to the office, where the little old
lady was sitting patiently, leaning forward on her cane. A
few minutes earlier, I had a heated confrontation with one
of my partners, who wanted me to lock her in
the vault with the other hostages, something I flatly refused
to do. I shouted in her hearing, aid, my friends
want me to tie you up in the chain, but
(29:00):
I won't do it if you promise not to yell
for help or leave the office until the clock up
there reaches twelve o'clock. Can I trust you? She promised
that he could, and with that Roger and his gang
were out of there. They peeled away in their getaway
car and switched vehicles. A few blocks later, they fishtailed
(29:24):
on the icy roads like winter demons, trying desperately to
make it across the bridge in time. Did someone call
it in yet? Did the manager have a way of
opening the safe from the inside. Was Roger wrong to
leave the old lady outside the vault? They wouldn't know
until they made it to the bridge. Picture it. The
(29:45):
roads were slick, and down the steep ledge the river
would have been raging, matching their pace above it. Clutching
their score, they kept turning round to look out the
back window, praying that they'd slipped away undetected. One last turn,
and there it was. There were no flashing lights awaiting
(30:06):
them as they approached, so they tore across the bridge
as if it were built for them and them alone,
and they made it. All five men made it to
their hideout safely. They didn't get to knock off the
Brinks truck, but the job had gone as smoothly as
they could have hoped for. Roger was set up for
(30:27):
success in his flat. He had a fully stalked fridge,
and for a man like him, laying low in a
cozy apartment was nothing. But unbeknownst to him, a chain
reaction was working its way to ward him. A nosy
landlady had just heard on the radio that the crooks
were believed to have been from Montreal, so she called
(30:50):
the police and told them that she'd heard two men
laughing and speaking French the night before about a bank.
In short order, the police arrested those two, then arrested
the guy whose name the flat was rented in, which
eventually led them to Roger, who was asleep when the
door was kicked in. After losing his trial, Roger appealed
(31:14):
and lost that one too. He was sentenced to ten years,
but then he escaped almost immediately, leaving two guards gagged
and tied up behind him, only to be caught again,
so they bumped the ten years to twelve years. Roger's
life was like Groundhog Day, stealing prison escape, stealing prison escape.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So I kept escaping from prison, and I ended up
escaping in a period of twenty four years, more than
any other prisoner in Canada.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
By the end of nineteen sixty two, Roger had escaped
from prison so many times that no warden in the
country wanted him, so the government had to figure out
where to put him for the long haul, and there
was really only one place where they wouldn't need to
worry about him anymore. The worst place there was. Roger
(32:09):
arrived at Kingston, penn with twelve years in front of him,
but unbeknownst to him, this time would be different because
a surprising new era in Roger's life was about to begin,
and the thing that would put Roger on a whole
new trajectory, the thing that was about to change his life,
(32:33):
was a package of jelly beans. Seriously. Go Boy is
a production from Campside Media in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
(32:53):
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'll
get your podcasts. Go Boy was written and hosted by
me Sam Wellins. Our producer is Rob Lindsay of Paradox Pictures.
Laine Rose is our senior producer. Sound design, mix and
engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music by Garrett Tiedeman. Fact
(33:17):
checking by Michael kenyon Meyer. Selected archival clips are from
CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy was written by Roger Koran.
iHeart Podcasts executive producers are Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett.
Excerpts from Roger Koran's book Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh.
(33:38):
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam
hoff and Matt cher A. Special thanks to our operations team,
Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Marra and Destiny Dingle. If
you enjoyed Go Boy, please rate and review the show
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
In the summer of nineteen fifty nine, Roger was free
as a bird, well free as a bird on parole.
He was out of the Kingston Penitentiary. He was living
in his parents' home in Cornwall, Ontario, and he was
determined to not just pull his weight, but to help
his parents with their financial woes. His dad's cancer was
(00:26):
getting worse and his mortgage and hospital payments were falling behind,
so Roger decided that he was going to help out
in the only way he knew how, which is why
a few weeks later, he found himself five hundred and
(00:47):
fifty five miles away from home in Fredericton, New Brunswick,
behind bars again. But Roger wasn't too concerned to be here.
Being hind bars in the literal sense was sort of
best case scenario, because the thing about bars is you
can cut through them. From iHeart podcasts and Campsite Media,
(01:19):
I'm Sam Mullens and this is Go Boy, Episode three,
Legend of the jail Breaking bank Robbery. When Roger was
(01:40):
first brought to the Fredericton County Jail, the guard search
had failed to discover two very important items that he
always tried to have on his person no matter what.
Number one, the soul of his right boot contained a
hacksaw blade, and number two, the soul of his left
(02:02):
boot also contained a hacksaw blade.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I got this hat that pattin bars all the time.
I cut so many right in my life, So I
went to county jail and handed paptain bars. I always
got actual ways hidden in his soul by shot.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
When Rogers set out to help his dad get some money,
he didn't expect to be cutting bars in a prison
cell two provinces over less than a month later. But
there was a score he'd heard about in his hometown.
There was a rumor that at a nearby Cornwall general
store there was a safe chalk full of the owner's savings.
(02:41):
So the plan was simple enough. Typically with these kind
of scores, he'd physically remove the safe and take it
away to a private barn or garage somewhere so that
he could blow towards his way in. But when he
was in the act, something went sideways and the place
(03:01):
was surrounded by police before he even got the thing outside.
How bitter he must have felt that on his very
first foray into the robbing arts as a graduate of KP.
He couldn't even get a safe from a general store.
How hopeless it must have felt to know that he'd
be back behind bars again for likely a much longer stint.
(03:25):
This time, it was game over right, Not so fast,
as the Ontario Provincial Police were leading him to a
cell in the Cornwall police station, Roger suddenly broke free,
and still handcuffed, dove headfirst through a window, falling two stories.
He disappeared before anyone with a badge could even figure
(03:48):
out which way he went. And from there it was
a summer to remember. He stole a car and drove
two provinces over to Fredericton in Atlantic Canada, where he
spent most of the summer working at a carnival. When
the carnival gig was over, he stole another car and
headed to Montreal, where he immediately got into a high
(04:10):
speed chase with the police, was arrested and sent back
here to Fredericton, the city he stole the car from,
and he was booked into the county jail where he
was awaiting his trial. Roger didn't like awaiting anything, so
he started cutting the bars right away. When they arrested him.
(04:32):
He gave them a bogus name and claimed to have
never been in trouble with the law before, But he
knew it was only a matter of time before they
figured out who they had a kid that was a
bona fide go boy, so he had to work fast.
The Fredericton County Jail was just a small operation with
(04:54):
a handful of holding cells, a boutique purgatory for those
on their way to much larger prison, or the gallows,
which were still a thing. Cutting bars is a lot
more complicated than you'd think. It's more of an art form,
one that Roger eventually became a master of and would
talk about often. You need to choose the right ones,
(05:18):
learn how to evaluate which section of the welding looks
the weakest, the quietest, and figure out which direction one
should saw.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And don't cut the bar in an angle, because you've
got to keep putting the back and take us a
week to cut you all day.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Trying to cut a prison bar with a hacksaw blade
is a lot like trying to cut the strings of
a violin with a spoon. It can make an awful
amount of racket and take a long time to get through.
Its bar. And at the end of a successful night
of sawing, you of course need to hide your work.
It's not like you can throw up a construction cone
(05:54):
and walk off the job. You need to find something
to hold the bar perfectly in place.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I take the bar I grew from the library books,
and some scotch tape from the library books and soap
and all that, and I take the bar in place.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The shave soap would be the glue, and then he'd
take a small strip of tape off the spine of
the library book and finish it off with a coat
of shoe polish for color.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So when using the seam scotch tape for a week now,
it's starting to let out.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
The time in between the first cut of the first
bar and the final cut of the final bar is
an extremely stressful time. Every time a guard would walk by,
Roger's entire being would clench.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Then like the garden com walk down this hall pass
all the cells go into the washington and come by
the steel barrier of ent into the hanggun room, and
you give the barrier shake And every time he'd shake
that game my heart just a bus stop that gate along.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And if it wasn't the guards fraying his nerves, there
was the bar cutter's other greatest foe, gravity.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
And it's heartbreaking when you work on a bar for
a week, and at three o'clock in the morning, while
you're waiting to wake up in the morning to work
on it and more, it falls down in the middle
of the night.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Back in the Frederickton County jail, Roger had made some
real headway. He only had one or two bars to
go before he could fit all the way through, and
he was determined to get the hell out of here
so that he could get back to the mission at
hand and find a way to score some cash to
help out his folks. Everything was going according to plan
(07:29):
until one of the guards work in the graveyard shift
must have heard roger sigh. They slammed the door open
suddenly at three am and caught him blade in hand.
The guards wrestled him out of his cell and put
him into a different, more secure one. Roger still had
(07:52):
the other hacksaw blade taped to his foot, but the
joke was on him because in the new drum they
threw him in, there wasn't a bar to cut, just
four cinderblock walls with a solid door. The next day,
the guards added a series of extra locking mechanisms to
(08:12):
the other side of his door, confirming to Roger that
his time was up. They had finally figured out his
real name and thus his reputation. And this is where
things got weird. Picture Roger in this new coffin like cell,
(08:33):
sulking about this considerable setback, just feeling lower than ever,
waiting for them to transport him to his next slice
of hell. When he hears it, someone was tapping on
the side wall of his cell. When he stood up
to investigate, he heard that the taps were moving in
(08:55):
a pattern. They begin in the back corner and move
slowly to the front of his cell. He started following
the percussive sound as it moved, when he discovered that
he was being led to a tiny hole in the
wall about knee height that was stuffed with toilet paper.
When he dug the paper plug out, he got down
(09:17):
on all fours to peer through when he saw staring
back at him but two feet away, a very pretty eye,
the eye of a young woman halfway through a six
month sentence in the cell beside his She said her
name was Ninni excitedly. Roger gestured for her to step
(09:40):
back so he could have a look at her. Roger
describes meeting Ninny in his book as read here by
an actor.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
By midnight we were fast friends, and things got informal,
to the point where she would strip down to her
bra and panties and roll around teasingly on her bunk.
The thought that I would be returning to the penitentiary
still a virgin troubled me very much, and that thought
inflamed the passion in me for a girl. When she
smiled wickedly and arched her back, I'd clowt the plaster
(10:10):
and break out and sweat. If you want me, Roger,
she'd murmur, silkily, why don't you find a way to
come over and visit me.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Ninni obviously didn't know that she was talking to the
one man who could accomplish just that. Roger and Ninni
hatched the most naive of plans. She slid him a
butter knife that she'd hidden from the guards, and he
was to use it to chisel through the wall so
that he could cut the bars in her cell, and
(10:40):
then they could run away together. Roger worked frantically desperately
in the way only a virgin young man could. He
got the first cinderblock out of the wall.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I became so obsessed with my little project that I
had very little inclination for small talk, and Ninni was
beginning to pass. To keep her spirits up, I would
fill her mind with happy thoughts about what we would
do together after we escaped. But the excitement started wearing thin,
and the dire consequences dawned dark and threatening.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Roger was only a few hours from getting all the
way through when suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of
her cell door swinging open. Roger froze and pressed his
ear to the hole, just in time to hear his
dear Ninny's voice shout. And he has a hack saw
blade too. He staggered to the center of the cell,
(11:36):
his face buried in his hands, disbelieving what he'd just heard.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Out in the corridor, there was a wild stampede of
confused activity and hysterical yelling as the sheriff and his
powerful trustees started fumbling with the locks.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And this is where you need to understand something about
Roger Karan. When he is totally cooked, when he is cornered,
it is never over. As the three guards prepared to
open the door, they had no idea what was waiting
for them on the other side an explosion. When the
(12:11):
door swung open, the guards didn't know what hit them.
Roger came at them ferociously, fists swinging.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
My assault was so fierce and unexpected, I momentarily had
the edge. As I struggled to my feet, Roger saw
a stairwell and leapt down them a flight at a time.
With the guards in hot pursuit, he ran into an office,
and most people would have hidden, would have realized that
they were cornered and had no choice but to come
(12:39):
out with their hands up.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But that's not Roger's style. At the instant of the
guards burst into the office, Roger dove headlong through a window,
hit the ground, and limped away, with a guard shouting
at him through the open window. Roger made his way
to the highway, where he hitched a ride bound for
(13:04):
the US Board. The painful part about being on the
run that summer was that Roger knew the one place
he couldn't go was the place he wanted to be
the most home. Roger would call his dad on the
(13:25):
phone in the middle of the night to tell him
that he was okay. Since he last saw his father,
he'd been pursued by police in three provinces, had stolen
two cars, and had escaped custody twice. It had been
less than a month. Roger was surprised that his dad
never told him to turn himself in, perhaps because he
(13:48):
still had that bootlegger spirit in him. Roger thumbed a
ride from some teenagers who took him to the main
border where he crossed undetected, and he thought he was
home free. But then in one of those this could
only happen to Roger Strokes of profound bad luck, one
of the guards from the very prison he just escaped from,
(14:12):
was on a road trip with his family when who
should he pass hitchhiking on the main highway but the
young man the rest of the country was looking for.
He immediately called it in and Roger was picked up
by the highway patrolman, delivered to the RCMP, or, as
Roger called him, the Horseman, and before he knew it,
(14:34):
he was back in maximum security with a fresh two
and a half years to serve. Summer was over, Roger
was sent to serve his time in a new Brunswick
prison called Dorchester. Up until this point, when Roger entered
a new institution, he would lay low at first and
(14:55):
suss things out for a time. But he decided that
he was going to things a little different this time.
This time, he decided he was going to check's notes,
fight everyone.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
You could fight with your best friend and be best
friend at one guy in the next time you just
looked back to fighting. We could be fighting as like
at Jungle.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
The toughest guys in prison, three guys in one day.
It didn't matter. He just wanted to throw his hands.
He needed to.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
My fists would act like demented playmates, with mind and
temper of their own. It was as if all the
hate and frustration of being a born loser had seeped
down into my fists. Sick at heart being pushed around,
I lashed out viciously at anything that was cool to me.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Roger got into so many fights in Dorchester that they
had to move him to another province, to Saint Vincent
de Paul in Quebec, where his fists picked up right
where they left off. And it was during this toxic
time that Roger got a left her from his sister
Sue from back home, sharing the unfortunate news that their
(16:05):
father had passed away, and it was too much for
Roger to process, so he snapped. When my father died
when I was in prison, I was in the cell.
I went berserk. He destroyed every possession he had, and
by the time he was done, even his own body
had been smashed to pieces. The last bit of hope
(16:26):
he'd held on to was gone.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
That Roger was devastated when my father passed away. He
was inside because I remember writing to the warden. You know,
it was worth a shot to see if he could
attend the funeral, and that was not granted. But I
did try, you know, hoping maybe you know that that
(16:52):
might be a closure for Roger whatever. But he did
not get to see that. I don't think that was
easy for him.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Roger's final months at Saint Vincent were spent not in
a rage, but in quiet reflection, turning over an inescapable
thought he had failed his father. He wasn't there for
him when he died, and he certainly hadn't been there
to help out with the bills like he said he
would to help keep his father comfortable at the end.
(17:28):
Roger was never guided by any faith or ideology, but
one animating force that he did hold on to was
that one day he was going to make his father proud.
One day he was going to clean up his act
and turn into the man his father believed he could become.
(17:49):
But now he'd never have the chance. And with this
devastating realization came in a lusive bit of clarity. When
he got out this time, there truly be nothing to
hold him back now. When he got out of Saint Vincent,
Roger said.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
I no longer have any intentions of going straight about
my release.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I have wasted all those years I kept saying to myself,
I can get that one big score. I'll prove to
them that they're wrong.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Roger was paroled in nineteen sixty two, and he was
hungry to make a name for himself. This wasn't going
to be like the other times he'd been let out. No,
this time he had a plan, and he knew exactly
where he wanted to go.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
America.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
France and Britain have influenced the growth of Montreal, capital
of Canada's Quebec province.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
In the nineteen sixties, Montreal was the place to be
if you wanted to be a thief, and not a
small time thief. Montreal was where you went to become
a bank robber. So the plan for Roger was this,
build a solid bank robber crew and start hitting banks.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I must admit when I first got out, I used
to look at things like some guys look at girls
and miniskirvis.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
There were so many bank robberies happening in Montreal that
the police let it be known that there would be
serious consequences to anyone they caught pulling a job, that
they were going to show up shooting if they had to.
But that didn't seem to deter Roger in his gang.
The only thing that did seem to stop them was
if the bank they pulled up to was already in
(19:33):
the process of being robbed by another crew.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
And I've nearly walked thanks. I'm trying to to went
to all that's a good good day. We pulled up
to a bank and bank arbor Tres running out and
he said, oh, Dan, you're here first.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
No. Roger was grateful that he'd been accepted into a
group of professionals like this. Things were going well at work,
and would you believe it that, in between robberies Roger
managed to finally fall in love. Denise was the sister
(20:06):
of one of the guys on his crew, a single
mother and cocktail waitress who was a little older than Roger.
She got a kick out of him right away. He
was rough around the edges in the way most ex
cons are, but he was also surprisingly chivalrous, gentle, and funny.
While he had experienced more things than other twenty some things,
(20:27):
it was clear that he was delayed in other areas,
and she loved seeing how hard he'd blush when she
flirted with him.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Roger wrote, it took me twenty three years to finally
lose my virginity, and when it did happen, it was
as wonderful and fulfilling as the literature on the subject
had prepared me to experience.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
After their first night together, Roger showed up the next
day at Denise's with a bunch of boxes and announced
that he was moving in.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
I moved in with all my belongings, accepting the responsibility
of caring for loving both her and her daughter, Diane,
who was at boarding school.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You see, Roger never half ascidly does anything it seems
like Denise coming into Roger's life when she did change things.
Whereas before he walked into these banks, they were knocking
off like he was invincible, he suddenly had something to lose.
And I guess it was only through this first hit
(21:24):
of romantic love that he finally grasped how risky and
unsustainable this life he was living was, and if he
kept going like this, it was only a matter of
time before he got pinched or worse shot.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So I burst into I remember running in the bank
and he looked kind of empty, and I'm saying, stick
him up, arroy lyon the floor. All of a sudden
a half a dozen big policemen popped up and behind
the town of both group vets and sheet and got
into shotguns. He said, do stick them up, and I
said no, no, no, I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Soon as he said you stick him up, I was
about take feet off the groundling the ringstrake through the
lake glass window.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
By this point, jumping through a window was almost a
normal occurrence in Roger's life. What was new was the
bullets whizzing past his head.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Running down the street, the machine guns, shotgun bullets, Everything's
winding around by years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
It was only when Roger made it back to the
getaway car that he realized he had badly injured himself
on the broken glass and was bleeding everywhere. Making matters
worse was that his crew had a rule, if the
first bank doesn't work, we hit a different one before
calling it a day, even if you're bleeding out in
the back seat.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
We pulled up to our secondary bank about two miles away,
and getting behind the car, I'm all gloody, we're going
all He ran.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
To inspect the banks, big banks, boom boot without being weight.
He zoomed the way.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
He took me to it. N behind the world doctor.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
The underworld doctor had his work cut out for him
that day.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
He's putting all these meadow plants, about one hundred and
baggy meadow plants, always said on the skin to get
you know, is that kind environment?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
With all these close calls with the Montreal police, a
sense of anxiety was creeping into Roger and his gang's psyche.
The city was getting too hot, even for a crew
as skilled as theirs.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
The jug patrols were so well organized that it was
suicide to remain inside of a bank for longer than
ninety seconds with a countdown restriction on each heyst. The
take was small whatever was in the teller's cages, and
so the ambition of the gang I joined up with
was to hit that one big score.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Roger and his crew got to thinking that instead of
making off with all these small scores from the tellers,
what if they instead made plans for something really big.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
I was living in bliss with Denise when our gang
was offered that one big score. We'd all dreamed of.
An ex con in the city of Saint John in
New Brunswick set he had a score that was worth
almost a quarter of a million dollars and wanted to
know if we were interested. So we immediately set out
by plane to check it out personally.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
By no means was it going to be an easy tank.
It was a job where everything would have to go
perfectly on account of the geography of the place. The
city of Saint John, New Brunswick is surrounded by water,
the Atlantic Ocean in the Bay of Fundia on one
side and a treacherous river on the other. The only
(24:32):
way to get back to where their hideouts would be
was via bridge. So more so than any job in
the past, They needed to be one hundred percent positive
when they took control of the bank that no one
pushed the silent alarm. The police station was only a
few blocks away, and Roger's crew came to understand that
(24:52):
the police could close the bridge in just a minute
or so, thus trapping them. It was risky, but the
thing that set this job apart from every other one
that they pulled was that they weren't just going to
empty the safe. Every second Thursday between eleven and eleven
twenty five am, an armored truck with just two armed
(25:16):
guards would deliver one hundred ten thousand dollars cash to
the branch, making the job in irresistible two four. So
the plan was this, secure the bank without the alarm,
empty the vault, wait for the armored truck to arrive,
disarm the shotgun guard at the moment he walks in,
(25:37):
empty the truck, and high tail it over the bridge,
where the five of them would be split up in
separate hideouts while things cooled down. After that, they could
head back to Quebec victorious and chop up the score
of their dreams.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
My dream at the time was to make just enough
bread to invest in a health Gym, thus joining the
land Lunchbucket Brigade and maybe even marrying Denise to complete
the picture.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Thursday morning, March first, nineteen sixty two, the bandits checked
their weapons and went over the plan one final time.
It had been decided that Roger, the only member of
the crew who spoke without a French dialect, would be
the one doing all the talking. They didn't want anyone
to know that they were a Montreal gang. Roger pulled
(26:28):
up at the downtown bank of Nova Scotia just before
eleven am. He watched as the first two members of
his crew went inside posing his customers, and moments later,
Roger shifted a shotgun into his coat and got out
of the car. Gripped with adrenaline, he stormed into the
bank wearing a ski mask gun in hand.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
The next most danger spotted when you first out of
the bank and you expect them to say put your
hands up on then, oh I'll never win.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
You just black to be as it said exactly. That's
how he secured macrones up and kill at least one
of them.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Two members of the crew got all the bank employees
away from the alarm buttons and onto the floor Roger shouted,
hold up, this is a hold up, then jumped on
the counter and said to the tellers below, touch that
alarm and I'll blow your feet off. With a bank
secure and everyone in position, the crew took a small breath.
(27:26):
The most important part was done. They took the manager
to open the big safe in the rear and throw
the cash into some pillowcases, while another member of the
crew kept an eye out for the arrival of the
truck and slickly took hostage anyone who unknowingly entered the bank.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
By eleven twenty am, two pillowcases were overflowing with money.
As yet, there was also no sign of the armored truck,
and we were all becoming increasingly anxious.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
About this time, an old lady in her seventies entered
walking with a cane. She was thin and wore a
flowery dress and gold spectacles. Upon seeing the crew, she exclaimed,
oh my. As Roger came over to tell her that
everything was going to be okay. He led her over
to a chair in the manager's office, where he quickly
(28:15):
pulled the telephone cord out of the wall and told
her to sit tight. At eleven twenty eight am, the
armored truck was now officially late, so in a panic,
the gang started making preparations to get out of there
while they still could. They began hurting what had become
a sizeable crowd of hostages, about thirty people into the
(28:39):
big vault so that they could lock them in quickly.
I ran over to the office, where the little old
lady was sitting patiently, leaning forward on her cane. A
few minutes earlier, I had a heated confrontation with one
of my partners, who wanted me to lock her in
the vault with the other hostages, something I flatly refused
to do. I shouted in her hearing, aid, my friends
want me to tie you up in the chain, but
(29:00):
I won't do it if you promise not to yell
for help or leave the office until the clock up
there reaches twelve o'clock. Can I trust you? She promised
that he could, and with that Roger and his gang
were out of there. They peeled away in their getaway
car and switched vehicles. A few blocks later, they fishtailed
(29:24):
on the icy roads like winter demons, trying desperately to
make it across the bridge in time. Did someone call
it in yet? Did the manager have a way of
opening the safe from the inside. Was Roger wrong to
leave the old lady outside the vault? They wouldn't know
until they made it to the bridge. Picture it. The
(29:45):
roads were slick, and down the steep ledge the river
would have been raging, matching their pace above it. Clutching
their score, they kept turning round to look out the
back window, praying that they'd slipped away undetected. One last turn,
and there it was. There were no flashing lights awaiting
(30:06):
them as they approached, so they tore across the bridge
as if it were built for them and them alone,
and they made it. All five men made it to
their hideout safely. They didn't get to knock off the
Brinks truck, but the job had gone as smoothly as
they could have hoped for. Roger was set up for
(30:27):
success in his flat. He had a fully stalked fridge,
and for a man like him, laying low in a
cozy apartment was nothing. But unbeknownst to him, a chain
reaction was working its way to ward him. A nosy
landlady had just heard on the radio that the crooks
were believed to have been from Montreal, so she called
(30:50):
the police and told them that she'd heard two men
laughing and speaking French the night before about a bank.
In short order, the police arrested those two, then arrested
the guy whose name the flat was rented in, which
eventually led them to Roger, who was asleep when the
door was kicked in. After losing his trial, Roger appealed
(31:14):
and lost that one too. He was sentenced to ten years,
but then he escaped almost immediately, leaving two guards gagged
and tied up behind him, only to be caught again,
so they bumped the ten years to twelve years. Roger's
life was like Groundhog Day, stealing prison escape, stealing prison escape.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So I kept escaping from prison, and I ended up
escaping in a period of twenty four years, more than
any other prisoner in Canada.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
By the end of nineteen sixty two, Roger had escaped
from prison so many times that no warden in the
country wanted him, so the government had to figure out
where to put him for the long haul, and there
was really only one place where they wouldn't need to
worry about him anymore. The worst place there was. Roger
(32:09):
arrived at Kingston, penn with twelve years in front of him,
but unbeknownst to him, this time would be different because
a surprising new era in Roger's life was about to begin,
and the thing that would put Roger on a whole
new trajectory, the thing that was about to change his life,
(32:33):
was a package of jelly beans. Seriously. Go Boy is
a production from Campside Media in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
(32:53):
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'll
get your podcasts. Go Boy was written and hosted by
me Sam Wellins. Our producer is Rob Lindsay of Paradox Pictures.
Laine Rose is our senior producer. Sound design, mix and
engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music by Garrett Tiedeman. Fact
(33:17):
checking by Michael kenyon Meyer. Selected archival clips are from
CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy was written by Roger Koran.
iHeart Podcasts executive producers are Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett.
Excerpts from Roger Koran's book Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh.
(33:38):
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam
hoff and Matt cher A. Special thanks to our operations team,
Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Marra and Destiny Dingle. If
you enjoyed Go Boy, please rate and review the show
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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