April 16, 2025 • 38 mins
Young Roger is sent to the notorious Kingston Penitentiary, where he quickly learns the ropes of prison life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A campsite media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Roger knew about punishment. He was a kid who'd been
on the business end of a teacher's ruler, who had
felt the impact of the back of his father's hand
many times. But unfortunately for him, nothing he'd been through
in his sixteen years of life prepared him for what
he suffered in the limbo room. And unfortunately for us,
(00:28):
there's no way to tell the Roger Karan story without
describing specifically what happened to him in there. Let me
ask you about the scars.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I don't mean the physical scars, but the emotional scars.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
What was the worst of all the things that happened
to you during that period.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
If you look back and say, the one thing that
really strapped the strap.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
Happened twenty four years ago, when you're sixteen years old,
and something very traumatic happens to your scars, it.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
After Roger smashed the guard's flashlight that fateful night in
nineteen fifty, he was dragged to a literal dungeon underneath
the Gwelfer Formatory. The limbo room was painted a pristine white,
and the pressure change of the door opening set the
light bulb and their shadows into perverse motion. Roger watched
(01:19):
his twelve officials filed in behind him when he first
laid his eyes on the apparatus, and a fixed.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
To the far wall was a human course of the
restraining straps. He metal pipings the neck.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But what really concerned him was what was beside the apparatus,
three wooden handled leather straps four feet long, four inches wide,
the leather so thick and coarse they barely sagged when
held upright. The superintendent motioned him forward, and.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
He says to me, okay, step in the machine. White.
I took a few paces four and stepped in the
sub course, and all of a sudend, drop your paints. White,
I dropped my paint.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
He slowly moved his body into the device called the machine,
as a guard tightened the restraints around his ankles and knees.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Then took my hands and strapped him straight off in
front of me and shackled me to the wall.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And now I was naked from my neck and my ankles.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Roger was secured in the most vulnerable position imaginable, as
a black hood was.
Speaker 6 (02:22):
Pulled firmly over his head. And then for a moment
it was darkness and quiet, and then an unsettling sound
that he couldn't make out at.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
First, dragging, shuffling. It was the shuffling of feet of
all twelve men's shoes against the concrete floor.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
So all of a sudden they have original and they'd
all scraped their feet on the floor.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That was the further confused you to get your hearers straight.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And then it began, and.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Then a super tended to say what then to hear
this strap cutting through the air here and then it'll
just itch. You go off like a shot when an
itch you.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Across the fire box and be wham and your whole
hit what exploding and colius broke of colors and rockets.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And remember to keep this cleaning from bursting from my lips.
I had to fight down on my tongue, bit down
on my lips.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Blood just burst from under the wood down my chin
and onto my chest.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
And then minute later togo and here scrape, scrape. Then
here too the strap from cutting swilled, it gets and
ashed up against the wall, just ringing inside your mind.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
Negatis walks broke just butchered me and knocking ergo hurt
so much.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Of my life.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
This was happening to a minor serving time for a
nonviolent offense at the hands of a government employee on
the grounds of a government institution. Roger was so carved
up he had to lay on his stomach as his
wounds healed. This wasn't the only time Roger got the
strap in Gwelph either. One time he got it for
(04:05):
just trying to free a bird that was trapped between
two window panes. Words spread among the prison population about
what had happened to Roger. Some of his peers swung
by to see the damage to Roger's backside first hand,
and they were horrified, which is why, after yet another
gnarly experience in the limbo room, when Roger expressed a
(04:27):
desire to break out of prison again, he had a
dozen guys vow to help him. A well timed distraction
in the rock quarry was all that it took, as
Roger slipped past the armed guards and disappeared through the gate,
a much easier go boy than his first, but a
go boy all the same. With the welts on his
(04:50):
backside still healing, still seeping through his clothing, Roger went
on a crime spree. He broke into homes, stole cars,
stole a safe, and everything was going great until he
attempted to rob a post office which wait, this place
happens to be literally a block from my house in Toronto.
(05:15):
Sixty nine years ago this week, I brought my wife
on her coffee break to this old brick corner store
in our neighborhood at this intersection. In this building right here,
this used to be a postal store slash grocery store.
Roger had heard that this place had a safe full
(05:35):
of money. But as soon as he pulled out his gun,
the guy behind the counter grabbed onto him and starts
strangling him, and the two have this epic fight in
the store. Everything in the store is knocked over, there's
broken glass everywhere, and the fight spills out onto the
streets and everyone waiting for the street cars like, what
the hell's going on? There's blood everywhere and this storekeeper
(05:57):
he starts yelling help help. Roger runs across the st
and disappears into a park when he hears the first siren.
It's a rare all cars call on the Toronto Police radio.
So while Roger is on the run down here, he
hears the siren of literally every police car in Toronto.
(06:19):
Desperate to find a place to hide, Roger storms into
the home of a multi generational Japanese family, completely covered
in blood, gun in hand, and he more or less
holds this family hostage. There's a three year old and
a five year old kid just sitting on the living
room floor and they're watching Superman on TV. And in
(06:43):
the newspaper article, I think it was their dad. He's like,
he's like, not even a gunman in their living room
could get them to stop watching Superman. Not too long
after that, the cops surround the place, burst in and
took Roger down. The photo of him after they caught
him in the back seat of the police car, he
(07:04):
just looks exactly like he's from the book The Outsiders,
with his leather jacket and his tall, slicked hair, and
he looked like a cartoon rendering of a troubled youth
from the fifties. Yeah, so it would have been one
of these houses. Okay, let's go, and then those were
(07:29):
our girls. Takes one lessons. The disjointed Toronto Star headline
says storekeeper slugged gun cow's family arrest gory suspect.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
I definitely remember that one because that hit the papers
big time.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
That's Sue, Roger's sister. This was the first time Roger
had a full page dedicated to his crimes. And when
he had his day in court, the judge had before
him a seventeen year old kid who'd broken out of
prison twice in a little more than a year, and
who'd basically been in trouble with the law since he
was twelve years old. They needed to send a clear message.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
That's when Roger was given five years in the Kingston Penitentiary.
He was thrown to the walls.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
What awaited seventeen year old Roger at Canada's most feared
penal institution More pain, more suffering, sure, but also something
he hadn't experienced yet in education.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
In the headlines you're trying to start with, graduated from
reformatory with honors to the big.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Hot from iHeart Podcasts and campsite Media. I'm Sam Mullens
and this is Go Boy, Episode two. School of Crime.
(09:02):
The Kingston Penitentiary or the pen KP, Canada's Alcatraz, was
originally opened for business in eighteen thirty five. When it
finally closed its doors nearly two centuries later, it was
one of the oldest continuous use detention centers in North America.
And to see it now, just looking at it, you
(09:24):
can still feel the weight of the place. You can
hear the foreboding music of it. Every large limestone boulder
it's built with was broken loose in a quarry by prisoners,
transported to the site by prisoner muscle, and set by
prisoner hands. By the time Roger arrived, the place had
(09:45):
already broken the spirits of generations of men. Roger was processed,
assigned a cell number and a prison uniform. His number
was unique because it started not with a digit, but
with a letter Y for youth. He was only seventeen
years old, and he was thrown into the snake pit
(10:05):
containing almost a thousand of Canada's most dangerous men, because
in the eyes of the law, he was one of them.
A sobering thought for him to mull over as his
seat door locked shut. It was a tiny space, just
enough room for a flip down bed chained to the
wall and a toilet and sink. Roger writes extensively about
(10:29):
his time in the Kingston Pen, so we hired an
actor to read his words.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Hey, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
This is Jamie Cavanaugh. Whenever you hear Jamie's voice, Jamie
say something.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Hey, Sam, thanks for having me on perfect Whenever you
hear Jamie's voice starting now. It is a verbatim from
the writings of Roger Karan. In those days, the first
thing he did when you moved into a cell was
to make a heavy cover for the lidless toilet. The
maze of sewers below were infested with bloated rats as
big as a groundhog and with big yellow teeth. If
(11:03):
you forgot to cover the toilet, you might suddenly wake
up about three o'clock in the morning to find half
your tow chewed away.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Roger had no plan yet on how he was going
to survive this place. Wherever he stood in the pecking
order among the inmates at the Guelpher Formatory meant nothing.
Here here he was no one. He had no one,
he knew no one, and in a place like this,
one wrong move could kill him.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
Prison life is definitely a society within a society.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
This is Bill Isaac's, a former headguard at the pen.
Bill is the kind of person so radically unflappable you're
afraid to ask what made him this way?
Speaker 7 (11:45):
You don't get too many frontline correction officers, you know,
talking about their life behind bars. It's not a good environment.
The norms and values are different inside prison to the
norms and values that we in the community see on
a daily basis. You could be physically assaulted, stabbed, piped, beaten.
(12:07):
They don't think of ramifications.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Roger had heard stories about predators and the warped sexual
politics that can play out in a place like this,
and he wanted to do everything he could to protect himself.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
It's an unpredictable, volatile environment. The inmate must to survive
conform to those prison norms and values.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
If ever there was a time for discipline, this was it.
He had to study the routines and movements and learn
the structure of the place like his life depended on it.
And he learned quickly that on the inside, it's all
about the routine. It's all about learning the routine. Everything
(12:56):
in the pen, and I mean everything begins and with
the ring of the bell. The cell buildings were designed
like a giant wheel, the cell blocks being the spokes
extending outward four stories each and at the center of
the wheel was the dome.
Speaker 7 (13:15):
They couldn't go anywhere off the range without going through
the domes. It was basically the heart and soul of
Kingston Penitentiary.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And prominently in the center of the dome floor, usually
surrounded by a small gang of guards, was the infamous
Kingston Penitentiary Bell, a brassy behemoth loathed by most who
had ever done time there.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
The bell told you what to do.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Mike McGinn remembers the abrace of chime Well. He's an
ex con who served at KP around the time that
Roger did.
Speaker 7 (13:51):
The bell told you when to go to supper, when
to go get your breakfast, when to get your launch,
when to go to the yard, when to wake up,
when to go to sleep. Quite a large number of
the imates actualiated that bell. It was a source of soreness.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
By Roger's count, The thing chimed one hundred and twenty
seven times a day.
Speaker 7 (14:10):
It was ding ding ding, ding, ding ding ding ding.
They hated it with a passion.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
It controlled your life. It controlled your life.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Roger began obediently moving to the toll of the bell
like a machine, to get his breakfast, to take a shower,
and to head to work. Every inmate at KP is
assigned a job in the institution. Different prisons are known
for different lines of production. At one prison they might
make license plates or make clothing for the armed forces.
(14:42):
But a KP, one of the things the inmates made
was mail bags for Canada Post. One wing was devoted
to making them, the other for repairing them. So Roger
learned the intricacies of a sewing machine in a hurry,
and did his best to keep his eyes on his work,
trying to be in visible. As he got a feel
for the place.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I sensed the prison atmosphere slowly. It was one of
constant restraint, of suspicion and bitterness and secrecy. Men let
down their guard only in intimate conversations with other cons
They all wore a look that puzzled me. For a while,
I couldn't begin to guess the cause of the unseeing,
lost in contemplation vagueness. One day I realized that I
(15:27):
was wearing it too.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
When he first arrived at KP, Roger used to spend
eighteen hours a day stuck inside his cell, but he
really didn't mind all the time alone in there. He
could at least let his guard down a little bit.
In the confines of his drum, no one could get
to him.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
Here.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
At the end of each day, the bell would ring
for dinner, or as the cons called it, jug up.
There was no cafeteria or mess hall at KP with
these types of men, and it wasn't worth the risk.
So they'd go one cell block at a time, and
they'd line up by the kitchen where a tray would
be unlovingly shoved through a small opening, and then you'd
(16:10):
shuffle back to your cell for the night to enjoy
your dinner alone. As Roger would pick at the unsavory
arrangement on this tray, and a guard would glide by
for the final count of the night. He heard a
saying that stuck with him in this place.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
They feed us like swine and count us like diamonds.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Every day ended the same, with hundreds of locked doors
and hundreds of men with nothing but time.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
You could read, listen to the radio, pace a few
steps back and forth, dream, watch your neighbors through their
reflections in the windows, crack up, smash your cell furniture,
slash yourself with a razor blade to break the monotony,
hang yourself, or join in on range conversations until the
silence spells sound of it's o'clock. This would be followed
(17:02):
by a gurgling of toilets, coughs, and curses, and then
a long silence until morning, interrupted at intervals with nightmares
or outbursts, as one prisoner warned another to come out
swinging when the gates opened in the morning.
Speaker 7 (17:17):
On top of the monotony of prison routine, on top
of being told what to do, when to do it,
how to do it, et cetera, et cetera, they've got
the additional stress of living in that volatile environment.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Roger started to get a firm grasp of the routine
and was beginning to understand the hierarchy of the place
and the things to watch out for. The wolves of
the institution would try to get young inmates to gamble
with them, with the idea being that if they accrued
enough of a gambling debt, they could then be coerced
(17:51):
into performing sexual favors instead. Roger was determined to avoid
that scene at all costs, and the best way could
think of doing it was through silence. He didn't even
realize what he was doing at first, but then a
day would pass where he wouldn't say a single word
to anyone, And then a week would go by.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
I figured out what was say the wrong, think of
my number of friendship to the guards, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Going to stuff. But I decided not to talk. And
when I went to talk, after a while, I could
talk any more.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But just because he wasn't saying anything didn't mean that
he had nothing he needed to express. Inside. He was screaming.
He was filled with hostility, with self hatred and regret.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
At night, alone in my cave, no smile would touch
my face, often silent tears, but no smile. Loneliness sat
heavily on my shoulders, and my throbbing temples made sleep
more and more difficult to attain.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
He started getting migraine headaches, the pain so acute he
struggled to fall asleep at night. He never felt so isolated,
so alone in his whole life. It was as if
he'd already left the world of the living. He'd rock
and rock for hours, a mass of sweaty emotion, replaying
(19:13):
everything he'd done to end up here, and then, seemingly
at the moment he'd finally managed to slip off to sleep.
As time marched on, Roger had managed to keep himself
out of trouble and mostly was able to stay out
of harm's way. But even when you're being a model inmate,
(19:34):
not doing anything to draw attention to yourself, the horrors
of KP will find you. Roger's little sister, Sue, would
drive down to Kingston with her dad to visit him
(19:56):
whenever she could. She was a teenager too, and even
all these years later, she can still remember the feeling
of sitting across from her brother and wanting to know
how he was doing, but at the same time not
wanting to know.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
I hate to think what's happened in there. I find
it very difficult to even let my mind go there.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Over the years, the two siblings would sit in many
visitation rooms like this one, and Roger would not speak
of the punishment he was subject to. He'd never tell
his little sister about the limbo room or the fistfights.
He wouldn't tell her that once in Gwelph he was
thrown in a straight jacket and subject to an experimental
(20:38):
gas treatment that made him thrash on the table and
then black out. And it wasn't until several years later
that he told Sue about the many shock treatments he received.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Hey, put me on a table, He'd put a stick
between my teeth.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Elect who elector designed for hid pump Solian Fennis all
by that car, making count back whis from one hundred
and then might count about really groggy, and doctor would
shoe a switch.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
They would give them shock treatments, lots of shock treatments.
You know they're going to shock the devil right.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Out of them.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Even though it was hard for her to see her
brother in this place, one thing that was never hard
for Sue was to stand by Roger no matter what.
She'd do her best to encourage him in their brief
time together, but she'd always leave worrying about him.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
It's hard to see your family member or your loved
one incarcerated, It really is. It's difficult when you drive away,
you don't speak in the car all the way home.
You feel guilty leaving them behind. I didn't do anything wrong,
but I feel bad leaving him behind.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
In prison, it's not uncommon for inmates to succumb to
their hopelessness and take their own lives. Roger saw it
all the time. Guys who were there one day would
just be gone the next and given what Roger had
suffered in places like this, It would have made sense
if he considered his own disappearing act from this plane
(22:17):
of existence, but he didn't, and one of the main
reasons he didn't. The thing that turned his life around
in there was when he discovered an outlet for his anguish.
Every day, the inmates were allowed forty five minutes of
free time in the recreation yard. Some guys would play
(22:40):
baseball or just bullshit in the shade of the watch tower,
where guards would peer down on them cradling rifles. But
in the middle of the yard was a weight pit
where the toughest guys in the prison would pump iron.
Roger had a strict discipline for not participating in anything
he didn't need to, but one day the barbells seemed
(23:02):
to be calling out to him, so he walked over
and worked his way in, not sure how his sudden
boldness would be received, but no one said anything. Roger
wasn't very big, but he was always athletic and determined,
and with a high threshold for pain, the exact right
(23:24):
mix of attributes to become a great lifter. He started
showing up every day, hitting the same circuit, increasing the weight.
Little by little, he had a normal practice.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
What was not normal was the black rage within me,
and I desperately needed something to dispel it. And I
found the heavy barbells a perfect distraction, and like a
drowning man, I threw myself at them with a fury
and advance.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
The resistance of the weights seemed to finally lift something
off of him. Even his headaches went away. Roger's dogged
determination with the weights caught the attention of the guys
who ran the pit. They'd watch this kid pump iron
day after day, pushing the bench press bar like he
(24:13):
hated gravity. When one day they called him over, here's
former KP guard Bill Isaacs again.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
So there are a number of groups inside present. The
Clicks could be a muscle group. In other words, we're
the weightlifting group. We're four five or six inmates that
get together and we basically run in all the weight pets.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Roger had observed enough to figure out that the weight
pit guys were the most popular guys in the prison,
the alphas, the best athletes, and the toughest guys in
the place. So when they basically said, we've been watching you, kid,
and we're wondering if you want to join our group?
Roger smiled. He knew right away that this would change
(24:56):
things for him, because he knew it meant that now
people would be less inclined to fuck with him. Roger
was still silent when they'd all hang out, of course,
but it was remarkable what he could accomplish socially with
a mute button on. And the beauty of the weight
pit was that it rewarded those willing to listen. It
(25:19):
was a hub of gossip and stimulating conversation. The thickest
part of the prison grapevine ran right through the pit.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
You could also just sit around in the shade of
the wall, or pace back and forth in the walking
area and participate in the biggest pastime of all one
thousand and one ways to better thieving. One of the
main weight pit guys that Roger became friends with was
a guy named Chuck. He was a war vet and
as bright as he was grumpy, which was very Chuck
(25:49):
also happened to be in a click of bank robbers.
Roger was young and impressionable, and in the power rankings
of the prison population. Nothing was cooler and more respected
than being a bank robber, so.
Speaker 7 (26:03):
The very very top of the pyramid. Those inmates are
considered the true inmates, the true cons The leaders, predominantly
bank robbers, might not be smart from an educational perspective,
but very very street smart, very very prison smart, so
that they've got brains, so a bank robber. Those types
(26:26):
of people would be at the top of the packing water.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Rogers started spending more time with Chuck and the other
bank guys on the inside. It was almost as if
between games of handball or horseshoes or weightlifting sets, there'd
be classes to audit on bank selection, how to build
a solid crew, crowd management, and best practices for weapon usage.
(26:52):
Chuck and the elite crew of cons knew all about
the inner workings of bank voughts, or how best to
sec convent the newest generation of alarm systems. They'd talk
about these things openly, with the idea being that one day,
maybe one of them in this dusty pit might pull
off the perfect, big league heist. As Roger listened, he
(27:17):
realized how much of a novice he'd been when robbing
in the past. By hearing these guys talking shop every
day in the yard or over the whir of the
sewing machines at work was like having his own private
Dillinger masterclass. One day, Roger would walk free from this
place and he had no intention of ever coming back.
(27:38):
But at the same time, if he ever was going
to try robbing again, he at least knew now how
to get away with him. The Kingston Pen was a
place where there was constant turnover. For every new fish
walking in, someone who seemed like they would never get
out would be granted parole. One guy guy serving a
(28:00):
long sentence. Lou, who'd been the way pit manager for
over a decade, finally got his parole paper stamped, thus
creating a job opening. The weight pit manager was one
of the most coveted jobs in the whole prison. You're
in charge of keeping everything clean and orderly, not just
in the pit, but in the sports shack as well.
(28:22):
Instead of the mere hour of recreation time, you would
get six hours a day with all the athletic equipment
to yourself. So naturally there were lots of guys clamoring
for the job. But since Lou had held the job
for so long, he was able to appoint his own successor,
and he surprised everyone when he chose Roger. This was
(28:47):
the cherry on top of Roger's miraculous social ascension. Without
saying a single word to a single person in two
full years, he went all the way from being a
total outcast loaner to the top of the heap. He
was respected, and much more importantly, he was protected. The
(29:10):
day that Roger's vow of silence ended, he was lined
up with some guys he knew from the pit waiting
for their turn in the showers, when a new guy
in the pen, a wolf, started whispering and eyeing up Roger.
This wolf had no idea that the crew flanking Roger
on either side were his good buddies, so imagine his
(29:31):
surprise when seconds later he found himself laying on the
floor of the showers with the full weight of a
man compressing his windpipe as he gasped for breath. It
was in this moment, as Roger watched his friend defend
his honor, that he shouted the first words he'd said
in two years. He yelled, don't you'll hang. Roger's buddy
(29:58):
was so shocked to hear his voice from the first time,
he released his grip and laughed and said leastwise, we
got Roger talking again. When Roger hit the halfway point
of his sentence, everyone assumed that he'd be paroled at
(30:19):
the first opportunity. He was still so young and had
been such a model inmate during his stint that it
seemed a foregone conclusion that he'd get out any day.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
My parole never did materialize, and everyone was dismayed. My
friends on the Sports Gang were ready to grab a
hostage and demand my release.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Roger started to get that old hopeless feeling that he
got when he first landed on the inside, like society
didn't want him, like he wasn't good enough to ever
be free again. But then something unexpected happened. Someone busted
him out. The first two times Roger left prison, he'd
(31:02):
done it by escaping, but the third time he was
sprung by the least likely person you can think of.
The Queen of England, Her Majesty, was off to Canada
in nineteen fifty nine to cap the Great Saint Lawrence
Seaway Project. The Queen came to Canada and with President
(31:26):
Eisenhower by her side, she boarded a boat to officially
and royally declare the project open. The Seaway project had
taken five years and nearly half a billion mid century
dollars to complete. It was one of the most ambitious
projects in Canadian history, and it connected the Great Lakes
(31:46):
to the Sea the Free world. Hail's this stupendous achievement.
The Saint Lawrence seaway. As part of her royal trip
to Canada. The Governor General sent out a wire to
the penitentiaries alerting them that at the wish of Her
Royal Highness, a general amnesty was being granted, whereby a
fraction of all sentences being served would be terminated. So,
(32:10):
just like that, in the fine month of June, Roger
and five hundred and sixty eight other inmates from across
the nation were told that the Queen was busting them out.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
A tremendous feeling of exhilaration filled my whole being the
moment that I stepped through that big front gate into
a perfect summer day. I stood at the edge of
the old road that led into the city as shivers
of anxiety made my legs tremble and perspiration break out
on my brow.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Naturally, his family was elated when they received word that
their little Roger was finally going to be free.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Will come Dad and I to pick him up.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
When Sue embraced her brother Roger, he looks much better
than he had on previous visits. The light was back
in his eyes, his boy's frame was gone, and he
suddenly had the build of a man. Sue teased him
for being so tanned and fit and joked that maybe
she should go to prison. There was another thing that
(33:12):
they had to do in Kingston before making the two
hour drive back home to Cornwall. Roger's dad had an
appointment at the hospital with a specialist. When Sue came
back out, she brought Roger up to speed. Their dad
had been sick and steadily getting worse. The cobalt treatments
(33:33):
weren't working on the cancer, and they didn't know how
much time he'd have. This was devastating news for Roger,
a shadow cast on an otherwise wonderful day. There wasn't
much time for sulking, though, because when his dad finally emerged,
he gave Roger the keys.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And he even let Roger drive the carmel.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Sue had wanted to throw a proper welcome home party
for Roger, but he had vetoed it to Roger homecomings
are for soldiers, not ex cons, But Roger's arrival was
too big to let pass with nothing. Relatives and old
friends started popping in to congratulate him, and the beautiful
(34:20):
woman from next door kissed Roger, still a virgin, on
his blushing cheek.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
My mind went spinning back through all those endless nights
of dreaming and yearning and hugging my pillow and wanting
to be loved to return. I was now twenty one,
and I still hadn't gotten around sleeping with a woman.
Realizing that I was now a man, and that a
profound change had occurred in me since leaving home five
years earlier, I braced myself for the changes I was
(34:48):
sure to find the people that I left behind.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It was all very surreal to be back home. The
space of his childhood home weirded him out. The hardwood
floors felt foreign, the ceiling felt needlessly low. The silence
of his childhood room at night was horrific. What was
he going to do now? Since the seaway project had wrapped,
(35:17):
the job market was suddenly flooded with twenty thousand men
looking for employment. Roger took a job with the railway,
replacing old rail lines, but the work was hard, even
for a ripped x con, and the pay was criminally low,
just ninety cents an hour. One night, Roger was soaking
in the bathtub, having just walked off the railway job,
(35:40):
and reflected on his parents' financial woes he had heard
them talking about earlier.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Since Dad was too weak to work and not bootlegging anymore,
he was hard pressed to keep up the mortgages, so
for the first time in their long marriage, Mom had
to work to make ends meet, and for a proud
man like Dad, it must have been more painful. In
the cancer, soaking up water in the bathtub, I felt
a profound love for my father for the first time
in my life, but also anger and sorrow that such
(36:09):
a proud man could not die in peace.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Roger knew he had to do something. He could find
another job, maybe lay some brick, get his foot in
the door somewhere, maybe learn to be a carpenter or something,
or or he could find another way to make some money.
(37:06):
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
and hosted by me Sam Mollins. Our producer is Rob
Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
(37:28):
Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music
by Garrett Tiedemant fact checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected
archival clips are from CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy
was written by Roger Kuran. iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers are
(37:48):
Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Kuran's book
Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh. Special thanks to Mike mcghinn,
who passed away before we wrap production. Campside Media's executive
producers are Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam hoff and Matt cher.
(38:09):
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.
A campsite media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Roger knew about punishment. He was a kid who'd been
on the business end of a teacher's ruler, who had
felt the impact of the back of his father's hand
many times. But unfortunately for him, nothing he'd been through
in his sixteen years of life prepared him for what
he suffered in the limbo room. And unfortunately for us,
(00:28):
there's no way to tell the Roger Karan story without
describing specifically what happened to him in there. Let me
ask you about the scars.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I don't mean the physical scars, but the emotional scars.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
What was the worst of all the things that happened
to you during that period.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
If you look back and say, the one thing that
really strapped the strap.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
Happened twenty four years ago, when you're sixteen years old,
and something very traumatic happens to your scars, it.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
After Roger smashed the guard's flashlight that fateful night in
nineteen fifty, he was dragged to a literal dungeon underneath
the Gwelfer Formatory. The limbo room was painted a pristine white,
and the pressure change of the door opening set the
light bulb and their shadows into perverse motion. Roger watched
(01:19):
his twelve officials filed in behind him when he first
laid his eyes on the apparatus, and a fixed.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
To the far wall was a human course of the
restraining straps. He metal pipings the neck.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
But what really concerned him was what was beside the apparatus,
three wooden handled leather straps four feet long, four inches wide,
the leather so thick and coarse they barely sagged when
held upright. The superintendent motioned him forward, and.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
He says to me, okay, step in the machine. White.
I took a few paces four and stepped in the
sub course, and all of a sudend, drop your paints. White,
I dropped my paint.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
He slowly moved his body into the device called the machine,
as a guard tightened the restraints around his ankles and knees.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Then took my hands and strapped him straight off in
front of me and shackled me to the wall.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And now I was naked from my neck and my ankles.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Roger was secured in the most vulnerable position imaginable, as
a black hood was.
Speaker 6 (02:22):
Pulled firmly over his head. And then for a moment
it was darkness and quiet, and then an unsettling sound
that he couldn't make out at.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
First, dragging, shuffling. It was the shuffling of feet of
all twelve men's shoes against the concrete floor.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
So all of a sudden they have original and they'd
all scraped their feet on the floor.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That was the further confused you to get your hearers straight.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And then it began, and.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Then a super tended to say what then to hear
this strap cutting through the air here and then it'll
just itch. You go off like a shot when an
itch you.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Across the fire box and be wham and your whole
hit what exploding and colius broke of colors and rockets.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And remember to keep this cleaning from bursting from my lips.
I had to fight down on my tongue, bit down
on my lips.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Blood just burst from under the wood down my chin
and onto my chest.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
And then minute later togo and here scrape, scrape. Then
here too the strap from cutting swilled, it gets and
ashed up against the wall, just ringing inside your mind.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
Negatis walks broke just butchered me and knocking ergo hurt
so much.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Of my life.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
This was happening to a minor serving time for a
nonviolent offense at the hands of a government employee on
the grounds of a government institution. Roger was so carved
up he had to lay on his stomach as his
wounds healed. This wasn't the only time Roger got the
strap in Gwelph either. One time he got it for
(04:05):
just trying to free a bird that was trapped between
two window panes. Words spread among the prison population about
what had happened to Roger. Some of his peers swung
by to see the damage to Roger's backside first hand,
and they were horrified, which is why, after yet another
gnarly experience in the limbo room, when Roger expressed a
(04:27):
desire to break out of prison again, he had a
dozen guys vow to help him. A well timed distraction
in the rock quarry was all that it took, as
Roger slipped past the armed guards and disappeared through the gate,
a much easier go boy than his first, but a
go boy all the same. With the welts on his
(04:50):
backside still healing, still seeping through his clothing, Roger went
on a crime spree. He broke into homes, stole cars,
stole a safe, and everything was going great until he
attempted to rob a post office which wait, this place
happens to be literally a block from my house in Toronto.
(05:15):
Sixty nine years ago this week, I brought my wife
on her coffee break to this old brick corner store
in our neighborhood at this intersection. In this building right here,
this used to be a postal store slash grocery store.
Roger had heard that this place had a safe full
(05:35):
of money. But as soon as he pulled out his gun,
the guy behind the counter grabbed onto him and starts
strangling him, and the two have this epic fight in
the store. Everything in the store is knocked over, there's
broken glass everywhere, and the fight spills out onto the
streets and everyone waiting for the street cars like, what
the hell's going on? There's blood everywhere and this storekeeper
(05:57):
he starts yelling help help. Roger runs across the st
and disappears into a park when he hears the first siren.
It's a rare all cars call on the Toronto Police radio.
So while Roger is on the run down here, he
hears the siren of literally every police car in Toronto.
(06:19):
Desperate to find a place to hide, Roger storms into
the home of a multi generational Japanese family, completely covered
in blood, gun in hand, and he more or less
holds this family hostage. There's a three year old and
a five year old kid just sitting on the living
room floor and they're watching Superman on TV. And in
(06:43):
the newspaper article, I think it was their dad. He's like,
he's like, not even a gunman in their living room
could get them to stop watching Superman. Not too long
after that, the cops surround the place, burst in and
took Roger down. The photo of him after they caught
him in the back seat of the police car, he
(07:04):
just looks exactly like he's from the book The Outsiders,
with his leather jacket and his tall, slicked hair, and
he looked like a cartoon rendering of a troubled youth
from the fifties. Yeah, so it would have been one
of these houses. Okay, let's go, and then those were
(07:29):
our girls. Takes one lessons. The disjointed Toronto Star headline
says storekeeper slugged gun cow's family arrest gory suspect.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
I definitely remember that one because that hit the papers
big time.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
That's Sue, Roger's sister. This was the first time Roger
had a full page dedicated to his crimes. And when
he had his day in court, the judge had before
him a seventeen year old kid who'd broken out of
prison twice in a little more than a year, and
who'd basically been in trouble with the law since he
was twelve years old. They needed to send a clear message.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
That's when Roger was given five years in the Kingston Penitentiary.
He was thrown to the walls.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
What awaited seventeen year old Roger at Canada's most feared
penal institution More pain, more suffering, sure, but also something
he hadn't experienced yet in education.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
In the headlines you're trying to start with, graduated from
reformatory with honors to the big.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Hot from iHeart Podcasts and campsite Media. I'm Sam Mullens
and this is Go Boy, Episode two. School of Crime.
(09:02):
The Kingston Penitentiary or the pen KP, Canada's Alcatraz, was
originally opened for business in eighteen thirty five. When it
finally closed its doors nearly two centuries later, it was
one of the oldest continuous use detention centers in North America.
And to see it now, just looking at it, you
(09:24):
can still feel the weight of the place. You can
hear the foreboding music of it. Every large limestone boulder
it's built with was broken loose in a quarry by prisoners,
transported to the site by prisoner muscle, and set by
prisoner hands. By the time Roger arrived, the place had
(09:45):
already broken the spirits of generations of men. Roger was processed,
assigned a cell number and a prison uniform. His number
was unique because it started not with a digit, but
with a letter Y for youth. He was only seventeen
years old, and he was thrown into the snake pit
(10:05):
containing almost a thousand of Canada's most dangerous men, because
in the eyes of the law, he was one of them.
A sobering thought for him to mull over as his
seat door locked shut. It was a tiny space, just
enough room for a flip down bed chained to the
wall and a toilet and sink. Roger writes extensively about
(10:29):
his time in the Kingston Pen, so we hired an
actor to read his words.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Hey, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
This is Jamie Cavanaugh. Whenever you hear Jamie's voice, Jamie
say something.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Hey, Sam, thanks for having me on perfect Whenever you
hear Jamie's voice starting now. It is a verbatim from
the writings of Roger Karan. In those days, the first
thing he did when you moved into a cell was
to make a heavy cover for the lidless toilet. The
maze of sewers below were infested with bloated rats as
big as a groundhog and with big yellow teeth. If
(11:03):
you forgot to cover the toilet, you might suddenly wake
up about three o'clock in the morning to find half
your tow chewed away.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Roger had no plan yet on how he was going
to survive this place. Wherever he stood in the pecking
order among the inmates at the Guelpher Formatory meant nothing.
Here here he was no one. He had no one,
he knew no one, and in a place like this,
one wrong move could kill him.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
Prison life is definitely a society within a society.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
This is Bill Isaac's, a former headguard at the pen.
Bill is the kind of person so radically unflappable you're
afraid to ask what made him this way?
Speaker 7 (11:45):
You don't get too many frontline correction officers, you know,
talking about their life behind bars. It's not a good environment.
The norms and values are different inside prison to the
norms and values that we in the community see on
a daily basis. You could be physically assaulted, stabbed, piped, beaten.
(12:07):
They don't think of ramifications.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Roger had heard stories about predators and the warped sexual
politics that can play out in a place like this,
and he wanted to do everything he could to protect himself.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
It's an unpredictable, volatile environment. The inmate must to survive
conform to those prison norms and values.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
If ever there was a time for discipline, this was it.
He had to study the routines and movements and learn
the structure of the place like his life depended on it.
And he learned quickly that on the inside, it's all
about the routine. It's all about learning the routine. Everything
(12:56):
in the pen, and I mean everything begins and with
the ring of the bell. The cell buildings were designed
like a giant wheel, the cell blocks being the spokes
extending outward four stories each and at the center of
the wheel was the dome.
Speaker 7 (13:15):
They couldn't go anywhere off the range without going through
the domes. It was basically the heart and soul of
Kingston Penitentiary.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And prominently in the center of the dome floor, usually
surrounded by a small gang of guards, was the infamous
Kingston Penitentiary Bell, a brassy behemoth loathed by most who
had ever done time there.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
The bell told you what to do.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Mike McGinn remembers the abrace of chime Well. He's an
ex con who served at KP around the time that
Roger did.
Speaker 7 (13:51):
The bell told you when to go to supper, when
to go get your breakfast, when to get your launch,
when to go to the yard, when to wake up,
when to go to sleep. Quite a large number of
the imates actualiated that bell. It was a source of soreness.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
By Roger's count, The thing chimed one hundred and twenty
seven times a day.
Speaker 7 (14:10):
It was ding ding ding, ding, ding ding ding ding.
They hated it with a passion.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
It controlled your life. It controlled your life.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Roger began obediently moving to the toll of the bell
like a machine, to get his breakfast, to take a shower,
and to head to work. Every inmate at KP is
assigned a job in the institution. Different prisons are known
for different lines of production. At one prison they might
make license plates or make clothing for the armed forces.
(14:42):
But a KP, one of the things the inmates made
was mail bags for Canada Post. One wing was devoted
to making them, the other for repairing them. So Roger
learned the intricacies of a sewing machine in a hurry,
and did his best to keep his eyes on his work,
trying to be in visible. As he got a feel
for the place.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I sensed the prison atmosphere slowly. It was one of
constant restraint, of suspicion and bitterness and secrecy. Men let
down their guard only in intimate conversations with other cons
They all wore a look that puzzled me. For a while,
I couldn't begin to guess the cause of the unseeing,
lost in contemplation vagueness. One day I realized that I
(15:27):
was wearing it too.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
When he first arrived at KP, Roger used to spend
eighteen hours a day stuck inside his cell, but he
really didn't mind all the time alone in there. He
could at least let his guard down a little bit.
In the confines of his drum, no one could get
to him.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
Here.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
At the end of each day, the bell would ring
for dinner, or as the cons called it, jug up.
There was no cafeteria or mess hall at KP with
these types of men, and it wasn't worth the risk.
So they'd go one cell block at a time, and
they'd line up by the kitchen where a tray would
be unlovingly shoved through a small opening, and then you'd
(16:10):
shuffle back to your cell for the night to enjoy
your dinner alone. As Roger would pick at the unsavory
arrangement on this tray, and a guard would glide by
for the final count of the night. He heard a
saying that stuck with him in this place.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
They feed us like swine and count us like diamonds.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Every day ended the same, with hundreds of locked doors
and hundreds of men with nothing but time.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
You could read, listen to the radio, pace a few
steps back and forth, dream, watch your neighbors through their
reflections in the windows, crack up, smash your cell furniture,
slash yourself with a razor blade to break the monotony,
hang yourself, or join in on range conversations until the
silence spells sound of it's o'clock. This would be followed
(17:02):
by a gurgling of toilets, coughs, and curses, and then
a long silence until morning, interrupted at intervals with nightmares
or outbursts, as one prisoner warned another to come out
swinging when the gates opened in the morning.
Speaker 7 (17:17):
On top of the monotony of prison routine, on top
of being told what to do, when to do it,
how to do it, et cetera, et cetera, they've got
the additional stress of living in that volatile environment.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Roger started to get a firm grasp of the routine
and was beginning to understand the hierarchy of the place
and the things to watch out for. The wolves of
the institution would try to get young inmates to gamble
with them, with the idea being that if they accrued
enough of a gambling debt, they could then be coerced
(17:51):
into performing sexual favors instead. Roger was determined to avoid
that scene at all costs, and the best way could
think of doing it was through silence. He didn't even
realize what he was doing at first, but then a
day would pass where he wouldn't say a single word
to anyone, And then a week would go by.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
I figured out what was say the wrong, think of
my number of friendship to the guards, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Going to stuff. But I decided not to talk. And
when I went to talk, after a while, I could
talk any more.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But just because he wasn't saying anything didn't mean that
he had nothing he needed to express. Inside. He was screaming.
He was filled with hostility, with self hatred and regret.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
At night, alone in my cave, no smile would touch
my face, often silent tears, but no smile. Loneliness sat
heavily on my shoulders, and my throbbing temples made sleep
more and more difficult to attain.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
He started getting migraine headaches, the pain so acute he
struggled to fall asleep at night. He never felt so isolated,
so alone in his whole life. It was as if
he'd already left the world of the living. He'd rock
and rock for hours, a mass of sweaty emotion, replaying
(19:13):
everything he'd done to end up here, and then, seemingly
at the moment he'd finally managed to slip off to sleep.
As time marched on, Roger had managed to keep himself
out of trouble and mostly was able to stay out
of harm's way. But even when you're being a model inmate,
(19:34):
not doing anything to draw attention to yourself, the horrors
of KP will find you. Roger's little sister, Sue, would
drive down to Kingston with her dad to visit him
(19:56):
whenever she could. She was a teenager too, and even
all these years later, she can still remember the feeling
of sitting across from her brother and wanting to know
how he was doing, but at the same time not
wanting to know.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
I hate to think what's happened in there. I find
it very difficult to even let my mind go there.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Over the years, the two siblings would sit in many
visitation rooms like this one, and Roger would not speak
of the punishment he was subject to. He'd never tell
his little sister about the limbo room or the fistfights.
He wouldn't tell her that once in Gwelph he was
thrown in a straight jacket and subject to an experimental
(20:38):
gas treatment that made him thrash on the table and
then black out. And it wasn't until several years later
that he told Sue about the many shock treatments he received.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Hey, put me on a table, He'd put a stick
between my teeth.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Elect who elector designed for hid pump Solian Fennis all
by that car, making count back whis from one hundred
and then might count about really groggy, and doctor would
shoe a switch.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
They would give them shock treatments, lots of shock treatments.
You know they're going to shock the devil right.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Out of them.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Even though it was hard for her to see her
brother in this place, one thing that was never hard
for Sue was to stand by Roger no matter what.
She'd do her best to encourage him in their brief
time together, but she'd always leave worrying about him.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
It's hard to see your family member or your loved
one incarcerated, It really is. It's difficult when you drive away,
you don't speak in the car all the way home.
You feel guilty leaving them behind. I didn't do anything wrong,
but I feel bad leaving him behind.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
In prison, it's not uncommon for inmates to succumb to
their hopelessness and take their own lives. Roger saw it
all the time. Guys who were there one day would
just be gone the next and given what Roger had
suffered in places like this, It would have made sense
if he considered his own disappearing act from this plane
(22:17):
of existence, but he didn't, and one of the main
reasons he didn't. The thing that turned his life around
in there was when he discovered an outlet for his anguish.
Every day, the inmates were allowed forty five minutes of
free time in the recreation yard. Some guys would play
(22:40):
baseball or just bullshit in the shade of the watch tower,
where guards would peer down on them cradling rifles. But
in the middle of the yard was a weight pit
where the toughest guys in the prison would pump iron.
Roger had a strict discipline for not participating in anything
he didn't need to, but one day the barbells seemed
(23:02):
to be calling out to him, so he walked over
and worked his way in, not sure how his sudden
boldness would be received, but no one said anything. Roger
wasn't very big, but he was always athletic and determined,
and with a high threshold for pain, the exact right
(23:24):
mix of attributes to become a great lifter. He started
showing up every day, hitting the same circuit, increasing the weight.
Little by little, he had a normal practice.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
What was not normal was the black rage within me,
and I desperately needed something to dispel it. And I
found the heavy barbells a perfect distraction, and like a
drowning man, I threw myself at them with a fury
and advance.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
The resistance of the weights seemed to finally lift something
off of him. Even his headaches went away. Roger's dogged
determination with the weights caught the attention of the guys
who ran the pit. They'd watch this kid pump iron
day after day, pushing the bench press bar like he
(24:13):
hated gravity. When one day they called him over, here's
former KP guard Bill Isaacs again.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
So there are a number of groups inside present. The
Clicks could be a muscle group. In other words, we're
the weightlifting group. We're four five or six inmates that
get together and we basically run in all the weight pets.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Roger had observed enough to figure out that the weight
pit guys were the most popular guys in the prison,
the alphas, the best athletes, and the toughest guys in
the place. So when they basically said, we've been watching you, kid,
and we're wondering if you want to join our group?
Roger smiled. He knew right away that this would change
(24:56):
things for him, because he knew it meant that now
people would be less inclined to fuck with him. Roger
was still silent when they'd all hang out, of course,
but it was remarkable what he could accomplish socially with
a mute button on. And the beauty of the weight
pit was that it rewarded those willing to listen. It
(25:19):
was a hub of gossip and stimulating conversation. The thickest
part of the prison grapevine ran right through the pit.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
You could also just sit around in the shade of
the wall, or pace back and forth in the walking
area and participate in the biggest pastime of all one
thousand and one ways to better thieving. One of the
main weight pit guys that Roger became friends with was
a guy named Chuck. He was a war vet and
as bright as he was grumpy, which was very Chuck
(25:49):
also happened to be in a click of bank robbers.
Roger was young and impressionable, and in the power rankings
of the prison population. Nothing was cooler and more respected
than being a bank robber, so.
Speaker 7 (26:03):
The very very top of the pyramid. Those inmates are
considered the true inmates, the true cons The leaders, predominantly
bank robbers, might not be smart from an educational perspective,
but very very street smart, very very prison smart, so
that they've got brains, so a bank robber. Those types
(26:26):
of people would be at the top of the packing water.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Rogers started spending more time with Chuck and the other
bank guys on the inside. It was almost as if
between games of handball or horseshoes or weightlifting sets, there'd
be classes to audit on bank selection, how to build
a solid crew, crowd management, and best practices for weapon usage.
(26:52):
Chuck and the elite crew of cons knew all about
the inner workings of bank voughts, or how best to
sec convent the newest generation of alarm systems. They'd talk
about these things openly, with the idea being that one day,
maybe one of them in this dusty pit might pull
off the perfect, big league heist. As Roger listened, he
(27:17):
realized how much of a novice he'd been when robbing
in the past. By hearing these guys talking shop every
day in the yard or over the whir of the
sewing machines at work was like having his own private
Dillinger masterclass. One day, Roger would walk free from this
place and he had no intention of ever coming back.
(27:38):
But at the same time, if he ever was going
to try robbing again, he at least knew now how
to get away with him. The Kingston Pen was a
place where there was constant turnover. For every new fish
walking in, someone who seemed like they would never get
out would be granted parole. One guy guy serving a
(28:00):
long sentence. Lou, who'd been the way pit manager for
over a decade, finally got his parole paper stamped, thus
creating a job opening. The weight pit manager was one
of the most coveted jobs in the whole prison. You're
in charge of keeping everything clean and orderly, not just
in the pit, but in the sports shack as well.
(28:22):
Instead of the mere hour of recreation time, you would
get six hours a day with all the athletic equipment
to yourself. So naturally there were lots of guys clamoring
for the job. But since Lou had held the job
for so long, he was able to appoint his own successor,
and he surprised everyone when he chose Roger. This was
(28:47):
the cherry on top of Roger's miraculous social ascension. Without
saying a single word to a single person in two
full years, he went all the way from being a
total outcast loaner to the top of the heap. He
was respected, and much more importantly, he was protected. The
(29:10):
day that Roger's vow of silence ended, he was lined
up with some guys he knew from the pit waiting
for their turn in the showers, when a new guy
in the pen, a wolf, started whispering and eyeing up Roger.
This wolf had no idea that the crew flanking Roger
on either side were his good buddies, so imagine his
(29:31):
surprise when seconds later he found himself laying on the
floor of the showers with the full weight of a
man compressing his windpipe as he gasped for breath. It
was in this moment, as Roger watched his friend defend
his honor, that he shouted the first words he'd said
in two years. He yelled, don't you'll hang. Roger's buddy
(29:58):
was so shocked to hear his voice from the first time,
he released his grip and laughed and said leastwise, we
got Roger talking again. When Roger hit the halfway point
of his sentence, everyone assumed that he'd be paroled at
(30:19):
the first opportunity. He was still so young and had
been such a model inmate during his stint that it
seemed a foregone conclusion that he'd get out any day.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
My parole never did materialize, and everyone was dismayed. My
friends on the Sports Gang were ready to grab a
hostage and demand my release.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Roger started to get that old hopeless feeling that he
got when he first landed on the inside, like society
didn't want him, like he wasn't good enough to ever
be free again. But then something unexpected happened. Someone busted
him out. The first two times Roger left prison, he'd
(31:02):
done it by escaping, but the third time he was
sprung by the least likely person you can think of.
The Queen of England, Her Majesty, was off to Canada
in nineteen fifty nine to cap the Great Saint Lawrence
Seaway Project. The Queen came to Canada and with President
(31:26):
Eisenhower by her side, she boarded a boat to officially
and royally declare the project open. The Seaway project had
taken five years and nearly half a billion mid century
dollars to complete. It was one of the most ambitious
projects in Canadian history, and it connected the Great Lakes
(31:46):
to the Sea the Free world. Hail's this stupendous achievement.
The Saint Lawrence seaway. As part of her royal trip
to Canada. The Governor General sent out a wire to
the penitentiaries alerting them that at the wish of Her
Royal Highness, a general amnesty was being granted, whereby a
fraction of all sentences being served would be terminated. So,
(32:10):
just like that, in the fine month of June, Roger
and five hundred and sixty eight other inmates from across
the nation were told that the Queen was busting them out.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
A tremendous feeling of exhilaration filled my whole being the
moment that I stepped through that big front gate into
a perfect summer day. I stood at the edge of
the old road that led into the city as shivers
of anxiety made my legs tremble and perspiration break out
on my brow.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Naturally, his family was elated when they received word that
their little Roger was finally going to be free.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Will come Dad and I to pick him up.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
When Sue embraced her brother Roger, he looks much better
than he had on previous visits. The light was back
in his eyes, his boy's frame was gone, and he
suddenly had the build of a man. Sue teased him
for being so tanned and fit and joked that maybe
she should go to prison. There was another thing that
(33:12):
they had to do in Kingston before making the two
hour drive back home to Cornwall. Roger's dad had an
appointment at the hospital with a specialist. When Sue came
back out, she brought Roger up to speed. Their dad
had been sick and steadily getting worse. The cobalt treatments
(33:33):
weren't working on the cancer, and they didn't know how
much time he'd have. This was devastating news for Roger,
a shadow cast on an otherwise wonderful day. There wasn't
much time for sulking, though, because when his dad finally emerged,
he gave Roger the keys.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And he even let Roger drive the carmel.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Sue had wanted to throw a proper welcome home party
for Roger, but he had vetoed it to Roger homecomings
are for soldiers, not ex cons, But Roger's arrival was
too big to let pass with nothing. Relatives and old
friends started popping in to congratulate him, and the beautiful
(34:20):
woman from next door kissed Roger, still a virgin, on
his blushing cheek.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
My mind went spinning back through all those endless nights
of dreaming and yearning and hugging my pillow and wanting
to be loved to return. I was now twenty one,
and I still hadn't gotten around sleeping with a woman.
Realizing that I was now a man, and that a
profound change had occurred in me since leaving home five
years earlier, I braced myself for the changes I was
(34:48):
sure to find the people that I left behind.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It was all very surreal to be back home. The
space of his childhood home weirded him out. The hardwood
floors felt foreign, the ceiling felt needlessly low. The silence
of his childhood room at night was horrific. What was
he going to do now? Since the seaway project had wrapped,
(35:17):
the job market was suddenly flooded with twenty thousand men
looking for employment. Roger took a job with the railway,
replacing old rail lines, but the work was hard, even
for a ripped x con, and the pay was criminally low,
just ninety cents an hour. One night, Roger was soaking
in the bathtub, having just walked off the railway job,
(35:40):
and reflected on his parents' financial woes he had heard
them talking about earlier.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Since Dad was too weak to work and not bootlegging anymore,
he was hard pressed to keep up the mortgages, so
for the first time in their long marriage, Mom had
to work to make ends meet, and for a proud
man like Dad, it must have been more painful. In
the cancer, soaking up water in the bathtub, I felt
a profound love for my father for the first time
in my life, but also anger and sorrow that such
(36:09):
a proud man could not die in peace.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Roger knew he had to do something. He could find
another job, maybe lay some brick, get his foot in
the door somewhere, maybe learn to be a carpenter or something,
or or he could find another way to make some money.
(37:06):
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
and hosted by me Sam Mollins. Our producer is Rob
Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
(37:28):
Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music
by Garrett Tiedemant fact checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected
archival clips are from CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy
was written by Roger Kuran. iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers are
(37:48):
Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Kuran's book
Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh. Special thanks to Mike mcghinn,
who passed away before we wrap production. Campside Media's executive
producers are Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam hoff and Matt cher.
(38:09):
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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