Kenora is a small town of about 15,000 on the Lake of the Woods at the west edge of Ontario, a prominent province in Canada. Normally, Canadian towns are pretty quiet and orderly but on May 10, 1973, a masked gunman robbed a Kenora bank and then blew himself to smithereens with a bomb strapped to his chest. I call it a bombery.
You’d think this was something on a movie set, but it’s a true crime story with no ending. The bombed robber has never been identified. That’s beside having a full set of fingerprints, some twisted teeth, and a beautiful DNA profile available. Briefly, here’s what happened.
At opening time, the robber entered the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce on Kenora’s main drag. He wore a black balaclava and was armed with a pistol, a rifle, and packing a homemade bomb built with six dynamite sticks. The detonator was a clothespin device which he could operate through his mouth.
Instead of just “grab the money and run”, the robber made a huge spectacle He took the bank employees hostage and began negotiation with the police. This resulted in a plainclothes officer exchanging himself for the hostages. The robber demanded a get-away truck be supplied and for the vault to be opened. About $100,000 in bills were stuffed into three duffle bags the robber brought with him.
This ordeal lasted two hours. During that time, word quickly spread, and a large crowd assembled outside the bank with the police holding them back. The media arrived, and the outside scene was reported live on radio and filmed for TV.
When the robber and the officer came out of the bank, a police sharpshooter shot him— the bad guy, not the cop. He went down and the bomb went off, with blood and body bits and bills flying everywhere. It was chaos. The officer was injured—no doubt saved from death by being shielded with the money-filled bags strung on his back. Remarkably, most of the $100,000 was recovered and not scooped by frenzied folks.
To this day, no one knows the robber’s identity. His description was a while male about 45-years-old, 5’6” to 5’8”, and around 160 lbs. Despite his fingerprints being circulated through Interpol, dental records checked, and when DNA came along in the 1990s – there was no lead. Today, his body lies in a Kenora graveyard, and the case of the Great Canadian Bombery is closed.
Now, this case hits home for me. I grew up near Kenora and was in a Grade 12 class when it happened. My girl-friend-at-the-time (now known as she-whose-name-must-not-be-mentioned)—her mother’s car was parked outside that bank. Rosie’s Impala got splattered with the blood and the bits and the bills.
Watch the explosion on film as it happened.
Listen to the live radio broadcast.
Kill Zoners — Have you ever experienced a close-to-home crazy crime? Do you know anyone who has? Or can you think of a crime that can top this? Tell us about it in the comments.
Calm.
Bomb.
Cash.
Dash.
Bank robber
Macabre.
BOOM!
Broom.
JGA – Nice – you’re a poet and you didn’t know it.
Thanks, Garry, for sharing this interesting story.
A close-to-home crime crazy crime? Yessir. A neighbor seven doors up the street from me raped and murdered his wife in 2018. The echoes from that event still quietly resonate among those still here.
That’s an awful situation, Joe. Stuff like that never leaves the mind.
When we lived in Florida, we were very close to the FBI shootout of 1986, which happened very near the Farm Store we used to frequent. Fortunately, we were home at the time, but the FBI agents were completely outgunned. From Wikipedia: “The incident is infamous as one of the most violent episodes in the history of the FBI and is often studied in law enforcement training. The scale of the shootout led to the introduction of more effective handguns, primarily switching from revolvers to semi-automatics, in the FBI and many police departments around the United States.”
I remember this situation, Terry. At the time, we were in the process of switching sidearms from the S&W Model 10 .38 Special revolver to the 9mm Sig Sauer P228 pistol. The FBI experience helped make the decision.
That’s absolutely insane. Wild story.
It’s impossible to say, of course, but I get the impression the robber may have gotten away with the cash had he not pulled the hostage stunt. Sounds like a proto-Suicide by Cop situation.
I’ve always been a sucker for a heist story, whether true or fiction. Thanks for sharing.
That’s exactly what I suspect, Philip. It was an over-the-top suicide by cop.
Not me, but my mom. My family lived in a very small town in southwestern Arizona. Dad ran a popular gas station. Over time, he modified it, and eventually turned the abandoned lube bay into a small convenience store. Shortly after it opened, my mom was working on the pumps (to monitor profitability, we kept the store books separate from the gas books) and noticed a young man entering the store. She was not busy and idly stared into the store and saw the clerk acting oddly. Mom decided to go in to assist and the kid turned around showing a gun. Mom asked him what he was doing and he said he was robbing the place. So mom reached over the counter and pushed the silent alarm. The kid asked what she was doing and she told him. He was surprised and asked what for? She said because he was robbing the place. He got flustered and decided to run. Mom chased him into an empty lot next door where he tripped. Covered in sand, he stood up and yelled “Now see what you made me do?” Mom decided enough was enough and turned back to the gas station because she had customers. As soon as she was clear, the cops who were waiting nearby converged on the guy and arrested him. She got yelled at by everyone from my dad to the CEO of the corporation my dad leased the franchise from. I had grown and moved away by the time this happened, so when she called me to tell me about it, I just laughed at her. Mom was always going to do whatever she wanted to do. Mom was Irish, so she might have embellished the story a bit.
Good for your mom.
Yaay, Mom!
Good story, Joe. It’s probably the Irish in her. I can relate. I have Irish in me, too 🙂
Sure, an’ me gran’father’s name was Seamus, tho he went by James.
In populations exposed to many generations of tribal/clan strife, the survivors tend to have more powerful Guardiennes* than average, thus are capable of instantaneous reaction to trigger events, such as physical attacks, insults, or the offer of a nice drink of whisky.
* The brain’s emergency reaction network, rapid, autonomous, and without conscience.
When I was in the sixth grade I was supposed to spend the weekend with a friend along with a couple of other girls. She had horses and we all were looking forward to riding. But she didn’t come to school that Friday. We learned on Monday that her father had killed her and her mother…For months afterwards, I feared my dad would do the same thing.
Oh My God! Patricia, what a dreadful story.
I did witness a bank robbery in Jersey back in 1977.
I was between jobs and on my way into the bank parking lot to deposit my unemployment check. There was a car parked next to the waklkway with the engine running and as I entered the lot three guys in ski masks came hauling ass out of the bank carrying bags headed for the car. I had stopped by this time, I thought it was a movie or a gag or something and as they entered the car one guy stopped and looked directly at me sitting there in my Falcon with serious eye contact.
He held a sawed off shotgun in one hand and that’s when I figured out what was going on and dove to the floor of my Ford Falcon “Holy shit! This is the real thing!”
They left in a hurry and I went into the bank where people were picking themselves up off the floor. They’d pistol whipped a teller who didn’t move fast enough. So I hung around until the FBI showed up and told them what I’d seen. The FBI man said they knew who the robbers were but just hadn’t been able to catch them yet.
Great comment, Robert. If I had some guy in a ski mask with a sawed-off shotgun staring me down, shit would have been the real thing, too.
Wow. What a remarkable story, Garry. I’m surprised they still can’t identify the robber. I’d love to know what name or other info they put on his tombstone.
While I was researching this, Kay, I read that he was buried in an unmarked grave in a Kenora cemetery.
Great story, Garry. It proves, once again, that you can’t fix stupid. If only the guy had booked it, he might be on some island somewhere enjoying himself instead of ending up like so much confetti on the street. Ugh.
Decades ago, when my kids were young, there was a case that got a lot of attention in my town. The murder was gruesome, but the adjudication of it was maddening.
A woman murdered her mother. She chopped her up and put her in a barrel on the property where they both lived. Then she continued to cash her social security checks. Eventually, people noticed the mother wasn’t around, it got reported, and voila, the daughter was arrested.
But, here’s the kicker: the daughter got two (2, dos) years for the crime. I never heard why she only got two years. Probably a smart lawyer, insanity plea (wouldn’t ANYONE who did that be insane?) or some such.
Pretty sure that daughter must be dead of old age by now. I’d like to think that she is now serving the sentence that should have been handed out to her topside.
There must have been some sort of psychological defense argument used, Deb, like a reduction to manslaughter or committing an indignity to a dead body. If it was a murder conviction – first degree, second-degree, or whatever, there would have been a much greater minimum penalty.
“Her mither she could never stand,
Sing rickety-tickety tin . . .” –Tom Lehrer
Sadly I have been too close to to many crimes. The first one that came to mind was the rape and murder of the Kerry sisters in 1991. The two girls took their cousin to the Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi. It was a hang out. Four men decided to rape the girls and rob all three. They then pushed the girls into the Mississippi and the male cousin jumped.
Police at first didn’t think anyone could survive the jump so thought the cousin had killed his cousins. It took some time before he showed the police where he jumped from. Then they belived him. Then they found the real killers. The killers have either been executed or are serving life sentences. The Kerrys were regular pizza customers. I was at their house many times.
This is an awful tragedy, Alan. Hope it ended with executions.
One of the killers was deemed mentally incompetent to be executed. He consistently scores 67 on IQ tests. He ever gets to 69 Missouri has a needle for him. Somehow I don’t think he tries his best.
Many people are intelligent enough to score 67 on IQ tests if their life depended on it.
When my wife and I were looking for an apartment, a friend offered to run a perspective address into the regional criminal database. One apartment complex got a hard NO! Where we ended up got a thumbs up. It turns out a couple in our complex also used the criminal database before choosing where to live. They were husband and wife police officers.
After moving in, and with additional police patrols, one of our neighbors was raped by a serial rapist shortly there after.
One of my pizza co-workers fit the rapist’s description. Powerfully built black male, 20-30, shaved head. He was pulled over more than once a day for months.
Eventually a detective realized the rapists crime pattern. The police started looking for someone who works 24 hours on, 48 hours off, a firefighter. When arrested he looked nothing like the description, other than black and male. He was 50 with gray in his beard, and not that buff.
Garry, the most fascinating part of this story was that honest people returned most of the money they picked up. Doubt that would happen today.
Almost two years ago, I wrote about the murder of a young man at a gym I belonged to: https://killzoneblog.com/2021/09/true-crime-thursday-a-small-towns-loss-of-innocence.html
My next True Crime Thursday post on 7/27 is a follow up on the killer’s trial.
Hi Debbie. It’s clear in the photo that money was strewn everywhere. By the time my ex’s mom got to her car, the bills were gone from it but the blood and bits were still there. She refused to drive it after that. Looking forward to your 7/27 post 🙂
Wild story, Garry. I hadn’t heard about this one.
Back in the day, I knew a bank robber. My best friend dated him. LOL Five successful heists before a surveillance camera captured the perfect snapshot of his face. Last I heard, good ol’ Manny was in Walpole Correctional. 😀
You would know a bank robber, Sue 🙂
I was at the Kyrilia rock festival in Moscow when the 2003 Tushino Airbase bombing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tushino_bombing) happened. Two Checken women suicide bombers set off their explosions near the gate. I remembered it more from the festival atmosphere than the bombing. IIRC there were multiple stages, and when I heard a loud sound, I though it was just part of the festival. The Russian authorities didn’t shutdown the festival right away, it went until about 10 at night. The main entrance, the one closest to the Moscow metro, was closed as a crime scene.
I was at first annoyed that security at the festival gate wouldn’t let me carry in a plastic water bottle. But it was clear after the terrorist attack that they had good reason (not just corruption) to deny such being carried in.
My Russian understanding was not anywhere near being able to hear the rumors that were without doubt, circulating at the festival. The Russians certainly didn’t stop partying!