INDEPTH: STOPWATCH GANG
Lost Redemption
CBC News Online | October 18, 2005
From The Magazine September 8, 1999
Reporter: Hana Gartner | Producer: Gregg Dummett
Tonight a human puzzle. Just how does one even begin to explain what has happened to Stephen Reid? It's a bizarre story of personal reform so suddenly and violently shattered. A bank robber once on the FBI's Most-Wanted List, Stephen Reid became an acclaimed author, married one of Canada's most famous poets. He left prison to begin a new life. He appeared to have everything. Then seemingly out of nowhere, he lurched back into crime: a drug binge; a bank heist; a police standoff. So how did he lose his way? The Magazine's Hana Gartner had a chance to ask him in an exclusive prison interview.
HANA GARTNER: It made no sense. Stephen Reid being led away by Victoria police after a five-and-a-half hour standoff? Maybe the old Stephen Reid, famous for robbing banks and busting out of jail. But not the celebrated author who, for the last 12 years, appeared to be a model citizen. No one thought 49-year-old Stephen Reid would ever be behind bars again. But the man who claims he put down the gun when he picked up the pen is now facing charges of attempted murder, armed robbery and kidnapping.
Everyone, including his family, friends and fans, are asking why. That's what I wanted find out in this jail house interview in Victoria, BC.
GARTNER: You were the poster-boy for rehabilitation and redemption. You had -- you had a life handed to you, a new life. You could re-invent, recreate yourself and you blew it away. That's how it's perceived.
REID: It's, you know, it was just a slipping away. I sit here now with my bones back in my body and I look at my wall, you know the wall of my cell and I can't. I can't reconcile that I would have made those decisions. You know it doesn't make sense to me. It's -- I'm baffled, I'm puzzled, I'm more than that. You know it's a very -- it's a strange and awful place for me to go to and I can't at this time. You know it was -- you know just -- you know just started slipping away somewhere.
GARTNER: By the time Stephen Reid became part of the notorious bank robbing trio called "The Stopwatch Gang," he was already a career criminal. Known for its split second timing, the gang made the FBI's Most Wanted List for stealing $15 million from 100 banks. When they caught him, Reid used the time to good advantage. In 1986, he wrote a bestseller. His editor was acclaimed poet Susan Musgrave.
(File footage) MUSGRAVE: Some editor once said you can tell how good a book's going to be by the first three lines. And the first three lines were really great. So I put "great opening." And the second paragraph was excellent. So I put "excellent."
GARTNER: This is where the crime story turns into a love story. In 1986, the poet and the bank robber got married in maximum security.
GARTNER: This match made in prison was especially hard on Musgrave's daughter Charlotte, who is now 16.
CHARLOTTE MUSGRAVE / DAUGHTER: It took me so long. Like years, like ten years before I even started to want to even look at him. And then like he became my best friend. I couldn't even imagine what I would be like without him or where my life would have gone. And for that to happen. He was just -- he was a role model to me and to my close friends. He was like a best friend to all of us.
(File footage) REID (Reading): Dear Susan, sending out my last draft was like sending a Victoria aunt a nude picture on a drunken whimsy.
GARTNER: After his release from prison in 1987, Reid tried to redeem himself by teaching and preaching to others as someone who successfully went from larceny to literacy. He also tried his hand at acting. In the movie "Four Days," Reid plays a security guard who shoots and kills a bank robber. Afterwards, Reid joked that it was the first time he ever fired a shot during a heist. But his favourite role: being dad to the daughter he had with Musgrave; ten-year-old Sophie.
 Susan Musgrave (CP Photo)
GARTNER: She feels his loss already?
MUSGRAVE: Oh yeah. She said that, you know, he won't be here for Christmas. Father's Day was coming up and that was -- and she had a present for him that I couldn't send in because you can't have presents you know. But that was really upsetting for her.
(File footage) MUSGRAVE: But there hasn't been a lot of bark washing in.
GARTNER: Did you ever think, in a million years, that he was going to be locked up for armed robbery, attempted murder and kidnapping?
MUSGRAVE: No. That is. Those weren't my worst fears. My worst fear was that he would die of an overdose. That's what I thought -- I thought that was pretty inevitable.
GARTNER: Heroin addiction has plagued Reid most of his life. And now he returned to his habit with a vengeance. Three months before the bank robbery, Reid disappeared into Vancouver's inner city, staying drunk and high for days.
REID: You know I OD'd about six times in the last ten years. And you know I've been doing drugs long enough to know how much I can do. And I would wake up like four, five hours later, sideways on the road with blood on my arms.
GARTNER: Reid, who had worked so hard to reclaim his life, was now descending into a living hell and dragging his wife and daughters down with him.
GARTNER: Where -- where did it start slipping away; where did it start unravelling?
 Stephen Reid
MUSGRAVE: I guess the first time it happened that he was addicted I was very angry and I would try things. I would come in in the middle of the night and he'd be reading a magazine and I would close it and there would be a needle underneath. And I tried throwing it down the toilet and I learned that you don't do those things. Billy Holiday's lover, I guess, did the same and she slashed him with a straight razor. I mean don't take somebody's fix away when they're about to get sick.
REID: I'd stop, you know stop the car -- I'd break up my paraphernalia. I'd throw away -- you know it's not I didn't try. I was aware. I'd look at Sophie and see her. You know and she'd be beside me and she would just -- she wanted dad back you know. And you know that's. This is you know more than tough stuff; it's stuff that I have to. And I went there then, even in so separate from the world with heroin - - you know what heroin does, just surrounds you with -- with comfort, you know, so that you can't be wounded by the world anymore and.
GARTNER: Are you taking drugs while you're in jail?
REID: No, no. I haven't taken any since June the 9th.
GARTNER: Why? I mean you could if you wanted to.
REID: Yeah.
GARTNER: Why do you choose not to?
REID: Because of June the 9th; because of all the things we've discussed here. My daughters and my wife.
GARTNER: Is that what you are? Is that what you will always be, a desperate junkie?
REID: I hope not Hana. I hope not. You know these last 12 years are so out there. There are times when I've been -- when it's good is when I'm producing my life. Um and when you stop producing your life. And there isn't a demarcation: there isn't a point where I can say yeah, on Tuesday, September 12th, I stopped producing my life and went out and shot heroin. That didn't happen. You know I just stopped generally over a few months, probably paying a little less attention to the world; probably not getting up early enough; probably not being in all of the world often enough. Paying attention to my daughter as I should, the kind of things that -- and slowly it slips away. And um and that doesn't sound dramatic and that doesn't sound fulfilling; I can't wrap it up in one line. But um I don't think there's anybody more -- more aware of what's happened here than I am. You know of what's been done here, of what's been reaped.
GARTNER: Sixty-four-year-old Cathy Tupalic had never heard of Stephen Reid until this summer. Tupalic, who takes care of her ailing husband in this cramped one bedroom apartment, recalls that Wednesday morning just after breakfast when a jittery, sweaty man in a police uniform carrying a shotgun appears at her door.
CATHY TUPALIC / HELD HOSTAGE BY REID: There was knocking like that you know. He right away jump again down and tell me to put all the pillows on top you know.
GARTNER: What, this opens?
 Cathy Tupalic
GARTNER: Let's talk for a while about -- about the victims, about the Tupalics.
REID: I'm going to court on those things and I've been asked by the courts not to address them. So it's one of those things. Talk about terrorizing anyone; it's not something, you know when I see it in the light of day, is um you know it's. It's difficult for me to think about. I'm not going to, you know I'm not going to defend myself here. I can't defend myself here.
TUPALIC: Something happen like this, you feel like you was violated in your own home. And you know when you get older or something -- I think it's hard for young people too, but when you get older that. So for older people it's more hard than the younger. We try to get back our life, but not to think about. But this is just always with us.
GARTNER: Police were able to get the Tupalics safely out of their apartment at 11:30 am, but the standoff continued four more hours as Reid stayed holed up with his shotgun and the realization of what he had done.
GARTNER: Were you worried that he was suicidal, realizing what he had done not only to himself, but to you to his children?
MUSGRAVE: I know he was now at the end. And with luck, there's only luck that the gun didn't go off. I think. Well I know he tried to kill himself. And there was one bullet left in the chamber. So I said "thanks Stephen, that would have been a really nice picture: you with your head all over the room."
GARTNER: Under suicide watch and going through severe heroin withdrawal, Stephen Reid spent the first week in prison too sick to see anyone; too broken down to care.
REID: After my arrest, you know I was thinking that, you know I was sitting here with a plastic bag for about three or four days. And I thought well I'll get through another five minutes before I kill myself; I'll get through another five minutes before I kill myself. And I've never figured out whether I'm too much of a coward to kill myself or if it's the other side. Maybe, you know, I have enough strength not to kill myself. And in the end, it really doesn't matter. And if I was a betting man, I'd probably say too much of a coward.
GARTNER: In a poem to Stephen, Susan Musgrave once wrote: "I love that you have fulfilled my worst fears and all of my desires."
GARTNER: Stephen Reid walked out of prison a free man 12 years ago, exchanging a life of robbing banks for writing books -- but it didn't last. He is facing charges of armed robbery, kidnapping and attempted murder. Acclaimed poet Susan Musgrave is facing a life without her husband.
GARTNER: This is how their love affair began: for four years, Musgrave would visit Reid in jail and help him write his book. If it sounded dangerously romantic then, it isn't now. Stephen Reid could be facing 20 years in prison. But Musgrave hasn't given up. She visits every day. And every day, the routine is the same.
MUSGRAVE: You know the person is already kept away from you and then you can't get to them. And that's the horrible reality of prison. You can't reach the person that you most want to reach. It's like all our nightmares where you're trying to get somewhere in the dream and you can't. And suddenly it's a living nightmare.
MUSGRAVE: I looked in the glass -- the reflection of my hand could touch him. And so I would see the reflection of my hand going down his back. And I would massage his shoulders and I would mess up his hair. This became a little game. I mean it sounds pathetic, but actually it felt like I was -- that they couldn't keep us apart if they wanted to. So you have these small victories.
GARTNER: Can you help us understand a little bit?
REID: You know I wish I could. I wish I could say, you know, oh, I did heroin or I went crazy. Or you know I was the poster boy and I just fell apart and these pressures did this to me. Or you know: you know I served 14-and-a-half years, therefore I am damaged in a way that I can't. You know, whatever. You know I wish I could point to something. Or I am morally inferior to the rest of the population. Whatever. I am sure there are pieces of all of those that are true. You know but, I did some -- I made some bad moves in there. You know I made some bad choices and I didn't do some things. And I think it's the absence of things that we do.
GARTNER: But it's more than that. It's clearly actively self-destructive.
REID: I think in the end, the last, you know the last actions that we're talking about, I think, you know, for sure that way.
GARTNER: Could you put me in your head at that time. What led up to it?
REID: You don't want to go there Hana. You don't want to go in my head at that time.
GARTNER: Do you hate him? Do you hate Stephen Reid?
TUPALIC: No.
GARTNER: You don't have bad feelings towards him?
TUPALIC: No, I don't hate him. No. No. I am maybe angry all that you know he violated our life or something like that. But I don't hate him.
GARTNER: Forgiving is easier than forgetting, and Stephen Reid worries about the wounds he has inflicted.
REID: I worry and you know at the same time -- I'm very very worried about Charlotte.
GARTNER: Do you visit?
 Charlotte Musgrave
GARTNER: Has Stephen tried, in your conversations, to make some sense of it for you? Has he tried to explain himself, has he tried to defend himself?
MUSGRAVE: No, why would he bother? Because it wasn't even him that did it. So...
GARTNER: Who was it?
MUSGRAVE: It's just not him. It was everything inside of him that he did to himself but that had taken over. And it wasn't -- it wasn't really anything of Stephen left in him.
GARTNER: What about Sophie? She goes to jail to visit?
MUSGRAVE: She visited once -- well actually twice. Once when we were behind glass in a booth over a telephone.
GARTNER: What was that like?
MUSGRAVE: Horrible. They were both very brave. They made jokes and told riddles and had burping contests. And then at the end, she just burst into -- when he was led away, she started crying. She said I didn't want him to see my cry. He did the same on the other side.
GARTNER: So what are you looking at? What are you going to do? What's going to happen?
REID: You're looking at a lot of grief and a lot of time. Um and what's going to happen is I am going to live today, going to get through today for now. We are too close to the bone here to be, for me -- I have no predictions of the future and all the things about it. Just a game.
Whatever way it comes out it, will come out with some dignity. I know that much now. I know that much now. It's very much a death. I mean there has been a death of. A little death of our relationship and our life as it was. And we had a good life. We had a great life. And I had a great life, you know, as well. And now a death of that. That thing. And we are both aware of it. And coming back to it. I thought that the worst crime that I could ever commit would be to come back to prison and watch Sophie grow up from here. And then it happened. And my options I have narrowed down to very little also. I can either live or not live. And that's as simple. That's where I am at now.
GARTNER: So why do you choose to live?
REID: Number one, I think that a ten-year-old girl can be shown in -- I don't know how many years -- that there is a way out of these things; that there is redemption at the end. Whatever it takes. Whether she is old enough to vote by the time I get out or not. She'll see me get out. And she'll see me in a limited way from now 'til there.
MUSGRAVE: He has a chance to redeem himself -- to show that you can make a really bad mistake and go on and still be there in some capacity. He has that opportunity. And it's a better ending than if he, you know, puts a plastic garbage bag over his head in prison.
GARTNER: Stephen Reid is looking for a second chance a second time. Tomorrow, (Sept. 8) he faces another court appearance. Right now, all Reid knows for sure is he won't be going home for a very long time.
REID: I know that I'll always have a relationship with Susan. Sophie -- I'll always have a relationship with Sophie, I am her dad. I'll always have a relationship with Charlotte. You know again love doesn't stop, you know, because of some barbed wire.
GARTNER: For the Magazine, I'm Hana Gartner.
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