Paddy’s Last Word Series #7: The truth about Christopher Clarkson

[Note: This is the seventh of Paddy Mitchell’s seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] Howdy Folks, 

I received a letter from my son Kevin today, and he included an article from the newspaper about Christopher Clarkson which included a photo of him getting of an airplane at the Ottawa International Airport, in handcuffs, obviously not looking forward to the 20 year prison sentence.  He escaped this, by jumping bail, and living an honest existence, having married, and becoming a successful businessman over the past 30 years.  

My heart goes out to him and his family.   If he is made to do the 20 years – it wouldn’t be fair at this late stage.  He proved that he’s not a criminal by his exemplary behaviour over the past 30 years.  I didn’t know this back in 1975 when he and I met, and Tommy Harrigan, and Lionel Wright were arrested for conspiracy to import a narcotic (cocaine) into Canada.  I’d met him 2 or 3 times.   He was a highly intelligent , 25ish gentleman and Hollywood handsome.   And, other than meeting Lionel and I, those 2 or 3 times, had nothing to do with the so called “Stopwatch Gang”, and never robbed or stole anything in his life. 

The only thing I know about his “criminal career” is that he traveled to Curacao in 1975 or ’74 with Tommy Harrigan – I don’t believe he had anything to do with that 8 ½ pounds of cocaine – that came out of that trip.   I didn’t put up any money for those drugs.   I got involved in the “Conspiracy” because I knew someone at the airport who said he could get the suitcase out of customs without inspection.   As it turned out, he was an agent, provocator, working for the RCMP and he entrapped several people into joining conspiracies to import narcotics.   And, shame on me and about six others, we fell for it.   One friend of mine committed suicide, two jumped bail, two were acquitted, and three of us were convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.  If you want more information about this, ask me, I’ll be honest!   I believe it’s time (after 30 years) that the truth should be known about those conspiracies. 

P.S.  Somebody finally got it right!  My congratulations to reporters:  Andrew Seymour and Chris Lackner of the Ottawa Citizen for getting the facts about the “Stopwatch Gang”. Everything in their article rings true. 

Paddy’s Last Words Series #6: New Year’s Eve reflections

[Note: This is the sixth of Paddy Mitchell’s seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] 

It’s Sunday morning, 9:00 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and I’ve just turned off my Sony radio after listening to an hour of N.P.R. (National Public Radio).   The headlines were:  the death of ex-president Gerald Ford, Saddam Hussein and James Brown.   

This is the first time I’ve picked up pen and paper since going through a chemotherapy treatment on Thursday that kicked my butt.   It’s a product I haven’t been treated with before.   The initial treatments of chemo had worked fine, stopping the spread in its tracks, but then stopped working, thus the sudden change in product.   I’m just coming out of the “fog” (that’s what is is referred to here, “chemo fog”, you lose your strength and memory and appetite and balance… you walk around in a fog all day).   It’s called Gemcitabine (or Genzar). 

There’s still a few hours remaining in this waning year.  It hasn’t been a good one for me healthwise; but other than that, it hasn’t been a bad one for me either.  I got to see my 2 grandsons and my son  (grandsons for the very first time) (they are 13 and 15) and my son for only the third time since I escaped from prison in 1974.   So it has been a good year in that sense! 

I believe my first wife, Joanne, has forgiven me for all my peccadilloes, she wrote to me (after not doing so, and hanging up the telephone on me several months earlier, angry about embarrassing her with the publication of my book) a couple of times this year;  it’s been a good year in that sense! 

And, I’ve made some new friends through my website; and now a new “blog” (that has grabbed a lot of attention) set up by a wonderful new friend named Susan who volunteered to help me.    Of course, I still have Lynda who has helped me with all my typing through the years.   So, that’s all a blessing! 

I’m sorry, I’m just reminiscing, remembering good times that ’06 has given me:     I think that Dave Brown of the Ottawa Citizen and I have buried the hatchet after some heated words on paper last  year.  I wrote to apologize for my letter on my website where I let loose my anger at him over something he wrote about me in his newspaper column – but he was perfectly right!   He’s written back and if you think his columns are good, you’d love his personal letters.     He inspires me to write better.

Paddy’s Last Word Series #5: Christmas in Prison

[Note: This is the fifth of Paddy Mitchell’s seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] 

My good friend Jimmy Allen also has been an inspiration to me this past year with the success of his book: “This Firefighter’s Life”.   What a book!   Jimmy and I have been friends forever.  He writes to me all the time…keeps me informed by sending newspaper articles, stuff off the internet, and just generally, what’s happening around my home town of Ottawa. 

My family, mostly in Ottawa, but spread across the entire country are still supportive of me and don’t condemn me for the things I’ve done (but certainly, do not approve of my actions over the years). 

On Christmas Day, they served us a pretty good meal:  Cornish game hens, sweet potatoe, cornbread, pecan pie and a full plate of fruits and vegetables.     And tomorrow, New Year’s Day, they’ll try to do the same with a steak dinner.  Most of the 1000 inhabitants here will be contented, me included, they try to treat us right on Christmas and New Years. 

One Christmas still stands out to me:  it was the most miserable one I can recall from all those I’ve spent in prison.  It was the one I spent incarcerated at the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, Arizona in 1983.  I had robbed a department store in that city in Dec. 1981, and, under false identification, was granted bail on the charges.  I skipped bail and wasn’t re-arrested until more than two years later.  It was like a slap in the face to the authorities in Arizona.   Here they had one of the countries most wanted fugitives in their custody and let him bail on them.   When they got me back in the county jail they treated me really bad.   They kept me in an all-steel cell, never letting me out – except for 20 minutes every Sunday for a phone call.  (I’ll explain what happened to me on one of those forays out in a future letter – suffice to say it wasn’t pleasant).    They didn’t feed me properly – I had to shower in cold water – they ignored all my requests and treated me like dirt.   Then on Christmas Day (evening actually) my big steel door was unlocked and in stepped a uniformed jail guard – the only one who had treated me decent throughout the months I’d been there – named “Frenchy”.  

He said:  “How are you doing, Mitchell?”  

I answered: “Fine.” 

I figured he’d been sent to search my cell or something. 

“I just want you to know that I don’t approve of the way you’re being treated around here, and I just wanted to wish you a Merry Xmas.  My wife asked me to bring these in for you”, and he handed me two packages wrapped in tinfoil and turned and left my cell.   The packages contained about a pound of sliced turkey and a piece of pecan pie!   

Just reminiscing; hope I didn’t bore you! God Bless!

Paddy’s Last Word Series # 4: Out of the frying pan, into the blizzard

[Note: This is the fourth of Paddy Mitchell’s seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] 

I don’t know if the term “history repeats itself” is appropriate here, but I was just listening to my radio and heard a news broadcast about a  major blizzard passing through Denver, Colorado, closing highways and schools and the Denver Airport, and my memory flashed back “exactly” twenty five years ago (which is a wonder because my memory has not been working well of late) to an incident that happened to me:  I had attempted to rob “Diamond’s Department Store” at the Metro Center Mall in Phoenix, Arizona. 

It was the week before Christmas, 1981.  I was reasonably successful until I found myself in a shootout with an undercover policeman who just happened to be at the store.  After bouncing over the counter and scooping up the money that was awaiting an armoured-truck pickup ($165,000) I was confronted by the policeman, gun pointed at me, and ordered to “Stop or I’ll shoot”.  He shot!  Taking a layer of skin off my nose….  I write about this entire incident in my book:  my arrest, incarceration, release and my trip to Denver;  all within three days. 

Too long a story to describe on this blog…anyhow, I ended up on a flight out of Phoenix to Denver and all I had to wear for the flight was a pair of jogging shorts, a polo-shirt, a pair of ankle-socks and running shoes.   There  was some questions as to whether my plane would be able to land because of blizzard-like conditions.   Somehow, we landed and when the passengers were leaving the plane the female steward stood at the doorway saying goodbye to passengers.   She greeted me with: “Where do you think you’re going dressed like that?   Don’t you know there’s a blizzard out there?”  “It would take too long to explain.” I answered and scurried on out onto the tarmac – no covered ramp on this flight – but I’d gotten away, which was an important thing! 

NOTE:   I hope you’ll forgive me if you think I write about robberies, prison escapes, and women in a flippant manner.   I don’t mean for things to come out that way, but that’s the way they happened to me.   These stories are not fiction… they all happened to me in the way I describe them.

Paddy’s Last Words Series #3: Times have changed

[Note: This is the third of Paddy Mitchell’s seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] 

Did you get to read the piece about Samantha?   Because of the delay between my writing on this blog and my receiving it via snail-mail I have no way of knowing whether the woman who runs things for me in Ottawa felt the essays I send her are appropriate to print.    I’m completely out of touch after spending the past 12 years in maximum security prisons (Atlanta, Leavenworth, Lewisburg, Butner medical center) that I don’t know what’s acceptable in this day and age. 

 “Samantha” was a lady I met in my travels and I wrote about in my book, only to edit the piece out thinking it was too explicit, but since, regretted taking it and others out of my book.  I’m from an old school, anything you wouldn’t mention to your mother, you shouldn’t write about in a book.   Boy-oh-boy, have times changed in literature!  I just got finished reading “My Old Man” by Amy Sohn, a chick-lit author.  It was the most graffic, sexually explicit book I’ve ever read.   It gets the thumbs-up from all the critics.   And I worried that two words would offend my readers… “Pussy and Penis”.   I wouldn’t dare offend by using the words:  f..k, or c..t, or c..k.  There’s so much more to Samantha’s story and I’m wondering (and waiting to hear) if it would be appropriate to tell about it here.  I will let you know what the consensus is, soon.

Paddy’s Last Words Series #2: Chick Lit has changed

[Note: This is the second of Paddy Mitchell's seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] 

These places afford people (inmates) plenty of time to read.   Dozens of periodicals come every day in the mail; newspapers come daily from all over the country, and the library is overflowing with books – dozens of inmates belong to book clubs and when they finish reading the books, they donate them to the library.  I only have one subscription to a magazine and that’s G.Q.   But I get to read Newsweek, Time, U.S. News, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair,…etc. 

Right now, I’m 100 pages into a great book by Amy Sohn, titled “My Old Man”.  It’s “Chick Lit” and is it funny.   The author doesn’t pull any punches with her descriptions about her thoughts about sex.  I don’t select books by their sexual content, like a lot of inmates do.  Especially, most of the blacks.  If someone doesn’t get laid by the third page… 

Anyhow, I’ve been out of circulation for thirteen years, and I can’t believe the change in attitude and thinking.  Not that there’s anything terrible going on, it’s just that people (especially women) are finally expressing their thoughts and feelings about sex.  Wow!   This book is an eye-opener for me.  And I was concerned about two words in one of my previous letters.    

I’m just heading out to the chow hall for lunch.   They are having some kind of fried fish sandwich, but I’m just going to see what kind of vegetables they have that I can smuggle out and get back to my unit, in order to make a bowl of soup with them.   I don’t like the fish, it’s deep-fried and has been dipped in bread crumbs or something, served on a hamburger bun.  If my mission is successful, I’ll eat healthy, if not, I’ll try again at dinner time.   The guards at the exit door at dinner time are more relaxed than the noon ones; the noon ones try to impress the bosses that abound during the day.   But I’m quick and slick…. 

NOTE:   I don’t know if all these things I’ve been writing about on this blog are interesting to others.  I’m new at all this.  But don’t give up on me, I’ll get better!  I’m just getting my writing skills back after 6 or 8 months of not being able to hold pen in hand.  I have some interesting things to write – I’m just feeling my way towards them.

Paddy’s Last Words Series #1: Tool Man

[Note: This is the first of Paddy Mitchell's seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.] 

I was never much of a handyman; breaking more of what I set out to repair than what I fixed.  If I got a flat tire on my car and I was near a telephone I’d call a service center and have them send someone to change my tire.  If I tried to do it myself, I’d strain my back or bang my knuckles or tear a $100.00 pair of pants or soil a $75.00 shirt – or worse still; break an expensive part.  I’m the kind of guy who thinks if a screw or a nut and bolt has one last turn in it … snapping the screw or the breaking of the bolt. When I went to the Philippines and married and bought a house, I found myself in a dilemma.  

They didn’t have any tradesmen in my area, only general handymen.  They didn’t have trade-schools where people went to study carpentry, electrical, plumbing, etc, etc.   And no one that I contacted seemed to know what they were doing.  So I went out and bought a whole bunch of tools and a big tool chest to put them in and decided I’d fix things myself.  I fixed nothing and broke everything!  One of my first operations was to replace a rubber washer in a sink in our bedroom bathroom.  When I visited the store that sold me plumbing supplies and asked how I should go about fixing a leak in my taps – he told me it was a simple thing.    Pop the plastic thing on top of the tap; there I’d find a Phillips screw;  take that out and put a new rubber washer in…but he neglected to tell me to turn off the water and where the shutoff valve was located … I flooded the bathroom and part of our bedroom… 

The next thing I tried to fix was a plug on our floor polisher.  I got it right and told my wife Imelda, “Okay, plug it in.”  Needless to say, I hadn’t got it right and a black ‘Puff’ emanated from the wall, plug and blew the circuit out, scaring Imelda so that she jumped and yelled at me.  She would never plug in anything I fixed after that. Then I tried to fix her flat tire.  She begged me to go down to the village and hire a handyman to come up (the mountain) and fix it.  I told her I could fix a simple thing like changing a tire.  I didn’t know how to work the car’s jack and the car fell off it just as I pulled the flat tire off and knocked me off my feet jamming the tire between the rear fender and the break drum.  I had to go to the village and hire a handyman to pry the tire out there and to repair a bulge in the fender.   From then on, every time I went to the little room under my stairs for my toolbox Imelda would appear and ask:  What are you doing?  In an accented way she had of asking an accusatory question.  And I’d answer:  I’m going to fix something or other. 

She’d block my way, saying like:  “Gary, please, you can’t fix anything.  Go to the village and hire someone.   You’ll end up breaking it or hurting yourself.” 

And I’d always say:   “Get out of my way, Imelda.  Any idiot could fix …” and I’d end up breaking it. 

We had a 300 foot deep well and a really high pressured pump on the property in the compound that pumped water into reservoirs that  cell fifty houses in the compound had high above their houses to provide water.  Rather than hire someone to turn the pump on every day and fill the tanks and then shut them all off after they fill up I volunteered to do the job – a good deed on my part that everyone appreciated.  (People would come to me at all times of the day AND NIGHT wanting me to fill their tanks of water.)  Anyhow, what I was going to fix this particular morning was a pipe that was leaking at a connection.  I figured it just needed a half a turn….  This was a high pressured pump and I bent over to tighten it.  I turned the bolt with all my strength.  The pipe snapped and shot up in the air almost taking my head off and shot water into the sky.   I stood there and shook, and promised myself I’d never try to fix anything ever again.   Imelda had been watching me through the front window and came running down the hill.  I told her she had been right and I apologized for not listening to her advice.   The only thing I was permitted to do after that was paint – but that’s another story! 

Paddy Mitchell’s Last Words

As you probably know by now, Paddy Mitchell passed away at a high security medical facility in Butner, North Carolina on January 14th, 2007. In the two weeks leading up to his death, he continued to hand-write entries for his blog and mail them to Ottawa to be typed and posted on his blog.

These last seven entries will be posted here over the next five days leading up to his memorial service on January 25th, in a blog series entitled “Paddy Mitchell’s Last Words.” Check back daily for Paddy’s final words to the world.

 In the days following the service, we’ll post some photographs and coverage of the service and reception. There will be a live mike at the reception at the Prescott Hotel for people to share their memories of this remarkable man and his legendary life. We’ll try to capture some of those memories and post them here for those of you who are unable to attend.