What Happened to Mickey?. Peter McSherry
too, that Jimmy had concern over what would happen to him if he tried to get rid of them. He tried, instead, to manage them with make-believe friendliness and small favours and preferments. “They kept after him for money all the time,” said Jack Windsor.[3]
On December 29, 1938, Frank Pallante, a part of this risky crowd, had been one of three who went to 247 Briar Hill Avenue and solicited Windsor for a contribution to Johnny “The Bug” Brown’s “Defence Fund.” As a bookmaker himself, Windsor had little sympathy for those who were known to extort bookies, but what could he do? This gang from the barbecue were casual associates of Brown, a known gunman for whom no less a figure than Rocco Perri had once posted $3,000 bail. Windsor handed over only $10 for The Bug’s fund — and the solicitors of the cause were later said to be unhappy with that. Their supposed buddy, who decorated himself in diamonds, gave them, instead of the fat contribution they expected, handbills that advertised the New Year’s party at the Windsor Bar-B-Q.
A problem for the detectives following this line of investigation was that the Windsor household unanimously absolved these suspects of being the perpetrators of the crime. None of the gang from the Bar-B-Q were among the killers, they all said, both before and after viewing them in a line-up.
At the same time, the publication of Frank Pallante’s name as having been picked up the day after Windsor’s death brought a small flood of whispered information from bookies and gamblers in west end Toronto. Most or all of these were saying that the same four men were actively extorting bookmakers and gaming operators in that part of the city. On February 17, 1939, Louis Spizziri, Louis Spadafina, Armando Cosen, and Frank Pallante — all frequenters of the Windsor Bar-B-Q — appeared at a preliminary hearing in a packed Toronto Police Court charged with “demand money with menaces” — extortion.[4] Cornelius Sheehan, a longtime dice- and card-game operator, testified against the four under the pseudonym “Mr. X,” and they were all sent to trial. But on their subsequent day in County Court, June 13, 1939, Judge Daniel O’Connell declared the evidence against the four accused to be “most unsatisfactory” and acquitted them all without requiring a defence. In the interim Donald and Alex MacDonald had been charged with, and tried for, the murder of James Windsor — which meant the $2,000 reward for the murderers was no longer on offer. That had helped end whatever impulse there was among the west end gambling set to testify against the four extortion suspects, either as murderers or as extortionists.
The important effect of this first suspicion of the killers as being Italians was that it provided the defence in the murder trial with its necessary alternate theory of the murder. The eyewitnesses had at first described the murderers as dark-complexioned Italians, not pale-skinned Scots. Then the same five witnesses had switched to fingering the MacDonald brothers, Mickey and Alex. Why? the defence would want to know. How was it reasonably possible for them to make such a mistake in their initial identifications, then afterwards switch to being so definite about an apparently contradictory truth?
Jack Shea’s arrest on Saturday, January 21, had changed the focus of the murder investigation. Long before being caught, Shea had surely made up his mind that he had to cut “a deal” to sell Mickey, and the others he was criminally involved with, both for the Windsor Murder and the Port Credit bank robbery. As a three-time loser, Shea was facing too many years “inside” for the bank heist and the shooting of the bank’s accountant and, as he would later testify, he feared being implicated in the murder by reason of Mickey’s loose mouth. He saw a way out for himself at what was meant to be great cost to Mickey, Alex, Louis Gallow and, to a lesser extent, Leo Gauthier.
An OPP report, clock-dated 4:30 p.m. on the day of Shea’s arrest, states, “After questioning by Insp. Lougheed, Shea made a statement admitting his part in the bank robbery.” Lougheed’s own report, for whatever reason, is not available.[5]
On the evening of the same day, January 21, Shea requested an interview with Detective-Sergeant John Hicks and Detective John Nimmo, two of those who had arrested him that morning. Upon their arrival at the Claremont Street Station, where Shea was then being held, as Alex McCathie’s later case synopsis states:
... Shea immediately informed them that the two revolvers which had been found in his room were two of the three revolvers that were used in the murder of James Windsor, and that the actual murderer of James Windsor was Donald (Mickey) McDonald, and that his companions in the crime were his brother, Alex McDonald (sic) and Louis Gallow....[6]
What Shea wanted, as future events would indicate, was “a wash” — total immunity — on both the Port Credit bank robbery charge and any charges against himself that might arise out of the murder of Windsor. In return, he would explain to the police how and why the murder happened, name others who had information that would help convict the men involved, and he would testify against those he named as the murderers as well as his accomplices in the Port Credit bank holdup. Such an agreement would, of course, never be made public, or even its existence acknowledged, by the authorities — but that is what it came to be, if, indeed, it was not exactly the proposition Shea put to the police on the evening of Saturday, January 21, 1939.
Fifty years later, Gwyn “Jocko” Thomas, The Daily Star’s junior police reporter at the time, recounted a mildly different version of what he was then told of Shea’s bargain with those in authority:
A senior detective had told me that Mickey’s brother, Alex MacDonald, and a man named John Shea had been charged with bank robbery ... Shea had then approached the police and offered to tell them what had happened to Jimmy Windsor if the robbery charge was dropped. A deal was made, and Shea told how he, Mickey, Alex and a Louis Gallo (sic) had gone to Windsor’s house to rob him. Only Alex and Mickey, who was very drunk, were armed, and Mickey shot Windsor for speaking to him sarcastically.[7]
If the murder happened as understood by Gwyn Thomas, Shea needed more than a bank robbery charge dropped: he needed the authorities to somehow overlook his participation in the murder. If he really went to Windsor’s home with the other three, Shea had formed a common intention with them to commit a felony and, under Section 69-2 of The Criminal Code of Canada, was as guilty of murder as the actual killer and, thus, stood to be hanged, as did all of the others involved.[8]
Shea did not have to be as clever as he was to know how badly the Toronto Police needed to clear up the Windsor case and, as a bright, experienced criminal, he ought to have known that he needed a lawyer to protect his interests in the deal he was trying to make. He may have understood too that, ultimately, the only person who could say Yes or No to such an arrangement was Gordon Conant, the attorney general of Ontario. Later, when he was several times queried about a deal with Shea, Conant answered by refusing to comment on the case at all. Cecil L. Snyder, the special prosecutor who would press the murder indictment against the MacDonalds, when asked, always flatly denied any such agreement existed. Any admission of “a deal” would, of course, serve to greatly weaken Shea’s value as a witness. Thus, if Shea was at Windsor’s house at the time of the murder, it was imperative for Shea to deny that he was there and it was similarly imperative for Shea to deny there was any agreement that would allow him to go free in return for his testimony.
Shea likely understood this before he spoke to the police. He had, or would soon have, a believable story to tell in the witness box and, if it was true that he was, in fact, at the Briar Hill house at the time of the murder, then the story he would tell in court, which did not acknowledge his presence there, was simply a pretextual story that nicely tied the MacDonalds to the murder and, at the same time, gave an account of how he knew they were responsible for the crime. Shea’s version of their guilt, true or not, did not disqualify him as a usable witness and it in no way risked any subsequent prosecution of himself for the murder. Very importantly, too, Shea supplied a motive for Mickey’s part in the crime. The killing of Jimmy Windsor, as Shea divulged it to the police, was nothing more complicated than a botched armed robbery. Mickey’s impelling motive was the $50 he badly needed as an advance for his lawyer, Frank Regan, who, so Mickey had supposedly been told, would not have been in court for him on January 10, on the charge of robbery with violence on James Elder, Lefty Thomas’s Church Street bootlegger.
On the afternoon of Monday, January 23, Shea was removed to the Peel County Jail at Brampton, where he was set up for most of the ensuing 10 months