What Happened to Mickey?. Peter McSherry
signed and later back-dated to January 23, 1939, in which the critical part of his tale had the MacDonald brothers coming back to his Ossington Avenue apartment soon after the murder, whereupon, almost as he came through the door, Mickey blurted out the startling admission, “I have just killed a man,” without ever saying the victim’s name. There followed, as Shea would later testify several times, an oddly foolish argument between Mickey and Alex, in which the MacDonalds unnecessarily shared a lot of dangerous information with Shea and with Cecil Clancy, who Shea informed the police was present at the time and, though very drunk, had also heard, and understood, Mickey’s confession of murder. Shea would tell this story, real or imagined, in public for the first time, in Toronto Police Court on March 10, 1939, the first day of a preliminary hearing that would be “the longest in the history of the court.”[9]
Shea’s credibility, the Crown and the detectives knew, would be a major issue at the subsequent murder trial. The investigators had to scrupulously check his story in great detail, to make certain it was substantially true and would hold up in court. Shea had an extensive criminal record and, most importantly, he was facing serious charges in connection with the Port Credit bank robbery and, possibly in connection with the Dominion Shoe Repair robbery in Toronto. He had not been tried or sentenced on either charge — and, because of this, had an obvious self-interested motive to seek favour with the Crown by way of his testimony in the Windsor case. The Crown knew that a jury would be asked to consider whether Jack Shea was purposely lying Mickey and Alex into a hangman’s noose in order to get consideration for himself in connection with the robbery charges, and, further, as would also be more than suggested at trial, in order to get free of the consequences of his own likely involvement in the murder. Shea would deny all of this, of course, and, when his time came to tell his tale in court, he would perform nearly as well as any well-practised con artist might have.
One has to wonder about Shea’s story. That a career criminal, even a witless one, would make such an unnecessary admission, virtually as a form of gossip, to another — especially to another whom he knew was wanted on a major “beef” — seems almost to exceed the known limits of criminal stupidity. What could have been Mickey’s purpose in sharing such information except to put a noose around his own neck and that of his teenaged brother? Certainly, Mickey was an erratic and talkative professional thief at times — but could he have been this unwise? Did this really happen? Jack Shea said it did and, eventually, Cecil Clancy, who supposedly had only listened and tried not to appear to hear, said so too. As a police document attests, when, 26 days after the murder and 12 days after Shea “rolled over” on Mickey and the others, detectives, in need of corroboration of Shea’s story, first questioned Clancy, they found the bookmaker in a state of great fear over what he later testified he had overheard. With real reason, Clancy, who was certainly criminal-minded enough to understand the danger, was said by the police to be palpably afraid that Alex MacDonald, who was then at large on bail, might take “serious steps” to insure his silence forever.[10] It seems odd that Shea and Clancy — who barely knew each other — decided to take a car trip to Clancy’s cousin’s Read, Ontario, farm, two days after the murder, ostensibly “to get off the liquor,” and that this happened immediately after an arranged meeting with Mickey at the Duke of York Tavern in the east end of Toronto. If nothing extraordinary had taken place, would it not have been unusual, or at least odd timing, for these two virtual strangers to go off together in such a fashion?[11]
CHAPTER EIGHT
Toronto’s First Gangland Murderer
(January 22, 1939–March 15, 1939)
After his conviction for robbery with violence, Mickey signed the waiver that relinquished his right of appeal then waited to be removed to Kingston Penitentiary. Day after day, he sat playing bridge in the corridor outside his cell in the Don Jail, but nothing happened. Cullinan, Constantino, and Epter all went. Johnny Brown, who stayed, faced further charges in Toronto and Hamilton, including armed robbery, shopbreaking, and escape custody. After the line-up of January 22, Mickey began to hear stories that the police were grilling criminal associates about the Windsor Murder — and questions with his name on them were coming up at the back end of these conversations. Mickey knew what this meant. He was the real suspect and there was “a squawker” — and he already thought he knew who this must be.[1] How many other friends and criminal allies had been frightened or bribed into turning stool pigeon? he surely asked himself. The police then began grilling Mickey himself — all day, every day, for two weeks, as his mother later complained in the press.[2] True to his own persecution complex, Mickey started making noise in the jail that the police were going to charge him with the murder — shouting that it was all a “frame-up” by the cops.
On February 23, 1939, more than a month after Jack Shea had sold his criminal friends to the police, Sergeant of Detectives Herbert McCready, now with Detective-Sergeant Alex McCathie in charge of the Windsor investigation, formally charged Donald and Alex MacDonald with the murder. Louis Gallow was not charged, since he had not been identified by any of the five eyewitnesses at the line-up and, otherwise, there was only Jack Shea’s hearsay story of Gallow’s supposed involvement in the killing.
Alex MacDonald, aged 19, on his way to City Hall and Toronto Police Court on February 24, 1939. (York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, Toronto Telegram fonds, ASCO7404
That evening Alexander MacDonald Sr., near his end as a working blacksmith and less than four years from the last breath of a hard life, was brought to No. 12 Station at Yonge Street and Montgomery Avenue on Herbert McCready’s order. Old MacDonald broke down weeping at the situation he was faced with. McCready wanted him to prevail upon his son, Alex, to tell “the truth” about what happened on the night of the murder against the advice of his lawyer, Isadore Levinter, who had advised Alex to say nothing.[3]
The next morning, Friday, February 24, 1939, The Globe and Mail, first Toronto paper on the street, wore the streamer: TWO BROTHERS HELD IN BOOKIE’S SLAYING. The heading over the lead story was “Mickey McDonald Named By Police as ‘Trigger Man’.” Later in the day, the Daily Star and the Evening Telegram had the arrest of the brothers as their blacklines, but their front-page stories led off with news of a disturbance Mickey had created that morning in Toronto Police Court. So it was that Donald “Mickey” McDonald, alcoholic, recidivist criminal and well-known frequenter of The Corner, came to be what Toronto and a good part of the rest of Canada then thought to be “Toronto’s first Gangland murderer.” That perception would last even after Jack Shea first told his story on the witness stand, whereupon Mickey might have become in the public eye only a dangerous armed robber who had tried to work “a score” that he was too drunk or too incompetent to handle.
After this, there followed nine months of prominently-displayed news stories, unremittingly full of the Windsor Murder and of the names of Alexander and Margaret MacDonald’s sons, Donald especially.[4] This was so even as World War II impended, even as King George VI and his Queen Elizabeth visited Toronto, in what was part of reigning British Royalty’s first-ever sojourn in Canada, and even after Toronto had adapted to living with the war in Europe on a daily basis. During this time, beginning with his arrest for murder on February 23, 1939, Mickey — dirty little Mickey from The Corner — became nothing less than one of Canada’s best-known contemporary crime figures. His reputation as such would hold up for almost 20 years.
Every seat in Toronto City Hall’s “A” Police Court was filled at 11 a.m., Friday, March 10, when His Worship Robert J. Browne, a grim-faced former policeman, went to the Bench. An air of quiet expectancy hung over the packed courtroom. Inevitably, as on other days of the four-day hearing, this near silence was broken by the sound of clanking steel from down below, a sound that grew louder as Mickey and Alex, in leg irons and handcuffs, were brought upstairs from the basement cells and into the courtroom. With the chained-up brothers came a flock of hovering sheriff’s officers, detectives, and uniformed policemen, to augment those of the same who were already in the room. This too would be part of the ritual each day of the hearing. Outside in the hall thronged many dozens of thrill-seeking gawkers who had failed to get into the courtroom. These had to be content