What Happened to Mickey?. Peter McSherry

What Happened to Mickey? - Peter McSherry


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      A man known to police as a member of a bootlegging gang was badly beaten by three men who broke into an apartment Sunday ...

      Under arrest are Mrs. MacDonald and her husband, Mickey. The woman, known in the Church-Dundas-Jarvis district as Kitty, was the tenant of the apartment which was wrecked several weeks ago and furnished the spark which started the blaze of violence.[5]

      Within a few hours of the robbery, the Toronto Police had rounded up Brown, Constantino, Mickey, and Kitty, but had to let all of them go when, at the last moment, James Elder quaked at preferring charges. After a Monday conference with Crown Attorney James W. McFadden, however, Detective-Sergeant John Hicks and Detective John Nimmo arrested all four again and charged them all with robbery with violence.

      The trials of those connected to the major “Gangland incidents” of October 5 and November 13 did not get to court until January 1939. During the 51 days after November 20, 1938, including the night of James Windsor’s murder, Mickey McDonald was out of jail on $2,000 bail. During some of this time, he stayed with Kitty in a second-floor flat at 233 Broadview Avenue, where the couple did a lot of socializing with others of similar interests. It seemed convenient that Leo Gauthier, one of Mickey’s long-time partners-in-crime, was released from “the pen” on November 22. Leo was soon paired off with Marjorie Constable, a friend of Kitty’s who then “worked the street” in the vicinity of The Corner. A short time after their first meeting, Leo and Marje moved into an apartment at Sherbourne and Dundas streets. In the first forty-eight hours of 1939, the two couples rang in the New Year by bunking in together in a single room in the seedy Frontenac Arms Hotel at 306 Jarvis Street.

      Three days after the Windsor Murder, on the morning of Tuesday, January 10, 1939, Mickey surrendered to face the music over the beating of James Elder. His trial, and the much-publicized trials of the others charged in connection with the same event, took place before County Court Judge James Parker and a jury that same afternoon. Elder and two others belonging to Lefty Thomas’s outfit had been charged as material witnesses and, so, as an alternative to going to jail themselves, were made to tell of what they saw, heard, and suffered at 463A Church Street in the early morning of November 13, 1938. For the defence, Brown and Mickey went into the box and told lying stories. Constantino and Kitty did not testify. The jury took four and a half hours to settle on guilty verdicts for Mickey, Brown, and Constantino. Kitty was found not guilty.[6]

      “I am quite in accord with your verdict,” Judge Parker told the jury. “The evidence disclosed these men went to Elder’s place for a certain purpose and they carried out that purpose with violence.”[7]

      The judge then remanded the three for sentence. Six detectives escorted the convicted men through the corridors of City Hall and, afterwards, to the Don Jail. The Globe and Mail of January 11 told its readers, “In gathering up the three, the police made their first arrests in the series of gang raids and shakedowns that have kept the Toronto underworld seething for several months past.”

      A few days later, the eight invaders of Kitty’s apartment went before Judge Ian Macdonell and a County Court jury. They were all charged with robbery with violence, assault occasioning actual bodily harm on a female, burglary, and wilful damage to property. Their three-day trial ended in the conviction of Brown, Cullinan, Constantino, Verne Epter, and Millie Dinwoodie on one or more of the charges. Kitty, who switched sides again, seemed to glory in her role as star witness against the lot and, as ever, took obvious delight in showing herself off in beautiful clothes. The October 5 Gangland incident, her previous flamboyant appearance in Toronto Police Court, and this County Court trial were the first widely-reported “events” in Kitty’s establishing her almost 30-year reputation as Toronto’s most scandalous woman. In the 1930s, few women in Toronto would go into open court and boldly tell that they were living with a man other than their husband, to whom they had returned upon his release from prison, and no daily newspaper used the word “prostitute.” Instead, the press employed phrases like “The woman, known in the Church-Dundas-Jarvis district as Kitty...” which said the same thing in a code acceptable to the straight-laced citizens of Toronto the Good. Like the term “Gangland,” Mickey’s wife’s reputation, fueled by many future arrests and misadventures, would live almost as long as the scandal sheets. The connotations of the names “Kitty Cat” and “Gangland” would be virtually inseparable. In fact, one was a habitual frequenter of the other — and much of Toronto knew it.

      January 27, 1939, was the day of final reckoning for all convicted of the two high-profile Gangland crimes. In Judge Parker’s court, Mickey’s father, in his thick Scottish brogue, made an “eloquent plea” for “my son, Donald, known as ‘Mickey’,” his errant boy of almost 32 years of age. Mr. MacDonald told a version of what had happened following Mickey’s return from prison:

      ...After a few days the telephone began to ring. His old companions found he was home. He tried to dodge them, and time after time we denied his presence in the house. Drink is his downfall. Whatever he did that night, it was not by deliberate choice. I do not ask anything for this boy other than the clemency of the court.[8]

      Judge Parker sentenced “Michael McDonald,” John Brown, and Joseph Constantino to two years each in Kingston Penitentiary.

      Then it was Judge Ian Macdonell’s turn on the Bench.

      “Gang warfare, such as was never thought possible in Toronto, must end,” Judge Macdonell told the five who stood convicted before him. “I am afraid you must be made an example of. It is my painful duty to inflict severe sentences on you.”[9] Brown was then awarded five years consecutive to the two years he was given a few minutes before, and Constantino two years consecutive with his previous two. Cullinan, considered the ringleader on October 5, got five years. Verne Epter, once known as the undisputed head of the “Jarvis Street Gang,” was given four years. Millie Dinwoodie was let off with a suspended sentence. That day’s Toronto Star wore the banner: 5 OF GANG SENT TO ‘PEN,’ 7 YEARS FOR ONE.

      The Star’s Page One lead-all story was titled “Pleading Father Hears Son Sent to Penitentiary.” Because of Alexander MacDonald’s pathetic appeal in court, the story concentrated largely on Mickey, who got only two of the 22 years handed down. Mug shots of the five who were “going inside” appeared together in the Star and the Telegram, on Page Two of both papers.

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      Johnny “The Bug” Brown, the man with the gun in the Toronto Gangwar of 1938. (Library and Archives Canada)

      Mickey’s two-year sentence was by this time the least of his worries. Already he had reason to believe that he would be charged with the murder of James Albert Windsor. His days as a criminal of minor importance were over.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      The Line-up of Sunday, January 22

       (January 22, 1939)

      Mickey McDonald first knew he had real reason to worry about being charged with the murder of James Windsor on Sunday afternoon, January 22, five days before he was sentenced by Judge Parker to two years in the Elder case. Early that afternoon, together with several other Don Jail inmates, Mickey was suddenly and unexpectedly vanned to Toronto police headquarters to be in an identification line-up that was to be paraded before the five eyewitnesses to the Windsor Murder.

      This was a procedure Mickey knew well.

      Those to be displayed, whether they were brought to the line-up theatre from the jail, from one of the police stations, or from the detective room at headquarters itself, were taken there by a route that insured they would not encounter any of the witnesses in advance of the “show up” and thereby contaminate their evidence in any subsequent prosecution. Mickey and others from the jail were brought into the building by way of the underground garage, then taken up to the fifth floor in the back-corridor freight elevator.

      The line-up room was a long narrow rectangle with a raised platform along the entire length of one wall. A thin wire mesh separated the men on the platform from those who were there to view them, and an array of lights created the effect that the witnesses could


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