A Rock Fell on the Moon Page 14

  Now that I’ve seen Dad’s Moon claims and refreshed my Elsa memories, the troubles of the past take on a new stark clarity. Even before the ore had arrived at the Helena smelter, curious geologists and mine officials were crawling all over the Moon claims, the Duncan Creek loading site and the Elsa mine. Among the first there, were chief and assistant mine engineers Bob Cathro and Bob Shank.

  Gentle and tall, with turquoise eyes flashing behind wire-rim glasses, Cathro had been relatively new to the job when word of the heist broke. Archer’s advice to Dad about the Moon claims was based on an erroneous report that said the Moon group had a lot of quartzite, the most important host rock for silver. “Turns out they didn’t,” Cathro told me years later. “They only had rhyolite.”

  Rhyolite. Right. I got what Cathro was saying: the Moon had the wrong kind of rock. After consulting the oracle, Wikipedia, I was better informed about quartzite and rhyolite. And more confused. Quartzite, it read, is “a hard, non-foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone… Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure relating to tectonic compression within orogenic belts.” My mind was spinning, and even more dazzling was the oracle’s definition of rhyolite as “an igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic (silica-rich) composition (typically greater than 69% SiO2—see the Total Alkali Silica classification). It may have any texture from glassy to aphanitic to porphyritic.”

  This jumble of geological jargon led me to wonder how a pre-Google juror—even a Yukon juror—would have handled such information as it related to Dad’s contested ore.

  For several months following Dad’s arrest, page after page of such gibble-gabble accumulated in the Mounties’ files as one field report or geological assessment after another rolled in, all aimed at either showing that the ore originated from the Elsa mine or, increasingly, that it did not come from the Moon. And more geological abstruseness would emerge from eminent geologists back in Ottawa. As police and Crown counsel wrestled with translating scientific opinion into something that was semi-comprehensible, Dad and his lawyer built a reasonable counterargument based on the testimony of their own experts.

  Apart from some of the more arcane aspects of the geological investigation, it was already clear to Bob Cathro and Bob Shank that Dad’s story of hand-mining ore from the Moon didn’t wash. In late June 1963 the two UKHM engineers tramped across the claims looking for signs of recent mining. What they found was evidence of a decidedly curious nature. For one, the effects of recent blasting appeared totally inconsequential. There was a small exposed rock slide surrounded by a carpet of moss and stunted conifers, but the rocks had been blasted upslope with the aim of rolling them downhill onto the surrounding moss. Virtually all the rock on the surface of the slide consisted of small boulders of white rhyolite (worthless). After digging just below the surface, the two men retrieved the odd 2-inch chunk of galena. Below that, they encountered the bane of every placer miner’s existence: barren bedrock.

  Galena—found in abundance in the Elsa mine—is the most important lead ore mineral and often contains significant amounts of silver. As the two men looked closer, they spotted another fifteen to twenty similarly sized chunks of galena, all sitting conspicuously on the moss. More small lumps of galena were discovered in the nearby cabin, lying in full view on a dusty wooden table.

  The two were struck by the same thought: someone had purposely placed chunks of galena in prominent places—places where they’d surely be seen. In the mining world, such subterfuge has a name: salting. Usually salting involves scattering enough valuable ore in the right spots to lure a would-be investor into paying for mineral claims that may have little worth. On the Moon, the intended message appeared to be the opposite: something valuable had been there. But except for a few spilled leftovers, it was gone.

  A month later, geologist Al Archer arrived for his own inspection of the Moon. Archer gathered ore samples too, but they were few. Since Cathro and Shank’s visit, someone had gone onto the claims with a tractor—likely Bobcik, as he owned a BobCat—and chewed up a considerable piece of turf.

  “Looks like whoever did it had one thing in mind—to obliterate any previous workings on the property,” Archer told Strathdee upon his return.

  Less than a month later, Archer was back. This time leading a group of eleven geology students who combed the entire four claims in a slow, coordinated march. With the outer edge of the first two claims established by compass, the men spaced themselves out and at Archer’s signal began a steady walk at right angles from the outer line, using compasses to maintain their direction.

  To the uninitiated, the scene had the grisly appearance of a methodical hunt for a missing body. But the men were looking for any unusual occurrences of ore and/or signs of work. Once they reached the end of their first pass, a quarter-mile walk, they turned, shifted to the right and walked back again. The pattern was repeated until they’d scrutinized the entire surface of the Moon. At the end of that long, hot and tiring day, Archer reported back to Pike: “No trails of recent origin were found. No workings or pits of any age were found. The only rock types seen outcropping were graphite schist and greenstone.”

  Falconbridge geologist Alexander Smith was at the Vancouver airport awaiting a flight to Whitehorse when he first learned about the strange ore shipment. The next day, after journeying from Whitehorse to Elsa, Smith was greeted by Pike, who told him the whole story—or at least as much as he knew and suspected.

  That same day, Pike, Smith and Shank drove to the Duncan Creek loading site, where they found shredded fragments of old sack liners with traces of silver-rich galena clinging to their edges. There were also chips of galena on the ground, many showing signs of oxidization. In other words, they’d been above ground for a year or more. In a cabin they found a few new jute sacks with what looked like concentrates from the UKHM mill rubbed into their rough exteriors as well as a cookie tin containing about 2 tablespoons of the same concentrate matter. And on the banks of the loading site, where the ore had been sacked and loaded onto the trucks, they discovered more traces of concentrates.

  Smith told Pike that the concentrates found at Duncan Creek were “identical” to those produced at UKHM’s mill. “We need to get this stuff examined by a metallurgist,” Smith said. That’s when Pike notified UKHM brass in Toronto and under their orders flew to Helena, where he helped himself to more samples from Dad’s shipment. Two days later, eight of those samples were under the microscope at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Mining and Geological Engineering. Six of the eight contained what looked like lead concentrates and precipitates from the Elsa mill. Before that could be confirmed, however, a massive sampling and ore analysis exercise lay ahead.

  On August 12, Falconbridge’s lawyers asked the RCMP if they could review “on a confidential basis” the contents of Dad’s statement to FBI agent Bruce Lanthorn. Their wish was granted. At the same time, they also learned that the Mounties had chosen an independent expert to examine the shipment. Kenneth J. Christie, chief mining engineer for the Resources Division of Canada’s Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (DNANR), was ordered to scrap any remaining plans for summer fieldwork and give “top priority” to the case. The next day Falconbridge’s lawyers told the Mounties that UKHM would pay for two additional geological specialists to rendezvous with Christie in Helena—two company-paid experts working alongside the Crown’s chosen expert.

  “We understand that this sampling is not of a nature of an ordinary mineral shipment,” the Falconbridge letter read. “That fact has been made abundantly clear by the examination by Mr. A.E. Pike, the Mine Manager, very experienced in these minerals. One is left with the conclusion that the shipper has intermixed solid ores, well oxidized, brittle pieces and fines, high-grade pieces, lead concentrates, zinc concentrates and possibly precipitates in such manner as to confuse an examiner and make qualitative as well as quantitative
analysis as difficult as possible. This deduction is in part confirmed by Priest’s statement [to Lanthorn] that he had dumped bags of concentrates and other fine materials over the ore pile.”

  Joining Christie would be Falconbridge geologist Alexander Smith and a consulting metallurgist, John Mortimer, also paid by Falconbridge. Meeting at the Montana smelter, they quickly realized the enormity of their challenge. After they examined the 7 bags Pike had previously rummaged through, another 10 bags were opened. After examining the contents of all 17 bags, Christie, Smith and Mortimer confronted the ugly truth: each bag contained such great variations that they needed to open, dump and examine the entire shipment—all 671 bags.

  Three smelter employees were assigned to help with the project. Every sack of ore in the two railcars was offloaded, cut open and its contents spread out and examined. After probing everything, the three experts decided that the entire shipment could be roughly broken down into twelve different categories. Their descriptions ranged from the technical “high siderite ore with tetrahedrite and galena” to the more pedestrian “gravel boulders.” The men took a representative sampling of these twelve types from each sack and then bagged, numbered and tagged the hundreds of samples. The samples were boxed and delivered to chemists and metallurgists at DNANR in Ottawa, to Falconbridge Nickel Mines in Toronto and to Christie, who would carry them to his next point of call: the Yukon.

  But more than ore was selected. As the men worked their way through the mountain of material, they turned up odd bits of metal: metal sack ties that probably originated from the mine; metal cable that looked like part of the pulley system in the mine; and bolts and other odd metal pieces that might be linked to the mine. After all visible extraneous material was sorted, a giant electromagnet, commonly used for unloading scrap metal, was attached to a crane and swept slowly over the unloaded ore to pick up any undetected metal bits. This complement of retrieved metal objects was duly bagged by Christie—in sample bag number 13653.

  The team noted other odd items in their inventory: a half-eaten meat sandwich and a stray Doublemint chewing gum wrapper, with its distinct green bar and two arrowheads aiming in opposite directions. For Christie it was a fitting image as he left Montana for the long car journey to Calgary and the even longer trip to the Yukon. Would the amassed evidence point to the Moon as the source of the ore, or to the Elsa mine?

  From Calgary, Christie caught a flight to Edmonton, where he overnighted before boarding a plane for Whitehorse. Included in his luggage were two large canvas bags full of heavy ore samples. In Whitehorse, Christie borrowed the local mining inspector’s pickup, purchased a padlock and locked the two bags in the rear cab. After a long day’s drive to Elsa, he delivered the samples into the waiting hands of Corporal Strathdee.

  Two days later, Christie, Strathdee, Swizinski and Archer entered the Elsa mine to collect new samples they hoped would tie the shipment to the mine. Strathdee, by this point, had learned one thing about going underground. He hated it. It “was the dampest, darkest, dankest, most filthy place on earth.” The mine also turned out to be bereft of anything worth sampling. But Christie and company chipped at some rock anyway, with the slim hope that it would yield a promising result.

  That done, it was time for yet another visit to the Duncan Creek loading site. But when Christie arrived, he discovered the site had been recently bulldozed, just as the Moon claims had a few weeks earlier. The bulldozer operator hadn’t, however, done a thorough job and Christie spotted traces of lead concentrates clinging to a bank. On the northerly cut of the recently bulldozed track, he eyed a lonely piece of galena. Both specimens were immediately bagged for analysis in Ottawa. Christie also found more Doublemint chewing gum wrappers.

  Next stop, the Moon. By then, Christie knew that Dad said he’d hand-mined the ore on the Moon from a very large boulder that, once upon a time, had rolled down the mountain. A celestial gift, he insisted, that just happened to be loaded with silver-laden tetrahedrite and galena. Like Cathro, Shank and Archer before him, Christie dismissed Dad’s story. He left the Moon that day convinced that nothing of value had been mined there in a long, long time.

  “My examination of the geological formations found on the Moon mineral claims, where I could find no high-grade galena or tetrahedrite in siderite, thoroughly convinced me that the ore in the shipment was never mined from rock in place on the Moon mineral claims… The wall rock found in the shipment was quartzite, similar to that found at the Elsa Mine.”

  This statement by the Crown’s leading expert was the strongest indication yet that the Mounties not only had their man, but had the facts to establish his guilt. Little did they know that nearly all their sleuthing—which ate up much of the $300,000 spent on the case—would prove largely useless. Like that alluring yet ultimately worthless chunk of galena that Matthias Bindig cracked open on our trip to the Moon, Christie’s and Falconbridge’s conclusion looked impressive on paper but mattered little in a court of law.

  Chapter 13

  Fourteen Days at the Northern Lights Lodge

  How strange two “irresponsibles” should chum away up here!

  It was a chilly November even by Yukon standards. But in one of the coldest countries on earth, in a village known for its weather extremes, visitors and locals could expect nothing less. In fact, in the central Yukon, which Mayo middles, the mercury climbs higher and falls lower in any given year than in any other populated spot in North America. Still, few were prepared for day after day of minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit—and lower—so early in the season.

  Least prepared was a twenty-four-year-old Vancouver lawyer named John Molson. Yes, his roots were tangled in that heady dynasty that founded what is now the oldest brewery in North America. Molson had arrived in this far-flung settlement at this insufferable time of year along with several other outsiders from as far away as Ottawa, Toronto and Montana to attend the longest and most expensive preliminary hearing in Yukon history. So long in fact that Whitehorse Star court reporter Al Godolphin filled more than a dozen shorthand notebooks covering the event, and transcripts ran to more than 48,000 typewritten lines—“the average length of a paperback novelette,” as the Star put it. The hearing would determine if the evidence against Dad and Poncho warranted a criminal trial.

  Only days before, John Molson didn’t have a clue that Mayo was anything more than the creamy stuff you spread on Wonder Bread before you slapped on a piece of bologna. But at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, his Vancouver firm—Bull, Housser & Tupper—had thrust him into the proceedings and forced him to get up to speed on his new client, my father. Two days before the hearing started, Molson was summoned to the office of senior lawyer Bae Wallis, who supervised Molson’s assignments. Wallis had just received a call from Henry Regehr, who outlined the general nature of the charges that Dad and Poncho faced. Regehr had reluctantly concluded that he could no longer represent both men. The charges they faced were complex and there was a good possibility that as the proceedings moved forward Poncho and Dad would find themselves in conflict.

  “Henry Regehr’s asking us to represent Gerald Priest, and he’ll continue to represent the other guy, Anthony Bobcik,” Wallis said. “I need you packed and ready to fly to Whitehorse the day after tomorrow. Regehr will meet you and drive you up to Mayo.”

  At the time, neither Wallis nor Molson appreciated just where Mayo was, or how the assignment would nearly cost Molson his life.

  “I didn’t know that Mayo was in the middle of nowhere,” Molson later said with a rueful chuckle. “White socks, loafers, a white shirt and suit: that was about all I had; that, and a raincoat like you wear around Vancouver.”

  For Molson, Mayo was colder than Mars. In the sub-zero temperatures of a dull midday, Molson checked into the Chateau Mayo, a stark, two-storey wood-frame box with a flat roof and small rectangular windows. He soon learned that if you didn’t smother your face when you went outdoors yo
ur nose would fall off. Parked outside the hotel and haphazardly everywhere else were cars and trucks with their motors idling. Any vehicle not up on blocks with its motor fluids drained risked a cracked engine, rendering it more useless than a dogsled without dogs.

  In fact, the two policemen on the case had such trouble starting their new unmarked, black 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix that once they did turn it over they never turned it off. For three weeks, day and night, the car either idled or was on the move. (Within a year, it was deemed junk.) Adding to the clouds of exhaust, people’s exhalations hung in the air as they scuttled between buildings like two-legged cocoons. On most days, Mayo was a soupy monochromatic haze of white, dirty black and grey.

  Mounties Strathdee and McKiel also roomed at the Chateau Mayo. Every night, between November 19 and December 6, its bar and restaurant swarmed with over-lubricated men, and no doubt some companionable women, eager to dissect the day’s revelations.

  Apart from one Canadian Press story, the proceedings received little national attention, being understandably eclipsed by the November 22 assassination of John F. Kennedy. One key witness—FBI agent Bruce Lanthorn—sped home immediately upon hearing the news. Fortunately, he had just completed his testimony.

  Held at Mayo’s Northern Lights Lodge No.157, the Freemasons’ gathering place, the hearing featured 248 separate pieces of evidence. A long-standing Mason himself, Al Pike was familiar with the lodge’s membership. Under his direction, some fellow Masons had likely stolen samples of the disputed ore from one of the White Pass and Yukon Route trucks while the driver was lunching at the Mayo café. Indeed, WP&YR driver Peter McAleer testified that after his midday meal he “found a whole group of people climbing over my truck, some with samples in their hands.” He couldn’t name the men and, curiously, the incident—along with two others involving pilfered specimens from what the Mounties now referred to as the “Priest shipment”—were not pursued by police. In the two other cases, the men were Pike and consulting Vancouver-based geologist Aaro Aho. But the Mounties, the presiding police magistrate, Bill Trainor, and Crown counsel Vic Wylie apparently had bigger fish to fry. Molson and Regehr also raised no concerns about the illicit sampling. If their clients were committed to trial, however, evidence tampering was one possible line of questioning.