In 2014, the Tsilhqot’in emerged victorious from a 21-year legal battle, as the Supreme Court of Canada granted them title to their traditional territories. The court found the Tsilhqot’in—like many British Columbia First Nations—had never signed treaties or ceded the right to their land. The precedent-setting ruling granted the Tsilhqot’in title to 1,700 square kilometres, the same land Klatsassin set out to defend.
THE ROCKEFELLER CON
British Columbia has seen some extraordinary con men.
But no one quite like Christopher Rocancourt.
Rocancourt duped victims with the most implausible claims of riches and celebrity, donning identities like most people change their clothes. For the young Frenchman, it was a game. If the people he swindled couldn’t see that he was lying, they deserved to lose their money and be humiliated. If he was caught, it was just a challenge to escape and start again.
Rocancourt was already a wanted man when he breezed into Vancouver in early 2000. He was thirty-three, and a veteran of scams and cons on two continents. He had survived a rough-and-tumble childhood in northern France, his father an alcoholic house painter and his mother a young prostitute. He spent time in an orphanage.
Still in his teens, Rocancourt set out to recreate himself. He moved to the bright lights of Paris, found friends with money, and told the world he was, implausibly, Prince de Galitzine, a rich Russian aristocrat. (He spoke no Russian.) He settled into a life of crime—cons, forgery, thefts, and even, according to police, a role in a violent $400,000 robbery of a Geneva jewelry store in 1991.
When things got too hot in Europe, Rocancourt, just twenty-three, took his act to the United States.
He landed in Los Angeles, and used charm, his French accent, and a series of fake identities to line up new victims. He was a cat burglar, he told some people. A rich international businessman. A nephew of movie producer Dino De Laurentiis. The son of Sophia Loren. Whatever worked.
And he lived the part, sharing a house with actor Mickey Rourke for a while, living in a $75,000-a-month Beverly Wilshire Hotel room, negotiating to buy a mansion, a jet, and luxury cars.
None of the deals ever closed. But they all impressed people who advanced money to invest in business deals that never seemed to happen.
So did the beautiful women who always seemed to be at Rocancourt’s side. Not just his wife, Pia Reyes, a former Playmate of the Month. Girlfriends too.
He wasn’t particularly good-looking. He was short—“five feet nine and a half,” he always insisted—with a high forehead and prominent nose. Expensive haircuts added a certain style. “He’s not an attractive man,” a woman friend observed. “So I always wondered how he had his way with the ladies.”
But in 1998, things were growing complicated in Los Angeles. Rocancourt went to a police station to report he had been shot at, and police discovered he was using a forged passport. He was charged, released on bail—and promptly skipped for the East Coast.
He ended up in the Hamptons, summer resort for the rich of New York, both new money and old, and wonderful hunting ground for a charming French con artist.
And between Los Angeles and the Hamptons, Rocancourt became Christopher Rockefeller, part of the famously wealthy family. He lived the part, travelling with an aide, chartering helicopters to make grand entrances, spending evenings in expensive restaurants and days shopping for a mansion.
It was easy to persuade people to loan him a little money or invest in a scheme, to dodge bills for the champagne-fuelled nights and expensive hotels and inns. He was a Rockefeller. The money was no problem.
Not everyone was fooled, though. Why would a Rockefeller have a heavy French accent? And those aides and hangers-on seemed thuggish for a wealthy young man of the world. More like crooks. Creditors inevitably grew impatient with the stories, and victims got tired of waiting for returns on their investments.
Rocancourt was arrested, facing a raft of larceny and fraud charges. He posted bail, and promptly fled with his wife and Zeus, their son.
Wanted on both coasts, Rocancourt decided a trip to Canada might be wise in 2000. And Whistler, the booming ski town with visitors from around the world, seemed just the place to find new prey.
He adopted a new identity—Michael Van Hoven—with a wonderfully brazen backstory. He was, he told new acquaintances, the son of a reclusive Dutch billionaire businessman, and was himself worth some $250 million.
But his love was car racing, and Ferrari had just signed him to a $28-million-a-year Formula One contract.
It was breathtakingly bold. Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing. Ferrari’s two F1 drivers are international celebrities. The story would have crumbled with the tiniest bit of checking.
Rocancourt turned creating his new character into an artistic exercise.
“For the look: small glasses and slicked back hair,” he wrote in a memoir. “Classic, serious, sporty. Obvious character traits: high self-esteem, modesty and kindness. Of course. I tried testing out my new identity on women to observe the reaction. I remember a gorgeous saleswoman in the cashmere shop of the shopping arcade of the hotel. What a beauty! She was very impressed with Van Hoven.”
The new look alone was not enough. He took a $1,500-a-night suite in the Westin Resort and Spa, and made sure he was noticed. Sometimes that meant tipping lavishly, a $100 bill for a small service. Other times, Rocancourt pushed in front of other clients and demanded special treatment, acting out the entitlement of the rich.
The trap was being set. “I established my hang-out at the Bearfoot Bistro, a fine dining restaurant with one of the best wine cellars on the continent,” he wrote. He bought expensive wines, talked about his wealth, how much he loved Whistler, and his desire to buy property. It always worked.
“Usually, a real-estate agent will show up within 48 hours. And the other offers follow: ‘You should invest in my business, Mr. Van Hoven—I can make you lots of money, Mr. Van Hoven.’ All you have to do is choose.”
It worked. A real estate agent showed Rocancourt the Chateau du Lac, a partially completed home that would be the most expensive in Whistler. I’ll take it, said Rocancourt, writing a cheque for a $100,000 deposit that somehow never cleared.
That was enough to let him show off “his” new house to acquaintances, even directing the builders to make changes. Who could doubt the wealth of a man who had just bought the most expensive home in the famously high-priced Whistler real estate market?
Not Robert Baldock. The Vancouver businessman was trying to launch a company that would market a promising but unproven tool to assess mental illness by monitoring heart rates. It was a high-risk investment, and a tough sell. He was no neophyte. Baldock was about sixty, with a serious business background.
Baldock and his wife, Norma, were introduced to Rocancourt in Vancouver. He quickly came to be the white knight who would solve all the problems in launching the company.
Rocancourt assured the Baldocks that his father would invest $5 million. And they began helping him while the deal came together, advancing him money, renting him cars, buying him a $5,000 laptop, letting him use Robert’s credit card. Baldock paid a mysterious lawyer to work on the deal; the “lawyer” was really Rocancourt.
Baldock even bought a $26,000 Rolex and gave it to Rocancourt, who said his father collected watches and would be delighted by the gift.
The $5 million never came. The excuses should have set off alarm bells. Rocancourt told Baldock he missed one meeting because he had to fly to Brazil to race for Ferrari.
But Baldock wanted to believe. So much that he twice flew to Geneva for meetings with Rocancourt’s non-existent father, and accepted his excuses when the meetings never took place.
Rocancourt liked to cast himself as a kind of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and greedy.
In fact, he preyed on anyone who crossed his path.
Katie Olver was a twenty-four-year-old front-desk clerk at the Westin when she crossed paths with Rocancourt,
who befriended Katie and her boyfriend, Jon Reader. She was Australian; her boyfriend was British. Rocancourt was a generous friend, picking up the tab for fancy dinners and nights on the town and letting them stay in his suite when he was away. He and his beautiful wife seemed like real friends.
So when Rocancourt said he had connections and could help them get green cards so they could travel and work in the United States, they were glad to hand over their passports and $475 each for the fees.
And they didn’t think it odd when Rocancourt, saying he had to rush to the United Kingdom on business and didn’t have time to exchange money, asked if they could give him a few thousand pounds. They gave him almost all their money—about £3,000, some $6,500. Rocancourt said he’d have $10,000 deposited into their account, a nice return.
Olver and Reader needed the money. They were about to head to the United States (though without green cards). As they drove toward Los Angeles, they kept checking their bank balance. And slowly, painfully, the couple realized they’d been had.
But they didn’t yet know how badly. Until Reader tried to use his credit card and found Rocancourt had somehow obtained the number and run up $22,000 in charges. Those lavish dinners and expensive wines—they were charged to Reader’s own credit card.
The Baldocks—out more than $150,000—were also growing suspicious. When they learned Rocancourt’s deal to buy the Whistler mansion had fallen through, they called the RCMP.
Rocancourt could have taken off. The scam couldn’t run forever. But he was greedy, calling the Baldocks, supposedly from Geneva, telling them the $5 million was almost ready.
RCMP traced the cellphone call to the Oak Bay Beach Hotel across the water in Victoria, fading but grand, and in a ritzy neighbourhood with some spectacular oceanfront mansions.
But Rocancourt wouldn’t get the chance to find new victims. On April 26, 2001, Rocancourt left the hotel at 11:30 p.m. The police emergency response team was waiting.
Even in jail, Rocancourt was unrepentant, welcoming media attention, working on a book, and insulting his victims. Celebrity, it seemed, was a new kind of scam. He spent a year in a Victoria jail and used it to begin constructing a new legend—this time using his real name. He pleaded guilty to the charges in Canada and was deported to the United States, where he was sentenced to almost four years in jail.
Rocancourt used his jail time well. He revelled in a wave of publicity—TV profiles, magazine and newspaper articles. He called media—collect—from his prison cell to encourage them to write about him. And they did. He told new stories—no more likely to be true than the old ones. He became the daring, dashing gentleman thief.
It was, perhaps, Rocancourt’s greatest reinvention. He claimed to have conned people out of $40 million. Even if exaggerated, that represents terrible damage to hundreds of innocent people.
But Rocancourt emerged from prison as a self-created, charming rogue and international celebrity.
Within months of his release, he showed up on the red carpet at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, supermodel Naomi Campbell on his arm.
Rocancourt didn’t have to pretend to be someone else any more.
THE BEAST
A catalogue of criminal types passes through the courts. The drunks. The addicts. People with mental illness. The bewildered first-time offenders. The career criminals.
And the evil. The extremely rare people who stare at the courtroom with cunning and menace.
Clifford Olson might be the most evil of all.
Olson was a New Year’s baby in 1940, born in Vancouver and raised in Richmond, then a distant suburb. His father was a milkman, and Olson was one of four children.
He was an unlikeable child. He stole, bullied, tormented the neighbourhood pets. When he kept getting into fights at school and losing, Olson took up boxing, and used his new skills to batter the boys who had beaten him.
He made it through grade eight and became a habitual, hapless criminal, spending most of his adult life behind bars on scores of charges. He was short, stocky, and dark-haired, with squinty eyes under dark brows. He seemed a typical smalltime, sleazy career criminal.
But Olson was cunning. He escaped custody seven times. He knew people’s weaknesses, and the flaws in his captors’ systems. He was a jailhouse lawyer, a snitch and, when he had the chance, a prison bully and sexual predator.
And he was a monster.
Christine Weller was twelve in 1980, with dark hair and a direct gaze. She was a tomboy with lots of friends. She liked hanging out in the local mall, roaming around the soon-to-be developed fields in Surrey.
But Clifford Olson knew she would be a good victim. He could always judge good victims.
When Christine didn’t come back to the motel room where her family lived that rainy Monday afternoon, November 17, 1980, her parents assumed she was staying at a friend’s house. They didn’t report her missing for a week. There was no big police effort to find her.
On Christmas Day, a man walking his dog discovered her body near the Fraser River in Richmond. She had been stabbed repeatedly, and strangled with a belt.
It was the start of a time of terror. On April 16, Olson abducted and murdered thirteen-year-old Colleen Daignault of Surrey. Her body was found five months later. Less than a week later, Olson lured Daryn Johnsrude, sixteen, from a mall. His lifeless, beaten body was found less than two weeks later.
Olson paused to marry Joan Hale in a formal ceremony in the People’s Full Gospel Chapel in Surrey, with their one-month-old son, Stephen, as a witness.
But just four days after the wedding, he spotted sixteen-year-old Sandra Wolfsteiner trying to hitchhike home. He picked her up and killed in her a patch of woods.
The children kept disappearing, and dying. Ada Court, thirteen, disappeared June 21. Simon Partington, nine, disappeared July 2 while riding his bicycle to a friend’s house. Judy Kozma, fourteen. Raymond King, fifteen, lured from an employment centre with a promise of work. Sigrun Arnd, eighteen, a student visiting from Germany. Terri Lyn Carson, fifteen, strangled and left in the woods along the Fraser River. Louise Chartrand, seventeen, buried in a shallow grave near Whistler. The children were raped, beaten, bludgeoned.
Eleven children killed in less than seven months. Olson knew how to charm, promise jobs, offer a ride. He preyed on weakness, exploited trust.
It was easy, at first, for police to ignore the crimes, to tell the parents that their children had run away and would probably show up.
That changed with Olson’s fourth victim, nine-year-old Simon Partington. Nine-year-olds don’t just run away and vanish.
But as parents kept their children close to home and headlines warned of a predator on the loose, police failed to come to grips with the menace. Olson roamed throughout the Lower Mainland, one large community, one hunting ground.
But there was a patchwork of police forces—municipal, RCMP—that didn’t communicate with each other. They failed to act on reports of missing children. Olson showed up on suspect lists in different police departments, but they didn’t share the information. RCMP officers were transferred in and out, and the case fell through the cracks.
Even when police knew Olson was a prime suspect, delays in setting up surveillance allowed him to kill his last three victims.
Finally, on August 12, their surveillance paid off. Olson was arrested near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island with two female hitchhikers in his car.
Once arrested, Olson used the system to inflict pain on the victims’ families, their communities, the courts. On anyone he could hurt, or taunt.
It started with his trial. He pleaded not guilty. Three days after the trial began on January 11, 1982, he changed his plea to guilty. He had struck a deal. He would guide police to the bodies they had not yet discovered and provide details about the other crimes—if they paid $10,000 per killing, with the money going to his wife.
Police, prosecutors, and British Columbia Attorney General agreed. Olson revelled in the experience of g
uiding officers to the bodies, describing each one in gleeful detail. He collected $100,000. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Public outrage over the “cash for bodies” deal just brought him more attention.
Olson’s manipulations to win attention, inflict pain, and taunt the families of his victims and the public had just begun.
Once in prison, Olson toyed with police, claiming to have information on dozens of additional murders. He wrote letters detailing the killings to the families of victims and to politicians until the prison system began censoring his outgoing mail. He told anyone who would listen that he was writing his memoir, with detailed descriptions of the eleven murders, plus scores of other killings and sexual assaults.
He filed a string of lawsuits from inside his special cell, with its wall of Plexiglas in front of the bars to prevent other prisoners from attacking him.
And as soon as Olson was eligible for parole, he applied. He knew there was no chance of success; it was an opportunity to taunt the families and regain the spotlight at his public parole hearing.
No opportunity was missed. When he began receiving the old-age pension, he shared the news with a Toronto Sun reporter. He knew the news coverage would outrage the public and wanted the attention.
Clifford Olson died of cancer at seventy-one, in September 2011. No one mourned.
FORGIVENESS
One punch, four kicks to the head, and a lawyer lies dying on a bedroom floor as a rowdy house party goes on around him.
His wife and twin four-year-olds wait in a house down the street. But Bob McIntosh isn’t coming home to rejoin the New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Nothing good, surely, could be expected to come from that grim last night of 1997. But it did.
***
Bob and Katy McIntosh had moved to Squamish from Vancouver. He was a successful lawyer and, at forty, a world-class triathlete. She taught at a college, worked with local entrepreneurs, and raised the twins. She was attractive and stylish.
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