Owning Mahowny, a restrospective
Hownow
The film "Owning Mahowny" opened over the weekend.
It's based (how loosely I don't know) on the case of Brian Molony, an
assistant bank manager in Toronto around 1980 who stole about $10
million in gold from his bank and blew most of it at the tables in
Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
I doubt that this is in the film, so I thought I'd post an anecdote on
why at one time I considered him a suspect, although a dead one, in the
murder of a Toronto Sun/Argo Dancer -- a member of the Toronto Argos
football team cheerleading squad sponsored by the Toronto Sun.
Police believed that the killer of nineteen-year-old Jenny Isford had
followed her on the Yonge subway line and the Sheppard Avenue bus then
raped and strangled her a few yards away from her home in the suburban,
notch-above-middle-class Sheppard/Bayview Avenue area.
At the time of the slaying, Brian Molony, the embezzler who was
fascinated with gold (that's mostly what he stole, as I recall) was out
on bail posted by his parents with whom he was living while awaiting
trial.Then he committed suicide at his parents cottage, north of
Toronto, leaving a note saying he could not live with himself after
what he had done.
The murder of Jenny Isford murder began early on a Friday morning at
about the same time I was leaving the old Toronto Press Club to where I
had gone after coming off shift at the Sun. At that time, the paper did
not publish on Saturdays, so everyone was off Friday and drank lustily
into Friday morning.
Given the Toronto Sun angle, I became deeply interested in the case,
taking the subway and the bus to the murder scene, walking the route
and once driving up there with a friend in the middle of the night and
walking around and out of the neighbourhood.
And I realized there was a good chance the cops had it wrong.
The bright, vicacious, blonde Jenny Isford had left a party with
cheerleader friends in the west-end of the city, taking public transit
subway to the Bloor station in midtown Toronto where she transferred to
the Yonge subway for the trip north to the Sheppard Station -- the end
of the line at that time.
From there Jenny boarded the Bayview bus, which travelled a little more
than a mile east on Sheppard Avenue, then left-turned up Bayview Avenue
for about a half-mile to drop her at the top of her street, about one
hundred yards from her home.
The bus driver (who was rather a suspect for a while) told police that
Jenny sat in a seat near him and he had chatted her up; and that a male
passenger had also boarded the bus at the subway station but appeared
to have fallen asleep and gone by his stop then jolted awake and left
the bus by the rear exit at same stop as Jenny.
Police had their web out all across the city, but concentrated in the
downtown area, working on a theory that her killer had seen her at the
Bloor Station and then stalked her onto the train and from there to her
death.
It was the last train of the night (at about 1:45 a.m.).
Jenny boarded the first car of the train.
So did her killer.
I took the Yonge subway and sat in the first car.
It became obvious to me that Jenny got into the first car of the train
for the same reason that her killer did.
The exits at the last four stops on the Yonge line were all located at
the front end of the platform right where the first car stops. The
first car was the quickest way out, or to the bus platforms.
The killer's home stop might have been one of the three before Sheppard
and he decided to stay on; or it could have been Sheppard.
I believed his home stop to be Sheppard. And I based that on what the
bus driver said.
The killer pretended to be asleep on the bus.
Why would he do that?
Because he had, indeed, gone past his stop; and in his own mind needed
a reason for having done so. If his stop had been past Jenny's, he
would not have needed to fake going to sleep. He would have simply
exited the bus.
Nor would he have needed to fake sleep if he lived nowhere along a
route he never travelled.
The killer had quite obviously come from a bar, which at that time
closed at 1 a.m. and from which drinkers were shooed out by 1:30.
He must have been really smashed because he strangled and raped Jenny
on an open lawn a few feet from the front of a house and the roadway, a
scene so well lit that that anyone coming down the street or looking
out a window would mpt have missed seeing the murder.
The subway was the last of the night and so was that bus.
The only way out at 3 a.m. for someone needing to return far downtown
was by walking the mile and a quarter to main Yonge Street where there
was hourly bus service only.
I know. I walked it.
And on the Yonge bus at that time of the morning there are so few
southbound passengers (three or four at most and often none), a driver
would remember anyone who boarded. The killer did not take a Yonge bus
and did not jump into a taxi. He walked home from the murder. He lived
in the area ... and on one of those streets the bus passed on its way
to Jenny Isford's street.
I even figured out a strong possibility of the actual street he lived
on.
Enter Brian Molony, inspiration for a film made 20 years later, and the
McGuffin in my carefully worked out theory.
He was out on bail and living with his parents.
He had killed himself in the family cottage about 100 miles north of
Toronto on the same weekend as the Isford slaying (provincial police
found his body on Tuesday after he did not call home) and leaving that
note about "not being able to live after what he had done."
He had gone up to that cottage alone hours after the murder of Jenny
Isford.
Remember his fascination with gold?
Jenny Isford was wearing gold-colored shorts.
One of the conditions of his bail was that he live at his parents' home.
The parents' home was located at Bayview Avenue and York Mills Road.
York Mills Road is about a mile-and-a-half directly south of the street
where Jenny Isford lived ... an easy walk along tree-shaded sidewalk in
the dark of night.
York Mills is the Yonge subway stop before Sheppard, and one with its
exit closest to the first car on the train.
I put Brian Molony on my list as a possible suspect. If police ever
did, they did not tell anyone. Neither did I ... it was too weird a
reach. I did once broach the Molony theory it to a crime desk reporter
but when I mentioned gold shorts and Molony's fascination with gold I
got the look that said drop it.
The case went cold.
But Brian Molony did not do it.
About four years later, a guy living on the street I suspected the
killer had pretended to miss on that night was arrested, convicted and
jailed for sexual assault of a woman in an elevator.
Drunk again, I figured.
Another seven or eight years after that, when DNA came into play,
police arrested and got a confession from a guy who had served time for
sexual assault and who had at one-time lived in the neighborhood. He
was eventually convicted and sentenced to life at a quick trial.
I'm not sure if it was the same guy.
I was no longer a working journalist by then and the published reports
of the trial gave few details other than the fact of DNA. And I did not
have enough interest to dig deeper into it.
I do believe they were one and the same, though.
- hm
shepatRE...@sympatico.ca
>
>The film "Owning Mahowny" opened over the weekend.
>It's based (how loosely I don't know) on the case of Brian Molony, an
>assistant bank manager in Toronto around 1980 who stole about $10
>million in gold from his bank and blew most of it at the tables in
>Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
>
>I doubt that this is in the film, so I thought I'd post an anecdote on
>why at one time I considered him a suspect, although a dead one, in the
>murder of a Toronto Sun/Argo Dancer -- a member of the Toronto Argos
>football team cheerleading squad sponsored by the Toronto Sun.
>
>Police believed that the killer of nineteen-year-old Jenny Isford had
>followed her on the Yonge subway line and the Sheppard Avenue bus then
>raped and strangled her a few yards away from her home in the suburban,
>notch-above-middle-class Sheppard/Bayview Avenue area.
>
>At the time of the slaying, Brian Molony, the embezzler who was
>fascinated with gold (that's mostly what he stole, as I recall) was out
>on bail posted by his parents with whom he was living while awaiting
>trial.Then he committed suicide at his parents cottage, north of
>Toronto, leaving a note saying he could not live with himself after
>what he had done.
{Massive snip of fascinating stuff}
Are you thinking of someone else who committed suicide?
I was under the impression, because I hadn't read otherwise, that Molony is
still alive. I did a bit of searching and the director of Owning Mahowny said
that he met with Molony once before filming started, which was in 2001. Gary
Ross, the author of the book, is quoted in the National Post as saying, "This is
not a happy development for him that this movie would actually get made" and
"His life has changed considerably since the '80s, and his point is he shouldn't
have to face the music all over again." The Post also says that Molony's name
was changed because of his objections. And it also says that Molony gave up
gambling, and after his six years in prison he married his girlfriend and moved
to Pickering, where he runs his own loan company.
According to the Globe, in August 2002 Molony wouldn't give an interview re Nick
Lysyk's $15-million embezzlement case.
Sheila Paterson
Note: address transmogrified.
Hownow
<shepatRE...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
Goodness. You most likely are correct..
That I have confused him with another bank thief of the period.
Someone else mentioned in an e-mail the dates of 1984-86, which struck
me as a somewhat later than the Jenny Isford killing.
The guy I'm tying into it definitely stole gold and a lot of it.
And definitely offed himself.
One thing I do remember about the Molony character was the lawsuit
launched by the bank against the Vegas and Atlantic city casinos in an
attempt to get their money back. Can't recall the outcome. Likely not
successful, although at the time Caesar's Palace maintained a store
front in Toronto.
I'll dig around and see if I can come up with the name of the other guy.
Thanks.
- hm
Hownow
<how...@cogeco.ca> wrote:
I was wrong and had confused Molony with another bank embezzler.
Did a search in Toronto Star archives.
James McKechnie, 28, stole $650,000 in gold wafers from the bank and
took off to Brazil in 1981.
He returned voluntarily to Toronto in 1982 on the Tuesday before the
Friday May 28 killing of Isford, and after a short bail hearing went to
the family cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka. The bail surety was the
family-owned home in the York Mills and Bayview area.
He shot himself to death with a .22 rifle at the cottage on the Tuesday
after the killing.
None of the money was recovered.
As I recall, subsequent stories by a sometmes girlfriend in Toronto
brought out his fascination with gold.
Oh well, nothing like having a faulty memory adjusted.
He did tie in nicely, though.
- hm
spooge
news:300620030352302651%how...@cogeco.ca:
The buzz was that the casinos did settle, for far less than the $10MM that
Molony absconded with. The casinos violated their own "know your customer"
guidelines. They knew that Molony made approximately $30K - an assistant
manager like he was was really just a glorified credit officer. They knew
he didn't have the wherewithal to be gambling the kinds of dollars he was,
yet because he was a real loser they were sending planes for him, and
comping him for weekends. For that they did pay a price.
The book _Stung_ is a great read. From the reviews of the movie I've read,
the theft as shown in the movie isn't accurate. Molony made numerous false
loans over about 3 years, he didn't create one fake loan. He made advances
in the names of both established and bogus clients. He would then
have someone in the branch issue a bank draft, take the draft to a currency
exchange house for cash himself (claiming he was delivering it to the
client), and use that cash at the casino. In other words he abused the
trust of his collegues by involving them, albeit unknowingly, in his
scheme.
His fake loans made it through 2 or 3 internal audits, because he would
"help" the auditors while they went through the loan files. Molony was
considered an up and coming star, so his explanations for any gaps were
taken on face value.
Many people paid for his theft. Several lost their jobs, and at least one
banker committed suicide when the book hit the bookstores.
Molony served about 6 years, IIRC. Not a lot considering the damage that
he did and the amount he stole. I personally don't believe that he didn't
stash some of his ill-gotten booty...
--
The power alone stored in my little hand
Could melt the Eiffel Tower
Turn the Sphinx into sand
Hownow
<spo...@petitmorte.net> wrote:
I've disbelieved many of those claims by offenders -- and particularly
embezzlers -- that they lost the the money at the track, to the bookies
or at Atlantic City, Las Vegas or a friendly home-town casino.
Molony does, indeed, seem to have blown much of it at the casinos,
which despite their protestations do encourage suspicious money to be
pushed through their drop box slots.
Some embezzlers have lavished the loot on girlfriends and boyfriends
and want to keep that from the wife ... and smart investigators looking
for an easy confession will give him that way out of the family
dilemma.
Bullshit artists thieves writing books or being interviewed for
publication also use the gambled-it-at-the-racetrack yarn to explain
what happened to huge amounts of money they tell you made on the huge
scores they say they pulled of and why they're now sitting there inb
front of you with the ass out of their pants.
One of my favorite stupid crook stories involves a mutt in Toronto who
took off with about $20,000 (a lot of money at the time) he was
supposed to deliver for his employer. He was arrested a week later in
Vancouver when he went into a police station to report that someone had
robbed him of $15,000.
An interesting case of embezzlement is still going on here in the
Niagara Region about seven years after it was uncovered that a
bookkeeper had been embezzling for years via a simple in-house system
that moved funds around the place. She had set up her own classified
advertising scam by cooking the books over a period extending at least
ten years. A couple of million or more was involved.
Why it's still going on is that the owner of the family-run paper sold
out to a chain operation about two years before the scam was uncovered
and he believes that a chunk of any restitution assets recovered from
the woman rightfully belong to him.
And, of course, one of the longest running scams in North America was
on customers at major supermarkets. The supermarkets knew it was
happening but mostly did nothing because of fears of losing customer
confidence and the fact that the efficiency of the supermarket checkout
system was based on the flawed mechanical cash registers of the day.
Besides, the stores were not being cheated, the customers were.
If you remember, many cashiers at those checkouts tended to be
middle-aged women. You could tell the fiddlers. Despite their basically
low wage, they were usually quite heavily made up with expensive
cosmetics, sported expensive jewlry and lavishly maintained hairdos.
They had attentive husbands, too, because these women brought a lot of
cash into homes that were beyond their means and paid for the cars and
vacations.
Here's how it worked. And in an effort to curtail it, the stores
introduced Express Checkouts because the scam depended people coming
through the line with only a few items.
It was generally done during busy weekend shopping days.
It required a lineup mix of heavy shoppers and others with only a few
items.
I can remember often coming up to the line with about five dollars in
groceries in the basket or my armst, and the friendly cashier would ask
the huge-cart person in front to let me come through 'cause "he's only
got a couple of things."
Okay for me. Perfect for her. Bad for the nice shopper who let me
through.
That was the key.
The cashier would run my order for three or four dollars through the
register, and give me a receipt and off I'd go.
However -- and this was the mechanical machine flaw -- the receipt
handed me was just the sub-total.
The bill of the next person in line -- the one with $40 to $50 of stuff
in the cart -- would start with a hidden three, four or five dollars on
it. The cashier kept her own running total of how much she had been
scamming and lifted the amount out of the till.
She wojuld do that all day long. In some places it was not unusual for
a crooked casher rip off in excess of $500 on a Friday, Saturday or
Sunday.
The beauty of it was if the cheated customer went home and checked out
each item against the bill, it would tally -- unless they had did it on
a home adding machine, which most homes did not have until the 1970s
or so when the pocket calculator came into popular use.
It all ended, of course, with the introduction of computerized cash
registers and product scanning. Those long-time middle-aged cashiers
retired to Florida and Arizona, and the average age of supermarket
cashiers dropped by about 20 years.
Its would not surprise me that the scam if the scame were still being
operated today by some clerks in small markets using those old
whirring, clackety machines.
- hm
formica63
Wow. This was fascinating. Thanks, Howard.
Form.
spooge
news:010720030441441788%how...@cogeco.ca:
> In article <Xns93AAE0E69A4...@petitmorte.net>, spooge
> <spo...@petitmorte.net> wrote:
[Owning Mahowny stuff]
There is no doubt that Molony did indeed leave a significant part of the
~$10 million in the casino coffers. I do doubt that that accounted for all
of the loot though. He was smart enough to manipulate a system and people
for quite a long time, I think he would have been clever enough to stash
some cash as well.
Ultimately for me it comes down to him being a very skilled liar.
> Bullshit artists thieves writing books or being interviewed for
> publication also use the gambled-it-at-the-racetrack yarn to explain
> what happened to huge amounts of money they tell you made on the huge
> scores they say they pulled of and why they're now sitting there inb
> front of you with the ass out of their pants.
>
> One of my favorite stupid crook stories involves a mutt in Toronto who
> took off with about $20,000 (a lot of money at the time) he was
> supposed to deliver for his employer. He was arrested a week later in
> Vancouver when he went into a police station to report that someone
> had robbed him of $15,000.
Amazing.. like the drug dealers who call 9-1-1 to report when they have
been robbed...
This scenario was one of the ones presented in a Fraud Investigation course
I took several years ago. Simplicity is the key to any successful scam..
as long as the perp understands that success in crime has a time limit.
Hownow
<spo...@petitmorte.net> wrote:
>
> (That) scenario was one of the ones presented in a Fraud Investigation course
> as long as the perp understands that success in crime has a time limit.
NB: Thought I'd sent this about an hour ago but maybe I pushed the
wrong button and only spooge got it via e-mail.
So excusez moi if it turns up again.
I've always appreciated a good scam but that's while separating the
working fraud artists and real conmen from workplace embezzlers and
chiselers -- although I should say that the only career job I ever
really coveted was that of the old guy I once saw in the late 1950s on
a Pittsburgh public transit funicular for which the fare was ten cents
and the dime was placed directly into the geezer's hand.
(Of course, I've always considered it a wise rule of business to be in
on the first count of the money.)
Other old-time fiddles:
Coal deliveries always had to be counted as they were dropped down the
chute into the cellar 'cause the coal guys were notorious for
delivering a couple of bags short of a ton.
Sharp potato sellers would stick a stove pipe down the middle of the
sacks while filling them so a buyer could feel plump spuds on the
outside of the bag, unaware the innards were stove-piped with
twenty-five pounds of culls. (Still a popular tactic today with baskets
of locally grown strawberries.)
In the days of bottled milk, the dairies always locked the cardboard
caps for their thick cream in the vault 'cause if the delivery driver
got hold of them he'd stick them on bottles of cheaper cream, even
milk, to unload on restaurants and other bulk users.
In the days when rubes actually used clip-on ties (and not just bow
ties but regular ones, as well) I knew an itinerant Irish pitchman who
flogged a gadget the buyer could easily attach to any tie at home to
turn it into a clip-on. The pitch looked great. However, the pitchman
used "worker" ties in the demo, all tailored to his femo. When the
buyer tried it at home, the end of the tie hung somewhere down around
his nuts.
Another old time pitchman I knew briefly would arrive in a town with
only a couple of bucks and an electric water kettle so bought a few
bars of laundry soap and a roll of tin foil. He'd cut the soap into
squares, wrap them in the tinfoil then make a deal with the local
five-and-dime for counter space -- and flog his packages as a miracle
eye glass defogger.
You've seen the guy on TV selling flashy kitchen knives by putting them
through all sorts of abuse then showing how keen they remain by slicing
through sheets of paper. I can do that. So can everyone. I knew a guy
so adept at it that he could cut through the paper with his finger. It
was a favorite ploy of old-time sellers of knife and mower sharpeners
early in the past century. It depended somewhat on consistency of the
paper used ... Time magazine was a favorite.
Knew a young guy who survived the long winters in Winnipeg, Manitoba by
looking respectable and knocking on doors of homes and mutely
presenting housewives with a small card while holding forth packages of
needles. A long message on the card in very small, closely lined type
told the truth about him. It said. "I am not deaf-and-dumb but this is
my only means of living ...."
Once saw at the London, Ontario exhibition, two guys in the cow barn
working The Belt -- a variation on Three-Card Monte that uses a leather
belt, the kind used to hold up yer pants.
Three Card Monte, by the way, is a specific offence in the criminal
code of Canada since the early part of the last century. People
nowadays wonder why it got enacted because they think it's a gambling
game but it's like what Henry Gondorrf says to Johnny Hooker in The
Sting -- that it's a con so old Doyle Lonnegan wouldn't know about it.
I always liked watching the Three-Card Monte crews working the tourists
on the streets of London (the one in England).
There isn't a fiddle around that wasn't conceived by the Brits or done
to perfection in Petticoat Lane, where, the last time I went through
it, the pitchmen were still working the slick "gazump" on jet-boggled
tourists and naive day-trippers in from the shires.
- hm
spooge
news:030720031050256231%how...@cogeco.ca:
> In article <Xns93ACD1757D2...@petitmorte.net>, spooge
> <spo...@petitmorte.net> wrote:
>>
>> (That) scenario was one of the ones presented in a Fraud
>> Investigation course I took several years ago. Simplicity is the key
>> to any successful scam.. as long as the perp understands that success
>> in crime has a time limit.
>
> NB: Thought I'd sent this about an hour ago but maybe I pushed the
> wrong button and only spooge got it via e-mail.
Yep, that is what happened. It is always a pleasure and an honour to
receive email from you, Howard. I was going to suggest that you share
these fabulous tidbits with everyone, but you've beaten me to it.
--
