Okay, so the babysitter matter seems to be winding its way through the lawyers, which is nice.
But one matter that won’t ever get taken care of is the ’95 mugging.
As I mentioned previously in other postings, I had been to a late show at the Capitol 6 on Granville St. I went to see Congo at the Capitol 6.
Going to the late shows was something that I got into the habit of when I first moved to Vancouver. This was due to the fact that most of the jobs I had were evening jobs.
Most of the theatres on Granville were running late shows. The theatre on the south west corner of Granville and Smyth was forever showing Bob Guccione’s “Caligula”, the Caprice was showing films like Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and old black and white films.
Once the City of Vancouver turned Granville Street into Booze Can Alley in the early 2000’s all of the theatres were converted into booze cans / night clubs. The Capitol 6 was shut down in the early 2000’s to make way for condos. The Granville 7 ceased operations in the late 2000. Outside of the Vogue theatre, which itself was at risk of being gutted and converted into a bar, there are no movie theatres left on Granville St.
In July of ’95 I was working for Elashi developments / Lois Lanes Bowling & Billiards out in East Richmond on Gilley Road. I got off work as I usually did at 22:00 and I caught the #410 to 22nd street station. And like I did every Friday previously, I took the train downtown instead of into New West.
I forgot what I wanted to see, but I ended up seeing a movie called “Congo”. This movie was panned and reviled by the critics at the time, but the film that I had wanted to see wasn’t going to be shown as the film hadn’t arrived on time.
Young kids these days will never know the frustration of showing up to a theatre and being unable to see a film because it didn’t arrive in time, it got sent to the wrong theatre , or it got so damaged that the theatre had to request a new print. Nowadays theatres get their movies either via digital satellite download, or by a hard drive package.
Before leaving the bowling centre, Rosa had given a fist full of Canadian Tire money as she knew I was planning on going to Canadian Tire the next day to pick up some parts for a car that I was trying to get running.
I’ve gone into detail on this matter before, so I’m not going to go into the details again. But to quickly recap, some guy and his girlfriend in the concession stand line mistook the Canadian Tire money in my pocket as high denomination bills.
Security tape from the theatre showed them leaving the concession line as soon as I did, and they followed me right into the theatre. The same tape also apparently showed them leaving the theatre and following me right out the front doors.
The movies would end around 01:30 to 02:00 and as is still the case these days, there is no Skytrain back east at these hours. The only way to get home to New West was to catch the #19 which would make its way from downtown to Stanley Park. And the only way to get a seat on the #19 would be to board the bus over at Pender and Burrard. And that’s where I was heading after the movie was over.
The blue asterisk is where the Capitol 6 used to be. The Yellow dot at Pender and Burrard was my intended destination. The black star is as far as I made it.
This is where I got “clubbed”.
Didn’t hear much except for somebody running up behind me. As I had just passed the bus stop in the photo I assumed that it was just someone running either for the bus or was running down to Pender to get the #19.
The guy was about 6′ tall, East Indian male, beard, well built.
The female was white, about 5’6″, white heels, white mini-skirt.
He was armed with a red steering wheel club.
The female was armed with a fair sized kitchen knife. I distinctly remember the three rivets in the handle.
The only thing that I can think of is that they had a car parked nearby. And if they were this quick to arm themselves, this probably wasn’t the first time they had jumped someone.
He kept striking me with the club as I was on the ground and kicking me in the back and in the head. As he tried to search my pockets for the “money” he’d keep telling the female to stab me with the knife if I tried to fight back or tried to hit him.
All they managed to get was my wallet that didn’t contain much in money. The security guards from the Hyatt Regency raced over and chased them two suspects away.
I spent Saturday morning getting stitches in my scalp from the blows from the club.
The Vancouver Police Department officer, Constable Gil Puder, was a complete jerk. Even the nurse putting my stitches in was getting upset with him and told him that his questions were inappropriate and that he’d have to leave.
As he walked away he tossed the statement sheet on my stretcher and said that when I felt like telling him the truth I could fill the form in and get it back to him
When I was released Rosa came to pick me up and drove me back to my apartment.
My jacket had so much blood in it that when it dried out it was not flexible. I had to crunch it up to get it into the washing machine.
I went back downtown on Monday. I was hoping to find my wallet as it had all of my identification in it. When I got to the place where I had been mugged, the maintenance crew from Park Place were outside using the pressure washer to clean my blood off the sidewalk. I guess it had dried on Saturday and Sunday and was proving difficult to clean off.
I traced my steps from the Saturday morning and I figured out that it had to be someone from around the movie theatre. It was just by chance that I decided to ask the theatre if they had a video tape of the Friday night.
The manager was nice, she asked me for a description of the people, and then she went to view the video tape. She came back about 20 minutes later and said that she saw the two people I had described and me. She said that they were in the concession lineup next to me, they seemed to get excited when I pulled something out of my pocket, and then the left the lineup and followed me right into the theatre. When the movie was over they followed me right out. When I went to the washroom, he followed me into the washroom, and then he followed me right out.
What did they get excited about?
The Canadian Tire money.
The manger said that she would put the tapes aside and if the VPD officer wanted to come by and pick them up that they’d be waiting.
I called constable Puder.
Nope, he wasn’t buying it.
He had made up his mind that I was a gay male prostitute and that I tried picking this guy up in a gay bar and that until I admitted the truth he wasn’t going to waste his time.
Now, after having spent three years in the care of Terry Totzke for issues related to the apparent homosexuality that I had exhibited when I “allowed” myself to be molested, I wasn’t in the right mindset to deal with this.
I still don’t know what it was that made Puder think that I was gay, let alone a prostitute.
First, I didn’t drink, so I wouldn’t be anywhere near a bar.
And at that point in my life, you couldn’t have found me anywhere near Davie Street. I would have gone out of my way to stay away from any place like Davie street.
Second, I was still quite fucked up from having been dealt with by Terry Totzke, so I wasn’t even sexually interested in anything back then.
Was it the way that I dressed?
Was it some sort of lisp that I wasn’t aware that I had?
Was it my moustache that I had at the time?
Was it my haircut?
At the time I had been mugged it would have been 12 years since being dealt with by Terry Totzke for being a “homosexual”.
I survived working at Classic Billiards with my sexuality being questioned by the two co-owners who were police officers with the Metropolitan Toronto Police service.
I lost a job that I had moved to in Toronto for because my manager hadn’t been told that he was getting a fruit.
So, to have constable Puder literally blame me for getting myself mugged it was the CFB Namao matter all over again.
When cops tell you that there is no such thing as the “thin blue line”, they’re full of shit. The problem with cops is they’re trained in the “us vs. them” mentality. They’re trained, and it’s drilled into their skulls, that they are the only ones standing between law & order and the complete collapse of society.
And the VPD had all sorts of problems back in the ’90s. The dysfunction within the VPD is what led to Robert Pickton’s murder spree in the DTES.
When I went into the VPD on Main Street and tried to make a complaint against Puder and to ask for the case to be transferred to another constable I was literally shown the front doors of the Main St. station and told to get out and that if I came back again that I’d be charged with trespassing and harassment.
Puder died in the late ’90s.
I had someone I knew suggest that Puder’s brain tumour had fucked him up so badly that his brain was fried.
So whaddya think?
Was it Puder’s brain tumour that fucked up his common sense?
Or is “gaydar” a real thing and that gay/bi/trans people give off “signals”?
I mean, the babysitter and McRae, Totzke, Earl, Ed, Dirk, Don, Puder, Ron, Alex, and others can’t have just been randomly guessing that I was “gay”.
Even the kids at Pierre Laporte in North York often claimed that I was gay, a fag, a homo, that I walked like a girl, etc.
I do have the VPD incident report, and except for the notes from the morning that I was in the hospital, there’s nothing else to the investigation. I guess that Puder really did kill the investigation.
And so this one will go down as another unsolved crime.
Beeshive 