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Oliver Ledingham

Episode 09: Shootout at False Creek Flats

by Eve Lazarus on July 12, 2019
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On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats.

This story is from Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance

Fats Robertson:

On February 26, 1947, three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First Avenue in East Vancouver. Seventeen-year-old William (Fats) Robertson, was upset with his friends for leaving him out of the robbery and tipped off police. Just as the teens were putting on their stocking masks, police rolled up. A  car chase ensued, ending when the boys bailed out of the car and tried to lose police in the rail yards of False Creek flats.

 

Great Northern Roundhouse
False Creek Flats showing the Great Northern Railway Round House in 1956. CVA 447 250

Detective Percy Hoare had managed to disarm William Henderson, 17 but was unable to stop the gun fight. Officers Oliver Ledingham and Charles Boyes were killed, and Hoare, was shot in the leg and shoulder. Badly injured, but still able to shoot, Hoare killed 18-year-old Doug Carter. Another of his bullets hit Harry Medos, also 18, in the leg.

False Creek Flats
False Creek Flats in 1966, much the same as it was in 1947. The area is 450 acres and bounded by Great Northern Way, Main Street, Prior Street and Clark Drive. Courtesy Vancouver Archives
Shots fired:

Vancouver lawyer and gun expert Richard Berrow tells me that Detective Hoare’s actions were quite incredible. “He struck Carter twice and Medos once, while they were running away. That’s three hits with six rounds, by an officer who’d been hit twice himself in the leg and his non-shooting arm by a big, heavy, .44 calibre bullet.,” he says. “The three hits Hoare achieved (with his .38 army special) would have been a fine result even if he had not been injured at all. In modern time, deadly force shooting data out of the US indicates that today’s officers achieve an overall hit rate of 22% to 52% in violent encounters.

False Creek Flats
Officers Ledingham and Boyes. Courtesy Vancouver Police Museum & Archives

“The 1940s era police service revolver like Hoare’s Colt and the equivalent Smith & Wessons held only six rounds but were quite accurate, probably more so than the modern Glock-type pistols carried by most police nowadays.”

False Creek Flats
Vancouver Sun, February 28, 1947

Between 1912 and 1987, 16 Vancouver police officers have been killed in the line of duty. The officers are remembered in an exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum, For more information see:  In Memoriam

Logo Image: False Creek Flats, 1954. Vancouver Sun photo

 Credits:

  • Intro and outro music: Duke Ellington’s St. Louie Toodle
  • Steve Sweeney (retired VPD Deputy Chief of Police)
  • Richard J. Berrow (Vancouver lawyer and gun expert)
  • Intro and voice of Inspector Vance: Mark Dunn
  • Words of Detective Percy Hoare voiced by Matt Walton
  • Words of Mae Carter and Mary Magdalene Peterson voiced by Megan Dunn
  • Background track created by Nico Vettese wetalkofdreams.com
Sources:

 

The shootout at False Creek Flats

by Eve Lazarus on February 24, 2018
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On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats.

This story is from Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance

During the 1940s, many of Vancouver’s young men aged between 13 and 18 were recruited into “hoodlum gangs.” The youth were good at steering clear of police, members were rarely identified, and their crimes became increasingly serious. Police believed that an organized crime ring was recruiting these boys and using them to rob military depots and armouries and then use the stolen guns to rob banks around the Lower Mainland.

False Creek Flats and the Great Northern Railway Round House in 1956. CVA 447 250
Bank Robbery:

On February 26, 1947 three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First. A 17-year-old boy named William (Fats) Robertson, was upset with his friends for leaving him out of the robbery and tipped off police. Just as the boys were putting on their stocking masks, police rolled up and got into a car chase. It ended with the boys bailing out of the car and trying to lose police in the railyards of False Creek flats.

A gun fight ensured in which officers Ledingham and Boyes were killed, and another officer Percy Hoare, was shot in the leg and shoulder. Badly injured, but still able to shoot, Hoare killed Doug Carter, an 18-year-old with a wife and baby, another hit Harry Medos in the leg.

Oliver Ledingham and Charles Boyes. Courtesy Vancouver Police Museum
Gloves Off:

The shootings put Chief Walter Mulligan in a difficult position. Just two days before he had told a Vancouver Sun reporter that the “gloves were off” in a war against city crime. And, as the same newspaper reported, in the next 48 hours Vancouver experienced seven burglaries, two hold ups, two attempted robberies and 19 thefts.

Harry Medos, 18, was executed, while 17-year-old William Henderson received five years for possession of a firearm.

Fats Robertson,  who was not invited along on the robbery that day, went on to a spectacular life of crime and a career on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. He was a co-owner of the Wigwam Inn on Indian Arm in the early 1960s and turned it into an illegal gambling operation, printed counterfeit money, and ran a brothel. Eventually he was jailed for trying to bribe an RCMP officer.

More than 100,000 people attended the funeral for Boyes and Ledingham. VPL 42982

Ledingham, 40, who was known in his Kitsilano neighbourhood for his crops of gladioli and tulips, left behind a wife and 13-year-old son. Boyes, 38, who was a wizard with tools and often fixed the toys of the kids in his Point Grey neighbourhood, left behind a wife and six-year-old daughter.

The full story of the Shootout at False Creek Flats is now a Blood, Sweat, and Fear podcast

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