The Murder of Constable Jack Lewis

Norman J. “Red” Ryan and his gang swathed a trail of criminal activities from Montreal to Minneapolis, but it ended on a Victoria Weekend Saturday in Sarnia. Before that day in 1936 concluded, however, Red Ryan had destroyed the life of a brave young Sarnia police officer and left a family in ruins. Ryan committed multiple armed bank robberies from Hamilton to Montreal in 1921. Known as Canada’s Jesse James, he eventually was sentenced to a total of 119 years plus a life sentence in Kingston Penitentiary.

It was over the next few years that Red Ryan pulled his most audacious con job. Ryan adopted the pose of a model prisoner. A riot at Kingston Penitentiary in 1932, in which Red Ryan took no part, began to shift attention in Ontario to prison reform. The prison chaplain began campaigning for Ryan’s release as a reformed prisoner. The Toronto Star soon began to similarly champion Ryan’s release, detailing Ryan’s miraculous transformation in prison in a series of articles. The Star also published letters from prominent citizens arguing for Ryan’s release. Determined to see conditions in the prison for himself, Prime Minister Bennett showed up at Kingston Penitentiary unannounced one day in 1935. He met Red Ryan, then working in the prison hospital. Bennett had a 45-minute chat with Ryan, who impressed him with his rueful admission of a squandered life.

In May of 1935, the Toronto Star ramped up its campaign to gain Ryan’s release from Kingston with a spate of new stories, suggesting that Ryan deserved early release. and on July 23, 1935, Red Ryan was released from Kingston Penitentiary. Within the next year, the decision to release Ryan would have dire results and leave more than one family in anguish.
The Toronto Star, which had petitioned continuously for Ryan’s release, ran stories about him every day for a week following his arrival back in Toronto. He was feted at various events, treated like a celebrity, and photographed with judges, crown attorneys and even hosted at the Police Games. Job offers flooded in, and he was even given his own show on radio station CFRB, where he continued to lament the waste of his life of crime.
It was all a hoax. Three months after his release from Kingston, in October of 1935, Ryan began a new wave of robberies and safe crackings across Southern Ontario. In March of 1936, Ryan murdered a Markham car dealer during a botched robbery.

Sarnia was a city of 18,000 inhabitants in 1936. Liquor Store #46, at 140 N. Christina Street, was the city’s only liquor store. Ryan and Harry Checkley, a fellow gang member, attempted to rob the store on Victoria Day weekend. Police were called when the holdup was discovered in progress. Four of Sarnia’s 14 police officers responded.