Percy Moggey was a rootin' tootin' gun-toting scoundrel who became a folk hero in 1960 by breaking out of Stony Mountain Penitentiary for the second time in 11 years. Most Manitobans didn't care that Percy had been in a number of shootouts with the police. " Percy's People " pulled for him not to get caught and be returned to "The Rock." The good folks in Eriksdale even named a road and a museum for Moggey after his capture by the RCMP.
So who was Percy Moggey? And why was he so loved by the common folk?
Percy Moogey entered this world in 1904 in Portage la Prairie. When Percy was 4 yrs old, the family moved to the northern town of Gypsumville where young Percy was able to hone his bushman skills, which in later life, would come in very handy.
Percy Moggey's first steps on a lifetime journey of crime began in his late teens when he burgled homes and businesses. For this he received nine months in a youth reformatory in Dauphin.
Botched attempts, in 1924, Moggey picked up his first major prison sentence. 10 years for break and enter, receiving stolen goods and wounding with intent (he had shot Winnipeg detectives Fred Blatho and Robert Frayne while resisting arrest). When Det. Blatho retired, the bullet was still lodged in his left lung. Removal could have caused paralysis of his left arm.
Newspapers of the time billed Moggey as the leader of a gang of armed robbers who preyed on country stores. Moggey was actually caught in a Winnipeg bank while trying to pass a forged cheque.
While awaiting trial, Moggey hatched a plan for his first break from behind bars.
The plan to smuggle weapons and a saw into jail failed, just as the second escape attempt failed in 1930.Moggey received one year concurrent for the attempted escape and six months concurrent for throwing lye into a guard's face.
When his sentence finished in 1934 (there was no statutory release after doing three quarters of a sentence). Moggey headed for greener pastures in Toronto where a year later he picked up a 13-year sentence for shooting two cops while resisting arrest. Another failed escape from prison netted another two years, this time consecutive.
Released in 1947, Moggey became homesick and he started to work his way back to Manitoba. The federal gov't paid for the final 700 km. Because our boy Percy picked up four years in Stony courtesy of a court in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ont. For possession of housebreaking tools and explosives.
Not one to resist temptation, Moggey hatched another escape plan from The Rock. On May 13, 1949, while unloading coal, Moggey and another man walked away. They were captured hiding in a bush, 18 km from the prison.
The other escapee, Cliff Montgomery, held a guard at knifepoint, but in a change from the past, Moggey surrendered peacefully. Perhaps he was mellowing or perhaps he'd already began to hatch his next plan of escape.
With his release in 1953, Moggey began his longest stay in the outside world as an adult. But that ended in November 1957 when he received another 10 years for break and enter plus a weapons charge. That conviction set the stage for Moggey's place in Manitoba folklore as the first person to successfully go over the wall of Stony Mountain.
Shortly before midnight July 25, 1960, Moggey put a dummy in his bed, stole food from the prison kitchen, made his way through four locked doors, and with the aid of a rope and hook, climbed over the 18-foot wall and disappeared -- until June 10, 1961, when he was discovered living in the bush near Eriksdale.
Moggey's return to prison began when three men, Barney and Lawrence Swan along with Norman Baptiste. Stumbled upon his cabin while searching for seneca root. It was only later while relaxing over a beer in Voger, the men became suspicious of the man who didn't know what seneca root was and of his claim he was there to hunt muskrats, which were nonexistent in the area.
The men drove to Lundar to inform RCMP of the stranger.The next morning the trio led a three man posse -- Corp. Grant Russell, Const. Paul Hughes and local MLA Elman Guttormson -- to the cabin. At 5 a.m., Russell kicked in the door and called for the occupant to step into the early light of day.
Moggey cheerfully admitted his identity and did not resist arrest. He even offered his captors a cup a tea. They refused, but he drank a cup before they began the one kilometre trek out through dense bush. "He just seemed to accept the fact that it was all over for him," Russell told the Winnipeg Tribune.
Police seized a sawed-off .22-calibre rifle from the well-equipped cabin that included a cookstove Moggey had carried on his back. "Once in a while," he told his captors, "I took tours to keep myself occupied. I drank beer at Moosehorn, Teulon, Arborg and maybe some other places." He was amused at the news report he'd been spotted in Victoria, B.C.
His time on the outside, " 10 months, 15 days", broke the previous record of seven weeks set by Allan Robert Bulloch in 1958.
Given two years consecutive for the escape, Moggey was released in February 1967 but could not adjust to life on the outside.
In November 1968, he was sentenced to four years for breaking into the restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher. He was grabbed Aug. 6 by one of five youths who spotted movement inside the Pancake House, on Pembina Highway. In a nearby bush, police found a satchel containing break-and-enter tools.
At trial, Crown attorney Hersh Wolch told Magistrate John Enns that Moggey threatened to shoot his captor after the young man refused an offer of $80 to set him free.
Defence counsel Ben Hewak -- later to become chief justice of Queen's Bench -- told Enns that while it was obvious there was no hope for rehabilitation he hoped for leniency so his client would not die in prison.
At age 69, Percy Moggey died at home on Aug. 8, 1974, the result of a stroke he suffered four years earlier. The stroke, said his brother and keeper, Harold, had left Moggey paralyzed and unable to speak.
Moggey's cabin, located 6.7 km north of Eriksdale on Moggey Road -- has been restored and is now a museum. Just be sure to wear proper footwear for the kilometer walk into the bush.
