Author/robber Reid dead at 68

Stephen Reid — Stopwatch Gang bank robber, author of

Jackrabbit Parole and husband of poet Susan Musgrave — has died. His death, at the age of 68, was confirmed on Facebook by

Denise Bukowski, his agent as well as that of his wife.

Reid first met Musgrave while he was i n prison i n the mid-1980s. He began writing and sent his manuscript to Musgrave, while she was the writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. They began a correspondence, fell in love and married in 1986, while he was still in prison. Reid had been a member of the Stopwatch Gang, who robbed 140 banks across the U.S. and Canada in the 1970s and 1980s of up to $15 million, including stealing $785,000 worth of gold from the Ottawa airport in 1974. He was paroled in 1987 after Jackrabbit Parole, his semi-autobiographical account of the gang published in 1986, won literary praise.

Despite living a happy life with Musgrave and two daughters, Charlotte and Sophie, he relapsed into heroin use and in 1999 was again sentenced to prison, this time for the attempted murder of Victoria police Cpl. Bill Trudeau after a bank robbery and shootout.

In an interview with the Star at the time he said: “I had glimpses of grace ... I have two wonderful children. I’m married to one of the most interesting people in the world. I lived in a vine-covered cottage by the sea ... How could I end up in this catastrophe?”

He was rejected for full parole in February 2015, instead remaining on day parole and in a halfway house near Victoria, B.C.. Reid again received literary accolades in 2013, winning the Butler Book Prize for his collection of essays A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing from Prison.