Bank robber awaits sentence

SASKATOON — Bank robber Brian James Rudolph is the product of egregious failure by the child welfare system, his lawyer told a sentencing judge.

Defence lawyer Linda Wood asked Justice Neil Gabrielson to consider the “horrible and traumatic things that have happened” to Rudolph as Gabrielson crafts his sentence.

Rudolph, 38, robbed a Saskatoon bank two years ago and will wait until Oct. 29 to learn his sentence in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench.

Crown prosecutor Bryce Pashovitz argued for five years in addition to the seven years Rudolph is currently serving for an attempted bank robbery in Regina a week prior to the Saskatoon robbery.

Wood asked Gabrielson to consider Rudolph’s unusual life circumstances and apply the legal principle of totality to impose a concurrent term.

Rudolph was the youngest child of a single mother, a member of the Peepeekisis First Nation who left her older children with family in Saskatchewan and took him to Montana.

Rudolph’s early childhood was difficult because of his mother’s drug addiction, Wood said.

When he was three, his mother died of an overdose and he was found alone with her body.

“She had been dead for some time,” Wood said. “One of his earliest memories is extremely traumatic.”

The orphaned child was placed in foster care in the United States and was adopted into a home where he was neglected and abused. The adoptive mother was charged with beating him and Rudolph was placed in foster care again. At one point he was placed in an institution when an appropriate home could not be found.

Rudolph was returned to the adoptive mother’s custody, where the abuse resumed. He was made to wear a dog collar and the woman used a leash to lead him to school, Wood said.

Rudolph ended up in a series of foster homes where he never made any lasting relationships. When he turned 18, he was given a small amount of money and sent out on his own.

No social worker ever told him that at the time of his mother’s death, his aunt and uncle from Peepeekisis had asked to take custody of him.

Authorities deemed the couple unsuitable, in part because they were on social assistance, Wood said.

“The state had a duty to ensure he had a safe, secure upbringing . . . He felt unwanted and abandoned,” she said.

“He fell between the cracks and no one is held accountable.”

At 18, Rudolph was suddenly independent, without family, friends or skills to support himself.

Rudolph has worked as a labourer but also accrued a criminal record that includes assaults arising from conflict with others and in one case, excessive force in defending himself.

He was convicted of robberies in the United States and of escaping custody.

He also has ulcerative colitis, a painful chronic disease of the bowels.

At some point Rudolph learned he had family in Saskatchewan and he was eventually allowed to come to the province to live at the reserve with family members.

After 36 years with no contact, there was a scant family bond and the relationship foundered, Wood said.

A year after his return to Saskatchewan, Rudolph tried to rob a Regina bank by showing an imitation bomb and, a week later, succeeded in getting $2,565 in the robbery at a Broadway Avenue bank.

He has been in custody since then. He was sentenced earlier this year to seven years, less 20 months credit for remand time, for the Regina crime and has been waiting at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre while the Saskatoon case makes its way through the courts.

He was convicted in April.