After the revelation that Albert Walker is one of the world’s most wanted men, Sam investigates his origin story - and the trail of crimes he committed on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
Chapter 1: Who is Albert Walker and why is he significant?
I tell this story often in various bits and pieces, forms and layers. How many rabbit holes do you want to go down? I was pretty much ground zero for the whole nonsense.
That's Andy Staley. Talking with Andy, I learned quickly that whenever he references the intersection of his family's life and Albert Walker's life, he calls it broadly the nonsense. Andy's in his 60s now. He outclasses me by wearing a sharp blazer for our audio-only interview, as if we're doing it on camera. As I set up, he uncorks a bottle of red. Where we're going, he's going to need it.
Chapter 2: What is Andy Staley's connection to Albert Walker?
Hey, I mean, how much do you want me to tell you? All of it. I wanted to know all of it. I first read the Staley family name in an old newspaper clipping when I was learning about Albert's life in Canada and the people left in his wake. I cold emailed Andy Staley telling him what I was trying to piece together.
How did this man I'd been hearing about called David Davis and Ronald Platt come to be hunted by authorities across the globe? How did a middle-aged family man from small town Ontario come to be an international fugitive? and he responded by saying that he had something to show me, something that might help. The box. To say I was intrigued is an understatement.
When I walked into his place right away, I see it. Spread out on the dining room table are piles and piles of papers stacked high. Notepads, duotangs, folders, handwritten notes scrawled on post-its. As I set up my microphones, I see one of the file folders has written in Sharpie, the Walker file. Let's start. Why don't you tell me what we're looking at?
I guess what we're looking at is, so this came out of a big box. It was, like I say, my mother put a lot of it together.
Andy's mother curated the box, but when she passed away, none of her adult children wanted to take it because they knew what was in there, vaguely at least, and they knew it wasn't good. As I sit down across from Andy and I see on the wall behind him, dusty portraits of his ancestors, men in uniform, family shields.
It makes sense to me that he's the one in the family who wound up with this box, this decade of his mother's work.
And I really don't know. I mean, I just, I pulled it out two nights ago for the first time in 30 years.
Just last year, a friend of his recommended that he should just burn it all. Take the box to the family cottage and throw it in the fire pit in an act of catharsis. I remember going to, a couple of times going to burn it.
And I looked, something would catch my eye. I go, no, no. My mother saved this. I'm not going to burn it now.
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Chapter 3: How did Albert Walker start his financial career?
In the 70s and 80s, the Walkers and Staley's built a beautiful friendship. Andy remembers working as the Walkers' paperboy. And then when Al and Barb had their first two daughters, Jill and Sheena, they enlisted Andy for some childcare.
I was babysitting. I babysat Sheena and the kids, like, when I was, I don't know, 15, 16, something like that. Sheena was my favorite. She was just a sweet child. Like, whether it was babysitting or whether it was family functions, she was just... You know, she, in all honesty, when I think about it, she had her mother's soft personality and her father's good looks.
I mean, as crazy as that sounds. Yeah, she was good looking. She was quiet. She was sweet. Yeah, that would have been Sheena.
the two families grew to be fully entwined. It was a life of Sunday dinners with kids running around. Christmas at the farmhouse. Church socials. Al and my dad skied together. And the two couples even traveled to the UK a few times together.
It's funny, now, you're bringing back memories of actually many years of really happy times with Al Walker. It's really weird to think about.
Sitting with Andy, he's almost confused, like he's flipping through a photo album from another dimension. So much happened before the nonsense, as he calls it, came to overshadow everything. There was an age gap between the two couples. Albert and Barb were many years the junior. And the gap was most notable looking at their careers.
Bob was solidly mid-career when they met, whereas Albert Walker was still trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd been a man of many jobs. He worked in a candy factory, a men's store. He was in management training at Zellers, which is sort of like a Canadian Walmart. He sold insurance for a time, once in Scotland. He worked for a big feed and supply company.
He worked as a cattle herdsman, pig farmer, market gardener, and then for several years as a librarian. Walker was really searching. He was limited by his lack of schooling, but was always described as ambitious, thirsty to become a somebody. His big break though, came from the most surprising of places.
While Albert was bouncing wildly from career to career, Barb, right under his nose, was building their bright future from the dining room table. She was always good with numbers, so she started a side hustle doing taxes for a handful of local farmers and folks that she knew through the church. And this is where everything shifted onto a dark and ruinous track.
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Chapter 4: How did Albert Walker gain the Staley family's trust?
But always humming in the background of his and his family's existence was a promise, a whisper of future prosperity.
I remember thinking all my life, people have their big blessings, and my big blessing was going to be my inheritance, like the family farms was my gift. It wasn't like, oh... new boat, new car, right? It wasn't anything like that. It was just, we were gonna be a wealthy family. So that's how I always sort of anticipated it. And it was just a thing that never was real.
And then it was real. The story goes that Albert Walker, real estate agent extraordinaire, had managed to drum up something of a bidding war on the Staley's property. The wildest expectation pre-sale was that he would fetch something in the ballpark of two and a half or $3 million. And keep in mind, we're talking about 1989 dollars here.
But Walker didn't get them two and a half or three like they hoped. Out he goes and sells the farm for more than it's worth. He got them over five million. Like, wow, how much? Really? And holy moly. Eddie's Uncle Bill was so impressed with the sum Walker managed for the Staley's, he got Walker to sell his hundred acres. So Walker sold that for over five. And he became a god in that family.
Wow, look what Al Walker did for us, right? Just a magic money man. He turns water into wine.
This is always how it began. When he offered Elaine the career of her dreams. When he bought Ron his own business. When he gifted them tickets to move to Canada. It was just like this. The magic money man who turns water into wine. In a short period of time, Andy's family turned their 200 acres into over $10 million. It was a very, very comfortable time when it happened.
That niggling economic anxiety that rode shotgun with them for their whole lives was gone. There was no mistaking it. They were looked after. They could breathe easy. They had arrived. Andy remembers the money changing his dad in a good way. He moved through the world differently now. He was more grounded, confident, taller. He was like a country squire.
He had this demeanor about him. It wasn't cocky, but it was just proud of his world. It was just a really good look on him.
In our interview, Andy's expression gets heavy as we get to this part. In 1989, the Staley's found themselves in the unfamiliar position of not just having money, but more than they knew what to do with. Luckily for them, though, they knew a guy.
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Chapter 5: What led to the Staley family's financial transformation?
As the holidays neared, the Staley's finally secured a meeting with Albert Walker. They had a prepared list of questions and copies of all the spreadsheets and correspondence that they were going to confront him with when he arrived at their home.
Chapter 6: Why did Albert Walker focus on the Staley family?
Mr. Walker was to meet with us on December 5th, 1990, this time at our residence. My sister-in-law and her husband, William and Sheila Richardson, were also to be at this meeting. On that date, however, Mr. Walker did not show.
At the scheduled start time of the meeting, Albert Walker was sitting in a first-class seat in a plane over the Atlantic. Every credit card he held was maxed out on jewelry and as many things of value he could carry on his person. His trusty briefcase, which he used to mule millions of his clients' dollars, sat beside him. His months of hard work were done.
He'd emptied every account he had access to. He remortgaged the family farmhouse and transferred every penny he could into untraceable Swiss accounts. In the years to come, left in his wake, there was heartbreak and carnage he would never fully understand.
I remember right around Christmas, my parents were a bit nervous. Not so nervous as to make us nervous. They were really keeping it from us. But I remember there was conversation right around Christmas of 90.
Bob and Betty Staley had opted to keep most of their Walker financial concerns a secret from their children. But after being stood up by Walker and the initial rumblings they were hearing around the community, they feared the worst. My father said, Walker's left the country. They've left the country. What does that even mean? For the holidays? Is he coming back? No one could say for sure.
The true meaning of his departure would arrive a few weeks later, January 15th, a day that Andy would never forget.
January 15th, it was a Thursday. I was at a conference at the old Skyline Hotel in Toronto, and I knew something was up, and I phoned my dad at a break. And it was like a man who had changed. It was like I was talking to someone made of eggshells, right? It was as much the tone as the content. That's what I remember, just this shattered man. And he was like, Dad, what's going on?
I remember the tone being, Walker's gone. We don't know where he is. We have no way of tracking him. And he had the realization that everything was gone.
All of Andy's family's and his uncle's money, the generational security, was gone.
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Chapter 7: How did Albert Walker's actions affect the Staley family?
And, you know, I really believed that I could do that just fueled by anger and hatred. Right.
Andy was brimming with anger about the money, about the betrayal. But the thing that kept the fire of his rage burning white-hot for years was what this ordeal had done to his father. Yeah, it ruined him.
It ruined him. He was never completely the same.
At first, Bob Staley, a lifelong problem solver, tried to be a leader in the investigation at Walker Financial. He volunteered to be the point of contact for the dozens and dozens of devastated people frantically trying to recover their money. But some folks started directing their anger at him, started holding him at least partly responsible for what happened.
Hey, wasn't this guy your best friend? Why are you so interested in cleaning this up for him? Somewhere in and around there.
My father had his first trip to the hospital. I can remember the first time I went to visit him when he had a psychic break. They had my dad strapped down on a table, and he was... growling and snarling and clawing and like this. I remember looking at my uncle going, that looks like my dad, but that ain't my dad.
I got a call the end of that week and it was Dr. Veeraswamy and he said, you need to come up here now. Your dad needs electric shock therapy and he needs it in the next 24 hours or we may not be able to get him back. I said, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You're asking me to electrocute my father? He said, well, your father's either going to be like that, or we're going to save him.
And I went, holy fuck.
During those years, while her husband was fighting for his sanity, Betty Staley tried to keep hers in a different way. She started the Box of Documents. She needed to feel like she was doing something, so she compiled everything. She cut out news clippings written about Al Walker fleeing.
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