Roger Caron - Later Life

Later Life

Caron was paroled after the success of Go-Boy!. He eventually won a contract with Correctional Services Canada to give motivational talks to inmates and was considered a rehabilitation success. However, on April 1, 1992, Caron robbed a Zellers department store in Ottawa. High on cocaine and visibly shaking from the effects of Parkinson's disease, he tried to flee on a city bus only to be caught minutes later by police. Caron was denied bail and held until his trial in 1993. While awaiting trial, Caron tried to escape no less than three times. Initially sent to the Royal Ottawa Hospital to undergo a thirty-day competency test, he tried to pry open the wire mesh covering a window and was immediately sent back to the Ottawa Detention Centre.

Later, Caron was sent to the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital for another attempt at a competency test. He again tried to escape through a window but was caught and placed in a padded cell. When orderlies came to administer Caron's Parkinson's medication, he fought with the staff and tried to make another break.

In autumn 1993, after a lengthy trial, Caron was sentenced to nearly eight years for the Zellers robbery. An extra nine months were added to the sentence because of the previous year's escape attempts, and a further nine months were added for an attempted escape at Gatineau Maximum Security Detention Centre in Hull, Quebec from over a decade earlier, bringing Caron's total sentence to nine years and three months. On July 15, 1994, while imprisoned at the Joyceville Institution, Caron married Barbara Prince, a legal secretary from Ottawa he had been dating prior to his latest incarceration. He also suffered two heart attacks and underwent open heart surgery on December 2, 1998 to have a triple bypass performed. Caron was paroled on December 10, 1998, partially due to his health, and moved to Barry's Bay, Ontario to be closer to his new wife's family. His parole was to last until 2003.

On October 12, 2001, police, acting on an anonymous phone tip, arrested Caron at the Rideau Centre in downtown Ottawa for allegedly carrying a loaded revolver, wig, scarf, several hats, and a change of clothes. In February 2004, he was sentenced to twenty months in prison for being in possession of a loaded .32-calibre semi-automatic pistol at the Ottawa mall, which was a violation of his parole. While in prison for the parole violation, Caron was charged with fifteen more robberies that occurred in Toronto during the summer of 2001. Fourteen banks and one grocery store were robbed. Witnesses thought the robber was over six feet tall and in his thirties. Caron stands five foot eight inches tall and would have been sixty-three years old in 2001. The number of robberies was reduced from fifteen to five and on March 3, 2005 Caron was found not guilty on all charges.

At sixty-seven years old, Caron was released from Maplehurst Corrections Centre in April 2005 and had been living as a free man in Barry's Bay with his wife, Barbara. He subsequently lived alone in a retirement home in Plantagenet, Ontario. He suffered from dementia and Parkinson's disease.