The Decibel - A wallet was sent to The Globe with a letter from a dying man

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Earlier this year, The Globe’s sports editor Jamie Ross got a peculiar package in the mail – a wallet, with a request from a man nearing the end of his life, to help return it to its rightful owner. That piqued the interest of investigative reporter Grant Robertson. And that began the saga of trying to track these people down.Today, Grant Robertson tells us the story of a hockey player, his wallet, and the mystery Grant is trying to solve around it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Jamie, I guess, where does this story start? Like, what happened? It started from a very strange piece of mail that I got. I was a little bit overdue checking my mail slot. Most of the time it's books, it's swag from PR. But this day there was an envelope sent from the United States with a custom slip attached to it. And the declaration on it was wallet.

The Globe's sports editor, Jamie Ross, got a very peculiar package in the mail earlier this year. I took it back to my desk, ripped it open. Lo and behold, there's a musty old wallet wrapped in two letters. And that piqued the interest of the Globe's investigative reporter, Grant Robertson. I remember that day when Jamie got the wallet. I hadn't been in the newsroom for a while, and so I came over to say hi to him. And I walked up, and I remember Jamie

looking intently at this envelope. And I remember sort of asking, you know, what's up? And he said, I've got the strangest thing in the mail. I've got a wallet. I was confused. And so I actually read the letter first. And it was just this letter asking me if I would return this wallet to its rightful owner. Laying out this story about how this guy came into possession of it in the first place.

At that point, I'm practically begging him to let me try to track these people down. This week, we've been bringing you stories from the globe that are off the beaten track. Today, Grant tells us the story of a hockey player, his wallet, and the mystery Grant is trying to solve around it. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Grant, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you. So what is the story behind this wallet, right? So we know someone sent it to The Globe, but how did the person who sent it to you guys actually get the wallet in the first place? Well, it's interesting. We know very little about the person other sent it to you guys actually get the wallet in the first place? Well, it's interesting. We know very little about the person other than the letter that he sent accompanying the wallet. But what he says is that in 1973, he was working as basically a janitor at the New Haven's

Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut. And his job was to sweep up after hockey games there. He was a kid then working this janitor job like a teen? Yeah, he was 16 years old. So you can sort of imagine that's the kind of job that you would give to a teenager to maybe keep them out of trouble. And he describes himself as a troubled teenager. And so he's sweeping up one night after a hockey game in March, 1973, various like rolled up balls of hockey tape and

garbage around the room. And he looks over in the corner and he sees a brown wallet, brown leather wallet. And so, you know, according to what he told us in the letter, he picked it up and he looked inside and he realized it was a wallet belonging to one of the hockey players of the visiting team that night, the Hershey Bears. And it was a hockey player named Hank Novak. Looking at the wallet, you know, he sees Hank's ID. Hank's from Oshawa, Ontario. And, you know, he sees various things inside the wallet. And he also sees about $50 cash Canadian.

That's worth about $350 today. So it gives you an idea of, you know, how much cash, you know, Hank would have been carrying around at the time. The kid, he knows he should probably turn the wallet into his boss. Instead, he decides to take it home. He keeps the money. And he ends up taking the wallet and putting it in his cellar, in his basement. And he puts it in a drawer. So why hang on to the wallet?

Like, I guess it's one thing to, you know, take cash from a wallet. But why is he keeping it in a drawer in his basement? If I read between the lines of what he's telling us in the letter, I think he always meant to give the wallet back, but he was torn between knowing he had done something wrong and wanting to give it back, but also knowing that he had done a bad thing and feeling guilty about that. And what ultimately drove him to try to return the wallet to Hank Novak 50 years later was his health started to fail him. And it looks like he's, you know, coming close to the end. He says he doesn't know how much time he has left and he wants to know if we can return this wallet to Hank. This is almost like his, one of his last wishes, you know, like a dying wish. Can you get this

wallet back? Because he feels so guilty about it. Wow. Okay. So it sounds like, yeah, he's hung onto it for all these years because of that guilt, maybe. But why would he send the wallet to the Globe? Why send it to the newspaper? We wondered that same thing. From what I can tell, it looks like he went online and tried to find Hank Novak himself. And so in the letter to us, the guy says he worked for the TTC. Maybe you can find him that way. And so that's why I believe he sent it to us. And also on Hank's ID, it says he's from Oshawa. And so Oshawa being very close to Toronto, I think that's why he thought we could track him down.

Okay. So he sends it to a news organization in Toronto, figuring maybe we would have a little bit of a better chance, I guess, of finding him. But so what happened? Did you get in touch with the hockey player? Did you find him? The hockey player, Hank Novak, was inducted into the Oshawa Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. And so we reached out to the Oshawa Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. And so we reached out to the Oshawa Sports Hall of Fame. And there's a guy there named Jim Nesbitt, who, you know, grew up with Hank, and he is still in touch with him. And we said, you know, can you can you put us in touch with him? He said, Oh, yeah, you know,

Hank, I go way back, you know, here's his cell phone number. And so, you know, as it turned out, finding Hank Novak was relatively short process. the sender of the wallet turned out to be far more difficult. So tell me about that. Have you tried to find the person who sent the wallet in the first place? I've been an investigative reporter for a long time. I think I've gone to more creative lengths to find the sender of the wallet than I have on any of the other investigations that I've done. Wow. The customs slip, he writes his name down and there's an address. So the first thing you do is you, with any address, you plug it into Google Maps, comes up as a parking lot in New Haven, Connecticut.

What it turned out to be, when you go back and look at old records, it's the address of the New Haven Coliseum. He used the address of the place he worked in 1973. And the New Haven Coliseum has since been torn down. It was demolished in 2007. So now it's a parking lot. Now it's a giant parking lot. That's not a great start.

Then I look at his name, Joe Jones. Now, it's not impossible the guy's name is Joe Jones. If he used a fake address, then there's a good likelihood that's also a fake name, but you never know for sure. So looking up online databases of people in Connecticut, you start calling the Joe Joneses, the Joseph Joneses, the Joey Joneses, the Jay Joneses. And that was a fun exercise in a way. It was frustrating, but you're either getting a lot of numbers that are no longer in service. You get voicemails, but the people I did reach were initially confused and thinking it's some sort of scam or prank call. But once you

talk to them, they too were captivated by this mystery. Okay, so you're trying all these things. Nothing so far has really yielded any results, it sounds like. But Grant, you said you went to extreme lengths too, right? This kind of stuff is, more routine journalism. But what were these extreme lengths that you were talking about before? Well, I thought, okay, let's just throw everything on the table here. I went on his Wikipedia page and put a note there because my suspicion was the guy out there saw the detail about Hank working for the Toronto Transit Commission. Which was on his Wikipedia page. That's right. And so if he was Googling that a month ago, he might go back to it now. And so I went on the Wikipedia page,

wrote a blurb about how, you know, after 50 years, Hank's wallet had been returned to him. And, you know, the Globe and Mail hasn't been able to reach the center of the wallet, but they're trying. And then after that, I thought, okay, you know, if we're going to use the power of the internet, let's really use the power of the internet. If this guy is out there Googling Hank Novak's name, let's buy the search term for Hank's name. Wow. So you can buy search terms where if somebody Googles that term, your ad will show to the people who Google that term when in the search results. And the ad was very simple. It said, Hank Novak's wallet. Did you find it? We're trying to reach you.

And then if you clicked on the ad, it would take you to the Globe and Mail page with my contact information. And what we saw was in the span of a month, 38 people around the US, 38 people in 12 states searched the name Hank Novak. And of those, there were four people in Connecticut. And you can look at the demographic data.

And of those, two were men above 65. Interesting. And so we wondered, is this our guy? But no responses from that to you? No, no one clicked on the ad. This is so much work, Grant. Like you're going to extreme lengths to try to find this person. And it sounds like maybe he also doesn't want to be found, right?

If he gave you a fake address, he's giving you a fake name. Maybe he saw this ad and is not clicking on it. Like, I guess if he wants to remain anonymous, why go to such lengths to try to find him? Because he's done a good thing. And I suspect he's torn about whether he wants to be found or not. In his letter, he says, you know, he, if we can find Hank Novak, he would like to try to get the money back to him. So in that sense, he does indicate he wants some sort of follow up. But, you know, when we look at how he filled out the information on the custom slip, you know, it looks like he was also worried. You know,

maybe he thinks he's committed a crime and late in life, somebody might blame him. Maybe he thinks Hank Novak's angry with him. When I reached out to Hank, I wasn't sure what his reaction would be. But what we now know is Hank is extremely happy the wallet has been returned to him. We'll be back in a minute. So Grant, you actually met Hank Novak. You got to speak with him a little bit. This is the hockey player. Tell me, what was that like?

What was he like? When I reached out to him on his cell phone, I said to him, you know, in 1973, you lost a wallet and we found it. I was hoping for some suspense there. And he kind of responded, okay, all right. Who is this? Yes. Yeah, exactly. And he joked with me later, I completely thought that was a scam phone call, you know, as anybody would. And so we planned to meet at a bar in Toronto on a Friday afternoon. And I walk into the bar and, you know, Hank's 73 now. And I see this gray haired guy wave me over. And this guy looks to be, you know, in fantastic shape. You know, if I look like that at 73, I'll be extremely happy, you know, and the first thing

he does is shake my hand and basically crushes my hand. You know, he's got this like extremely firm handshake and, and, and big, you know, burly hands. Um, and we sit down and, uh, I, I pull out the envelope and I give him the letters first. And then I take out the wallet and I give him his wallet back after 50 years. And what was his reaction like to see his wallet back after all that time? It was a real slow burn. Something you notice immediately about the wallet is that it has a smell to it. It reeks of mold. Oh, no.

It's clear that this thing has lived in a damp basement for decades. And so when I pull the wallet out and give it back to Hank, you know, across the table, we can both smell the wallet. And, you know, he remarks on it as he's opening it up that, you know, it's pretty moldy. And then he opened the wallet. And I think I was expecting a lot of of like, you know, talking and excitement. But he sat there silently as he started to go through it. And he took out first the photos that were in there. And he started with there were three faded color photos of a young woman.

And it turns out those are photos of his ex-wife, who he's now divorced from and he's now happily remarried. And he sort of looked at them and said, yeah, you know, that's my first wife. And he just sort of said, it is what it is. And then he took out a black and white photo, small black and white photo of a middle-aged man. He's got a shirt off and this guy looks like, like a bodybuilder or a hockey player. And I was saying, who is this guy? And Hank said, that's my father. And he sat there silently looking at his father for quite some time. And he just said, yeah, you know, look at him, never lifted

a weight in his life, you know, you know, so, so strong, you know, and he said, look at those hands. He said, hands like baseball mitts. And his father had these giant hands that were much like Hank's. Wow. So, so this wallet is evoking a lot for Hank. I guess, what was it like for him to see that picture of his father again? Hank's a very stoic guy. And there wasn't a lot of immediate emotion there. And I was expecting everything to hit him a lot harder than it did. But he sort of went through and said, yeah, this is that and that's that.

His car registration from 1973 for a 71 Plymouth, his original birth certificate. And then at one point I got up to leave the table. And I came back about 10 minutes later, and he was sitting there silently looking at the picture of his father. And at that point, you're wondering, okay, what's the most important thing in this wallet to him? And at that point it became clear wondering, okay, what's the most important thing in this wallet to him? And at that point, it became clear, it's the picture of the father. And I sit down and I remember saying something to him like, so what do you think?

And that was the first time I saw Hank start to show real emotion. He was saying, you know what? I miss this guy. I really miss him. And we started to talk about that you know his father's backstory is amazing you know they were sort of on the run from the germans during the war you know learned as a young man how to like scrounge for food literally digging in abandoned land uh for potatoes with his hands digging digging with his fingers. And then he ended

up surviving a concentration camp. And after the war came over, settled in Prince Edward Island, and the backstory started to come out about how Hank, when he started to make the higher levels, minor pro hockey, the NHL, his father never really came to his games or saw him play. And the reason for that is because his father grew up so poor in Poland, he came over to Canada with the mindset that work and a paycheck was the only way to ensure you could have food on the table and take care of your family. And so as Hank put it, his dad would always rather go to work on the line at GM and never miss a shift than see him play. The realist emotion I saw come out of him was when he said, you know, you know, I have a lot of, you know, regret about that, about that my dad didn't see me play. But I understand.

So it sounds like that picture in particular was a really important thing for him to have then. Yes, and I had no idea just how important that picture was. I was about to find out. Two days later, I get a voicemail from him. And he says, there's something I forgot to tell you when we met on Friday. He says, four years ago in December, my wife, his wife's Mary, she was driving back to our place two hours outside of Toronto. It's three days before Christmas and she sees fire trucks sort of clustered on the street. And immediately she thinks, oh, that's terrible. I feel so bad for the neighbors.

And then she realizes what's actually going on. She phones Hank and Hank immediately says, how bad is it? And Mary says, it's bad. The house completely burned to the ground. It was their house. It was their house. They lost everything, including all of Hank's memories. He lost his NHL jerseys. You know, they lost family heirlooms. He lost the pictures he had of his father as well. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And then you realize, wow, 50 years later, a photo of his father has come back to him after he lost all of it a few years earlier. dad now that he didn't have. The guy who sent it has, you know, presumably the guilt has kind of lifted, right? He's returned this wallet that he's kept for years. I guess, you know, when it comes back to your search for this guy, does it really matter if we know who he is or not? I don't think it does. You know, I would like to know if the guy knows he got the wallet back. I hope he sees the story and sees the impact his effort late in life has had on Hank. Because, you know, in his letter, he talks about being wracked with guilt his entire life. And you can tell this has really torn him apart. And, you know, maybe this would help him with that. There's mixed opinions, even in our own newsroom, about where he is now. He says in the letter he's running out of time and his health is failing him.

Oh, yeah. And he found the wallet because he was packing up his house. Some of the people in our newsroom, some of my colleagues, don't think he's still out there, think that he may not be alive anymore. I'm an optimist. I think he is out there. And if he is, I hope he sees maybe the story and I hope he sees the impact of what he's done. And I hope that helps him with a bit of his guilt. So Hank is so happy to get the wallet back. He plans on using it again as his wallet, which I found hilarious. But in order to do that, he's doing his best to get the smell out of it.

But a week after getting it back, he was telling me that he initially put the wallet outside, out in the sun, to try to burn the basement smell off of it. And then when that didn't quite work, he started putting vinegar on it, slathering it with vinegar to try and deal with the mold issue. And then, you know, for good measure after that, he started putting dryer sheets in it to try and freshen it up. He tells me more recently that it seems to have worked and the wallet is back to, you

know, being a bit more normal. And so he's carrying the wallet with him and he plans to carry the picture of his dad around with him in that wallet because it means so much to him. And it's funny because, you know, since the article came out, wherever Hank goes, everyone asks him to see the wallet now. Grant, this was fascinating. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thank you so much. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wells.

Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.