My Son Thought I Didn’t Notice When He Hid An Envelope Under My Truck Dashboard. I Moved It To…

The Trap

But I didn’t tell them everything. I didn’t tell them about the decision I’d made the night before.

The decision that if they were going to search my truck anyway, if they were going to arrest my son anyway, I wanted it to happen sooner rather than later, before Thomas got deeper, before he couldn’t come back from this.

So that morning, before I went to the police, I did remove the envelope and I did place it in Thomas’s car, in the glove compartment where any routine traffic stop would find it.

Then I went to the police and told them my son was using my truck to transport drugs. The operation was supposed to be simple. They’d follow Thomas, wait for him to make his first stop, then move in.

But I’d changed the equation. When they ran Thomas’s license plate through their system for surveillance purposes, a patrol unit in Burlington flagged it.

Said they’d been watching that vehicle, had reasonable suspicion. 23 minutes after I got home from the police station, three OPP cruisers surrounded Thomas’s Honda Civic in a grocery store parking lot.

They found the envelope in his glove box. Inside was $40,000 in cash and enough fentanyl to charge him with trafficking.

My phone rang an hour later. It was Vanessa.

“Richard. They arrested Thomas. They’re saying he had drugs in his car. They’re saying he’s a dealer. This has to be a mistake. You have to help him.”

“Where’s Lily?”

I asked.

“She’s at my mother’s. Richard please. You have to do something.”

“Vanessa, listen to me very carefully. Take Lily and stay with your parents. Don’t go home. Don’t talk to anyone who calls unless it’s me or a lawyer. Do you understand?”

“What? Why? Richard what’s going on?”

“Just trust me. I’ll explain everything but right now I need you to keep Lily safe and stay away from the house.”

There was a long silence, then quietly:

“You knew.”

“I found out. I tried to help him stop. He wouldn’t.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“Richard, I’m sorry Vanessa. I’m so sorry. But this was the only way.”

She hung up. I stood there holding the phone, feeling like I just pushed my own son off a cliff hoping there was a net below.

Confronting the Consequences

The next 3 days were a nightmare. Thomas was denied bail. The Crown argued he was a flight risk, that he had connections to organized crime, that the amount of fentanyl in his possession indicated he was a significant dealer rather than a low-level courier.

The evidence was overwhelming. I visited him at the detention center on the fourth day. They brought him out in an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed.

He looked like he’d aged 10 years. When he saw me through the glass, he picked up the phone on his side.

“You did this,”

he said. His voice was flat. Dead.

“You put that stuff in my car.”

“Thomas…”

“Don’t lie to me Dad. Not now. They told me the envelope they found wasn’t what they were expecting to find. That their surveillance said you’d driven my truck that morning, but the drugs were in my car. You moved it. You set me up.”

I took a breath.

“I found it in my truck. I moved it to yours. And yes, I called the police.”

“Why? Why would you do this to me?”

“Because I love you. Because you’re my son. And I watched you destroy yourself. And I couldn’t stand by and let it continue. Because Lily needs her father. And the longer this went on, the more likely it was that she’d never have one.”

“I’m going to prison because you love me? That’s your logic?”

“You were already going to prison Thomas. It was just a matter of time. At least this way you have a chance. The police want you to cooperate. They want the people above you. Detective Singh told me if you give them good information they’ll work with the Crown Attorney. You could get out in 3 years instead of 10.”

“And you thought you had the right to make that decision for me?”

I leaned forward, looked my son in the eyes.

“When you used my truck without my permission to transport drugs, you made me an accessory. You risked my freedom, my home, everything your mother and I worked for our entire lives. You made that decision without asking me. So yes, I made a decision without asking you. I chose to protect myself, to protect Lily, and to protect you from yourself in the only way I could think of.”

Thomas slammed the phone down and walked away. The guard had to come get him because he was just standing there with his back to me, shoulders shaking.

I sat there for a long time after they took him back to his cell.

Over the next two months, things got worse before they got better. Vanessa filed for divorce. She moved with Lily to her parents’ place in Burlington and got a restraining order against Thomas.

His lawyer advised him to take the deal the Crown was offering: 15 years, eligible for parole in five if he cooperated fully and showed rehabilitation.