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

The Set-Up

3 weeks later, Thomas called again.

“Dad, I hate to ask, but can I borrow the truck tomorrow afternoon? Just for a couple hours.”

“Of course. I’ll leave the keys in the visor.”

“You’re the best, Dad.”

This time, I knew what I was doing. After Thomas picked up the truck but before he started his route, I drove to the Oakville OPP station.

I walked up to the front desk, my hands shaking, and asked to speak with an officer about suspected drug trafficking.

They took me seriously. An officer named Constable Morrison, maybe in her mid-30s with kind eyes that reminded me of Catherine’s, listened to everything I had.

The photos, the messages from the burner phone I’d photographed, the locations, the pattern of behavior. I told her I believed my son was making a run that afternoon, that he was using my truck, and that I needed her help.,

“Mr. Peton,”

she said,

“what you’re doing takes a lot of courage.”

“I’m terrified,”

I admitted.

“But I’m more terrified of what happens if I don’t do anything. My granddaughter needs her father, even if that means her father has to go to prison to get help.”

They moved fast. Constable Morrison brought in a detective, a man named Singh who specialized in drug trafficking. Within an hour, they had a plan.

They’d intercept Thomas during his run, search the vehicle, make the arrest. They’d try to get him to cooperate to give up the people above him in exchange for a reduced sentence.

“We can’t make promises,”

Detective Singh said.

“But if your son cooperates fully, if he provides valuable information, the Crown Attorney will take that into consideration.”

“I understand.”

“There’s one more thing, Mr. Peton. We need to be sure there’s actually contraband in the vehicle. If you could, if you were willing to verify.”

That’s when I told them about the envelope I’d found that morning taped under the dashboard. I discovered it at 6:00 a.m. when I went out to check something in the truck.,

This time, I didn’t remove it. I just took photos and came straight to the police. 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 Arrest

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.

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.

Confrontation Behind Glass

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.