(One of several interviews I conducted with paroled bank robber Richard Atkinson for the following story was done by Skype and recorded – watch the interview after the jump. Atkinson talks about the exploits he is documenting in an autobiography he is completing.)
Five-year-old Ricky Atkinson was excited when he found the shiny .38-calibre revolver hidden in his father’s bedroom. Sonny Atkinson managed a bar in a rough-and-tumble downtown Toronto neighbourhood and he often brought the nightly earnings home. The boy took the loaded gun and his four-year-old brother out into the back yard. “I got my younger brother Dwane to stand against the wall with an apple on his head,” recalls Atkinson, now 56. “The whole William Tell thing and I attempted to shoot the apple.”
An imprisoned career bandit who has amassed nearly 200 criminal convictions, and who shot three policemen in a bloody bank heist in Ontario in 1994 has won a chance at another payday, courtesy of Canada’s top court. The 
The National Parole Board has ordered serial bank robber Shawn Evjen (inset) detained in prison until the very last day of his prison sentence, June, 15, 2010, because he’s a dangerous crook who is a “very high” risk to commit new, violent crimes (
