Article content

In February 2006, Mark Steven Vandendool desperately wanted to get into McGill University’s Schulich School of Music.

The Kitchener, Ont. resident was 24 and showed promise as a guitar player. By his own admission his life at that point was heading nowhere (something that would later be attributed to an undiagnosed case of attention deficit disorder) and he figured his passion for classical guitar would provide him with a goal he cared about pursuing.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Man who robbed a bank to get into McGill, now charged with a dozen holdups Back to video

He hoped to audition for the school, but his car wasn’t working and he didn’t want to ask his parents for help. So on Feb. 20, 2006, he walked into a bank in Plattsville, Ont. — a small town about 20 kilometres southwest of Kitchener — armed with a fake gun. He used it to threaten two bank tellers inside and demanded they give him $50,000.

“Hurry up, your life depends on it,” he told one of the tellers.

The tellers were terrified and handed Vandendool more than $5,000 before he left. He used the money to get his Pontiac Sunbird running again and turned the trip to Montreal for his audition into a vacation getaway by bringing along a girlfriend.