Former broadcaster Vogelsang sentenced for bank robberies

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This article was published 04/04/2019 (2093 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Winnipeg broadcaster and college instructor has been sentenced to prison after admitting to robbing banks in Saskatchewan.

Steve Vogelsang pleaded guilty to four robbery charges Thursday in Regina, and was sentenced to five years in prison, staff at the provincial court office told the Free Press. He has 1,030 days left to serve after being given credit for time already spent behind bars.

Vogelsang robbed TD and CIBC banks in Saskatchewan between July and October 2017. Three breach charges he faced for failing to comply with conditions were stayed.

He has also been accused of robbing two banks in Medicine Hat, Alta., in Oct. 2017.

Vogelsang was sports anchor at CKY, which became CTV Winnipeg, and later became the station’s news director.

He left to become an instructor at Red River College’s creative communications program from 2002 until he resigned in 2011, moving to Nelson, B.C., with his wife. The couple divorced in 2016.

He moved back to Manitoba in 2014, and returned to teaching at RRC in 2015.

In 2017, he was served with a protection order meant to keep him away from a former student, and his ex-wife filed an affidavit in Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench detailing problems with the family home, which Vogelsang had kept as part of the divorce. They had purchased a house on Waverley Street for $540,000, and it had a total mortgage of $451,000.

They also lost money on three houses they bought in British Columbia during their marriage, which were sold for a total of $85,000 less than what they paid for them.

In court documents, his ex-wife said she discovered in 2016 her name was on documents when Vogelsang renewed the mortgage on the Winnipeg property. He admitted to her in a text message he had forged her signature on the document, the ex-wife’s affidavit says.

“I couldn’t get any kind of mortgage, not even get the original one renewed, when I didn’t get any of those jobs this summer,” Vogelsang said in a text sent last year, according to the documents. “I am in this situation (because) I gave you everything and did not ask for any spousal support.”

His ex-wife later discovered the house was about to be foreclosed because Vogelsang allegedly wasn’t keeping up with mortgage payments. Her father paid more than $2,500 to keep the house from being foreclosed and then the house was put on the market for $565,000 in 2017, the affidavit says.

The house was for sale in August 2017 for $489,000, but when a potential buyer offered $450,000, Vogelsang refused to sell, the report says. The woman said, as of Oct. 5, foreclosure of the house was “imminent.”

In an email to his ex-wife about a month before the Oct. 2017 bank robberies, Vogelsang said: “I have been staying in my truck regularly… I can not afford groceries so whatever food I have left from the lake will have to tied (sic) me over… then I’ll steal food until I get an EI payment on Tuesday, Sept. 26. I cannot be expected to live like this.”

Meanwhile, during a hearing asking for a protection order earlier in 2017, another woman — who can’t be named because of a publication ban — said she first met Vogelsang in September 2002 and began a relationship with him two years later. The woman had been a student at Red River College when she first met him.

“From the beginning, it wasn’t the healthiest relationship. It was on and off for many years. It was also a private relationship. Not too many people knew about it, secret,” she said in court documents.

The woman said the two split when Vogelsang moved to B.C., but the relationship started again when he moved back to Manitoba. The protection order was granted after she reported his emotional and verbal abuse, including harassment via text messages, emails and phone calls.

Before applying for a protection order against Vogelsang, the woman called police when a neighbour found notes from him sealed in a Ziploc bag in the parking lot of her apartment complex.