Former Winnipeg TV news director facing new bank robbery charges in Regina

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WINNIPEG — A former Winnipeg television news director is facing more bank robbery charges.

Regina police charged Stephen Vogelsang on Friday with three separate bank robberies in that city.

Police say the robberies took place on July 8, Oct. 13 and Oct. 18, and the alleged robber got away with an undisclosed amount of cash in both October robberies.

Vogelsang, who is 53, is also charged in two bank robberies in Medicine Hat, Alta., on Oct. 19 and 20.

It’s not known when Vogelsang will answer to the Regina charges as he is currently in custody in Medicine Hat.

Vogelsang was a journalism instructor at Red River College in Winnipeg from 2002 until 2011; before that, he worked as a sports anchor at CKY, which is now CTV Winnipeg, before becoming news director.

Court documents in Winnipeg show he was battling depression, facing crippling debt and was the subject of a protection order earlier this year.

They show Vogelsang and his then-wife lost $85,000 on the sale of three properties in Vernon, B.C., where they lived between 2011 and 2014. They purchased a $540,000 home when they returned to Winnipeg.

After the couple divorced in December 2016, payments were being missed on the house and they argued over whether to sell it at a loss.

Vogelsang rejected the idea and said he could not afford any more debt.

“I have been staying in my truck regularly,” Vogelsang wrote in a Sept. 17 email to his ex-wife. “I can not afford groceries so whatever food I have left … will have to tide me over until I get to (friends’), then I’ll steal food from them until I get an EI payment on Tuesday.”

The court documents show Vogelsang had struggled to find steady work in recent years. In one email to his ex-wife last year, he talked of being on disability for chronic depression twice in a five-year period.

His ex-wife said in an affidavit that Vogelsang had forged her signature on a mortgage-renewal, and that foreclosure on the Winnipeg home was looming.

Vogelsang also had an ex-girlfriend who was granted a protection order in March. She said Vogelsang had become emotionally and verbally abusive and would not leave her alone after their relationship ended in August 2016.

One time, she said Vogelsang left notes for her in a plastic bag in the parking lot of her apartment building.

“I made it very clear to Steve to stop talking to me, stop communicating and (I) didn’t want a relationship,” said the woman — a former student of Vogelsang’s — in court transcripts of the March hearing.

“He continued — whether it was through work, whether it was at home — to try to get a hold of me.”

Vogelsang filed an affidavit after the protection order was issued that said his ex-girlfriend “has repeatedly misled police in an attempt to discredit me.”