Kirk Mersereau hadn’t been very careful since his brother’s death. He’d sworn revenge many times in Halifax and word eventually leaked to Paul Wilson and then to Carroll. Carroll flew to Nova Scotia and met with Mersereau. At first he tried to turn his enemy, indicating how rich he could become if he became a Hells Angel. Mersereau wouldn’t budge. There was no way he’d do business with the people who’d killed his brother. Since he’d made it personal, Carroll finished the meeting by asking Mersereau if he’d put out a contract on his life. Mersereau didn’t say that he had, but he didn’t deny it, either. With no more to talk about, Carroll left. Three days later, on September 10, a neighbor drove up to Mersereau’s isolated farmhouse because she hadn’t heard from him in a while. She was about to knock on the front door when she noticed it was open. Inside, she heard what she thought was a baby softly crying. When she came in, she saw Mersereau’s 18-month-old daughter exhaustedly trying to cry. She picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where she found the bloodied bodies of Mersereau and his wife.
With his enemies either dead or made into friends, Boucher was not just a gangster—he was a celebrity. When Nomads prospect René “Balloune” Charlebois was married on August 5, Boucher held the reception at his Contrecoeur farm, invited the tabloid press and hired Quebecoise pop star Ginette Reno to perform. When photos of Reno hugging and kissing Boucher appeared in Allô Police, she was soundly criticized in the mainstream media. Her response was a bizarrely pompous demi-apology in which she compared herself to Christ. “Jesus hung out with bad people,” she told the Journal de Montréal, inferring that she was aware that the Hells Angels weren’t solid citizens. “Are they killers and criminals 24 hours a day?” She couldn’t use ignorance as an excuse. She’d also sung and partied at Paul “Fonfon” Fontaine’s wedding the previous summer.
And she wasn’t the only big-time celebrity who’d been linked with Boucher and the Hells Angels. José Théodore, star goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens, showed up in police photos drinking beer with some bikers in the Sorel clubhouse. When the SQ took the photos to the NHL head office in New York, their security department told Théodore to avoid the bikers, at least in public. He ignored them. When he and his father, Ted, were stopped on a golf course after playing 18 holes with some Hells Angels, he used a similar defense to Reno’s—they might be bad guys, but hanging out with them doesn’t make me bad. “My father taught me respect and good manners; he also showed me that honesty to one’s self pays off,” Théodore said. “If you are honest in your work, you’re not afraid of looking at yourself in a mirror.” Later that year, Théodore’s father and half-brother were arrested for running a loan-sharking business out of the Montreal Casino.
While Boucher’s star was rising, Kane’s was sinking into self-doubt, blunted ambition, resentment and despair. He’d allowed the police to put video cameras, transmitting and recording devices in his home, his car and on his person. The police could tell he was beginning to feel exposed and vulnerable. His biker career was depressing him, too. While he had spent ten years of his life with the Hells Angels, killed for them, started clubs for them and gone to prison for them, he was still nothing more than a gofer. While he was still chauffering Robitaille around and waiting patiently while the Nomad did his business, Kane could see newer members of the gang surpassing him. Michel Rose had not only become a Nomad, but was riding around in his many luxury cars or custom Harleys or piloting one of his three racing boats. Even Gregory “Picasso” Wooley, who’d done way less than Kane had, had become Rockers president—and he was black, normally a hindrance to promotion in biker gangs.
Meanwhile, Kane was having big-time money problems. He’d foolishly guaranteed a loan that Denis Houle, one of the wealthiest Nomads and a member of The Table, had taken from the Sherbrooke chapter. When Houle didn’t repay it, Robitaille pressed Kane to come up with the $80,000. Even more galling was the fact that The Table had just forgiven a $400,000 loan that the always unreliable Carroll had forgotten to repay.
By August, those close to Kane began to notice that he was emotional and depressed even by his own standards. On the morning of August 7, his common-law wife Patricia was extremely worried. So were the police. Benoît Roberge, the Montreal police officer attached to Carcajou who became Kane’s contact after his falling out with the RCMP, had a 7 a.m. meeting with the informant and, when he didn’t show up after 15 minutes, the cop paged him. But it was too late. At 8:30 a Rockers-supplied driver took Patricia and her son Steve home to Kane’s house. She’d been at her mother’s house the night before and had warned Kane not to deadbolt the front door. He had a habit of sleeping late and heavily the mornings after he’d been partying and, considering the mood he’d been in, she wouldn’t put it past him to be snoring away inside.
She tried the front door. It was locked. Pissed off, she tried the garage door opener. The stiff metal door budged, but didn’t open. She tried again with the same result. With the help of the driver, she tried to pry the door open enough for Steve to crawl in. As they heaved, Patricia could smell exhaust fumes and was startled when their cat, clearly upset, came running through the gap. When they managed to create a space big enough for Steve, he scooted under. As soon as he stood up, they heard him scream. “Dany!” Desperately, they kept pulling and the gap was eventually big enough for Patricia to get through. She rushed to the car. Kane was inside. He was sitting in the front seat of their Mercedes with the windows open and the engine running. He didn’t appear to be breathing and she couldn’t locate his pulse, but the color in his face and the warmness of his skin made her sure he was still alive. She ran into the house and dialed 911. It was 9:22 a.m. She told the driver to take Steve to her mother’s house. Police arrived five minutes later with an ambulance not far behind. As Patricia watched in horror, they made no effort to revive Kane; rather, they routinely declared him dead at the scene. And once the suburban cops typed his name in the computer and saw his record and who his friends were, they sealed the house and took Patricia in for questioning. When he finally found out, Roberge was stunned. “It was a huge, huge shock,” he said. “That guy was a little like a partner.”
Life went on for the Hells Angels. Michel Auger, the Journal de Montréal reporter who most doggedly pursued the bikers and was often ahead of the police in his investigations, began to become more than a mild irritant. After a late-night meeting with the anti-gang squad at Place Versailles,
Auger drove his Subaru back to the newspaper’s parking lot in the East End. As he was opening his trunk to retrieve his laptop, Auger felt a sudden pain in his shoulder. Then he heard the shots. When he turned around, he saw a masked man with an umbrella shooting at him. Auger went down and the assailant left him for dead. With what he thought was his last bit of strength, Auger called 911. Although he eventually recovered and is still investigating and typing away in an effort to expose criminals, he was sure he was going to die. Newspaper reports said he was shot six times, but Auger disagreed, saying: “I still don’t know how many bullets hit me.”
Montreal exploded with a righteous anger that hadn’t been seen since a Hells Angels bomb killed 11-year-old Daniel Desrosiers in 1995. Boucher wasn’t impressed. He’d seen it before and he knew it would pass. His new partners didn’t share his stoicism. Rizzuto sent Boucher a message that he’d better do something quick to calm the situation immediately. According to police, Rizzuto was afraid that public outrage could force the feds into passing an organized crime bill similar to the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law in the United States. While RICO had failed twice against the Hells Angels, it had repeatedly weakened the mafia.
Boucher relented. He sent emissaries to Fred Faucher in Quebec City. Now the highest-ranking surviving member of the Rock Machine, Faucher was stunned by the invitation to meet with Boucher in Montreal to discuss a truce and perhaps a large-scale patch-over. Faucher called Salvatore Cazzetta in his U.S. prison cell and excitedly told him the news. Cazzetta was ho
rrified. He told Faucher that his old SS partner couldn’t be trusted; it was a trap that would almost certainly end in the Rock Machine’s extermination. Faucher ignored him. On September 27, the bikers held a summit at a downtown Montreal hotel. When they emerged an hour later, Boucher and Faucher announced that the two sides had agreed to a truce. According to Patrick Héniault, a member of the Palmers (a Rock Machine-associated puppet gang similar to the Rockers), members from both sides ate dinner together that night at a fancy Rue Crescent restaurant and a few even went drinking together at area nightclubs. “It was the beginning of a new time,” he said. “Everybody was happy that we’re going to stop shooting at each other.” The war was over.
No matter how often he came around, Ontario police never got used to Walter Stadnick. They followed his every move, snapped hundreds of photos and shot miles of videotape. Every time he arrived—usually in the company of nine or more members from the Sherbrooke chapter, where he was revered—the police sent a release to major media centers predicting a gang war. Stockford, who was harder to spot with his ordinary appearance and reluctance to wear his colors, passed with less fanfare, but he was watched almost as diligently. Ouellette and the other usual quote machines were dragged out to give their often contradictory opinions but the theme was always the same: the Hells Angels were coming and they were bringing violence with them.
They’d seen it before, and not just in Quebec. When the best members of Los Brovos earned Hells Angels prospect status in October 1997, they changed the complexion of Winnipeg. The prospective Winnipeg chapter learned that the Hells Angels’ way does not allow for competition. With the Redliners out of the picture, the Winnipeg chapter set its sights on their old rivals, the Spartans. On the warm, moonlit night of May 29, 1998, Darwin Sylvester walked out of the Spartans’ clubhouse on Chalmers Avenue. He’d had a few drinks, but he wasn’t drunk. It didn’t matter anyway, he never made it home. His body was never found.
Without the charismatic leadership of Sylvester, the Spartans didn’t stand a chance. For good measure, Sylvester’s good friend Bob Rosmus was, like many Hells Angels victims in Quebec, shot in the head. Without any serious competition, the former Los Brovos prospered and their promotion to full-patch Hells Angels appeared imminent.
A Winnipeg police officer who doesn’t want to be identified was woken up from a deep sleep on the morning of July 21, 2000. The Hells Angels were coming and he was called into work. By the time he got dressed and drove into work, the biker procession had just passed to the north of Kenora, Ontario, about 125 miles from Winnipeg. When the convoy hit the Ontario-Manitoba line, the police were ready. It was a typical roadblock in which the cops checked the bikers’ licenses, registration and insurance papers and ran them through their computers, hoping to find any ticketable offenses or outstanding warrants. There were no cheering crowds looking for autographs this time. Aware of the increased violence and drug sales their own Hells Angels had brought, the people of Winnipeg weren’t about to welcome any more. But they couldn’t stop them. Although he had not been national president, or even a chapter president, for some time, no biker dared ride in front of Stadnick. It was his project, his day and, according to insiders, his gang.
The ride ended at the newly fortified clubhouse, a former Filipino evangelical church, in Elmwood. Legions of cops, reporters and spectators surrounding the place had no idea what was going on inside until they heard a roar of approval. Within minutes, 12 former Los Brovos came out of the clubhouse, lined up and turned their backs to the audience. They’d earned their bottom rockers; they had become a Hells Angels chapter. Instead of Winnipeg, the rocker read “Manitoba.” Even the police couldn’t help but get caught up in the festive atmosphere. Some of them applauded, not all of them sarcastically.
Stadnick worked with incredible alacrity in the prairies. With Hells Angels on both sides, Saskatchewan’s two biggest biker gangs, the Rebels (not affiliated with the Calgary or Toronto gangs of the same name) of Saskatoon and the Apollos of Regina, applied for Hells Angels membership. After evaluating their men and operations, the Hells Angels granted prospect status to the Rebels on September 18, 1998. The Apollos were designated as a puppet club, subordinate to their former archrivals 160 miles north. One year later, there was a huge party in Saskatoon. Hells Angels and prospects from British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec showed up. According to one source, Stadnick rode in on a borrowed Harley. By the time the party was over the next morning, Saskatoon had a full-patch Hells Angels chapter. According to an RCMP report published six months later, “the Saskatoon Hells Angels’ main source of income is from the sale of illicit drugs, particularly cocaine and marijuana.”
With the Spartans more or less neutralized, the former Los Brovos were awarded the title Hells Angels Manitoba on December 22, 2000, just five months after they became prospects. One RCMP officer pointed out that the Manitoba designation was intended to intimidate the few remaining Spartans who were operating in nearby Brandon and some smaller rural communities. Immediately after their elevation to a full-patch chapter, the Hells Angels Manitoba started expanding their market by persuading independent dealers to deal only with them. When some balked, a message needed to be sent. Bradley Russell Anderson was one of Stadnick’s original hand-picked Redliners. When the boss folded the company, Anderson went back on the streets to sell drugs. Although he bought the bulk of his drugs from Hells Angels, he could often find lower prices from other sources. Police sources said the Hells Angels told him he had to stop, and he promised he would. He didn’t keep his promise, but the Hells Angels kept theirs. Anderson’s bullet-riddled body was found north of the city two weeks after he received the ultimatum.
At about the same time that the Rock Machine was recruiting disgruntled Outlaws and setting up shop in Ontario, undercover RCMP agent Cal Broeker was riding with the Para-Dice Riders. He wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t an informant. Broeker had been a successful businessman in upstate New York when an investigation linked him to organized crime groups—including bikers—in Montreal. Although he’d never done anything wrong and was acquitted, Broeker became fascinated with the men who had sullied his name and decided he wanted to do everything he could to uncover their crimes. He volunteered his services to the RCMP and they were more than happy to accept. In 1999, posing as a crooked accountant, he insinuated himself into the Para-Dice Riders. He wasn’t a member or a prospect, but he was close enough to have a pretty good idea of what was going on. Stadnick’s increased presence led him, and many others within Para-Dice Riders, to believe they were going to become a Hells Angels puppet club. And they were excited. “They were like small bit players who got the big ticket,” said Broeker. “To them, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
The police had the same idea. “When I talk to police in this province, their major concern with organized crime is really the bikers.” said Ontario Solicitor-General David Tsubouchi on December 28, 1999. “It’s pretty evident right now that the bikers are a priority with us.” Realizing the biggest bikers were coming, Tsubouchi answered police requests for funding and manpower by increasing the Provincial Special Squad to 44 members and reorganized it as the Biker Enforcement Unit (BEU). “There will be no easy ride,” he told newspapers.
The cops themselves didn’t sound as sure. “I don’t think we can stop it,” said George Rooke, operations coordinator of the BEU. “But we are prepared for it.” In case there were any people in Ontario who were still under the sway of the Hells Angels’ old romantic image, he told The Toronto Star: “This isn’t a bunch of guys riding bikes; this is big business. It’s organized crime, and when you are dealing with organized crime you are dealing with individuals who have avenues and people entrenched in illegal activities in the province of Ontario—money laundering, drug trade, prostitution, stolen property, motor vehicle theft and extortion.” The Hells Angels were coming, and everyone watching was sure they’d start small by patching over a few veteran bikers as they had in Alberta and M
anitoba.
They were all wrong. The day after the saber-rattling comments by Tsubouchi and Rooke appeared in newspapers nationwide, a procession of bikers filed into the Sorel clubhouse. As soon as the first bikers started filing in, a herd of Quebec and Ontario cops gathered outside. What they saw was chilling. Besides the usual Quebec Hells and puppet gang crests, they saw bottom rockers from British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Nova Scotia. “The only thing missing is Ontario,” joked one OPP officer. He wasn’t laughing for very long. When all the anticipated guests had arrived, parked their bikes and walked into the building, the air was once again filled with the rumble of Harley V-Twin engines through customized pipes. Around the corner came Ontario. More than 125 bikers—wearing the logos of the Para-Dice Riders, Satan’s Choice, Last Chance and the Lobos—arrived en masse.
A few of the bikers acknowledged some of the cops they knew from their home towns; some mugged for newspaper and police surveillance cameras. The shock of their numbers shut the police and media up. Again, the calm was short-lived. There was a third rumble, far quieter than the others, but perhaps even more profound. The third and smallest group was made up of unlikely guests. Even the most cynical cops were shocked to see these patches arrive—about a dozen bikers, some sporting “Charlie,” the Outlaws’ trademark skull, and others with the Rock Machine’s screaming eagle’s head. The third group of bikers passed the crowd with little show of emotion as they filed past the stunned cops and reporters. The arrival of a beat-up old Chevy van made everything very clear to the spectators. Two big hang-arounds unloaded a heavy crate, which was clearly marked as containing an industrial-sized sewing machine.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle Page 53
