The club reopened under the same name with new management and a $200,000 renovation. But while the Independent Soldiers frequented Loft Six, it was not exclusively their turf. Members from other gangs would often show up there with little or no problem. But things changed on the night of August 16, 2003. Not only were the Independent Soldiers and their associates in the bar, but there were also Hells Angels and their supporters. Despite the use of metal detectors, many of the patrons at Loft Six that night were armed.
There are varying stories of what happened next, but I have heard from reliable sources that sparks started to fly when one of the Independent Soldiers recognized a guy named John “JJ” Johnson. Apparently, Johnson had worked at a Hells Angels–associated strip joint called Brandi's and had so much trouble with one loud mouthed customer that he decided to beat him into the hospital. When he later found out the guy was an influential Indian gangster, he went into hiding. And when he showed up in the midst of the Sikh-dominated Independent Soldiers, it was only a matter of time before trouble erupted.
Despite there being about 200 people in the club, most of them innocent bystanders, at just before 4 a.m., shots came from every direction. “A fight broke out, and all of the sudden bullets started flying,” one witness said. “We just ran. We were right in the line of fire. We couldn't see anybody; we didn't know who was shooting, and people began crawling over top of each other to get out of the way.”
When the smoke cleared, three people were dead, and eight, mostly innocent bystanders, were injured. Gerpal Singh “Paul” Dosanjh—cousin to two of the original Indo-Canadian Mafia members, Jimmy and Ron Dosanjh—was shot in the head but survived. Not as lucky were Johnson, whose presence sparked the melee; John Popovich, an innocent DJ visiting Vancouver from Windsor, Ontario; and Mahmoud Alkhalil, a member of the Independent Soldiers and little brother of Khalil Alkhalil, who was murdered in Surrey in 2001.
After the Loft Six murders, things began to change among the criminal organizations on the Lower Mainland, particularly the Indian Canadian ones. The Independent Soldiers—who had always been predominantly Indian—began working with more and more white guys, many with connections to the Hells Angels.
And as the region was still reeling from the November 28 murder of Mao Jomar Lanot—a teenager who had a glass soda bottle broken over his head when a mob outside Sir Charles Tupper High School attacked him—it was shocked by two murders of young Indian Canadian men in two days.
On December 12, the Richmond RCMP unit received a call from the New Westminster police about a shooting. When they arrived, 20-year-old Naveen Shiv Daval was already dead. He had been shot in an apartment and managed to get to his vehicle before passing out and dying behind the wheel. The other occupants of the East Richmond apartment he was shot in—a 20-year-old Indian Canadian and a 19-year-old white kid—were questioned but eventually released. The case was never solved, and police told media that Daval's death was most likely a case of mistaken identity.
On the following morning, at about 9:20 a.m., a couple had just finished a pleasant walk in Surrey's Bear Creek Park when they planned to return to their car. On their way to their car, they noticed a late-model Mercedes-Benz sedan with its engine running and its lights on. Moving closer, the couple described what they saw as an Indian-looking man behind the wheel. He appeared to be unconscious, so they called 9-1-1. When paramedics arrived, they determined that the man in the car—36-year-old Gurwinder Singh Bath—was dead.
His death was eerily reminiscent of the May discovery of Karmen Singh Johl, who had also been found shot dead behind the wheel of his car in the same neighborhood. In fact, Bath and Johl were both involved with a company called “R&S Trucking,” which had been the subject of a major investigation involving shipping marijuana over the border in tractor-trailers. Despite the fact that Johl had a long series of drug-related convictions, both men avoided charges by claiming they did not know what was in the trucks they were driving.
But while many people in the Lower Mainland had come to regard Sikh-on-Sikh violence to be a problem limited to that community, those minds changed at the start of 2004. On the night of January 2, Rachel Davis—a pudgy 23-year-old blonde who looked a lot like her mother, Janet Wright, one of the featured actors on the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas—went to the Purple Onion nightclub with some friends. On the way out, she noticed an Indian Canadian man involved in a fight with a group of other Indian Canadian men. As the man, 25-year-old drug dealer Imran Saff Sharif, was thrown to the ground, Davis intervened, putting herself between Sharif and the men who threw him down. As she was attempting to calm the situation, Sharif pulled a handgun and started firing wildly. He shot and killed Davis and a passerby named Richard Hui. It came out in Sharif's trial that he was running a dial-a-dope operation and had strong gang connections, but the authorities would not reveal which gang or gangs he worked with (they often keep this information to themselves because it's something the defense would make them prove in court).
There were a few more suspicious murders in the Lower Mainland with no obvious connection to established gangs, until March 6. At 5:00 a.m. that morning, Paul Dosanjh and an associate, both armed, were engaged in a summit meeting with a pair of rival drug dealers—one Indian Canadian, one white—over a territorial dispute at the Gourmet Castle, an East Hastings Street Chinese-food restaurant. Shots were exchanged, and Dosanjh was killed. “Because he is well-known to police and because of the family connections that are well-known to police, we are obviously looking at the gang link and the drug link,” a Vancouver police spokesman said. “But at this point, we don't have any idea why he was targeted.” Still, they did issue a media release indicating they would have an armed presence at his funeral.
By this time, of course, everything was changing. The organized-crime landscape looked very different on the Lower Mainland in 2005 than it had just a few years earlier when guys like Bindy Johal were acting all “gangsta” on local television newscasts.
The big players were still the Hells Angels and the Chinese, but—more than ever before—they were working behind the scenes, operating the street-level drug and other vice markets by proxy. There was no shortage of young men (and, to some extent, women) who wanted to be involved in the drug trade, particularly because of the ease and relative safety of dial-a-dope operations.
The only problem was getting the drugs to supply. For decades, dealers would have to connect with the Chinese or the Hells Angels for cocaine, heroin or meth, but could get marijuana from any of the thousands of independent growers in the area. But—just as they had with independently owned strip joints, escort agencies and other vice-related businesses—the Hells Angels had used violent, one might even say terroristic, methods to gain control of growers who did not want to play ball by selling exclusively to Hells Angels–associated dealers at a price determined by the bikers. Independent growers could expect to be robbed, beaten or even murdered if they tried to stay independent.
Of course, there were holdouts—small-time suppliers flying under the radar of the Hells Angels—but their output was small and the methods they used to stay out of the Hells Angels' way often led to them being invisible to other potential dealers as well.
So, despite all the talk of loyalty and honor and brotherhood, dealers went where dealers have always gone—to established organized crime. The United Nations—the very gang whose original stated reason for existence was to protect its members from the Hells Angels—began to play both sides of the fence. Roueche had connections with East Asian drug importers through his girlfriend's relatives, but other notable members and associates of the United Nations began buying marijuana and other drugs first from Hells Angels associates and then members themselves. The United Nations never really became a puppet gang, as they have been characterized in the media. Some UN members continued to deal without any connection to the Hells Angels or their allies, and continued their antipathy toward them. But many of them they did leave their original ideals behind
for the sake of easy money and started dealing for the Hells Angels and kicking profits upstairs just like everyone else. Still, it was at best a tenuous relationship, and many members of the UN retained their loathing of the bikers.
Of the other two major youth gangs on the Lower Mainland—the Independent Soldiers and the Red Scorpions—both were becoming increasingly diverse and territorial. After the Loft Six shootings, many of the original members of the Independent Soldiers quit and were replaced by more Hells Angels–friendly members who rapidly rose through their ranks and eventually swayed that gang, as well, from anti– to pro–Hells Angels. Whether this was an intricate plan of infiltration by the Hells Angels or just a coincidence, a result of the Independent Soldiers evolving in the face of the same contemporary zeitgeist as the United Nations has been the subject of intense debate. Either way, the Independent Soldiers steadily became less and less independent.
The lone holdout at that point were the Red Scorpions. Although I have been told by their supporters that it was because its members had more integrity and were made of sterner stuff, I have also been told by others that the Hells Angels rejected them as small-timers. Since that kind of rationalizing—my group is right no matter what it does, and all other groups are wrong if they are in opposition—is rampant, an essential part of the culture among gang members, the truth is anyone's guess.
But few were guessing at what the Bacon Brothers were doing. Like pretty well everyone else who agreed to talk to me for this book, the guy I will call Nelson asked me to protect his identity. Originally from the Toronto area, Nelson moved to the Lower Mainland with his graphic-designer wife and later shifted from a mid-level job at TD Bank to setting up his own business as a broker of a (legal) commodity he also won't let me name, but one that he will admit draws an entirely Asian market. The extra income allowed him to move into a much better house on Strathcona Court, not far from the Bacons.
When Nelson moved to Strathcona, the Bacon Brothers were all in their early 20s and, to his mild surprise, living at home with their parents. He did not like the family and, in his opinion, neither did anyone else. He described the neighborhood as “nervous” because of the Bacons' presence. “Nobody wanted to run into them because they were obnoxious and rude,” he told me. “It started with the old man. He was not just rude, but aggressively so. I have no idea how he had a job as a teacher.” Nelson explained that he did not know the boys' mother very well but said he “had a pretty good handle” on the brothers themselves.
He characterized Jonathan, the oldest, as “a pretty normal-looking guy” and also noted that he was the most approachable of the family, the least likely to be belligerent. He said Jarrod, the middle boy, was “flashy” and “tried to look like a gangster” in dark suits and expensive sunglasses. “He looked like he had more money than taste,” Nelson mused.
But the two of them appeared gentlemanly, in Nelson's opinion, compared to Jamie, the youngest. “He was the size of a moose and seemed about half as smart,” he said with a straight face. “While the other two had macho swagger, Jamie looked like a psycho.” He made it a point to steer clear of the young man, in case he experienced a “'roid rage.”
The Bacons, he said, tended to consider the street to be theirs and would park and hang out wherever they felt like. They were loud and kept late hours, often coming home or “partying” well into the morning, to the consternation of neighbors.
All three boys had late-model luxury cars, which they traded in, according to Nelson, annually. He told me about their other conspicuous signs of wealth—including clothes, jewelry and huge parties—and I asked them where he thought three boys could afford such as ostentatious lifestyle. He looked at me like I was crazy. “They sold drugs, of course,” he said.
The police, too, were aware of the Bacons, and their alleged drug sales operation, but could not acquire enough evidence to receive a warrant or even to mount a surveillance operation. Those in the know, though, have told me that the Bacons were selling drugs they had received from the United Nations, which could be traced back to the Hells Angels.
But things changed very rapidly in 2004, when Jarrod Bacon was charged with attempted murder after an altercation in the seedy Fraser Valley Inn. He went out back with two men, presumably to straighten things out, and shot one of them. The other fled. Nelson recalled, “Jarrod got into an argument with a guy at the pub about who could do what where and shot him. I guess it must've been bad because I know he was charged with attempted murder.”
But, just as the people who I spoke with were loathe to allow me to reveal their identities for this book for fear of retribution, the man the Crown alleged Jarrod was trying to kill refused to cooperate with police. Although the Crown continued to press the charge, the judge had no choice but to stay the case due to a lack of evidence, allowing Jarrod to walk free.
It was a valuable lesson for the Bacon Brothers: if nobody talks, you have nothing to fear.
Chapter 5
Going Global: 2005–2006
While the Bacon Brothers and others like them didn't think they had much to fear from law enforcement if they could convince the people around them, including the victims, to stay quiet, competition on the streets of British Columbia for product, territory and customers was leading to widespread violence. And, as they had in the past, the Hells Angels did their best to intimidate the competition, often through the use of puppet gangs and support crews.
One of the most violent of them was simply called the Crew. In fact, it was something of an oddity—a puppet gang of a puppet gang. Prince George, tucked away in British Columbia's mountainous interior, is a hardscrabble timber-and-mining community and has been named “Canada's most dangerous city” twice by Maclean's magazine because of its disproportionate rates of murder and other violent crime.
With prosperous markets for drugs and other vices, Prince George is a vital part of Canada's underground economy. And, as such, it could not be ignored by the Hells Angels. “The north has always been an expanding field. There are a lot of drugs consumed in the north,” said Inspector Gary Shinkaruk, head of the RCMP's Outlaw Motorcycle Gang unit. “They [the Hells Angels] want to tap into that lucrative market.”
But operating there and living there are two very different things. In the early 2000s, the Hells Angels visited and recruited some of the local tough guys to form a gang, the Renegades, to act as their representatives in the city, moving product and preventing anyone else from trying. They did their job with gusto, flooding the city with drugs. But they quickly realized they needed to enforce their dominance in the city.
To accomplish this, the Renegades recruited guys they knew to act for them on the streets, both as dealers and enforcers. Called the Crew, these guys acted viciously, conducting severe public beatings and worse. One such case occurred when a local (and, it would appear, uncooperative) drug dealer named Patrick Patriquin struggled into a convenience store covered in blood. When the shocked clerk saw that Patriquin was missing his left hand, he called 9-1-1. Patriquin regained consciousness in a hospital bed the following day but refused to cooperate with police. The hand was never found. Law enforcement officers on the street were convinced that the incident was the work of the Crew, but they could not get enough evidence to make any arrests.
Prince George, even more than most such places, has a voracious appetite for crack. One frequent user was a Shawn Giesbrecht. In order to have enough money to buy crack, he also sold crack. And like everyone else in Prince George who sold crack, he got it from the Crew. In fact, he got it from the Crew's president, Scott Payne.
Payne was a particularly nasty fellow. Abandoned by his mother at the age of 5 to a father who was constantly in and out of prison, Payne was found wandering the streets of Maple Ridge at the age of 8 and taken into foster care. As later revealed in his trial as an adult, his first convictions, when he was 15, were small time and netted him just probation. But in January 2000, he was caught with crack and sentenced to one day
in jail. Less than two weeks later, he was arrested again, for assault and carrying a concealed weapon. In June 2000, he was caught fencing stolen goods. In 2001, it was assault with a concealed weapon again. In 2003, he was caught with an illegal handgun, and in 2005, he was found to be carrying crack again and added resisting arrest to his list of charges.
Giesbrecht was, quite reasonably, scared of Payne. And on November 14, 2004, he was absolutely terrified. For various reasons, he had fallen into arrears with his supplier. He was $170—a fortune in crackhead terms—short. It might have made sense to lay low, but Giesbrecht didn't have that option. Not only did he need more product to sell if he wanted to make the money back, but he also needed crack for his own addiction—and there was no place else to get it. So he headed to Payne's crack shack and explained to his boss what had happened.
Payne calmly told him to put his left hand on the table that was between them. Giesbrecht complied. Payne then pulled a long, serrated hunting knife out of his pocket and sawed off the little finger on Giesbrecht's left hand. He then put the severed digit in a cardboard box with a lid, telling Giesbrecht and the others in the shack that he'd use it as a warning to others.
Payne was also present when his close associate Alia Brienne Pierini—a 21-year-old mother of a toddler—attacked Alphonse Holtz, another addict–turned–street-level-dealer who couldn't pay his bills, with an axe in an apartment the pair often used to process crack.
But arrests of various members of the Crew, including Payne and his right-hand man Joshua Hendrick, led to an intolerable amount of bad press and police surveillance, and the Crew was shut down. To replace them, the powers that be collected the remaining worthwhile members of the Crew, a couple of new recruits and some tough guys from Kelowna and formed them into the Prince George chapter of the Independent Soldiers.
The Notorious Bacon Brothers Page 9
