With his son still in the front seat, Pelletier sped eastward on 47th Avenue and turned left on 236th Street. The other car pursued. Panicked, Pelletier turned right on 52nd Avenue. But the Hummer took the turn wide, slammed into a parked car and careened into a ditch, finally coming to a stop after colliding with a tree. The other car pulled up beside the crashed Hummer and—despite the fact that Pelletier had driven to, and crashed in front of, Peterson Road Elementary School—opened fire.
Neither Len nor his son was shot, but Len did suffer some minor injuries from the crash. Both schools went into lockdown mode.
Later that day, the Pelletiers' older son fell into a confrontation with police. Although they required a taser shot to subdue the boy, he was released without charge. His mother attributed the incident to him being upset over the shooting.
Two weeks later, a joint agreement between the Pelletiers, the RCMP and the Langley school board led to the 14-year-old being removed from D.W. Poppy for “alternative schooling.”
The police did not agree with Cynthia that the shooting was the result of a teenage brawl gone out of control. In fact, they seemed to be of the opinion that the incident was part of a bigger conflict that was far-reaching and in danger of escalation. “We are confident that this incident has to do with far greater issues than a group of teenagers that were in a dispute that chose to beat on one another,” said Langley RCMP spokesman Peter Thiessen. “This issue that occurred yesterday is linked to something far greater and far more criminal than that. I will leave it to the community to form an opinion and make a decision as to where the credible information may be coming from.”
On October 19, 2007, the Lower Mainland learned that the cops were right. The news was everywhere. Six people had been shot and killed at Balmoral Tower in Surrey: four alleged gangsters and two clearly innocent bystanders. The amount of bloodshed, the cold-blooded planning and premeditation, and the absolute disregard for public safety made the Fortune Happiness shootings look like a birthday party.
When news of the Surrey Six murders broke, all of British Columbia went into a state of shock. Newspapers and radio were alive with news of the murders. Grief-stricken Eileen Mohan's image was everywhere, putting a human face on the horror everyone felt. Police were largely tight-lipped but admitted that the killings were “gang related.” Still, it didn't take rocket science for the public to put two and two together.
The common opinion in the area that the drug trade could be nonviolent was dashed. While local media understandably concentrated on the innocent victims, the fact that members of one gang essentially exterminated another was more historically significant. Mohan and Schellenberg were tragic victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the execution of the Lal gang set a deadly precedent. It had been made abundantly clear that with so much money involved, with so many disparate (and desperate) players involved, there was no way the drug trade could remain peaceful. The Lals and their allies had betrayed the Red Scorpions, and they were given a death sentence. What had been unthinkable now was standard operating procedure. Anyone who stood in the way of a gang's income could expect to die.
It was no longer business as usual. After the Surrey Six massacre, the lines were more distinctly drawn. Everyone in the underworld knew the rules. Mess with the other side, and you would be shot. Yet there were those who couldn't resist messing. The potential danger was rising, but the drug trafficking gangs were still intent on cashing in on the bonanza. While the Hells Angels' flunkies—the Renegades and the Independent Soldiers—dominated the drug trade in Prince George, there was actually enough business there that a new, independent gang emerged.
The name was always a problem. They called themselves the Game Tight Soldiers. The “game” referred to underworld business and “tight” reflected its slang meaning, in some circles, hip and well put together. But when it was all put together, it became a name other gangsters found hilarious, and launched several creative nicknames, pretty much all of which put the members' sexual orientation into question.
When the existence of the Game Tight Soldiers came to light, they were paid a visit by the Renegades. It's customary in Hells Angels–dominated communities for their representatives to offer any rivals a standard ultimatum: work for us or get out of town.
In most such cases, the members of the threatened gang simply capitulate. But there was a real rift in the Game Tight Soldiers—and an opportunity. A series of mass arrests in Winnipeg had left the Hells Angels chapter there in an absolute shambles. That power vacuum led to a group of rival bikers—including a few former Bandidos and some disillusioned Hells Angels associates—to form a new gang. And, in a move calculated to enrage the Hells Angels, they called it the Rock Machine, after the notorious Montreal-based gang who went to war with the Hells Angels.
So, when the Game Tight Soldiers were confronted by the Renegades, some of them—led by the gang's founder and president, Steven King, born in Barrie, Ontario—accepted the offer and started working for the Renegades. Others, however, packed up and took their talents to Winnipeg, where they hooked up with the Rock Machine.
But a new player emerged in the game. Apart from the established gangs, their hangers-on and the police, the public—in particular, the families of victims—began to make a difference. Public outrage was mounting, and the Surrey Six killings had given them a powerful, persistent and persuasive advocate—Eileen Mohan. The mother of Chris Mohan, who was among the dead at the Balmoral, Eileen Mohan was interviewed shortly after the murders on CBC Radio and announced that she was launching a campaign for judicial reform. She was sure that even if her son's killers were ever caught, their sentences would hardly fit the crime. That immediately made her someone reporters called when they needed a quotation for their story about how a victim felt or how light sentences were a problem. But as things went along, Mohan, others like her and people who just wanted to see an end to the violence banded together and rallied to quell the increased violence in the Lower Mainland.
The first public display of Mohan's activism came after details of Ronnie Lising's trafficking trial became public in the middle of November 2007. A security-camera video tape showed Lising and fellow full-patch Hells Angel knocking bouncer Randall Bowles to the ground then kicking him outside a popular downtown nightclub in 2005. Lising, who had already been convicted of cocaine trafficking in 2001, was given a $600 fine (which did not go to the victim) and a two-year gun ban, although no firearms were involved. Alvarez was given a year's probation and 50 hours of community service.
The CBC asked Mohan to comment. “I think the public at large will be appalled to see the amount of sentences that were given that were so lenient,” she told them. “In this case, we should have put these people away for a longer time.”
Eileen Mohan and the family of Surrey Six victim Ed Schellenberg held a Public Safety Rally at Bear Creek Park in Surrey on February 3, 2008. About 200 people attended the event, which began with the release of white doves to symbolize the innocent victims. Several people spoke, including the mayor and the local member of Parliament. But the most compelling, the one people came to see, was Mohan. She delivered. There was something about her honest, heartfelt words that moved people. Of all the speeches, hers drew the most applause and the most tears.
All of the speakers talked about staying involved in children's lives to help keep them away from drugs and gangs, but they all knew that prevention could only go so far. A much larger part of the rally focused on a call for stiffer penalties for violent offenders. Surrey Mayor Diane Watts pointed out that a life sentence in Canada usually results in about ten years of actual prison time, sometimes as little as six, and that Canada does not allow for consecutive life sentences. “We must have consecutive sentences for multiple homicides. When someone is caught for these murders—and they will be caught—they will be sentenced to one life sentence,” she said. “That's 10 years—for six murders. That's definitely unacceptable.”
Mohan a
lso called for a website dedicated to identifying and making public who the Lower Mainland's gangsters were. She got her wish. Soon after the rally ended, a website called “Gangstersout” was created that included a directory of known and suspected gang members, as well as a blog keeping its readers up to date on organized crime. It is operated anonymously by an administrator who goes by the name of Agent K. It is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to know anything about crime in the Lower Mainland and is meticulously and courageously kept up to date and accurate.
The first shot fired in the public's war against organized crime was a dud. Glen “Kingpin” Hehn, the full-patch Hells Angel who, along with his friend Ewan Lilford, was caught with $1.5 million worth of cocaine in 2003, was acquitted on April 30, 2008. Lilford was not charged.
Justice Peter Leask praised Hehn as a witness on his own behalf. When Crown Attorney Ernie Froess pointed out that the cocaine was probably not Lilford's because it would have been foolhardy and dangerous for a person to secretly store cocaine in a locker rented by a Hells Angel, Leask acknowledged that fact, but gave a bizarre interpretation of his own. “On the one hand, he can minimize his risk of detection and apprehension by just aborting the whole fucking thing, right?” he said, no doubt delighting the grade school children attending the trial that day as part of a field trip. “And saying, I thought I was going to do these things, but I'm not going to do them, it's just this morning is not working out for me, or he can try and make the best of things.”
And when Froess tried to claim the cocaine was owned by Hehn, Leask rejected that idea entirely. “But to be really clear, he'd have had to have been out of his fuckin' mind to store it in his own locker, all right?” he said. “I mean, that's for sure he wouldn't do that. Let's not spend any time on that theory.”
So in Leask's world, when a full-patch Hells Angel and his friend are caught with 52 kilograms of cocaine in a locker leased by the Hells Angel and admittedly used by the friend, it is obvious that the cocaine belongs to an unknown third party because the friend would be too intimidated by the Hells Angel to be the owner and the Hells Angel would be too smart to be the owner.
Kipling Street is an appealing, if largely treeless, suburban Abbotsford street that ends in a cul-de-sac. Since the houses there are quite large with spacious yards, most of the owners have children. Since the kids all play or at least hang out with one another and go to the same schools, it's a social and friendly block on which pretty well everyone knows everyone else.
But in 2008, there was a couple without kids who lived at the big white siding-and-brick house at 1432 and didn't mix with anyone else in the neighborhood. “They made it clear they had their own set of friends,” a neighbor told me. “And wanted to keep it that way.”
On the night of Friday, May 8, 2008, there were two strange cars on the street, a giant, customized Ford F-350 pickup and a large silver Mercedes-Benz M-Class SUV. At about 10:40 p.m., the quiet of the evening was shaken by a series of gunshots and the sound of squealing tires. Curious neighbors came to their windows just in time to see the SUV's taillights glowing in the darkness and getting smaller as it sped away.
The victim, a 40-year-old white man, was hit several times while walking across the front yard to his truck in the house's driveway. He managed to crawl back to the porch but collapsed there, dying before authorities—who had been alerted by several 9-1-1 calls—arrived.
The dead man was Duane Harvey Meyer, a former Hells Angels prospect who had risen to a high leadership post in the UN. His importance in that organization was made obvious by his funeral, which looked from its size and scope like a well-known hero had died. Except for who was in attendance. The entire membership of the UN was on hand—including luminaries like Roueche and Chan—and all but a couple of them were wearing ludicrous “gangster” suits with black shirts and white ties. Many of them, including Roueche, arrived in custom-made black hoodies emblazoned with the message “In memory D.M.” Also on hand were a significant number of Hells Angels and Abbotsford police with metal detectors. Pictures from the event would later be used to prove gang connections in dozens of subsequent criminal trials.
It was an increasingly violent time. Shootings, often in places full of innocent bystanders, were becoming commonplace. The police appeared powerless to stop them. Even when they did arrest somebody, it always seemed as though the courts would absolve the person charged, despite obvious circumstances, or hand out ridiculously small sentences which would then be reduced to merely symbolic punishments.
Frustrated by knowing who the bad guys were but being unable to do anything concrete about it, the Abbotsford police came up with an idea that they hoped would help promote public awareness of the situation, if not actually remove the problem. They issued a public warning on May 31, 2008, stating that any person doing business with or associating in any way with Jonathan Bacon was putting his or her life in grave danger. In truth, the cops could have said that about any of the Bacon Brothers or any of a number of other regional gang members. But the police chose Jonathan not only because they knew he was knee-deep in the drug trade, but also because he was easily identifiable and recognizable. Too often, cops tell me, the public will ignore warnings about members of visible minorities or the kind of person who simply looks like a criminal. To most people, Jonathan looked more like the kind of guy you'd buy a used car from than a gangster. He was, simply put, the boy next door for most Canadians. That made him stand out, and it also reminded the people of the region that anyone could be a gangster.
Unable to put the bad guy away, the best authorities could do was to tell people who he was. That way, if there were more victims, they could at least say they had warned them.
Jonathan Barber was no gangster, and his fate demonstrated how fatal even the most tenuous link to the Bacons could be. He was just a hardworking guy. He worked a few jobs, but the one he was best at was installing stereo equipment into high-end vehicles. It was a great job, not only because he could use his skills and get paid, but because he could drive around Vancouver in some of the hottest cars available.
On May 9, 2008, Barber was excited to be working on a black Porsche Cayenne, a luxurious SUV made by a sports car manufacturer that delighted drug dealers the world around as much as it horrified Porsche purists. As he drove it from the owner's place in Abbotsford to his Vancouver shop, he had his 17-year-old girlfriend drive his own, lesser SUV close behind.
He didn't know who the owner was; he was just happy to be driving the Cayenne. But others were well aware of exactly whose car it was. In fact, an armed group of UN members were surprised to see Jonathan Bacon's car cruising down the Kingsway.
Barber had no gang connections. But because the gangster look was in fashion, his short dark hair and gold chain gave him a passing resemblance to Jonathan Bacon.
The UN members—Barzan Tilli-Choli, Dan Russell, Dilun Heng, Karwan Saed, Yong Lee and Ion Croitoru (better known as “Johnny K-9,” a Hamilton, Ontario–born former professional wrestler and member of Satan's Choice)—took their shot. Oblivious to the other vehicles and pedestrians on one of the busiest streets in Canada, at ten in the evening, they sprayed the luxurious SUV with gunfire. Barber slumped down, dead. The weight of his right foot pressed on the accelerator, and the Cayenne's powerful engine vaulted the big vehicle over the sidewalk and into a nearby furniture store, knocking a big hole in the wall. Panicked by the gunshots and seeing the Cayenne veer off the street, Barber's 17-year-old girlfriend driving the man's own SUV accelerated and collided with several other cars. She was hurt but survived.
Three gang-related murders in less than 48 hours proved to even the most cynical observer that there was a war on. And it was more widespread than simply the UN against the Bacon Brothers. The UN, of course, had a tenuous relationship with the Hells Angels and, by extension, many other gangs, including the Independent Soldiers. And the Bacon Brothers had become synonymous with the Red Scorpions. In fact, once Kabovanec was back out of jail,
he shared a car lease with Jamie Bacon and gave the Bacon family home as his address.
From information they learned during Project Frozen Timber, police in both Canada and the United States knew that Roueche was a major player in drug trafficking from Canada to the United States. And the evidence they collected allowed them to tap his phone.
One of the first things they learned was that Clayton Roueche, like many Canadians involved in the drug trade, was afraid to travel to the United States, where sentences are much stiffer. On April 2, 2008, just before noon, he received a call from a friend named Pam Lee, who asked him if he knew anyone who could give her a ride to the airport in Bellingham, Washington. She pointed out that she knew it wouldn't be him. “Yeah,” he said with a snicker. “I'll never come back.” When she pressed him on it, he told her, “I wouldn't even get down there; they'd throw me in jail.”
But Roueche did go to Mexico. Not only was it essential to his business, but he also had friends there. And when he was invited to a wedding in May 2008, he did not hesitate to go. On May 19, Roueche landed in Mexico. When he handed over his passport—which had stamps from Vietnam, Japan, Macao, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Thailand, but not the United States—he was asked to wait in a separate room. Two officers met with him and told him that American authorities asked them not to allow him into the country. Roueche said he understood and told them he'd get on the next flight back to Vancouver.
The Notorious Bacon Brothers Page 14
