Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (29 page)

Then he approached Flanz. He hit him with the butt of his gun and accused him to his face of being a police informant. Then he laughed and said “I'm saving you for last, you fucking Jew.” Muscedere tried to reassure Kellestine that Flanz wasn't an informant. He wasn't listening.

All of the cell phones on top of the freezer had rung at least once during the ordeal. But one of them rang repeatedly. Muscedere admitted that it was almost certainly his wife, Nina. Kellestine told him he could answer it, but warned him: “Don't say anything fucking stupid.”

Muscedere answered. He told his wife that he was at “church” and that he'd be home in an hour or two. He also told her he loved her. Then he hung up and started crying. He looked up at his old friend Kellestine and said through his tears: “Do me. Do me first. I want to go out like a man.”

Kellestine laughed and said he was going to let him go. Then he ordered Muscedere out of the barn. Aravena followed him. Outside, Aravena later testified, Kellestine led the way, Muscedere was in the middle and he brought up the rear. They walked from the barn to Muscedere's VW Golf, which already had Raposo's corpse in the cargo area. Kellestine warned his old friend not to get too close.

“What are you talking about?” snapped Muscedere. “I'm right behind you, and I'm not doing nothing.”

When they got to the car, Kellestine ordered him to get inside. Muscedere refused. “I'm gonna get two bullets in the back of my head,” he said, challenging Kellestine. But, after a brief stare-down, he relented. As he sat down, Kellestine shot him in the face through the open door.

Aravena testified that he initially thought that Kellestine had missed because Muscedere “had a big smile on his face.” Then he saw the hole in the man's head.

Kellestine then leaned into the car, put his gun under Muscedere's shirt and shot him again.

Then, Aravena later testified, Kellestine pointed his gun at the Winnipeg prospect's chest and threatened him. “I ain't doing 25 years for you,” he snarled. “If you say anything, I'll kill you and your family.”

“I ain't saying shit,” Aravena replied as calmly as he could. “I'm not a rat.”

Inside the barn, M.H. reported that he heard more “pops” of gunfire.

When they returned, Sandham took the visibly shaken Aravena aside and told him that Muscedere was the only one they were going to kill, that the others were going home.

Gardiner came running from the house to the barn where he met Mushey at the door. “Did you fucking hear that?” he asked, clearly disturbed. “I should go check on Wayne.”

Mushey ordered him back into the house. Kellestine and Mather made sure he went.

Kellestine and Mather came back into the barn. Nobody spoke until Kellestine ordered Mushey to help him take Kriarakis outside. They did. M.H. heard more pops. Aravena was recruited to stow Kriarakis' body in the tow truck. He later testified that he thought they would take him to a hospital because “it was still warm” (despite having helped dispose of Raposo's body and having seen Muscedere murdered before his eyes). Kellestine said that they would drop the body off in Toronto where they could “make it look like a drive-by.”

Back in the barn, Sandham later testified that he considered shooting Kellestine to put a stop to the murders, but had already given up his gun. Then Kellestine asked for someone to help escort Jessome outside. M.H. said he volunteered. With their guns trained on Jessome, they walked out to his tow truck. Kellestine ordered him to get into the rear passenger seat. As Jessome was complying, M.H. said that he saw Kellestine shoot Jessome in the head, then lift his shirt, put the gun under it and shoot him again in the chest. He then ordered M.H. to push the body into the truck and shut the door.

Kellestine then sized up the logistics of his operation. He told M.H. to move the bluish-green Chevy tow truck to the farm's entrance, and then park Flanz's gray 2003 Infiniti QX4 SUV behind it. M.H. then got in the other side of the tow truck, with a man he had just seen get murdered in the back seat, and followed orders.

Kellestine waited for him, and walked back from the site of Jessome's murder to the barn, complaining bitterly all the way. “He was bitching about doing ‘wet work,' ” M.H. testified. He also told the court he took the phrase to mean murder.

Michael “Little Mikey” Trotta

Back in the barn, Kellestine ordered Trotta and Flanz — both of whom were still prospects and not full-patch Bandidos — to clean up the barn with bleach and water. Sinopoli, the reluctant one, was led out of the barn — still crying and complaining — by Kellestine and Mushey. They shot him in the head and stuffed his giant corpse in the back of Flanz's Infiniti. Yet again M.H. reported hearing “pops” from outside the barn.

When they returned, it was Salerno's turn and he knew it. He got up and faced M.H. Salerno offered his hand. M.H. did not shake it. Neither did Aravena, who later testified he wouldn't shake Salerno's bloody hand because he was “wearing new clothes” and didn't want to get them dirty. Salerno then turned to Mushey and shook his hand before leaving the barn with him and Kellestine.

M.H. testified he heard still more pops.

In an effort to break the tension, Flanz asked Sandham about how his kids were doing.

Mushey and Kellestine took Trotta out of the barn. Once again, M.H. heard, but did not see, him get shot.

Then Kellestine took Flanz outside. According to M.H, everyone who was still alive — himself, Sandham, Mushey, Mather, Aravena and even Gardiner — followed. M.H. watched as Flanz was forced into the back seat of his car. By this time, Sandham had acquired a handgun. But then M.H. said he turned around, and then he heard a gunshot and saw a flash. He turned back around. This time, Mushey had the gun in his hand. M.H. turned around again. He heard another shot and saw another flash.

Sandham later gave his own perspective on the death of Flanz. He said that Kellestine and Mushey ordered him to kill the last remaining victim. Sandham said he refused, and that Kellestine told him he could “get in the car and join them.” At that point, Sandham said, Kellestine turned away, Mushey grabbed the gun and killed Flanz. Sandham said that Mushey told him he “owed him one.”

All eight targeted men had gone to their deaths without a fight.

By this time, dawn was approaching. Kellestine told the other men to collect the keys for the four cars the Toronto Bandidos had come in, and one extra so that they could return after dumping the bodies far away. Since Muscedere's body was still behind the wheel of his VW Golf, nobody wanted to drive it. Instead, it was decided that it would be attached to Jessome's tow truck.

Although they had intended to drive far away to dump the bodies, one of the vehicles was almost out of fuel, so Kellestine made the call to ditch. They were traveling northeast on Highway 3 (which many locals call the Talbot Line) and pulled over into a lightly wooded spot less than 10 miles from Iona Station, next to a farmer's field down an unlit dirt road just outside the tiny hamlet of Shedden, Ontario — the self-proclaimed “Rhubarb Capital of Canada.”

When they returned, the men collected the slain bikers' possessions. They assembled all of their IDs, cell phones, keys and anything else that could potentially be incriminating, which Kellestine put in a bag that he later burned. Kellestine took all the change taken from the dead men's pockets and put it in his daughter's “Potty Mouth Jar” — an old glass jar she was expected to put money into each time her parents caught her swearing.

Sandham, Mushey, Aravena and M.H. went back to Winnipeg. Gardiner decided to stay at Kellestine's farm, joining Mather, who had already been there for a few days.

The following morning, at about 8 a.m. a neighbor saw Flanz's Inifiniti in a lot owned by Mary and Russell Steele. She called her friends and told them about the car on their property. The Steeles drove out to where the friend had spotted the car and discovered the slate-gray Pontiac Grand Prix Trotta had rented for the trip. At first they thought some revelers had been partying on their lot and had passed out or been too drunk to drive back home. But when they saw the tow truck with the Golf, it unnerved them. They went back to the house and called 911.

Curious, they went back to the site before the police showed up. Russell — or “Rusty” as his wife calls him — went up to Flanz's SUV, but he couldn't see inside the car because the windows had frosted over.

Just after they went back home, an OPP officer arrived. The officer approached the Infiniti SUV and noticed that the driver's side window was open. He looked inside and saw Salerno's body in the back seat. Undaunted, he went around to the back of the car. He put his hand on the handle of the latch. It was unlocked. He opened it. The next thing he saw was Sinopoli's gigantic belly. His body was folded up in the Infiniti's cargo area. By that time, another OPP officer had arrived on the scene. Circling the Infiniti, he noticed Trotta's body on the other side of the back seat.

They called for help. Two more OPP officers arrived. They found the VW hooked up to the Superior Towing truck. Inside, they found the corpses of Muscedere, Kriarakis and Raposo.

They called paramedics. While on scene, one of the paramedics looked in the back seat of the tow truck. He discovered the body of Jessome. The cops kept searching, and discovered Flanz's corpse in the back seat of the Grand Prix.

By noon, dozens of police were keeping hundreds of media and curious locals away from the crime scene.

At about 8 p.m. that evening, two old friends of Kellestine's — Eric Niessen and his common-law wife Kerry Morris showed up at the farm with a couple of cases of beer. They had driven unannounced from their home in Monkton, about two hours to the north. Niessen was an official Bandidos supporter — a position for which he was required to pay $25 a month, although he later said he'd only paid it once. Before that, he was an Outlaws supporter. A piece of lined, legal-sized paper later recovered from Salerno's house and used as evidence against him noted that he was a “hangaround.”

But he was no biker. Niessen attended Bandidos parties and knew all the guys — he even knew Kellestine had plans to reform the Toronto chapter and relocate it to London with himself in charge — but he wasn't the type to actually be in a gang. And although he was never charged with any drug-related offenses, according to police, Niessen's name came up in several different meth-related investigations.

When they arrived, he saw that the house was surrounded by police cars and what he — hey, he'd been around — recognized as unmarked police cars. He told Kellestine, who he later said didn't seem surprised.

Also inside the house were Mather and Gardiner. As he began to make himself comfortable, Niessen saw more police arrive. After watching television, Niessen realized that the cops were there because of the bodies found in Shedden. Although Niessen never publicly said he suspected his old friend of the crime, he realized it wasn't a huge intellectual leap for the cops to think that the baddest biker in the area may have had something to do with eight bodies found less than 10 miles away. Especially since the TV news had reported that all eight of the dead were bikers themselves.

Kellestine fielded phone calls about the murders all day. Niessen recognized Raposo's car and Jessome's truck from Toronto-based Superior Towing on the news. Just before midnight, Niessen called Muscedere's brother to tell him that he believed the bodies found in the field were Muscedere's and Raposo's. He did not mention any others.

Niessen began to harbor suspicions when he noticed the other people in the house destroying things that could potentially be used as evidence. Later, at Kellestine's request, Niessen went out to an old freezer Kellestine used to collect rainwater and brought a number of buckets of water to Gardiner who was cleaning up the barn.

Police later reported they saw Niessen searching the farm, especially in areas where they later determined the murders had occurred. They did not, however, find any hard evidence that he had destroyed or hidden anything that could be used as evidence.

Later that day, the police moved in. After an uneventful standoff, they apprehended everyone inside the house — Kellestine, Mushey, Gardiner, Niessen and Morris. They were all arrested and charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. Inside the barn, the police found blood spatters and bits of human flesh and hair among the beer bottles and Nazi flags. Gardiner had done a lousy job cleaning up.

Interestingly, at her trial later on, Morris testified that she thought the Hells Angels were attacking when the police moved in.

The media leapt on the story. Sinopoli's giant so-white-it's-blue belly was on the front page of every newspaper and led every night-time newscast. They called it the biggest mass murder in Ontario history. They called it the Shedden Massacre (even though the killings happened in Iona Station and the bodies were dumped just outside Shedden).