Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (34 page)

On the same day, a woman claimed to have been robbed of drugs and money by two armed men she identified as Burling and Pereira, but they were acquitted of that crime.

Although Amundsen endured the beatings in broad daylight and for a very long time, he claimed he could not identify his attackers. His testimony rarely ranged from anything other than “I don't know” or “I don't remember.” Burling kept grinning at his responses, until his lawyer told him to stop.

Instead, Michel (who took no active part in the torture), spoke on his behalf. “He looked like a beach ball. He was all puffed up,” Michel testified. “His finger was smashed; it was flat.”

The bikers' defense attorney, Ian Garber, asked the jury to disregard the testimony from Michel and the robbed woman as he was an admitted drug dealer and had already made a plea deal that saw the Crown drop kidnapping charges against him in exchange for his testimony and she was an admitted crack addict. “If the Crown had a choice, they wouldn't be asking you to take [the two witnesses'] word for anything,” he said “On cross-examination [Michel] admitted there is no reason for [the jury] to believe anything he told you. Mr. Michel would promise anyone anything he had to get out of the mess he was in.”

But the jury did believe Michel and all four accused bikers were found guilty of kidnapping, aggravated assault and extortion. Burling was given an eight-year sentence, while Curwin, Ducharme and Pereira were given six each. A woman who lured Amundsen to the address and had some degree of knowledge of the plan, was given four years.

Burling appealed his sentence, believing it too harsh because he was already serving nine years for another crime, but lost. On hearing the verdict at his failed appeal, Burling stood up in court and started screaming. He began by telling the judge that “the Bandidos aren't fuckin' going anywhere! God forgives, the Bandidos doesn't!” Then he turned to the Crown attorneys, calling them “fucking clowns” and vowing “to see [them] in 10 years.” As soon as the tirade began, he was rushed by court officers who started to drag him out of the room. As Burling attempted to overturn (or perhaps lift) a bench, the officers brought him to the ground. Moments later, Burling began clutching his chest and bellowing: “My heart! My heart!” He was removed from court on a stretcher, but never lost consciousness and asked his defense attorney for his sunglasses on the way out.

But the Rock Machine recruiter, a former Bandido himself, wanted to distance his new gang from the Rock Machine's first incarnation. “Obviously, we're keeping out of crime. We're going back to old-style biking and brotherhood of the '50s and '60s,” he said. “We want to go back to the older ways, the way it was in the early '50s — when it was just a bunch of drunken toughs.” He further denied that the new Rock Machine would be involved in crime, at least anything serious. “We're not going to throw a guy out for a bar brawl,” he said. “But anything that we consider an assault on society will be immediate expulsion.”

When asked about guys like Burling — who was still serving 17 years for a laundry list of violent crimes — being in the club, the recruiter demurred. “We believe everybody deserves a second chance,” he said. “We won't throw our members out who are in jail. We don't abandon our brothers that are in jail.”

He completely ignored the fact that this new version of the Rock Machine was actually formed when Burling was in prison for his crimes. In fact, they were not standing by him when he was put into prison, but actively recruited him
while
he was behind bars.

There's no irony here; or if there is, it's old and tired. Every outlaw motorcycle gang says the same thing about not being interested in crime. All they want to do, they say, is ride and drink and party and engage in “brotherhood.” And, of course, a remarkable number of them are eventually arrested for crimes — often in conspiracy with their “brothers” — or killed.

But what is interesting is that the new club has chosen to call itself the Rock Machine, a name completely at odds with their self-stated philosophy of avoiding organized and violent crime. Those paying attention will remember that the Rock Machine was formed by a group of disgruntled drug dealers who recruited dozens of toughs and a few legitimate bikers — notably the old SS minus Maurice “Mom” Boucher. It existed for years before it even started calling itself a motorcycle club, let alone actually becoming a semblance of one. And even if the Rock Machine was ever a motorcycle club (and that is stretching the definition), it certainly wasn't an old-school '50s and '60s gang. In fact, no prominent gang was on the farther end of the spectrum. The Rock Machine were justifiably known not for riding and partying, but for trafficking drugs, shooting opposing dealers and setting bombs in public places.

But these guys aren't the Rock Machine. In fact, they have little to do with them. If you want a good idea of who these guys really are, take a look at their website. Then click on the link marked RIP. It's commonplace for outlaw biker gang websites to have a page dedicated to the memory of deceased members (although they normally call it GBNF, gone but not forgotten). For the Rock Machine, you'd expect to see the names of notable dead Rock Machine members like Johnny and Tony Plescio or Richard “Bam Bam” Legace. But instead this is what you'd see at the time of this writing:

Clearly, these guys are the same guys that used to be the Canadian Bandidos. But they couldn't call themselves Bandidos because the club's international leadership in Texas wouldn't allow that crew ever to use their name again. Bandidos may eventually want to take another shot at Canada, but not with the same guys they worked with last time.

So when the old Canadian Bandidos got together to re-form, the guys needed to either come up with an original name or take an established one that wasn't being used. Of the established gang names no longer in use, the obvious choices were limited to Satan's Choice and the Rock Machine. Since Satan's Choice worked for Hells Angels for years before being absorbed by them, and the Rock Machine fought a bloody war against Hells Angels and almost toppled them from the top spot, the decision must have been easy. Since their raison d'être is to be in opposition to Hells Angels, what better name than the gang that killed more of them than any other?

While the reappearance of the Rock Machine name may instill fear in some, most law enforcement I spoke with aren't that impressed. One cop I know summed up his opinion of the new Rock Machine by telling me: “Internet bikers? LOL.”

So that's how it stood in 2010 when it came to bikers in Canada who weren't Hells Angels, their allies or their servants. The Outlaws existed, but were few in number and many are still limited by court-ordered restrictions. The men they had were mostly old, and they had a hard time recruiting new members as they were seen by many in their environment as the guys who always finish second. That, however, could change with the emergence of a charismatic leader. There appeared to be a few people identifying themselves as the Mongols in Canada, but they had no official presence, certainly no charter or clubhouse. And, because of judgements in the U.S., they were unlikely to change that status in the foreseeable future. Bandidos had officially ceased to exist in Canada, but what remained of their former membership had regrouped and renamed themselves the Rock Machine. They may not sound like much, but they actually had better numbers and better organization than what Hells Angels faced in Quebec until the Rock Machine began to coalesce in the 1990s.

Bang! The sound knocked Robert Parrish out of a deep sleep. “I thought my truck had blown up,” he said, not explaining why. So he gathered himself up, and went out the front door of his one-story Hamilton Mountain bungalow to investigate. It was December 15, 2009 — a cold morning, but warmer than you'd expect considering the date — so he had to bundle up a little.

Once outside, the first thing — and only thing — he saw was about two dozen heavily armed and heavily armored cops. Some were from Hamilton — many of the locals still call them “regionals,” a vestige of when they were called the Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police Force — and some were from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).

Maybe it's a Hamilton thing, but Parrish instinctively surrendered. “I put my hands up, and they said, ‘Please, go back inside your home,' ” he said. “So I did.” Before he left, one of the officers (a regional) told him not to worry, that they were only serving a warrant. Nothing terrible had happened there that night.

Parrish knew who they were after. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that his next-door neighbor, John Cane — the man who resided at 174 Duncairn Crescent, a pleasant home with a yard that backed onto Gourley Park — was a member of Hells Angels. He lived up in this nice, quiet neighborhood, but drove down the 300-foot hill Hamiltonians call “the Mountain” every day to the city's rough-and-tumble north end, where his very successful store, Darkside Tattoos, was located.

Another neighbor told me that everybody knew he was a biker — and they liked it. “Those guys ... they keep the neighborhood safe,” she told me with the self-assurance I have often heard from the neighbors of bikers and other organized crime figures. “Nobody's gonna do anything wrong with one of them around.”

It's a commonly held opinion, but one that's not necessarily true. Although they can intimidate other criminals — the Hells Angels in London became locally celebrated when they politely and effectively asked a crack dealer to move from their neighborhood — but bikers in the neighborhood can attract violent crime from other bikers. Just ask the people who lived in Montreal in the '80s and '90s when almost 200 people were killed because of a biker war. Or the neighbors of Thomas Hughes, the Outlaw who lived beside the Outlaws' London clubhouse, after his house was the scene of a shoot-out between Hells Angels supporter crew the Jackals and his own gang in January 2002. No matter where they live, the red-and-white Hells Angels face enemies in the black-and-white Outlaws, the red-and-yellow Bandidos and the biggest gang of all — the ones who wear blue.

And it was the cops who held sway on December 15, 2009. A joint-forces operation called Project Manchester made five forced entries in three cities and made seven arrests, laying a total 91 charges that day. And those 91 charges would increase as the police sifted through the arrestees' houses and businesses.

The cops made it abundantly clear who they were after. “They're all associated in one way or another with the Hells Angels,” OPP Sergeant Dave Rektor said of the accused. “Some are full [-fledged members], some are associates, some are prospects.”

Actually, most of them were small fry, but one was a truly big fish. In the Hammer, the joint-forces operation arrested Cane, Joseph Cafagna, David Behrens, Luis Barberiz and David Lachapelle. They also took in Cafagna's wife, Carmelina, for firearms violations, but I've since been told she was just taking the fall for her guy. They also took in a 26-year-old kid, Brandon Goodfellow, who lived in Nanticoke — a town on the shores of Lake Erie connected to Hamilton by an oil pipeline and an out-of-business steel company.

Altogether, they didn't add up to one-tenth of the value of the other arrest. In a quiet, suburban Waterloo neighborhood, the cops grabbed 56-year-old Andre Watteel. Charged with one count of being involved with a criminal organization, 28 counts of drug trafficking and 27 counts of possession of proceeds of crime, the former national president of Satan's Choice, former president of Hells Angels Kitchener and former secretary of Hells Angels Ontario, was quite a prize to law enforcement.

To be fair, he was also well known as a pillar of the community. Owner of the Barking Fish Café — described on a restaurant review site as “likely to be boarded up at any moment” — and several residential properties, Watteel was also locally noteworthy for sponsoring local kids' sports teams and being involved in turkey drives and other charities.

Using the power of all of the laws at their disposal, the police also confiscated one residence, three businesses — including Cane's burgeoning Darkside Tattoos — vehicles and motorcycles. They valued the total haul at $875,000.

Two days before the arrests of Project Manchester, I actually was in the Hammer. Since this book is the story of outlaw motorcycle gangs in Ontario — and every thread of every story about bikers in Ontario tends to lead back to Hamilton — I went to the source.