Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (35 page)

I went to the Hells Angels clubhouse. I'm pretty familiar with it from my research for my 2006 book,
Fallen Angel
, about Hamilton-born Hells Angels national president Walter Stadnick. But it's different now. While it's still a narrow, windowless block with barbed wire and cement barriers in front of it, I noticed two major changes.

The death's head logo has been removed. In fact, the windowless structure was just a concrete gray box trimmed with red. Although there were video cameras and concrete barriers, it appeared as though the Hells Angels dared not speak their name even on their own clubhouse. Gone is the familiar illustration on the door (but you can still see it on Google Maps Street View if you look hard enough). It was the club's mascot, a nearly life-sized anthropomorphization of the Hells Angels' trademark death's head logo. In his hands, he wielded two hammers. While that's clearly a reference to the town's nickname, every time I saw it I couldn't help thinking about Scott Steinert and Donald Magnussen — enemies of Stadnick's who were beaten to death with hammers.

I asked the OPP's Sergeant Len Isnor about it later. “Sure, it's gone; I unscrewed it myself, took it off and left it just inside the door,” he said, then chuckled. “That was the second time I've been in that building.” He was referring to the time when the OPP seized the building in 1996 when it was the Satan's Choice clubhouse in Hamilton.

He described what it was like inside: “Not a single window. It was very neat; you could eat off the floors. There were pictures of other [Hells Angels] chapters from all over the world and plaques they had earned. You'd go in the back door and the first thing you'd see is a display case where they'd have support gear for sale. In the main room was an L-shaped bar with a dance floor. Behind the bar was a beer fridge and a shelf with a variety of liquor. The basement was more of a crawlspace, maybe six feet; I had to duck to walk around in there. On the second floor, there was a meeting room with a big-screen TV and a table with maybe ten seats. In the back was a small kitchen. There were cameras everywhere and you could see the monitors in the meeting room and behind the bar.”

Then he drew me a floor plan that matched what he described. The arrests of Project Manchester may actually have killed off the Hamilton Chapter. On Hells Angels' official website — run by the original San Bernardino “Berdoo” Chapter in California — the list of official charters does not list Hamilton anymore. Likely it is at least on suspension due to a lack of active members.

After the raid, the closest remaining Hells Angels chapter was Niagara. Under the leadership of Stadnick's handpicked representative Gerald “Skinny” Ward, it had been very successful, especially as the Outlaws were rounded up by police first in Hamilton and then later in St. Catharines. But just before 8 a.m. in the warm and clear morning daylight of June 1, 2009, 15 officers in full riot gear from the OPP and Niagara Regional Police cut the padlock off the gate of the chain-link fence surrounding the clubhouse on secluded Darby Road in a rural part of Thorhold.

Even though surveillance told them nobody was inside, they stormed the clubhouse, knocking down the door violently. “You're always going to assume the worst-case scenario,” said Niagara police spokeswoman Jacquie Forgeron. “We don't know if [the Hells Angels] had been tipped off ... our members were dressed in full emergency gear ... you take all precautions.”

While the cops inside the clubhouse were still searching, a truck pulled up. The driver, Timothy Panetta, stepped out and approached the officers guarding the front door. He was wearing a black Hells Angels Nomads T-shirt. When they wouldn't let him in, he launched into a long, profanity-laden tirade, but did not become physical. As he turned to leave, one of the officers, a sergeant, handed him a box. Inside was a phonebook-thick pile of warrants, subpoenas and charges. Panetta threw it in his truck and drove off.

Just as he was leaving, the police moved in an unmarked SUV and two rented cube vans to collect evidence. One cop climbed a ladder to the roof and removed the bikers' surveillance equipment. It was the fourth Hells Angels clubhouse in Ontario to be seized in less than a month, after seizures in Oshawa, Thunder Bay and London. And, of course, the cops still had the Outlaws' clubhouse in St. Catharines from Project Retire.

The Niagara clubhouse, like the others, was seized on an exclusive possession warrant that was issued in Toronto because it “was considered a place where illegal activities took place,” said Forgeron. “There are six members of the Hells Angels Niagara Chapter and four known associates.”

But Ward wasn't one of them, neither was his trusted No. 2, Kenneth “Wags” Wagner. In fact, of the seven men who met with Walter Stadnick back in 2001 to form the Hells Angels Niagara Chapter, Panetta was the only one who was still in the club.

The others had been arrested in Project Tandem, a huge province-wide raid that involved 500 cops from 11 different services and took 18 months to put together. In total, 27 people were arrested, including 15 full-patch Hells Angels and a full-patch Vagabond. Billy Talbot, president of the Toronto East Chapter and arguably Ontario's (if not Canada's) top Hells Angel at the time was charged with six counts related to trafficking. From Windsor, the cops arrested full-patch Greg McIlquhan, prospect Giuliano Raimondo and his girlfriend Cathleen “Fawn” Meeking, associates Kevin Hurst, Jesse Thibert, Marc Rizek and Hamilton-resident Martin O'Boyle who was caught with three kilograms of cocaine in the parking lot of the Oakville Community Centre. Particularly hard hit was Niagara, with president Ward, full-patches Wagner and Richard Beaulieu, and associates Timothy Miuse, Alain Lacroix and Deborah Fetz all going down hard. Oshawa lost president Mark Stephenson and full-patches Ronald Zomok, Shawn Campbell and Sean West to a number of charges, including conspiracy to commit the murder of Francesco Lenti. Remond Akleh of the Ontario Nomads (Ottawa) Chapter also went down for that. Of course, Oshawa also lost Stephen Gault, who was paid $1 million to become an informant, and James Heickert, who went on the lam. Also arrested were Simcoe County full-patches Terry Pink and Brian Jeffrey, Keswick full-patch Luciano Capelli and associate Marco Freitas, Toronto East associates Ryan Kempton and Jim Spring, as well as Toronto Vagabond Peter J. Kennedy.

Also seized were $467,100 in Canadian currency, $6,914 in U.S. currency, about $60,000 in gang-related jewelry, $7,000 in surveillance gear, 10 cars and trucks ranging in value (according to the Biker Enforcement Unit) from $3,000 to $85,000, five Harley-Davidsons, six rifles, three handguns, something they called a machine gun and an estimated $2.9 million worth of drugs, including 13 kilograms of cocaine, 50,000 tablets of ecstasy, 50 pounds of marijuana, two kilograms of crystal meth and three pounds of hashish.

BEU chief Don Bell made it clear that his force had been targeting the Hells Angels in particular, had used informants to collect evidence and were intentionally trying to foment doubt and paranoia within the club. “We've taken down significant members within the hierarchy of the Hells Angels,” he said. “We've also infiltrated them with one of their own and now they have to look over their shoulder because who's a member and who's working for the police?”

The last of the original Hells Angels Niagara Chapter were arrested on October 8, 2008. The others had either been arrested after Project Tandem, or had quit. In fact, other than Panetta, all the Hells Angels in the Niagara clubhouse were on loan from Hamilton or Kitchener. It was a situation not unlike when full-patch Hells Angels were shipped from British Columbia to keep the Halifax Chapter afloat.

Panetta, who lived in nearby Wainfleet, was the owner of Advantage Auto Sales and Leasing on Allanport Road in Thorhold. He was charged with 12 counts of fraud. The advantage he had in auto sales, police alleged, was that he would buy salvaged cars in the U.S. for almost nothing, then fudge the paperwork and sell them to the public in Canada as legitimate used cars. Of the five cars in question, two had already been sold and three — two gigantic Chevy Suburbans and a Porsche Carrera — were still on his lot. The Porsche, police found, also contained stolen parts.

Things did not go well for the Hells Angels arrested in Project Tandem. Ward and Pink were tried together. After the weight of evidence made it foolhardy for them to try to deny their drug dealing, they acknowledged it but claimed that it was their own enterprise, separate from the organization.

It didn't work. “The whole idea of a patch and being a full-patch member is that you can be 100-percent trusted,” Gault testified. “And you can do business with anybody and they're to trust you 100 percent and that's meaning business as in illegal business — drugs, stolen property, anything — robberies.” He also said that dealers would pay Ward $500 per week above and beyond the price of product for the right to sell drugs in his territory and that others would pay him “tribute” just to keep the Hells Angels at bay. Since Gault was the first full-patch Hells Angel in Canada to wear a wire, it changed the situation a great deal, amping up the paranoia many bikers already had about informants.

“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that one of the main purposes or activities of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Canada is the facilitation or commission of serious offences including trafficking in cocaine and other drugs, extortion and trafficking in firearms,” said Justice John McMahon at their trial in Toronto on December 11, 2008. His decision supported the earlier conviction of Steven “Tiger” Lindsay and Raymond Bonner in which the Barrie Chapter was named a criminal organization.

On March 25, 2009 — a remarkably short 30 months after the original arrests — those arrested in Project Tandem were sentenced. Ward received 14 years. Wagner got 11 and Jeffrey (also considered a big target) received nine. Charges were dropped against three of the accused, and Stephenson and Akleh were acquitted of attempted murder because the jury did not believe Gault's testimony was credible.

And Hamilton's most famous biker — after perhaps Stadnick and maybe Mario Parente — isn't in any position to help either. Things got pretty bad for Johnny K-9 after his fateful trip to Sudbury back in 1997. While the OPP were still gathering evidence against him for his involvement in the bombing, the Hamilton Chapter of Satan's Choice had its charter revoked. Some of them quit the life altogether, and a few were accepted by the Toronto Chapter. Johnny K-9 probably would have liked to have gone, too, but was stripped of his colors.

During this period — on January 13, 1998, a quiet Tuesday afternoon — it came out in court that a Hamilton patrol sergeant just happened to be driving down Park Row, a residential street where the northbound and southbound lanes are separated by a strip of greenery, when he saw a commotion. As he drew closer, he recognized Johnny K-9 and another man, Jimmy Rich, as former members of Satan's Choice. They were arguing. Suddenly, K-9 lunged at Rich and landed a vicious right cross to his mouth, knocking him to the ground. The sergeant stopped and arrested him on the spot. The victim, with a torn lip, declined to lay a complaint, but Johnny was charged with assault, possession of a concealed weapon and failing to comply with recognizance (cop-speak for violating court-ordered release conditions). And after Rich turned informant, they added extortion to the list of charges.

Johnny went on trial for those crimes and the Sudbury police station bombing in September 1998. After a long proceeding interrupted by Johnny's breaches of bail and Michael Dubé's suicide, Johnny pled guilty to conspiracy to bomb the Solid Gold. He received a 33-month sentence.

And 1998 was a busy year for organized crime in Hamilton. After the deaths of Papalia and Barillaro, the subsequent arrests of the Musitano brothers and the disbanding of the local Satan's Choice chapter (not to mention the Outlaw arrests in 1996), the resulting vacuum of drug sellers sucked all kinds of contenders into the city.

Among the most prominent were the east end-based Gravelle brothers. Led by the youngest of the four brothers, André (34 years old in 1998), they had a history of supplying hashish and hash oil to Hamilton from Jamaica through connections in the United States and Nova Scotia. In fact, they were implicated in the biggest hashish shipment ever intercepted by law enforcement at the time in 1992, when 450 kilograms of hashish (worth $14 million) was seized in Florida. André received a four-year sentence in the U.S. and his big brother Paul (17 years older) received two years.

Even during the heyday of the Mafia in Hamilton, the blond, rakish Gravelles operated with impunity — as long as they knew their place. Hashish is generally considered a more lowbrow drug than marijuana (with which it shares the same active ingredient), and sells for less, yielding a lower profit margin. It's not even in the same neighborhood as cocaine or ecstasy, both of which command astronomical profits. So while the Gravelle brothers sold enough volume of their bargain-basement drug to make themselves comfortable, the big boys — the Mafia and the bikers — tolerated them, rather than seeing them as competition.

So in 1998, with all the major sellers of more desirable drugs sidelined, the demand for (and retail price of) hashish and hash oil went through the roof. The Gravelles went into overdrive.

And like many burgeoning crime families, they felt they needed a bit of muscle. So they contracted the services of Johnny K-9. It was good timing. After he was stripped of his Satan's Choice patch and with the cops holding most of his cash and possessions as evidence and potentially proceeds-of-crime booty, he was desperate for work.