Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (57 page)

When Guindon was finally released from prison in 1991, he returned to Oshawa and resumed command of what remained of Satan's Choice. Stadnick, now president of the Hells Angels, showed up almost immediately. He met with Guindon repeatedly, taking him to Toronto's most expensive restaurants and the area's most prominent strip bars. They were always joined by a squad of burly bodyguards, as much to show the power of the Hells Angels as for protection. Guindon loved the free food, booze and entertainment, and he never turned down a meeting with Stadnick. But he always deferred giving him a firm answer on whether the Satan's Choice would ever patch over to the Hells Angels. What Stadnick didn't know was that Guindon had no intention of ever patching over. As fiercely xenophobic as the original Hells Angels, he didn't want his club, which he considered a Canadian institution, to become a franchise of an American super-gang. He played Stadnick, not just for the free nights out, but because friendly relations and the potential to patch over made sure the Hells Angels wouldn't enforce a hostile takeover.

When Stadnick's patience finally wore thin, he decided to show Guindon who was boss. With 150 Hells Angels and associates behind him, Stadnick rode from Montreal to the Satan's Choice's old haunts in Wasaga Beach on June 18, 1993. Many independent clubs were invited to the party, but Satan's Choice was not. The OPP stopped the procession twice, but found no reason to detain any of them. One officer paid the Hells Angels a huge compliment by telling
The Toronto Star
: “ . . . you can expect a pretty violent summer this year.” At the party, Stadnick met with lots of bikers but spent most of his time in the Alliston Hotel (he rented every room) with the Loners.

The man he met with was Frank Lenti, the Loners' president. Even by Canadian biker standards, Lenti was a strange guy. Vain, constantly preening and prone to violent temper tantrums, he had a habit of giving up on projects when things didn't go exactly the way he wanted. Originally a member of the Rebels, a decidedly racist North Toronto gang with a Confederate flag emblem, he got bored with their hierarchy, took some friends and formed his own gang. The original Loners carved out a small niche for themselves in Woodbridge, Lenti's hometown just north of Toronto. Since the Rebels had incorporated the Confederate flag into their logo, the Loners steered well clear of the Rebels.

Things were working out well until the other Loners caught their president stealing from club funds. Rather than face his accusers, Lenti flew to Italy until tempers cooled. While he was gone, the rudderless Loners fell apart. When he returned in 1981, Lenti joined the Toronto chapter of Satan's Choice. He had a rough time there, too. His me-first attitude and penchant for whining didn't endear him to the guys at the top, and Lenti grew more and more alienated from the rest of the club. In 1984, he collected some other malcontents and formed a new gang, again called the Loners. Although they managed to terrorize a few blocks of Woodbridge, they made little impact and most other bikers called them “the Losers.” From all reports, Lenti's meeting with Stadnick did not go well. Lenti, an Italian, tried to impress the Hells Angels president with his connections to the mafia. Stadnick, who had actual ties to the mafia from the days when the Wild Ones were blowing up bakeries in Hamilton, and more recently from Montreal, wasn't impressed.

But expansion into Ontario would have to wait. The biggest drug bust in Winnipeg history went down on September 16, 1993, and it caused a crisis on the streets. The cops confiscated $18 million worth of heroin and cocaine after raiding 70 houses, including the Los Brovos clubhouse. Sixteen people were arrested on drug and money laundering charges, but none were bikers. The busts created a very enviable situation for the Hells Angels. The police took a huge amount of drugs and a number of drug dealers off the streets, while leaving the desperate drug users and eager bikers behind. Days later, police spotted Stadnick in Thunder Bay, a city not far from the Manitoba border, where he met with members of Satan's Choice, spending at least 90 minutes alone with Kitchener president Andre Wateel, before flying to Winnipeg the next day. The drug shortage in Winnipeg seemed to disappear overnight. As always, Stadnick frustrated police, who believed he was involved in illegal drug operations, but couldn't find a scrap of evidence to prove it. “He was extremely careful,” said Harris. “He always insulated himself.”

Although Stadnick was a highly visible character in his outlandish outfits and with his troop of giant bodyguards, he conducted business in stealth mode. Police recorded many hours of Stadnick engaging in personal conversations with other bikers and underworld personalities, but nothing close to incriminating (even in code) ever emerged. Instead, Stadnick and whoever he was doing business with would leave the bugged area and talk in places like busy street corners, abandoned alleys, front lawns and even parks, where he was confident the police couldn't eavesdrop.

Despite his success in Winnipeg, Stadnick was frustrated by his inability to move the Hells Angels into Ontario. It had become Outlaws territory under the forceful leadership of Parente, who shot at Hells Angels on sight. Satan's Choice, which still had a solid network and quality leaders like Wateel, represented a perfect opportunity to create a serious rivalry, but Stadnick eventually realized that they would never become Hells Angels as long as Guindon was in charge. And, after meeting with Lenti, he assessed the remaining nonaligned clubs as unworthy of the colors. Unable or unwilling to recruit Ontario bikers, Stadnick decided to import his own.

His plan was to send Quebec bikers loyal to the Hells Angels into Ontario to set up puppet gangs and drug operations there. He agonized over who he would appoint as their leader, but finally decided on Dany “Danny Boy” Kane. Unlike so many of the other bikers, who seemed slow-witted if not entirely stupid, Kane impressed Stadnick with his intelligence, ambition and gregarious personality. The president also noticed that, despite a lack of effective English-language skills, Kane had quickly and smoothly aligned himself with Stadnick and his East Coast lieutenant, David “Wolf ” Carroll, president of the Halifax Chapter, formerly the 13th Tribe. Kane had a lot going for him, including a history of courage, resourcefulness and loyalty.

An unplanned pregnancy in 1988 had led to Kane getting a job alongside his girlfriend's father at the Tissues et Fibres d'Amoco plant in industrial St. Jean on the South Shore. But the mind-numbing tedium of operating a thread-making machine all day, every day of his life depressed him. In an effort to alleviate his frustration, he bought a Harley. It was a 1946 Knucklehead model, 23 years older than he was, and he lovingly parked it in what he planned would become the baby's room. His girlfriend, Josée, liked the bike, but wasn't sure they could afford it. But the rumbling bike and the leather jacket emboldened Kane to the point where he told his boss he just couldn't take the thread machine any longer and quit. With a girlfriend and newborn son at home, Kane needed money. His own family was in no position to help him and asking Josée's parents, who had two other grandchildren from their two other unmarried teenage daughters, was out of the question. So when Josée's old friend Pat Lambert offered Kane a job, he jumped at the chance.

Lambert was a member of a notable Hells Angels puppet club called the Condors. Little known outside the South Shore, the Condors were well respected by the Hells Angels and other gangs. Unlike the Evil Ones, who operated in the area just to the west of them and always seemed to be in trouble with the police, the Outlaws or the Hells Angels, the Condors were quiet and efficient. Although police in the area called them small-timers who were nothing to worry about, the Condors actually dominated the regional drug trade right under their noses. Lambert was one of their best dealers and a rising star. He offered to pay Kane $700 a week to deliver drugs to area bars and pick up the cash they owed Lambert. The pay was more than three times what Kane made at the thread factory, and he could set his own hours.

That winter, Josée drove Kane, who only had a motorcycle license, from bar to bar on the South Shore in her ancient Hyundai Pony. She and their son Benjamin waited outside shivering because the Pony's heater didn't work very well—while Kane did his business inside. Then he would guide them to the next small-town bar. Ever gregarious, Kane soon developed his own network. He bought drugs directly from Lambert and sold them in bars situated between the ones his boss had already cultivated. His take jumped from $700 to $3,000 a week very quickly. But drug sales are a dangerous game built on fear-based respect, and many dealers didn't fear or respect the slight 21-year-old who arrived with his wife and baby in a beat-up old Pony. Although he nominally worked for Lambert, the point-of-sale dealers knew Kane couldn't call in the Condors' muscle, and they started stringing him along on their debts and haggling over previously set prices. Some even refused to pay altogether. Kane knew it was time to get tough.

First, he approached a Condor who owned a South Shore gym and bought steroids and weights from him. In months, the pills and workout routine transformed the scrawny punk into a thickly muscled tough who was prone to bouts of hysteric violence. Any questions about payments were answered with a punch or kick from the newly strong Kane; and debts started clearing up rapidly. The Condors helped him achieve the second half of his transformation when they drove him to the Kahnawake Mohawk territory and made some introductions. Kane left with the first of many handguns. He immediately started to carry his gun on his rounds and made a point of showing it to his business associates. He even shoved it into the mouth of one reluctant debtor, emulating something he'd seen on TV, before getting paid. Astutely recognizing another revenue stream, Kane started selling handguns and submachine guns he acquired from the Mohawks to bikers and other underworld types.

By the spring of 1992, Kane had gained a great deal of respect on the South Shore. In just a few short years, he'd evolved from skinny, unemployed thread-maker to a feared and successful drug and arms dealer who had the muscle and will to back up his promises. It was time, the Condors decided, to put him to the test. One of their dealers had been turfed from the Bar Delphis in St-Luc. Since the dealer was also a member, the Condors weren't just losing revenue; they were losing face in the community. They decided to blow up the bar, and they wanted Kane to do it for them. No problem. On the night of May 2, the empty Bar Delphis exploded and burned to the ground. Its owner, Réal “Tintin” Dupont, understood the message and left the area (he later emerged as a member of the Rock Machine). For his part, Kane gained respect, experience and a contact at the Canadian Armed Forces base in Valcartier who sold him 4.5 kg of C4 plastic explosive—enough to bring down a large apartment building—for $5,000.

A few days later, Kane and Josée started living apart. He reasoned that she could get a bigger welfare payment as a single mother (she was also working under the table as superintendent of her building in exchange for a rent-free apartment) and that his business might be too dangerous for her and Benjamin to be too close to him. He moved into a house in nearby L'Acadie with two Condors and a career criminal named Robert Grimard. In July, Kane took two new friends, local street punks Martin Giroux and Eric Baker, back to the house for a few beers and some pot. After they got good and stoned, Kane took the two skinny 19-year-olds to a closet under the stairs to show off his pride and joy. When Kane pulled out the hockey bag, Baker later told police, they thought it would be full of drugs. They were shocked to see it was full of guns, which they recognized immediately as both illegal and highly desirable. As stupid as it may sound to anyone who isn't a 19-year-old criminal, they decided there and then to steal them. Two days later, the boys watched the house. When they were sure nobody was home, they broke in through a back window and made off with the hockey bag.

Compounding their predicament, they immediately drove to the seedy bars of St-Jean, deep in the heart of Condors territory, and tried to sell their booty. Their intended customers, all of whom immediately realized that the guns were Kane's, laughed at the boys and told them to get lost for their own good. Realizing that they weren't going to sell any of the guns, Giroux and Baker raced back to the house in L'Acadie, planning to return the bag to the closet in hopes that Kane would never find out about the theft. But Kane, Grimard and two Condors had been tipped off and were already inside the house, waiting for the boys. They grabbed Giroux, but Baker managed to elude them by running through a cornfield. They beat Giroux until he was a bloody pulp and told him that he'd suffer a lot more if he didn't help them find Baker.

Five days later, in the town of La Prairie, Baker was thrown into the backseat of Grimard's car next to Giroux. Oddly, officers from the Sûreté du Québec who had been tailing Grimard that day saw the incident but lost the car as it weaved through the town and got on the highway, and they gave up the chase. The boys were taken to an abandoned quarry just outside Napierville, where Giroux was released. Kane took out a handgun and, with one shot, put holes in both of Baker's legs. Another car showed up and two Condors, Louis David and Richard Proulx, and an associate named Daniel Audet came out. David announced his presence by twisting Baker's right arm until it fractured. After about two hours of torture—including being cut with a stick, having his face urinated on and then pushed into a fire, having a bullet graze his skull and having cars speed at him only to brake at the last second, with Kane threatening to kill him all the while—Baker was surprised that he was still alive when Kane and his men drove off. Not sure if it was another trick, but unwilling to die alone in a giant pit, Baker crawled away in a random direction using his unbroken arm. He later estimated that it took him more than an hour before he arrived at a nearby farmhouse. Although Baker begged him not to call the cops, the farmer was talking to the SQ as soon as the boy was in his house. Baker was promised police protection if he'd testify against whoever tortured him. He agreed.