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Speaker 4: Loop HOADI, you are now listening to True Murder, The
Speaker 4: most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors
Speaker 4: that have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK.
Speaker 4: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 4: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 4: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 5: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 5: program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime
Speaker 5: History and the authors that have written about them. On
Speaker 5: the more of April eighth, two thousand and six, residents
Speaker 5: of the hamlet of Shedden, Ontario woke up to the
Speaker 5: news that the bloodied bodies of eight bikers from the
Speaker 5: Bandido's motorcycle gang had been found dead on a local farm.
Speaker 5: The massacre made headlines around the world, and the shocking
Speaker 5: news brought a grim light to an otherwise quiet corner
Speaker 5: of the province. Six Bandidos bikers would eventually be convicted
Speaker 5: of the first degree murder of their biker brothers. Like
Speaker 5: other outlaw bikers, Vandidos portrayed themselves as motorcycle enthusiasts who
Speaker 5: are systematically misunderstood and abused by the police. As well
Speaker 5: as feared by the public. We now know that Vandidos
Speaker 5: were anything but simple motorcycle enthusiasts. However, unlike such biker
Speaker 5: gangs as the Hell's Angels, who run sophisticated operations, the
Speaker 5: Bandidos were highly disorganized, prone to petty infighting, and even
Speaker 5: engaged in sabotaging fellow members. This is the story of
Speaker 5: how the Vandidos self destructed over one very night. As
Speaker 5: gripping as any crime novel, The Bandido Massacre takes us
Speaker 5: inside a crumbling brotherhood bent on betrayal and self obliteration.
Speaker 5: The book that we were featured this evening is The
Speaker 5: Bandido Massacre with my special guest, journalist and author Peter Edwards.
Speaker 5: Thank you for agreeing to this interview and welcome to
Speaker 5: True Murder. Peter Edwards.
Speaker 6: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Peter. This is a very, very
Speaker 5: incredible story, and I think our audience primarily we have
Speaker 5: a lot of people in America and abroad. So what
Speaker 5: I'll get you to do a little bit is maybe
Speaker 5: explain this because we see for those reading the book,
Speaker 5: you'll hear Sheddon Ontario, you'll hear Iona Station. But for
Speaker 5: most people, we know the greater Toronto area no matter
Speaker 5: where they are in the world. So tell us where
Speaker 5: the proximity where this all occurs. We're talking about London, Ontario,
Speaker 5: we're talking about shed and we're talking about Keswick, but
Speaker 5: we're talking about Toronto. Take us at least to the
Speaker 5: geography of where some of these things occur before we
Speaker 5: get too far into the story.
Speaker 6: Really killing took place with about midway between Toronto and Detroit,
Speaker 6: right on the or just off Highway four oh one,
Speaker 6: so that's knada's busiest highway. The Toronto chapter of the
Speaker 6: Bandidos was the one involved in the massacre and they
Speaker 6: one of their members lived in the tiny place called
Speaker 6: Iona Station, which only hit one hundred people. And that's
Speaker 6: about midway Toronto and Detroit.
Speaker 5: Right now.
Speaker 6: We pick place actually, and it hit a farm there,
Speaker 6: like a sort of a firm that was off the
Speaker 6: highway but secluded enough that things could be done there
Speaker 6: that other people couldn't see.
Speaker 5: Right now, Well, we're talking about that. This mass murder
Speaker 5: occurred on April eighth, two thousand and six. But for
Speaker 5: our audience, take us back. We really do do a
Speaker 5: exhaustive examination of biker culture in Canada for those that
Speaker 5: don't know really the hierarchy, tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about the background of the Hell's Angels and the Bandidos
Speaker 5: where they sort of originate from, and tell us just
Speaker 5: a little bit about the history of the Canadian chapter
Speaker 5: the Canaian chapters of those bike gangs, especially the Bandidos,
Speaker 5: that it is very important to this story.
Speaker 6: The Hell's Angels had been locked into a street war
Speaker 6: with a group called the Rock Machine in Montreal and
Speaker 6: that had gone on for about six years and there
Speaker 6: had been almost two hundred people killed in that so
Speaker 6: it was genuinely a war, you know, people being shot,
Speaker 6: blown up, disappearing. The Hell's Angels were winning. The Rock
Speaker 6: Machine was basically a group of drug dealers that kind
Speaker 6: of joined together to form a gang to try and
Speaker 6: hold off the Hell's Angels. When they saw they were losing,
Speaker 6: they reached out to the Bandidos, who are a well respected,
Speaker 6: really internationally known biker club based in mostly in Texas.
Speaker 6: That's where they got their start. They reached out to
Speaker 6: Texas for support and what they did was folded into
Speaker 6: the Bandidos and they hoped that that would hold off
Speaker 6: the Hell's Angels. The Hell's Angels kept pounding on them,
Speaker 6: and around the time of the massacre, the Bandidos had
Speaker 6: been driven out of Quebec and the Ontario Ones. The
Speaker 6: Ontario Bandidos were basically rose to the top because everybody
Speaker 6: else was either dead or in prison. So that was
Speaker 6: the group that on paper they looked good, but they
Speaker 6: weren't really tested and they weren't really that strong.
Speaker 5: Now to set up this story as well, that's for
Speaker 5: the people that'll know that the Bandidos are the number
Speaker 5: two outlaw biker gang in the world, and of course
Speaker 5: the Hell's Angels are the number one. Is that correct?
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely, And the Outlaws are always there, Like the
Speaker 6: Outlaws are have never been the top, but they've never
Speaker 6: been gone, so they're they're kind of the survivor group.
Speaker 6: The Hell's Angels are a lot of people think that
Speaker 6: that's what everybody aspires to be. And then the Bandidos
Speaker 6: were started up from Vietnam War veterans. They they got
Speaker 6: going in the sixties. The Hell's Angels roots go back
Speaker 6: to the Second World War and veterans coming back from that.
Speaker 5: Right now, now, what was the status of the Bandidos
Speaker 5: in two thousand and six, and say even two thousand
Speaker 5: and five, in that you know, not that many years ago.
Speaker 5: What was their status in terms of full member chapters
Speaker 5: in Canada and where where were the only chapters in Canada?
Speaker 5: Tell us about that, and tell us what the status
Speaker 5: was of this chapter in Winnipeg.
Speaker 6: And they had literally been kicked out at Quebec like
Speaker 6: the Hell's Angels, agreed to stop pounding on them if
Speaker 6: they would fold in kubbet and so. And it was
Speaker 6: interesting because the deal was applied to prison as well
Speaker 6: as on the streets. And so by them being driven
Speaker 6: out of Quebec, all of a sudden, Ontario became important.
Speaker 6: But Ontario altogether had maybe three dozen members, not that many.
Speaker 6: Manitoba was trying to trying to get going. There's a
Speaker 6: lot of violence in Manitoba, but it's not that organized,
Speaker 6: and the Bandidos there saw an opening to pull things
Speaker 6: together and tighten it up a bit.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 6: I mean at the same time that Bandidos in Manitoba
Speaker 6: weren't they weren't really recognized, and they were looking to
Speaker 6: Ontario for guidance and Ontario just didn't have the smarts
Speaker 6: to give it to them.
Speaker 5: Now, there's there's a little more background to this as
Speaker 5: well that we find out later, but we might as
Speaker 5: well say that that they're established that there was not
Speaker 5: there was conflict between the Winnipeg you call it a
Speaker 5: probationary chapter, and then the Toronto chapter is full members.
Speaker 5: If I'm not getting this incorrect, now, there was something
Speaker 5: about dues owed like again, we've already set up this
Speaker 5: a little bit in the synopsis that this is about
Speaker 5: petty in fighting. So tell us what the relationship was
Speaker 5: between the Winnipeg Probationary Chapter and Toronto and some of
Speaker 5: the things that they may have had an issue before
Speaker 5: we get to a couple of conversations and when the
Speaker 5: ball starts rolling in this very very deadly direction.
Speaker 6: Now, Winnipeg, the Manitoba chapter, they were supposed to be
Speaker 6: deferential to Toronto. They were supposed to send them dues
Speaker 6: for each member who got in. They were supposed to
Speaker 6: be kicking in money wise, and they just weren't really,
Speaker 6: and they weren't. They weren't even being honest. At the
Speaker 6: same time, they were trying to do an end run
Speaker 6: around Toronto and go directly to Texas. They're trying to
Speaker 6: go from being a probationary chapter to being the top
Speaker 6: chapter in the country. And they had a big kind
Speaker 6: of Napoleonic ideas of experiding, and they just thought they'd
Speaker 6: leave Toronto behind right now.
Speaker 5: The Texas chapter, what was there? What was their interest
Speaker 5: in Canada and what would? What would? What did they
Speaker 5: have to say about the situation between Winnipeg and Toronto?
Speaker 5: What was their take on the situation?
Speaker 6: Uh, the Texans were frustrated with all of them, really,
Speaker 6: I mean the after nine to eleven, it became a
Speaker 6: lot tougher to cross the border. It became difficult to
Speaker 6: come up to somewhere where there was expansion and actually
Speaker 6: see what was going on, meet the members. People with
Speaker 6: criminal records, we had a lot of trouble crossing the
Speaker 6: border either way. That meant that it was mostly internet
Speaker 6: contact and people could just play stupid and not return emails.
Speaker 6: It's it's sort of bizarre, but the Internet played a
Speaker 6: big role in this in Texas. Was breat guys. A
Speaker 6: lot of them had jobs in the oil industry, a
Speaker 6: lot of them were part of something that had grown
Speaker 6: out of a you know, real military basis. So these
Speaker 6: are people who knew how to take orders, who knew discipline,
Speaker 6: he knew to actually do things, and he generally came
Speaker 6: to see the Canadians as drug using the idiots for
Speaker 6: lack of a better word.
Speaker 5: Now, tell us about the first off, I guess you
Speaker 5: can tell us about the crew, the No Surrender Crew,
Speaker 5: and tell us just introduce the characters, because that's what
Speaker 5: this is all about, is these characters as opposed to
Speaker 5: another group of characters. So tell us about the No
Speaker 5: Surrender Crew, who was involved, and one by one, give
Speaker 5: us a little bit of background on these people. These men.
Speaker 6: The one that is kind of worthy of the most attention,
Speaker 6: although you know, probably worthy of well, it's worthy of
Speaker 6: the least respect. At the same time as is Wayne Kellestine.
Speaker 6: And he was in his late fifties, a long time
Speaker 6: outlaw biker. But none of the big clubs wanted him.
Speaker 6: The Outlaws had taken a look at him, they didn't
Speaker 6: want to be near him. The Hills Angels had had
Speaker 6: tried to kill him. There's a feeling among some Hell's
Speaker 6: Angels that some people are too crazy to be dealt with,
Speaker 6: and that they that you just get rid of them.
Speaker 6: And so he was on in that category. He wore
Speaker 6: a lightning bolt on his vest, which was his way
Speaker 6: of saying that he had he had killed and gotten
Speaker 6: away with it. The feeling was that he had, excuse me,
Speaker 6: killed someone who had killed a police officer, and that
Speaker 6: that had given him a pass, that he was kind
Speaker 6: of on the he had an inside track to some
Speaker 6: of the police through through murder that they were giving
Speaker 6: him a bit of a wide berth. And he's someone
Speaker 6: very very unstable drug use or Nazi lover, did really
Speaker 6: bizarre things that even in the biker world were considered
Speaker 6: too too strange.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: He saw himself as very very heroic. So he and
Speaker 6: and a huge gun collector, tons of weapons, and he
Speaker 6: didn't take care of his guns, but he had weapons
Speaker 6: all over the place, hidden all through his house. He
Speaker 6: had been hidden behind cabinets, in the eaves, troughs, just
Speaker 6: just sort of everywhere. Dangerous guy. There's another one, Jamie Flans.
Speaker 6: He was not a full member. He was a nod
Speaker 6: fit for the bikers because he was Jewish, and to
Speaker 6: be Jewish and trying to get into a chapter with
Speaker 6: a Nazi lover is pretty strange. But I think he
Speaker 6: was just playing it. I think it's more of a
Speaker 6: fashion thing for him. There's another guy, George Justin. He
Speaker 6: a tow truck driver, very popular. He was dying cancer
Speaker 6: and didn't want to be alone, and he wasn't nothing
Speaker 6: famim about the guy. Another guy George Caracas. He was
Speaker 6: a nice Greek immigrant kid who was more of a
Speaker 6: rugby player than a biker, and he honestly thought that
Speaker 6: by being clean he could clean up the entire club.
Speaker 6: He was briefly Canadian president. And here's a rebel, but
Speaker 6: the Texans liked him because he actually was solid. There's
Speaker 6: a guy, John Boxer mushedri Boxer's just his nickname. He
Speaker 6: was a factory worker, a very solid guy, had been
Speaker 6: a good boxer, not a great boxer, but a good boxer,
Speaker 6: a ton of heart, not a thinker, but a real
Speaker 6: heart type of person. And he was very vulnerable because
Speaker 6: if he thought that someone was his brother, he do
Speaker 6: anything for them, and so Kelstine could manipulate him. There's
Speaker 6: one guy on Louis Riposo. He was a very very
Speaker 6: tough guy. He was a survivor of the Quebec biker
Speaker 6: Wars and had done jail time. Was bitter because nobody
Speaker 6: visited him when he was in jail. Another guy, Frank
Speaker 6: Salerno was he looked imposing. There was a very very
Speaker 6: needy guy. He had a drug addiction, a gambling addiction.
Speaker 6: He used to actually phone in the Toronto Sun newspaper
Speaker 6: and asked for sports scores late at night, you know,
Speaker 6: in the sort of three internet time, because he wanted to,
Speaker 6: you know, keep up on his bets. Likable, but kind
Speaker 6: of a needy sort of guy. There's another guy, Paul Sinoptly.
Speaker 6: He weighed somewhere between four and five hundred pounds, and
Speaker 6: one of his friends said that he was basically in
Speaker 6: the club because he wanted women and how else was
Speaker 6: he going to get them. He wasn't really that active
Speaker 6: doing anything, but kind of a lonely sort of guy.
Speaker 6: Another guy, Michael Trotta, he was he wanted out of
Speaker 6: the club. A lot of these guys actually wanted out
Speaker 6: of the club. I think he just needed a title,
Speaker 6: he needed to be part of something, and he wasn't
Speaker 6: that active doing anything. He'd barely gotten into the club
Speaker 6: when he got killed, and he wanted out. So this
Speaker 6: wasn't someone who who you'd really fear, and that the
Speaker 6: ones I've described that's the Toronto chapter. You want the
Speaker 6: Winnipeg ones as well. Well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and just one thing too as well, when you
Speaker 5: talk about Kelestine too, because it's not necessarily written in
Speaker 5: stone that this happened. But Jamie Flans, like you say,
Speaker 5: is Jewish, which is kind of unusual. They liked him
Speaker 5: because he had money and he could they could borrow
Speaker 5: money from him, he said, so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you also hit a nice townhouse that people
Speaker 6: could use.
Speaker 5: For parties exactly, and he looked like a biker. There
Speaker 5: you go. The thing is and the thing is that
Speaker 5: what you mentioned about Kelstein too is part of this
Speaker 5: a little bit you figure is that not only is
Speaker 5: he you know, a neo Nazi or you know, Nazi
Speaker 5: supporter and has some interest in that, but he's also
Speaker 5: an anti semi too, so you say that it's a
Speaker 5: little bit in the mix as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he just he basically disliked anyone who wasn't him.
Speaker 6: He there was one Christmas party where he threatened to
Speaker 6: shoot a disc jockey for playing playing black music. And
Speaker 6: it was odd because the wives wanted to dance and
Speaker 6: they loved the stuff is being played. And then he
Speaker 6: told the guy even more Leonard skinnerd or you can
Speaker 6: have a bullet in you and the kind of wreck
Speaker 6: the night, like the Wise couldn't dance to the sort
Speaker 6: of Southern rock that he wanted to. But you know
Speaker 6: that that was him. He crashed the Gay Pride parade,
Speaker 6: like he actually crashed it. We're leaving the Nazi flags
Speaker 6: and you know who knows what's cooking in his mind
Speaker 6: that he feels the need to do that. Yeah, he's
Speaker 6: like a very angry guy. He'd sing the German national anthem,
Speaker 6: you know, sort of burst out when he stoned and
Speaker 6: sing it. On the other hand, he could be kind
Speaker 6: of charming, like when he was dried out, he'd go
Speaker 6: to bake sales and buy a whole bunch of pies
Speaker 6: from old woman in the area, and they'd all think
Speaker 6: he was great for a little while.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, Oh there's a balance, isn't there. Wat some
Speaker 5: pie wats some pies there. You go that that counters everything.
Speaker 5: What I was going to say too, is that we've
Speaker 5: got to make sure that the audience really understands though, too,
Speaker 5: that this guy was rejected by biker gangs like these
Speaker 5: these people want to belong to an our organization and
Speaker 5: not all of them are possessing of a certain charm.
Speaker 5: But we're talking about Kalestein being fifty eight or fifty
Speaker 5: nine years old at this time. So this is this
Speaker 5: plays into I think what happens of course, and of
Speaker 5: course he's the you know, the major character in it.
Speaker 6: So maybe definitely they were expanding into Ontario and they
Speaker 6: still didn't want them, like they were taking they sort
Speaker 6: of through the through the doors open in two thousand.
Speaker 6: It's like when the two clubs were scrambling to get
Speaker 6: control of Ontario, they were taking all sorts of untested people,
Speaker 6: and they still wouldn't take this guy. He'd been around
Speaker 6: for a quarter century. I mean, he was He'd be
Speaker 6: like the NHL goes from thirty two one hundred teams
Speaker 6: and you still don't get a tryout, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's kind of parveen Stone where you are right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think what was we'll you know, you'll
Speaker 5: be able to explain to the audience a little bit later.
Speaker 5: That plays into this whole deadly scenario later. Now, now
Speaker 5: weeks before the before the two thousand and six massacre,
Speaker 5: Here weeks before the Bendido's national secretary Treasurer Lewis manny Roposo,
Speaker 5: as we mentioned, was upset with the Probationary Chapter in Winnipeg.
Speaker 5: He said he wanted contact at least once a week.
Speaker 5: And then this we're talking about the emails proposal was
Speaker 5: contact was contacting Michael Sandham, who was president of the
Speaker 5: Probationary Chapter. And Sandham tell us what he said in
Speaker 5: reply to because I think this is well, well, obviously
Speaker 5: this is very important, tell us what he said in
Speaker 5: response to this, you know, this this request for contact.
Speaker 6: What did Sandal He basically bloom off like he patronized him.
Speaker 6: Then he bloom off and he treated him like an idiot.
Speaker 6: I mean, the odd the odd thing about Sandem was
Speaker 6: that he he had been in the military, he actually
Speaker 6: had been a police officer, and he he thought that
Speaker 6: he somehow was a bit better.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: The weird thing is that in this culture that makes
Speaker 6: you a lot worse, not the military part, but the
Speaker 6: police part. And so if they had done their due diligence,
Speaker 6: if they had checked this guy out, then he never
Speaker 6: would have gotten them within ten miles of a clubhouse.
Speaker 6: But because they had been sort of drunken stoned when
Speaker 6: his name came up, they just took him in. He
Speaker 6: was a very delusional guy who pretended he had black
Speaker 6: belts in martial arts that some of them that didn't
Speaker 6: even exist, and he invented this martial art and made
Speaker 6: himself the grand master. So he was a bit like
Speaker 6: George Costanza on Seinfeld, you know, just this guy totally
Speaker 6: into his own fantasy about himself. But he talked down
Speaker 6: to Riposo. And Roposo was a real biker. I mean,
Speaker 6: Roposo had done some serious time in Quebec, Reposa had
Speaker 6: been part of the biker wars. Reposo wasn't someone you
Speaker 6: kidded around with. He wasn't the biggest one physically, but
Speaker 6: he was the guy who actually would put a ball
Speaker 6: within you and feel good about it. And so I'm
Speaker 6: reposed of knew he's being talked down to, and I
Speaker 6: think he got a whiff that this guy was an
Speaker 6: idiot on the other end of it, and that that
Speaker 6: bothered him.
Speaker 5: Well you say that he said, he listened. He says,
Speaker 5: I'm not available, and he said stop calling the brothers,
Speaker 5: homes and families like that's on the end of don't
Speaker 5: don't even bother me, don't bug me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is just sort of on the scheme
Speaker 6: of things. You got someone who's a national officer, the
Speaker 6: other one who's not really even a full member I
Speaker 6: mean Winnipeg. Yeah, sort of in their world didn't even exist.
Speaker 6: They were just you know, maybe they'd get in, maybe
Speaker 6: they wouldn't then. Yet this guy is talking down to
Speaker 6: a National executive member who who had done serious day
Speaker 6: all time, and you just don't do that now.
Speaker 5: Two days before this killing, Kellestine and and and Cameron
Speaker 5: acorn a Bandito have a talk and this is and
Speaker 5: Cameron is is incarcerated and so what's the conversation about?
Speaker 5: Tell us what that conversation sounded like, and what was
Speaker 5: it about.
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Speaker 6: hear some of the conversations because I got them from
Speaker 6: court records. But Acorn caught on that something was happening.
Speaker 6: Kelstine told him. Kelstine basically spelled it out. There are
Speaker 6: going to be two sides, and you want to be
Speaker 6: on the right side. Acorn, and it's almost like out
Speaker 6: a Shakespeare. He he could see what was happening, and
Speaker 6: he let his brothers from Toronto walk into the trap.
Speaker 6: I mean he could have Boxer had been very very
Speaker 6: good to him. He could have worn Boxer instead. He
Speaker 6: played stupid and let Boxer walk right into it. So
Speaker 6: Acorn seemed shocked, but he didn't do anything to pull
Speaker 6: the other people out of the fire. And I think
Speaker 6: for Acorn's future, I mean, that's something that that I
Speaker 6: know a lot of people aren't aren't really impressed by.
Speaker 6: You know, your your job is supposed to be to
Speaker 6: stick up for your your your president, and your brothers.
Speaker 6: And he let them march right into a trap. And
Speaker 6: he had phone contact with Boxer hours before the murderers,
Speaker 6: and he I think I counted seventeen love you bros
Speaker 6: in there in the conversation, and yet he never went
Speaker 6: said watch out, don't go, be careful. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Incredible.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it seems there's a bit of a joke that
Speaker 6: some of these guys, as they say, love you broke
Speaker 6: more than three times, run for your life because you
Speaker 6: didn't getting set up.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I do often cover some books that
Speaker 5: are dealing with mobsters, and jeez, you know, these guys
Speaker 5: really are organized crime bikers, but we don't think of
Speaker 5: them in the same way. But in this way, they're
Speaker 5: very much the same. In terms of the mobsters always
Speaker 5: say that the best friend comes and gets you and.
Speaker 6: Don't worry about your enemies that your friends. It'll do you.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So that's what we as illustrated in this story too.
Speaker 5: There's a caution to those best friends for sure.
Speaker 6: Even the Hell's Angels. I mean they bump off a
Speaker 6: lot of their own in Quebec. Sure, for all them
Speaker 6: killing in the Viker Wars, a lot of it was
Speaker 6: injured gang. You know, it wasn't one group against the
Speaker 6: other group.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. I remember the Quebec murders that
Speaker 5: really got everybody's attention in Canada. You know, they were
Speaker 5: you know, they were about there was numbers like this
Speaker 5: as well. Weren't they eight or nine or somewhere around
Speaker 5: they were?
Speaker 6: They got up to five, you know, the big one
Speaker 6: was five. But they hit a lot sort of you know,
Speaker 6: kind of in around that range or a little a
Speaker 6: little less they.
Speaker 1: Did.
Speaker 6: I think it in a way makes sense because with
Speaker 6: these guys, I know, me dealing with them, the biggest
Speaker 6: thing is don't betray them. Like if you don't want
Speaker 6: to do something, if you don't believe something, if you're
Speaker 6: not comfortable with something, say it flat out. Don't don't
Speaker 6: be sneaky about it. I'm talking to one guy now
Speaker 6: for a new book, and his worst insult is to
Speaker 6: call someone a canniver. If you're upfront with him and
Speaker 6: you say, I don't do this, I don't do that,
Speaker 6: don't tell me. If you don't want me to know,
Speaker 6: and you know, then then everything's fine. But if you
Speaker 6: fake friendship, fake brotherhood and then turn on him, that's
Speaker 6: what sents. That's some off. And so I think you know,
Speaker 6: when you look at it in that context, then betrayal
Speaker 6: is betrayal is the thing that will get you killed.
Speaker 6: You know, betraying someone being on the other side won't
Speaker 6: necessarily get you in trouble because it's clear cut who
Speaker 6: you are and they can avoid you. Well. I actually
Speaker 6: know one guy from from the Hells Angels who knows
Speaker 6: where the undercover cop lives who put him in prison.
Speaker 6: And he I asked him, you know how you know
Speaker 6: what what is this? I thought you guys hated the police,
Speaker 6: and he said, no, the guy did a good job.
Speaker 6: He said, who who the guy would hate would be
Speaker 6: the or or who he'd really look down his nose at.
Speaker 6: It would be the member of his club who set
Speaker 6: him up with the cop. That would be the real runt.
Speaker 5: Sure, Oh yeah, yeah, sure, I think the I think
Speaker 5: there is some mutual respect where police are not getting
Speaker 5: families involved, and that I think that would be think
Speaker 5: that would be very important because we've seen that, we've
Speaker 5: seen police take it to our personal level, bring the
Speaker 5: family involved. And of course nobody wants that, right.
Speaker 6: And there are a lot of things too where they
Speaker 6: wouldn't want to say it publicly, but they agree with
Speaker 6: the police. I mean the oh, you know, traffic safety.
Speaker 6: I mean they want good traffic cops out there. They
Speaker 6: don't want idiots, you know, weaving around on the highway
Speaker 6: and endangering them. They don't want you know, drunks on
Speaker 6: street corners, they don't want people breaking into houses. A
Speaker 6: lot of it. They're just like you and me. It's
Speaker 6: just on you know, some things of their world, things
Speaker 6: where it all differs.
Speaker 5: Right right now, explain the and introduce the Winnipeg Probationary
Speaker 5: chapter for our audience please, and for the audience as
Speaker 5: well as long time listeners, will know, I reside in
Speaker 5: Winnipeg right now, and I have for eighteen years now.
Speaker 5: So Winnipeg is one wild place, and so I'm not
Speaker 5: so surprised because we've got this is the murder capital
Speaker 5: of Canada many years running, So introduce this probationary chapter.
Speaker 5: And because I found it very interesting after reading coverage
Speaker 5: of this a few years ago that getting more and
Speaker 5: more detail about these characters here in Winnipeg.
Speaker 6: It's funny because I was actually born in Saint Boniface,
Speaker 6: like the suburb of Winnipeg. So you know, that made
Speaker 6: this burden pretty interesting to me. And it really is
Speaker 6: wild West, like it's it's just you can when you
Speaker 6: use the phrase organized crime, generally the problem is justifying
Speaker 6: the organized side, like there's tons of crime, but it's
Speaker 6: just how organized. One person with Winnipeg chapter was Marcelo Aravena.
Speaker 6: He I'm kind of an odd guy because he was
Speaker 6: a very very good mixed martial artist, but he didn't
Speaker 6: train very hard and so he gave a lot of
Speaker 6: people really good fights, but he didn't win that many.
Speaker 6: And you'd you just think, if there's any job where
Speaker 6: you're going to practice a bit harder at it would
Speaker 6: be amma. You know, like why do you want to
Speaker 6: take a meeting? And if you're good enough to get
Speaker 6: in the ring with someone like that Butterbean guy, you
Speaker 6: know he's really tough four hundred pounder. If you're good
Speaker 6: enough to get in the ring with him, and he
Speaker 6: fought some former world champions. Why not train hard so
Speaker 6: that you you don't absorb a whole bunch of punches.
Speaker 6: And I think there was something in that guy's psyche
Speaker 6: where he just had sort of loser stamped on his
Speaker 6: on his soul. Somewhere. There's another guy, Brett Gardner. He was.
Speaker 6: He's kind of intriguing because he was very young. He
Speaker 6: very nice family, really nice parents, nothing criminal about them.
Speaker 6: Seems like a smart kid. Read a fair bit sort
Speaker 6: of odd because in this trial he struck me as
Speaker 6: a very bright guy. But he tried to use the
Speaker 6: stupidity defense and yeah, which is kind of a smart
Speaker 6: guy trying to act and not pulling it off. He
Speaker 6: kind of makes your head spin a bit. He didn't
Speaker 6: shoot anybody the knight of the massacre, but he was
Speaker 6: the guy who sat in the farmhouse and listened to
Speaker 6: police scanners, And so he's an interesting moral one. You know,
Speaker 6: he didn't touch a gun that night, but he says
Speaker 6: he didn't know, But I mean, people were killed in
Speaker 6: a barn right behind the farmhouse. How did he not
Speaker 6: know he saw the guns coming out, How didn't he know?
Speaker 6: And and couldn't he have couldn't he have helped? Like
Speaker 6: he's the one who I've heard some debates on this one,
Speaker 6: but he's the one who could have made one phone
Speaker 6: call and saved everybody's life, so right, you know, that's
Speaker 6: that's really what he went to prison for. There's one
Speaker 6: guy mh. You can't say his real name. He had
Speaker 6: been connected to the Hell's Angels, very heavy duty guy.
Speaker 6: He turned in former very quickly. He's a survivor. He's
Speaker 6: got a new name now. He actually tricked his wife
Speaker 6: into going into a witness program with him. Very very uh.
Speaker 6: The guy who knows which way the wind's blowing, which
Speaker 6: club to be and made a fair bit of money
Speaker 6: selling cocaine. And he's another one who struck me as
Speaker 6: very very bright, but then he had a learning disability
Speaker 6: and he could play stupid when it was was to
Speaker 6: his advantage. Hard guy to figure out, but a very
Speaker 6: tough guy. Guy Frank Mais. He's a kind of a
Speaker 6: I think that one of the fattest of the bunch
Speaker 6: because he wasn't a biker at all. He was just
Speaker 6: he was like a sort of a lonely, stray animal
Speaker 6: who just wander in where it was warm and then
Speaker 6: be nice to whoever open the door for him. He
Speaker 6: had done prison time with Kalestine, and Kelstine had said
Speaker 6: if you ever need a place to stay, come by.
Speaker 6: His girlfriend was pregnant, and so he went by Kelstine's house,
Speaker 6: and then he just didn't. He was the type of
Speaker 6: guy who had enough of prison culture, wasn't going to
Speaker 6: rat on anybody, and so when it happened, he just
Speaker 6: went along with it, stood by with a gun. But
Speaker 6: I've never heard of him actually ever doing anything violent.
Speaker 6: But then on the other hand, he was part of
Speaker 6: the group that had guarded the prisoners before they were
Speaker 6: executed one by one. Another guy who I think I
Speaker 6: got real mixed feelings about, Dwight Mushy. His nickname is
Speaker 6: Big d. He was someone who you really would take seriously.
Speaker 6: Who could have been Not that there's such a thing
Speaker 6: as a great gangster, but he could have been very
Speaker 6: very good at being an organized criminal if he was
Speaker 6: around the right people. Smart guy, guy, discipline too, very disciplined.
Speaker 6: He worked out. He had his black belt around two forty,
Speaker 6: around six three, very focused, would do things. And I
Speaker 6: think he thought that somehow he was getting away from
Speaker 6: the chaos of the Winnipeg streets and getting into something
Speaker 6: organized where he could actually make some money. He owned
Speaker 6: a night club. He was way way too smart for
Speaker 6: this group. And I think by the time he caught
Speaker 6: on that that they but some of these guys, they
Speaker 6: act crazy and you think it's just an act. And
Speaker 6: then about three murders in that night, he would have realized, no,
Speaker 6: these guys are crazy. But it's too late to get out.
Speaker 6: He's already caught up in it. And so and he's
Speaker 6: someone who could kill There's one of the killings that
Speaker 6: he did it himself just because the other guy panicked.
Speaker 6: Didn't put the guy away. He was suffering more and
Speaker 6: it's kind of but he just put a bullet in
Speaker 6: him to end it. It's a tough guy, and I
Speaker 6: think he felt incredibly betrayed and let down and by
Speaker 6: the idiots he was surrounded with. The person he probably
Speaker 6: despises the most is Michael Sandam, the former cop. They
Speaker 6: used to call him a little beaker behind his back
Speaker 6: with you know, the sesame street a gockey bird, which
Speaker 6: kind of shows the lack of respect for them. He
Speaker 6: quit pretty much anything. He quit being a husband, the father.
Speaker 6: He was a theology student, he was a soldier, he
Speaker 6: was a cop. He tried to get in with the outlaws.
Speaker 6: He pretended to be in a whole bunch of martial
Speaker 6: arts and always just kept moving on to the next thing.
Speaker 6: And he was more than one person said that if
Speaker 6: anyone ever played him in a movie, be Jason Alexander,
Speaker 6: the guy who played George Costanzo and Seinfeld like, even
Speaker 6: even after he got the what was supposed to be
Speaker 6: a big spot in the Big Club, he still looked
Speaker 6: like an idiot. And he cried in court the first
Speaker 6: day of court. He was just crying his eyes out
Speaker 6: like a like a schoolgirl. You're not what you expect
Speaker 6: at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no, not at all. Now, to complicate this,
Speaker 5: this story, this intriguing story, you have the York Regional
Speaker 5: Police Surveillance Team. I'd been trailing a couple of characters,
Speaker 5: Jamie Flans because tell us about the what happened on
Speaker 5: December eighth, where a man walking his dog found a
Speaker 5: body and what happened as a product of this what
Speaker 5: what initiative was undertaken by the York Regional Police Surveillance team.
Speaker 5: Hello Peter, Hello Peter, Peter. Well, we're having some technical difficulty.
Speaker 5: Peter just dropped out of the conversation when I was
Speaker 5: in a question and we've lost the signal. But I'm
Speaker 5: sure he's going to re engage and then I will
Speaker 5: have him back on. I just asked him about the
Speaker 5: York Regional Police Surveillance team that had been They had
Speaker 5: found a man. A man was walking his dog. His
Speaker 5: dogs found a body. On December eighth, a small black
Speaker 5: man was found bound, gagged and badly burned in a
Speaker 5: forest area in Durham Region in Durham County. So the
Speaker 5: corpse was all that was left of this drug dealer
Speaker 5: named Sean Dows. Dows was last seen alive as he
Speaker 5: exited a cab late night on Saturday, December two, and
Speaker 5: he was to attend a party at Flans's townhouse in Keswick,
Speaker 5: which is outside of Toronto. Now again we spoke about Flans.
Speaker 5: His father was a senior partner at a prestigious Montreal
Speaker 5: law firm and his nickname was Goldberg. He ran a
Speaker 5: small computer consulting business on tech on site tech support
Speaker 5: for business and he was Jewish and like Peter had said,
Speaker 5: that seemed odd that there was any was no real financial,
Speaker 5: economic motivation for him to be in this gang. So
Speaker 5: it was to be to lead an exciting life. Certainly,
Speaker 5: we still don't have Peter Edwards back on the line.
Speaker 5: I'm hoping we can still have him. We're about halfway through.
Speaker 5: We haven't spoken about again the surveillance team. We haven't
Speaker 5: spoken about the actual murder. Here. We have Peter back one. Ah,
Speaker 5: it can happen. It can happen anyway. What I was
Speaker 5: asking asking you was about the York Regional Police surveillance
Speaker 5: initiative as a result of a man walking some dogs.
Speaker 5: I talked to the audience about this. On December eighth,
Speaker 5: he found a small black man, bound, gagged and badly burned.
Speaker 5: A corpse was all that was left of a man
Speaker 5: named Sean Dowsey, reported drug dealer. Now. He was last
Speaker 5: seen alive as he exited a cab late night on Saturday,
Speaker 5: December second to attend a party at Jamie Flans' townhouse
Speaker 5: in Keswick. So take take us from there. What what
Speaker 5: happened as a result of this, and this is about
Speaker 5: this surveillance went on for four months but tell us
Speaker 5: just what happened and what they thought was their target
Speaker 5: and how they how this plays into the story.
Speaker 6: It was one of those things where it's almost like
Speaker 6: out of a movie where police had been been following
Speaker 6: the suspected killers of of Dows. They had a pretty
Speaker 6: good surveillance, and it wasn't it wasn't that tricky really
Speaker 6: to get these guys on the radar, because the guy
Speaker 6: had shown up at a party at Jamie Flans's house
Speaker 6: in a taxi and then just never never was seen again.
Speaker 6: And so they they knew, you know, that he had
Speaker 6: been at this party and that it was a biker place,
Speaker 6: and the the killing was pretty pretty off the charts,
Speaker 6: and so there there was DNA all over the place,
Speaker 6: even though they tried to clean up. The Flans was
Speaker 6: he wasn't a racist, and a lot of these guys were.
Speaker 6: Dous was black, and he was believed to be involved
Speaker 6: with someone who another biker who was white, one of
Speaker 6: his family members, and so the guy basically couldn't take
Speaker 6: some and that he knew sleeping with the black man.
Speaker 6: It was pretty much that simple, and so they they
Speaker 6: killed him for it. They lured him in and killed
Speaker 6: him and then and beat him to death in this townhouse.
Speaker 6: And the police naturally suspected the guy who owned the townhouse,
Speaker 6: and so they were following him around and that's how
Speaker 6: they They actually picked up a lot of these guys
Speaker 6: on tape and the hours leading in and leading out
Speaker 6: of the massacre, and on my website, I've actually got
Speaker 6: some of that tape that you can listen to.
Speaker 5: Now, how how much did they know from that this surveillance?
Speaker 5: What did what did they know before this meeting? Did
Speaker 5: they know about the meeting itself? Did they know what
Speaker 5: the meeting meant? How much did the Ontario Provincial Police
Speaker 5: surveillance team? What how much did they learn from this
Speaker 5: in the in the in those months and then just
Speaker 5: before this What did they know?
Speaker 6: See, that's a big mystery, and that's where there's a
Speaker 6: lot of debate, and I don't think it's totally clear.
Speaker 6: I mean, they knew there was going to be a meeting,
Speaker 6: They knew the guy who was holding the meeting bragged
Speaker 6: that he was a killer. They knew that there was
Speaker 6: tension in the club. They knew that. I mean, they
Speaker 6: picked it up on tape that the main killer, Wayne Kalestine,
Speaker 6: was talking about how they're going to be big changes
Speaker 6: and that you can be on one side or you
Speaker 6: can be on the other side, that there's going to
Speaker 6: be a huge fallout in their world. And they knew
Speaker 6: all of this, and yet they saw the cars go
Speaker 6: into the into the farmhouse of the guy who was
Speaker 6: the main killer and did nothing. You can argue that,
Speaker 6: you know, any night is a potentially dangerous night for
Speaker 6: these guys. But on the other hand, the tensions that
Speaker 6: night were pretty high. There was one cop who individually
Speaker 6: was trying to watch the thing and really couldn't do
Speaker 6: all that much. And the way the farm was laid out,
Speaker 6: he just couldn't couldn't get an eye on it. Really. Now,
Speaker 6: you know, you know what did they know? What should
Speaker 6: they have known? You know, hindsight of obviously they blew it.
Speaker 6: But you know, any night with Kelistine is the night
Speaker 6: they could be murdered.
Speaker 5: But the thing is how much did they how much
Speaker 5: did they information did they gain from the surveillance in
Speaker 5: terms of again you say that, well, there's going to
Speaker 5: be big changes. If they had that conversation, if they
Speaker 5: knew of that conversation and they knew of Kellestine's murderous
Speaker 5: sort of bent. You know that this meeting with with
Speaker 5: Winnipeg members in Toronto chapter in an isolated place, was
Speaker 5: there not? Precedent?
Speaker 6: Was there?
Speaker 5: Is? It?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 5: It? Was it a failure in terms of them not
Speaker 5: thinking that, you know, why couldn't they put the barn
Speaker 5: under surveillance? Why did they not have enough time to
Speaker 5: do that? Why did they do not? Why didn't they
Speaker 5: do more? And what's your take on if this was
Speaker 5: a failure on their part based on precedent, based on
Speaker 5: the information that they had.
Speaker 6: I think you don't want to point the finger at
Speaker 6: any one person, but overall, definitely was a failure. And
Speaker 6: one thing where there was huge failure on with that
Speaker 6: Telestine had two lifetime weapons stands and yet he had
Speaker 6: literally dozens of guns in his place, including automatic weapons.
Speaker 6: And so how do you how do you get to
Speaker 6: the point where you're doing target practice in your backyard
Speaker 6: with automatic weapons and yet you've got lifetimes and weapons stands?
Speaker 6: I mean, how does that come about? I don't know.
Speaker 6: You get all these comments about you need probable cause
Speaker 6: to search and everything. I think if someone said one
Speaker 6: or two lifetime weapons stands, that should be probable cause
Speaker 6: on its own. I don't see why you have to
Speaker 6: give them a free pass again. And it would have
Speaker 6: any fool could have found weapons at.
Speaker 5: His place, right amazing. Now, there was one person that
Speaker 5: was sick, or at least they claimed to be sick,
Speaker 5: and they didn't want to attend the meeting. Who did
Speaker 5: they speak to and who convinced them to attend the
Speaker 5: meeting and what in what way did they convince them
Speaker 5: to it?
Speaker 6: In this meeting, there was one guy's monopoly and he
Speaker 6: just really wasn't that much of a biker. He's kind
Speaker 6: of a very very heavy guy, kind of an insecure guy.
Speaker 6: One of his friends said that he just needed to
Speaker 6: be around people. He weighed four to five hundred pounds
Speaker 6: and he wanted out of the club just to get
Speaker 6: his weight under control. I mean he was he had
Speaker 6: trouble walking. A massive guy, but just sort of waiting
Speaker 6: for a heart attack and so. And he wasn't a
Speaker 6: big drug dealer. He's just sort of, you know, a
Speaker 6: guy who's kind of in the environment but not really
Speaker 6: doing all that much. He was feeling very sick. He
Speaker 6: wanted out, and he talked to Jamie Flans tried to
Speaker 6: get out talk to a boxer. Boxer wasn't so crazy
Speaker 6: about it, but he's going to let him out. But
Speaker 6: the rest of them, and Frank Salerno, who wasn't kind
Speaker 6: of all over the map. Sometimes he'd be talking like
Speaker 6: the ultimate biker. Other times he wouldn't wouldn't really fit
Speaker 6: in at all. He he got very upset and wanted
Speaker 6: him there. He wanted to, you know, a show of forth.
Speaker 6: On the other hand, he was someone who privately had
Speaker 6: said he was going to quit the club as soon
Speaker 6: as he became a father, and he had just become
Speaker 6: a father at the time of the massacre.
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Speaker 6: Aiant things listening to the tapes is the at one
Speaker 6: point you can hear his little son MARYO the baby.
Speaker 6: I'm crying in the background while he's talking. And so
Speaker 6: he left the baby and went off and got killed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just dripping with irony too. What he says
Speaker 5: is the Selerona, Like you say, he said, as soon
Speaker 5: as I'm a father, I'm out of here. And meanwhile
Speaker 5: he's there, like you say, incredible, and then he says, listen,
Speaker 5: you know, if you don't show up at the meeting,
Speaker 5: you're gonna get kicked out of the club.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's funny because they you know when you hit
Speaker 6: it right on the notes there when you said irony.
Speaker 6: Because you talk to their friends and you listen to tapes.
Speaker 6: Most of these guys wanted out of the club, but
Speaker 6: what they didn't want was to be kicked out of
Speaker 6: the club. And so privately, a lot of these guys
Speaker 6: wanted to leave, and I talked to some former members
Speaker 6: who you know, they weren't looked down upon. These guys
Speaker 6: envied them for getting out, but they didn't want to
Speaker 6: be told to get out, like they didn't want to
Speaker 6: be ordered out. And so when they were ordered out.
Speaker 6: They they fought this day and even though privately they
Speaker 6: wanted to quit.
Speaker 5: Now, before we get into the actual slaughter itself, unless
Speaker 5: I got this wrong again, but what I've read in
Speaker 5: your book was basically these guys, at least as far
Speaker 5: as Texas was, at least as far as any kind
Speaker 5: of official order, there was no order to kill, but
Speaker 5: there was an order that or at least there was
Speaker 5: the intention of taking these guys patches and any kind
Speaker 5: of memorabilia associated with the Bendido's Motorcycle Gang. There was
Speaker 5: no specific order to kill all these people. So what
Speaker 5: you do say, again this is just again you talk
Speaker 5: about pathetic, is that these people could have just given
Speaker 5: up their patches and that would have been it, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And some of the patches were counterfeit. I mean
Speaker 6: some of them weren't even real patches, and a lot
Speaker 6: of these guys were fighting over fake patches in the
Speaker 6: club that in a sense didn't exist. I mean, Texas
Speaker 6: didn't want any of them anymore, and so they're fighting
Speaker 6: for a bigger piece of nothing. It was. You know,
Speaker 6: when you said pathetic, that was right on the nose.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's sad, very sad. Now, like walk our audience
Speaker 5: through the day in question. Kealestine's behavior throughout this is
Speaker 5: chilling before we get to the trial. But tell us
Speaker 5: about the event that day, how it was done, Who
Speaker 5: was in the rafters, who again we spoke about, who
Speaker 5: was the lookout in the car or at least a
Speaker 5: police scanner. Give us the whole scenario of what happened,
Speaker 5: how the victims reacted. Again, very chilling and harrowing, unbelievable actually,
Speaker 5: So tell us about this whole event. Go take our
Speaker 5: audience into this incredible one of the worst mass murders
Speaker 5: in Canadian history and one incredible, incredible evening what they
Speaker 5: call church. Tell us about that.
Speaker 6: Please tell us then, you First, they had to gather
Speaker 6: up the guns, which he had dozens of them, but
Speaker 6: a few of them actually worked, and most of them
Speaker 6: were pretty cheap, and so they had to scrape the
Speaker 6: rust off them. They had to clean the guns so
Speaker 6: they actually come together. There's sort of things that if
Speaker 6: you knew about guns, you wouldn't want to fire them
Speaker 6: because they might blow up on you. They went around
Speaker 6: and got shells and had to clean up shells as
Speaker 6: well because they had rust on them. So they they're
Speaker 6: all getting loaded up. Some of them are putting on gloves.
Speaker 6: They they get the Toronto chapter to come down. It's
Speaker 6: supposed to be a church meeting, which is a a
Speaker 6: chapter meeting. They're going to have it in the barn
Speaker 6: at Helstine's barn, which you know has a Nazi flag
Speaker 6: hanging in it. When they when they come in, there's
Speaker 6: there's someone hidden in the rafters. That's Michael Sandam. He
Speaker 6: was the former military member, former cop and he had
Speaker 6: said he was a sniper. He was up there in
Speaker 6: the rafters. He had two guns with him when he
Speaker 6: was up there. And this is the guy who gets
Speaker 6: very very nervous. He shook. So you've got an old
Speaker 6: dusty barn. This guy shakes. Dust would have come down,
Speaker 6: wood would have come down, would have made a noise. Riposo,
Speaker 6: who's a very very alert guy, very street wise, part
Speaker 6: of product of the biker Wars in Quebec, he had
Speaker 6: a thought off shotgun that was kind of like a pistol,
Speaker 6: almost like a pirate sort of gun. He reacted quickly
Speaker 6: and fired fired up at at the noise, and he
Speaker 6: caught on quickly that there was a sniper up there.
Speaker 6: Sandom hit a bulletproof vest On, and so he was
Speaker 6: hit but it didn't kill him, and then he was
Speaker 6: able to shoot shoot Riposo and kill him. At that point,
Speaker 6: you've got kind of equal numbers of people on one
Speaker 6: side and the other side. But everybody stunned. Kelstine had said,
Speaker 6: if we kill one, we killed them all. Most of
Speaker 6: them thought that was just sort of tough talk. All
Speaker 6: of a sudden, that became what he wanted. A boxer
Speaker 6: who was the one of the visitors, he was very,
Speaker 6: very respected. He was the one who both sides thought
Speaker 6: the most of I'm sure that Kelstine would have been
Speaker 6: happy to have him on his side. He was something
Speaker 6: you really don't want to get mad at you. And
Speaker 6: what he did though that I thought was extremely brave.
Speaker 6: Was he stuck up for the Jewish guy. He stuck
Speaker 6: up for Flans. Kelstine had said that he wanted to
Speaker 6: kill Flans last. He wanted him to suffer most because
Speaker 6: he was Jewish. A boxer said, no, he's solid. Don't
Speaker 6: do it. You've got it wrong. He he's not a rat,
Speaker 6: he's a good guy. Kelstine couldn't stand someone standing up
Speaker 6: to him like that. He couldn't stand someone who he
Speaker 6: thought was his sidekick actually contradicting him. He also couldn't
Speaker 6: stand the idea of a Jewish guy who is basically
Speaker 6: a winner. You know that Boxer took his side rather
Speaker 6: than Kelstine's side, So that how that basically cooked Boxer.
Speaker 6: He said, do me first, I want to go out
Speaker 6: like a man, and his phone rang. It was kind
Speaker 6: of amazing because the cell phone went off, he was
Speaker 6: allowed to answer it. It was his wife on the phone.
Speaker 6: They just had a baby and his wife wanted to
Speaker 6: know if everything was all right, wanted to talk. He
Speaker 6: didn't want a rat on anybody. Even though he was
Speaker 6: in the midst of being marched out to be killed.
Speaker 6: All he had to do was say, I'm at at
Speaker 6: Wayne's farm. Called the cops. He could have said that
Speaker 6: quickly enough and the just by saying it it would
Speaker 6: have stopped the execution. But he, I think, was so
Speaker 6: into the biker code. If you don't bring in police,
Speaker 6: you don't go outside that he he just said love
Speaker 6: you and see you later, and and that was it.
Speaker 6: And minutes later he was marched out and executed by
Speaker 6: the person that he considered his best friend. And so
Speaker 6: when when he was dead. The rest were We're easy pickings.
Speaker 6: What they did was march them out one by one
Speaker 6: and make them sit in vehicles and then shoot them.
Speaker 6: There was Salerno. The new Father was a really really
Speaker 6: I was really poigned in court when they talked about
Speaker 6: his execution because he he was begging his his killers
Speaker 6: to be good to his kid. He he also wanted
Speaker 6: to shake the hands of his killers. He wanted some
Speaker 6: sort of a human contact. He wanted something that made
Speaker 6: it seem less ugly than it really was. And so
Speaker 6: they wanted to shake their hands, and they wouldn't shake
Speaker 6: his hands. They just shot him instead. It was they,
Speaker 6: I think a lot of them thought that there's only
Speaker 6: going to be one more killing and then it'll end.
Speaker 6: And so they picked them off one by one, marched
Speaker 6: them out. And some people like to put all the
Speaker 6: blame on Kalestine, but if you think about it, he
Speaker 6: turned his back on the group seven times to kill people,
Speaker 6: and nobody put a bullet in it. So you know,
Speaker 6: in a way, by not doing it, they went along
Speaker 6: with it. I mean, he totally exposed himself to everybody
Speaker 6: else with the gun that night, and and none of
Speaker 6: them turned on him, and so that's why they're all
Speaker 6: doing twenty five years in prison right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Now, the one of the most incredible events
Speaker 5: in this whole incredible event is Kellestine's behavior singing, dancing, praying,
Speaker 5: you know, very much evidence of his psychotic nature. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about what his behavior was like
Speaker 5: with some of these people.
Speaker 6: It was, you know, the first words, just insane. I mean,
Speaker 6: he's just supposed to be his brother's supposed to be
Speaker 6: the guys and that he cares so much about in
Speaker 6: the club, and yet he was singing and dancing, He
Speaker 6: started singing the old German national anthem. He taunted people frankly,
Speaker 6: you know, having a good time, which you know as
Speaker 6: he killed. Then he started to whine sort of midway
Speaker 6: through the murders. He talked about how he had to
Speaker 6: do all the work, that he called it the wet work,
Speaker 6: that he had to do at all, And so he
Speaker 6: was kind of whining as if he was a real
Speaker 6: victim that night, that he was a hard worker. I
Speaker 6: actually talked to Kelestine between the night of the murderers
Speaker 6: and two days later when he was arrested. I knew
Speaker 6: that he either would have been killed or had done
Speaker 6: the killing. I mean, there were only one hundred people
Speaker 6: in iona station. And so when you hear there's a
Speaker 6: biker murder and it's in Kealestine's town, then you know
Speaker 6: Hamlet really then you know, how can I not be involved?
Speaker 6: And so I phoned his place and he was laughing
Speaker 6: on the phone. I mean, this was less than a
Speaker 6: day after he had taken part in the execution of
Speaker 6: each of the people that he said he loved and
Speaker 6: that were his brothers, and he was happy as a
Speaker 6: kid who just won a football game. And you could
Speaker 6: hear laughter in the background. I mean he I interrupted
Speaker 6: a party to phone him.
Speaker 5: Incredible. Wow. So they put them in vehicles and was
Speaker 5: there any was there any idea by these guys that
Speaker 5: they would hide these bodies or this is a public display. Hey,
Speaker 5: we've killed them, it's a gang land slaying. They're going
Speaker 5: to find these people. Tell us what course of events
Speaker 5: happened after these murders, what transpired and how what kind
Speaker 5: of time are we talking about before these people were
Speaker 5: discovered and what was the idea for the bikers to
Speaker 5: do this? Was it? Was it a public display? It
Speaker 5: was a message. What was they trying to do? And
Speaker 5: with what they did with the bodies.
Speaker 6: Kelstine's original plan was to dump them in a Hell's
Speaker 6: Angel area and then everybody will think that dead Bandidos
Speaker 6: must have been killed by Hell's Angels, you know, like
Speaker 6: publicly they're you know, the two groups obviously don't mix.
Speaker 6: And so Kitchener, Ontario, which would be about i'll say
Speaker 6: an hour down the road, is a very very strong
Speaker 6: Hell's Angel chapter that had been a very strong Satan's
Speaker 6: Choice chapter and then flipped over in two thousands. So
Speaker 6: Kelstine's plant was, we dump them all there and everybody
Speaker 6: will blame the Hell's Angels and we get off with it.
Speaker 6: The stupidity, though, and it's it almost seems like it's
Speaker 6: out of Shakespeare with that. They the one of the cars,
Speaker 6: the most expensive car, the Jewish Guy's car, the Jamie
Speaker 6: Flans's car. It didn't have gas in it. Could it
Speaker 6: hit about enough gas to go about five or ten miles,
Speaker 6: and that was it. And so they hid this guy,
Speaker 6: a body of a five hundred pound man in the
Speaker 6: back of it. When they killed the guy, they didn't
Speaker 6: have him far enough into the van to get the
Speaker 6: hatchback down. And so this huge body isn't really secure,
Speaker 6: and it's in a vehicle that has very little gas
Speaker 6: in it. And Flans had been to a gas station
Speaker 6: for a meeting, but and police had been watching, but
Speaker 6: he hadn't bought it to fill it up with gas.
Speaker 6: It was almost like his last joke in a way.
Speaker 6: And so they've got all these bodies in these vehicles,
Speaker 6: but they don't have gas in one of them. They're
Speaker 6: hitting off on Canada's busiest highway at just before rush hour,
Speaker 6: and there's a chance that the body could go flying
Speaker 6: out into the road. I mean, it was beyond stupid.
Speaker 6: And so what they did was turn off onto a
Speaker 6: side road and dump them all in the farmer's field.
Speaker 6: So too, there was a plan. But to give these guys,
Speaker 6: especially Kalestine, too much credit for thinking is a mistake.
Speaker 6: I mean it was as stupidity involved was off the charts.
Speaker 6: I mean, the idea of bouncing down the road with
Speaker 6: a guy huge, I mean twice the size of the
Speaker 6: average pro football player, you know, lying in the back
Speaker 6: and ready to go bouncing onto the highway, you know,
Speaker 6: beyond stupid.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so how long did it take for police to
Speaker 5: put this together and make an arrest? And who did
Speaker 5: they arrest first.
Speaker 6: They basically did it the next day and they on
Speaker 6: the website there's film of the of the arrest of
Speaker 6: Kalisti and at his farm. I mean, it was pretty
Speaker 6: pretty easy pickings really, because I mean someone like me,
Speaker 6: who doesn't, you know, like an outsider, just as a reporter,
Speaker 6: I could figure that Kelstine's got to be involved in this,
Speaker 6: and it's pretty pretty logical to, yeah, to start watching
Speaker 6: his farm. I mean, this is a guy who who
Speaker 6: bragged about killing. He actually had lightning bolts announcing he
Speaker 6: was a killer in Nazi stuff on his business cards.
Speaker 6: When he wrote the letter when you write people, he
Speaker 6: put little lightning bolts on it to pretend that he
Speaker 6: was the killer for the s S. I mean he
Speaker 6: So it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to get watching Kelstein's
Speaker 6: place and then to move in on him. Some of
Speaker 6: them had stuck around to set up what they thought
Speaker 6: was going to be the new dominant chapter. Other ones
Speaker 6: went back to Winnipeg. But it was pretty easy to
Speaker 6: piece it together. Also, what they what police had was
Speaker 6: a an informer the one guy m H who was
Speaker 6: involved in the group that did the killing. He was
Speaker 6: canny enough to realize that this wasn't going anywhere, and
Speaker 6: so he quickly got a hold of police and and
Speaker 6: went on board. And so he was wired in Winnipeg
Speaker 6: and was able to pick up a lot of them
Speaker 6: on tape. On one of the tapes that really got
Speaker 6: me was that he picked up this guy Mushi, who
Speaker 6: I've got I don't know with respect is the right word,
Speaker 6: but he if I had respect for someone in the
Speaker 6: Winnipeg group, it would be him. And he picked up
Speaker 6: Mushy talking about how when Boxer was killed, it really
Speaker 6: was impressive that he, you know, went out like a man,
Speaker 6: that he actually laughed at Kalestine, Like when Kalestine was
Speaker 6: with getting ready to shoot him, this guy just laughed
Speaker 6: at him as if to say, you're an idiot, and
Speaker 6: even if you kill people, you're still an idiot. You're
Speaker 6: more of an idiot. So it was kind of poetic
Speaker 6: the way this guy went out and mush he picked
Speaker 6: up on that and was was very impressed.
Speaker 5: So how long was the investigation in terms of the recording,
Speaker 5: the COVID recording done by MH How long did they
Speaker 5: was this?
Speaker 6: Did this last for a few weeks but didn't really
Speaker 6: take too much because you know, they hit the informer
Speaker 6: inside the group. They they also picked up Texas, you know,
Speaker 6: talking to them, you know where they were shocked. I mean,
Speaker 6: I mean one of the ironic things is that they
Speaker 6: picked up Texas. You know, there's there's sort of the
Speaker 6: epicenter of all the bandido stuff, allong these guys that
Speaker 6: they didn't want them anymore, that they're fools. So it
Speaker 6: was it. The big question wasn't why it was done,
Speaker 6: or who did it, or or what was Donner who
Speaker 6: did it, but sort of the why, you know, the
Speaker 6: how can something so big happen over something so stupid?
Speaker 6: And a lot of people, me included, thought that there
Speaker 6: must be something about the Hell's Angels involved in here.
Speaker 6: You know, they can't be that stupid, and you know
Speaker 6: the Bandidos, but they were that stupid, and the Hell's
Speaker 6: Angels knew no more about what was going on than
Speaker 6: the average person in the community. I mean, this one
Speaker 6: Hell's Angel said to me when I talked to him
Speaker 6: in the courthouse was that it's a great day when
Speaker 6: you wake up and your enemies have all killed each other.
Speaker 6: And I mean they just woke up and were stunned
Speaker 6: that these guys who they thought were there sort of
Speaker 6: low level enemies rivals just self destructed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, incredible. Now what was your what was your conclusion
Speaker 5: after all this? You you know, I can almost guess,
Speaker 5: but what did you see at the as the why
Speaker 5: had they done it? Why had they done it? What
Speaker 5: was their intention to do and what? And of course
Speaker 5: the result was disastrous, But why had they done it?
Speaker 6: And I think the different reasons for a lot of them.
Speaker 6: I mean, Kellestine needed to dominate people. He couldn't stand
Speaker 6: being laughed at. He had to be taken seriously. And
Speaker 6: yet the further win in life, the more he was
Speaker 6: laughed at. And if if people don't take you seriously
Speaker 6: when you're pointing a gun at them, you've really got
Speaker 6: got a problem. You know, he was he was just
Speaker 6: considered a fool no matter what he did, and he
Speaker 6: still is and so I think for him there was
Speaker 6: huge amount of frustration. I think I think some of
Speaker 6: the other ones the reason they went along with it.
Speaker 6: And the odd thing is that most of the people
Speaker 6: convicted of murder actually didn't didn't pull the trigger that night.
Speaker 6: They were convicted for being guards. So they were convicted
Speaker 6: for standing by with rifles as other people killed, and
Speaker 6: they're basically being part of the crime, even though they
Speaker 6: didn't pull the trigger, which they'll still get first agree murder.
Speaker 6: I think that some of them were flat out afreight.
Speaker 6: I think some of them thought that if they're willing
Speaker 6: to kill eight people, they're obviously willing to kill nine people,
Speaker 6: and so I'm not standing up to them and getting
Speaker 6: a bulletin me too. Once it started, it would have
Speaker 6: taken a huge amount of courage to stand up and
Speaker 6: say no, this is wrong. I mean, they would have
Speaker 6: been killed where they had. The problem was that they
Speaker 6: were involved, you know, for days before that, getting guns
Speaker 6: ready and that sort of thing, and so it was
Speaker 6: easy to draw the conclusion that, you know, these weren't
Speaker 6: innocent bystanders, but it wasn't. It's one you can debate
Speaker 6: a fair bit, you know that if they were legitimately
Speaker 6: afraid and if they thought that they'd be killed too,
Speaker 6: should they be guilty of murder? And I think the
Speaker 6: Crown made a really strong argument that the murders wouldn't
Speaker 6: have taken place if they hadn't been the guards, and
Speaker 6: so they're guilty too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, it's as you know, in Canada, it is
Speaker 5: rare to have that kind of slam dunk conviction. First
Speaker 5: degree murders not the easiest thing to get in the
Speaker 5: Canadian courts. There's a myriad of ways of getting it
Speaker 5: down to second degree and even more lenient like manslaughter.
Speaker 5: But obviously I didn't think there was going to be
Speaker 5: anything like that. But the first degree convictions were well
Speaker 5: done and again like based on the email evidence, the telephone, wiretap,
Speaker 5: the witness. Yeah, they put everything together to have that
Speaker 5: successful prosecution. So there was you talk about the delay
Speaker 5: at the eleventh hour, but still it's just a sad, pathetic, idiotic,
Speaker 5: ironic story. It really is fascinating because you get so
Speaker 5: close and into the mindset I guess of these people.
Speaker 5: It's quite fascinating.
Speaker 6: So yeah, it's funny. I think it's just the irony.
Speaker 6: I mean, the you know, the part that I remember
Speaker 6: the most is the seventeen love you bros on the
Speaker 6: phone to boxers. He drove down to be killed and
Speaker 6: he's seeing them to a guy who is letting him
Speaker 6: die into a guy who he tried to mentor and
Speaker 6: be nice to. And he had actually told this kid
Speaker 6: in jail to don't waste your time, don't be like
Speaker 6: a lot of those other guys, get an education. Like
Speaker 6: he was trying to clean this kid up, and the well,
Speaker 6: the kid appreciated it. He let him get marched off
Speaker 6: to the slaughter that you know that that's one of
Speaker 6: the parts that that would really stay with me. And
Speaker 6: I got to know some of the former members who
Speaker 6: then that's kind of how I got pulled into doing
Speaker 6: the book with Some of them started to contact me
Speaker 6: because they couldn't believe that it was that stupid, and
Speaker 6: they couldn't believe that They thought they were kind of
Speaker 6: acting crazy and a bit crazy. They didn't think that
Speaker 6: they could actually be that crazy. It's kind of when
Speaker 6: you when you play a role and all of a
Speaker 6: sudden the role becomes real.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's a certain momentum, isn't there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they and I don't think they caught on, you
Speaker 6: know that tell Stein this is what he does, I mean,
Speaker 6: this is who he is, and this is where he's comfortable,
Speaker 6: you know, like he does exist for a murder and
Speaker 6: that you know, the guy's voice between the killings and
Speaker 6: the arrest, you know, the one day in the middle
Speaker 6: when I phoned, he here's the full party mode. I mean,
Speaker 6: he couldn't have been happier. You know, if the team
Speaker 6: wins the Super Bowl or the Great Cup, the fans
Speaker 6: aren't happier than he was that night. And he had
Speaker 6: just just slaughtered eight of his brothers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I know, there's a situation here where actually,
Speaker 5: never mind the brotherhood of bikers, he slaughtered his own
Speaker 5: family for an inheritance, grandparents, sisters, you know, and conspired
Speaker 5: to kill about eight people in his entire family.
Speaker 6: It's funny because when you look at murder rates, about
Speaker 6: consistent third or so are people killing people who they've loved,
Speaker 6: you know, people killing family members. And this, in a
Speaker 6: way was a huge domestic This little massacre was a
Speaker 6: huge family fight. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's it's incredible. Yeah. You also you mentioned
Speaker 5: your website, but you also are you know, I was surprised.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know of your work, but I did
Speaker 5: not know that you had written that many true crime books. Sure,
Speaker 5: you're like the top true crime guy in Canada, hands down.
Speaker 5: Very very interesting cases that you've covered. You know, the
Speaker 5: Opperwash case, but the mill Guard case was my favorite.
Speaker 5: It's such an incredible case. You see so much wrongful
Speaker 5: conviction in the US that it's come to be known
Speaker 5: that it's certainly they can have wrongful convictions. But in
Speaker 5: Canada we haven't had that many, really really high profile cases.
Speaker 5: In the Mill Guard story, with the movie and the
Speaker 5: books and the coverage and the compensation and jeez, it's
Speaker 5: just an incredible story for those people who aren't aware
Speaker 5: of your work. Again, maybe you can give the the
Speaker 5: webs for that. And how many true crime books have
Speaker 5: you under your belt.
Speaker 6: I'm working on my eleventh right now, Like the eleventh
Speaker 6: will come out next early next year, and it's about
Speaker 6: a long time biker who was in the Satan's Choice
Speaker 6: and the Hell's Angels who put in four decades, So
Speaker 6: that'll be number eleven. The websites Bandido massacre dot com
Speaker 6: and Bandido his two d's, and they deliberately spell it differently.
Speaker 6: And if you go in there and click the first page,
Speaker 6: you can actually see the people we've been talking about
Speaker 6: riding on their bikes. They're talking and see transcripts and
Speaker 6: that sort of thing. Yeah, that one kind of blew
Speaker 6: me away. The Mill Guard thing, I never forget. David
Speaker 6: in Stony Mountain penitentiary and he lost all of his appeals.
Speaker 6: I think it was nineteen ninety two or nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 6: and it looked hopeless, like it looked like he was
Speaker 6: going to be in there forever because he wouldn't say
Speaker 6: he was sorry because he didn't do it, and so
Speaker 6: I wouldn't He wouldn't say remorse, and I needed to
Speaker 6: find out quickly of this guy's for real or not,
Speaker 6: And so I said, why don't you just say you're sorry?
Speaker 6: You know not? He was obviously sorry for the killing,
Speaker 6: but he wasn't going to say he was sorry that
Speaker 6: he did it because he didn't do it. And he
Speaker 6: was so disgusted that the idea that he confessed to
Speaker 6: something that he didn't do that he walked away from
Speaker 6: me and went back into the prison like we were
Speaker 6: in the visiting area, and he just he just looked stunned.
Speaker 6: And I needed to find out it's this guy for
Speaker 6: real or not, So I needed to ask a rude question,
Speaker 6: and I just had a huge amount of respect for
Speaker 6: him as he walked away, even though he was disgusted
Speaker 6: by my question. And then his mother ran in and
Speaker 6: brought him back out again, but he he was so
Speaker 6: bothered by you know, that murder and his name being
Speaker 6: connected to it when he didn't do it, that he
Speaker 6: would have spent his life in prison rather than give
Speaker 6: a false confession. I also remember him with Larry Fisher,
Speaker 6: the guy who actually did do the murder, and at
Speaker 6: that point his name had been kicked around a fair bit.
Speaker 6: And I asked David in prison, what do you think
Speaker 6: of Larry Fisher? And I thought he'd gives some angry quote,
Speaker 6: and what he said was that he deserves a fair trial,
Speaker 6: and that David knows what it's like to be wrongly accused,
Speaker 6: and so wow, Fisher should be fairly judged. And I thought, wow,
Speaker 6: you know this is I know David's had his problems,
Speaker 6: but he did some really really classy, noble things that
Speaker 6: a lot of people don't know about. I also remember
Speaker 6: him asking him, right after he got out, what do
Speaker 6: you like about it, you know, being on the other side,
Speaker 6: And he said, being able to look at the sun
Speaker 6: and look at everything and not have to look through bars.
Speaker 6: And he that guy and he went to visit me
Speaker 6: in Toronto at the newsroom and we went out outside afterwards,
Speaker 6: down to Young Street and it was raining and it
Speaker 6: was kind of a warm rain, and David took off
Speaker 6: his shoes and his shirt because he wanted to feel
Speaker 6: the rain, you know, and he didn't care if everybody
Speaker 6: thought he was crazy, because he had been, you know,
Speaker 6: twenty two and a half years where he couldn't feel
Speaker 6: the rain, and he he wanted to experience it and
Speaker 6: he wasn't going to waste a minute. And so he
Speaker 6: when he went walking away, he hit his arms out,
Speaker 6: you know, like he was an airplane or like he
Speaker 6: was making a cross. And it's because he wanted to
Speaker 6: feel all the possible ring that he could. And that's
Speaker 6: one of those images that just stays with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. And you know the thing is when he
Speaker 5: had the compensation and they the authorities, still could not
Speaker 5: leave him alone. They were bothering him a few years
Speaker 5: ago to come to some hearing and threatening that they
Speaker 5: should come, and he said, well, I'm not really up
Speaker 5: to it, and they said, well you have to, and
Speaker 5: then that insult injury of the entire thing. The sort
Speaker 5: of conclusions were that the mother interfered, and if the
Speaker 5: mother wouldn't have interfered, and meanwhile, if the mother wouldn't
Speaker 5: have interfered, he still would have been in.
Speaker 6: There, and his mother deserves, you know, any honor we
Speaker 6: can think up for. I mean, he yeah, if if
Speaker 6: it wasn't for her, that kid would be dead or
Speaker 6: he's not a kid anymore, but I mean he'd be dead,
Speaker 6: and the real killer would have probably done more. I
Speaker 6: mean one thing, when Joyce Millgard, it was phenomenal sticking
Speaker 6: up for her kid, but she also was sticking up
Speaker 6: for other women who were victims of Larry Fisher. I mean,
Speaker 6: when you don't convict the right guy, you're letting the
Speaker 6: you know, the real killer, the real rapists go out
Speaker 6: there and do more. And he's got impunity. I mean,
Speaker 6: you're giving him a free pass. And so I mean,
Speaker 6: Joyce did a huge, huge public service, and it's so
Speaker 6: sad to see people try and drag it down to
Speaker 6: a petty personal level when they should just be learning
Speaker 6: from her. I mean, if it's funny, because with Joyce
Speaker 6: it's one of those things where you really feel it's
Speaker 6: the privilege to deal with someone, to talk to someone.
Speaker 6: And I remember, you know, when I thought about my
Speaker 6: own personal problems at the time, you know, then I
Speaker 6: look at Joyce and I think, gee, how can I
Speaker 6: wind when she's not complaining.
Speaker 5: Yeah. No, it's an incredible story of fighting a system
Speaker 5: that still does not want would make that they made
Speaker 5: this grave error, and not an error that anybody can
Speaker 5: understand it was. It is an incredible story.
Speaker 6: So from that they got the impression that a lot
Speaker 6: of kids are bullied into confessions that really aren't real.
Speaker 6: You know, especially a lot of First Nations kids. You
Speaker 6: know that a lot of people have said they've done
Speaker 6: things that they just really haven't done. I remember David Asper,
Speaker 6: who then was mill Guard's lawyer, and he talked about
Speaker 6: one guy who confessed to a murder when he was
Speaker 6: actually in custody somewhere else at the time of the murder.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was unless the guy was a phantom,
Speaker 6: it was absolutely impossible for him to have done it.
Speaker 6: But he just figured he's going to get shafted anyway,
Speaker 6: so why not go down easy.
Speaker 5: Well, what I have issue with in Canada is that
Speaker 5: supposedly we have these checks and these balances, but we
Speaker 5: are much more lenient to start with. Like I don't
Speaker 5: want to go on and on about it, but we
Speaker 5: we have a hard time prosecuting for murder one, whereas
Speaker 5: in Canada, we have this false assumption that, oh, we
Speaker 5: don't have the evidence for a murdered one conviction because
Speaker 5: you'd have to have all this evidence of premeditation. Well,
Speaker 5: in America, it's one minute of premeditation, thirty seconds of premeditation.
Speaker 5: The driver that went there for the robbery, he is
Speaker 5: also convicted of murder. And you could say that this
Speaker 5: is unjust. But I think that there are some you know,
Speaker 5: I think Canada I can learn something from, not necessarily
Speaker 5: the harshness of American law, but that there are circumstantial
Speaker 5: cases that make sense to juries that they do not
Speaker 5: you know, excuse murder as we often do in Canada.
Speaker 5: You know, you're intoxicated, so it's just it's manslaughter. And
Speaker 5: we're talking about much much less time. So I think
Speaker 5: that's the inheritent differences. But I can't believe that we
Speaker 5: have any wrongful convictions with the lawyers that you can
Speaker 5: get paid for by the taxpayer here and in the process,
Speaker 5: the long, careful process, and I can't believe that we're
Speaker 5: still getting wrongful convictions in this country.
Speaker 6: The one that really gets me, and this is you know,
Speaker 6: someone who works in Toronto, is that if you are
Speaker 6: going to do a gangline killing. And I mean the
Speaker 6: guy I'm writing about now, he's shot people for clubs.
Speaker 6: But if you are going to do one, I think
Speaker 6: that it should be ramped up. If it's done in
Speaker 6: a public place. I mean, to go and execute someone
Speaker 6: in the Eaton Center. Yeah, to shoot someone on Young
Speaker 6: Street when people are doing boxing day shopping. I mean,
Speaker 6: if you're even really hardened total total, bikers will a
Speaker 6: lot of bikers will call that cowardly. You know, the
Speaker 6: idea of shooting from a distance. The paralyzing of a
Speaker 6: woman in a sandwich shop in Toronto because they didn't
Speaker 6: have the guts to walk in and face the guy
Speaker 6: they're going to shoot, and so they try and shoot
Speaker 6: around a bunch of regular folks just lining up to
Speaker 6: buy sandwiches. I think if it's in a public place,
Speaker 6: I think that should ramp it up. Like I think
Speaker 6: that that should be there should be something that that
Speaker 6: contributes to them, both to the ends and to just
Speaker 6: to what it's called. I don't I don't think you
Speaker 6: should be allowed to claim manslaughter when you shoot someone
Speaker 6: in a crowded food coart or when you shoot someone
Speaker 6: in a crowded restaurant or when you shoot down the street.
Speaker 6: This guy I'm talking to you now, he's it sounds funny,
Speaker 6: but I mean he's he's disgusted by the lack of
Speaker 6: courage by a lot of people now who are going
Speaker 6: around doing gang line tellings that they don't have the
Speaker 6: guts to get out of their car, don't have the
Speaker 6: guts to walk up to someone, plant a bomb and
Speaker 6: hope it hits the right person. I mean, it's they're killers,
Speaker 6: but they're cowards too well.
Speaker 5: I've been hearing that from the mob ever since Sammy
Speaker 5: Gravano's complained about the locals and Ostra not being the
Speaker 5: way it used to be. Meanwhile, he's ratten out on
Speaker 5: sam On Gotti, John Gotti. So oh yeah, you hear
Speaker 5: a lot of that. You know, there's no there's no
Speaker 5: more honor. But I don't know there never really was,
Speaker 5: was there?
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe they never really was, but there was. Maybe
Speaker 6: maybe there's something between honor and courage, you know, like
Speaker 6: it does take out to walk right up and do it,
Speaker 6: and any fool can can shoot from a distance. I mean,
Speaker 6: when one joke now is that some of these guys
Speaker 6: would be better for the public and when they're in prison.
Speaker 6: You gave them target practice every day. You know, at
Speaker 6: least hit the guy you're trying to hit. Don't hit
Speaker 6: a bunch of mothers and daughters, and you know, little
Speaker 6: kids going to see movies, and at least teach them
Speaker 6: how to put the bullet where they want to put
Speaker 6: the bullet, rather than them springing all these people who
Speaker 6: don't have a clue what the dispute's about.
Speaker 5: Well, you know the thing is, too we do have
Speaker 5: we have, As I talked to the American audience sometimes or
Speaker 5: primarily American audience, I say, you know, we have about
Speaker 5: one tenth of the murder rates that say a typical
Speaker 5: American city would have, you know, not the did you
Speaker 5: can compare exactly, you know, but a fraction, say ten percent,
Speaker 5: will say for comparable place Winnipeg, say Detroit comparison. But
Speaker 5: the thing is, if you really think about it, what
Speaker 5: we are under the assumption in Canada, and it may
Speaker 5: be true to a certain extent, but for other reasons,
Speaker 5: is that we're a kinder, gentler country. We're not as violent.
Speaker 5: And you hear this from Canadians, the violent Americans, you
Speaker 5: know that they think it's like their entire culture is
Speaker 5: based on violence, which is is incorrect. And yet if
Speaker 5: you look at the Vincent Lee, if you look at
Speaker 5: the case of Colonel Williams, you look at the case
Speaker 5: that I was involved with, Sidney Tierhughes, you look at
Speaker 5: Mark Twitchell from Edmonton, and now you look at Luca Magnata.
Speaker 5: We are very very competitive, aren't we.
Speaker 6: Well, then are biker works too? I mean the are
Speaker 6: there around two hundred people murdered and all you know,
Speaker 6: others disappeared, a lot more injured just in Quebec and
Speaker 6: mostly not even Quebec, but really in Montreal, and they're
Speaker 6: only one hundred and twenty or so Hell's Angels in
Speaker 6: all of Quebec. I mean, at one point the biker
Speaker 6: violence accounted for seventeen percent of the province's murders. And
Speaker 6: so yeah, it's sort of like when we do it,
Speaker 6: we go right off off the deep end, you know,
Speaker 6: to plate Canadians just turn psychotic when they turn the switch.
Speaker 5: Yeah. No, I think we're very very competitive, And like
Speaker 5: I said, I think I think Canadians should dispense with
Speaker 5: this sort of notion and realize that certain people UH
Speaker 5: deserve to be in prison for the rest of their
Speaker 5: lives because they are dangerous individuals and we need not
Speaker 5: try to rehabilitate everyone because there's certain characters that absolutely
Speaker 5: cannot be rehabilitated. There's isn't even a device for consecutive
Speaker 5: convictions for murder. There is no actual life sentence without
Speaker 5: the possibility of parole. I don't know, you can't. I
Speaker 5: can't see how any political party is tough on crime.
Speaker 5: What they just don't get.
Speaker 6: That have seen some Ofwene Kelston's parole records, and you
Speaker 6: know when officer said, the problem is the guy likes
Speaker 6: being the criminal, you know, like he like, that's what
Speaker 6: he wants to be. And so how do you rehabilitate
Speaker 6: someone when that's that's his self image, that's who he
Speaker 6: wants to be, that's what he thinks is right. You know,
Speaker 6: where do you go from there?
Speaker 5: Well, you can never rehabilitate the victims families because if
Speaker 5: they have a parole hearing, regardless of whether you and
Speaker 5: I knowing that, well it's unlikely that you know, well,
Speaker 5: Robert Picton will not be paroled, but you have there's
Speaker 5: still a parole hearing.
Speaker 6: So yeah, and every time there's a victim there's there's
Speaker 6: a whole bunch of waves of secondary victims. You know,
Speaker 6: the other people who are heard, who've lost trust, who've
Speaker 6: been nervous, will never be the same. And so it's
Speaker 6: you know, it's not like it stops with one person
Speaker 6: that it just it keeps on going. Yeah, now, I
Speaker 6: it's kind of numbing, really, you know when you when
Speaker 6: you think about it, and when one thing I think,
Speaker 6: I mean, it sounds like me in the soapbox. But
Speaker 6: if people are upset with a with a organized crime
Speaker 6: drug war and stop buying the drugs, you know, and
Speaker 6: I know it's not quite that simple, but everyone who
Speaker 6: bought drugs from someone connected to the Hell's Angels and
Speaker 6: Quebec was contributing, you know, was basically buying bullets where
Speaker 6: the biker were. I mean, these guys don't operate in
Speaker 6: a vacuum and they don't force the drugs on people.
Speaker 6: I mean one of them said, you know, we don't
Speaker 6: ram it up their noses. They buy it from us.
Speaker 6: And so I know that doesn't make the guy innocent,
Speaker 6: but it sometimes we try and make all the crime
Speaker 6: on the other side of the fence. You know, look
Speaker 6: what they're doing, and look how bad they are. But
Speaker 6: you don't have a drug war without people buying drugs.
Speaker 5: Well, you also don't have a drug war when you know,
Speaker 5: again it's idealistic, but I think it's it's irresponsible that
Speaker 5: we didn't learn anything from the first prohibition of alcohol
Speaker 5: and alcohoone. Imagine what alcohol will be like and the
Speaker 5: society would be like of alcohol was still solemn booze.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, we went into the treatment, you know, like
Speaker 6: I've it bugged me when they hear about people with
Speaker 6: drug problems in there they've got a huge, huge waiting
Speaker 6: time for treatment. Or in Toronto where there are three
Speaker 6: dozen to basically work in these high risk communities and
Speaker 6: their two thirds of them are being laid off. I
Speaker 6: mean that the money would be better spent helping people,
Speaker 6: you know, find better things to do. There's some people
Speaker 6: like Callithon, You're just not going to You can spend
Speaker 6: all the money you want, you know, surveillance on them,
Speaker 6: he's still not going to stop them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think the thing is is that you know,
Speaker 5: and I'll just leave it at this statement in terms
Speaker 5: of my position is that I really think that the
Speaker 5: sooner we try to regulate all drugs. What will happen
Speaker 5: is that we need to separate regular society, whether it's
Speaker 5: a cocaine user for the first time or a cocaine
Speaker 5: user that's been using it for years. The reason why
Speaker 5: some of this biker activity is normalized, why women will
Speaker 5: go out with bikers while they see an attractive, well
Speaker 5: dressed biker with an expensive bike, they see the allure
Speaker 5: they see you know, there's charming people. They're charming guys
Speaker 5: that are outlaw. So I think the sooner that we
Speaker 5: separate regular society from being in contact with any kind
Speaker 5: of organized crime via drugs, then there will always be
Speaker 5: an element that will be an organized crime, that will
Speaker 5: be gangsters, that will be people who are violent. But
Speaker 5: when you take the drug profits out of the equation,
Speaker 5: and then you take the contact and the glamour and
Speaker 5: the normalization out of it, you're going to have the
Speaker 5: pirates of the world, the outlaws that went into a
Speaker 5: small innocent town and robbed the bank and killed whoever
Speaker 5: was got in their way. You're going to still have
Speaker 5: those people, but you're not going to have that collateral
Speaker 5: damage like you had in the biker wars, and you
Speaker 5: have with all of this, all of these bikers, all
Speaker 5: of these prospects, All of these people had families, like
Speaker 5: you say, you know, the president of the Probationary Chapter
Speaker 5: or pardon me, the Toronto Chapter talking on the phone
Speaker 5: with his wife. You know, all these people have families,
Speaker 5: they have children, they have you know. So again, so
Speaker 5: that's my bit too. You're right to somebody supported organized
Speaker 5: crime by buying those drugs, but we also have people
Speaker 5: have to be realistic about how all of this works.
Speaker 5: And I think it's time that the you know, the
Speaker 5: drug war is a failure, a dramatic failure. And like
Speaker 5: you say, if people are addicted to drugs, maybe they
Speaker 5: should be given in the opportunity to get off those
Speaker 5: drugs and they get for sure.
Speaker 6: I mean, if they got the guts to finally step
Speaker 6: out and and face it, then we should all be
Speaker 6: cheering them on and helping them. We shouldn't be saying,
Speaker 6: you know, wait another five months and maybe you can
Speaker 6: get in.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And also, I mean it sounds like me in the soapbox,
Speaker 6: but you know a lot of these guys, when you
Speaker 6: talk to him one on one, they're very, very needy,
Speaker 6: and they really want to belong to something that seems
Speaker 6: like something, and they sure, and so I mean better sports,
Speaker 6: better community programs, better something. So when they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,
Speaker 6: they can belong to something that that gets some respect,
Speaker 6: that doesn't involve carrying a gun, doesn't involve blowing things up.
Speaker 6: I mean a lot of them. They when you get
Speaker 6: them one on one, you think, Jesus, guy would have
Speaker 6: been a good football player. This guy would have been
Speaker 6: a good hockey player. This guy, he's got some rating ability.
Speaker 6: This guy sounds odd, but would have been good in
Speaker 6: the military, would have been good in business. You know
Speaker 6: a lot of them, and they can see it themselves,
Speaker 6: and they just but they want to be in something.
Speaker 6: And they've got kids who don't know who their fathers are.
Speaker 6: His fathers couldn't give a damn about them. One thing
Speaker 6: that jumps out at me too when I deal with
Speaker 6: these guys one on one is it's a very short
Speaker 6: list of the amount of them who had a good
Speaker 6: father at home. I mean, a lot of them don't
Speaker 6: know who their fathers were, or they their father would
Speaker 6: would slap them around. There's not a long list of
Speaker 6: people in organized crime. I'm outside of them, the mob,
Speaker 6: which is a different thing. But a lot of these
Speaker 6: guys got into it because they needed some sort of
Speaker 6: you know, male figure who could guide them a bit,
Speaker 6: and it turned out to be a you know, a
Speaker 6: guy who's making money illegally.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, all that is still, you know,
Speaker 5: there's all kinds the people who got hard luck stories
Speaker 5: and so are people still. It's just these people still
Speaker 5: chose to belong to an organization that's known that they
Speaker 5: will kill. And I mean, you know that's the bottom
Speaker 5: linees Like anybody that joins La Causa Nostra, you can't
Speaker 5: be that naive. You've got to know what's what's possibly
Speaker 5: in store here. So as much as they it's just
Speaker 5: a sad story that wasted lives, wasted opportunities, you know,
Speaker 5: no sense to this murder at all, but a great
Speaker 5: book and a great story. And again, like you say,
Speaker 5: there's so many incredible things, almost like sopranos when you
Speaker 5: see the surveillance team, and yet they can't, you know,
Speaker 5: they can't prevent this from happening.
Speaker 6: Well, it's better for me because for the website, I
Speaker 6: mean I could pick through all sorts of video and
Speaker 6: all sorts of audio, you know, before the murder and
Speaker 6: you think, geez, if I've got this stuff from you know,
Speaker 6: didn't the light go off that maybe something bad was
Speaker 6: going to happen? I mean, you know, couldn't they patch
Speaker 6: it together, that maybe something terrible was just about to
Speaker 6: to go down?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, well, Peter, I want to thank you
Speaker 5: very much for your time. It has been a very
Speaker 5: very informative interview. And for those people listening, we've been
Speaker 5: talking about the Bendido massacre by Peter Edwards and go
Speaker 5: to his website give.
Speaker 6: You that to us one more time, Bendido masac dot
Speaker 6: com and Bendido with t DS.
Speaker 5: Yeah, B A N D I d O. Okay, Well,
Speaker 5: thank you very much, Peter. We'll post that up on
Speaker 5: Facebook and I'll send you a link as well, and
Speaker 5: if you'd like to share this interview with people. So
Speaker 5: thank you very much, and we'll be looking forward to
Speaker 5: your eleventh true crime book, so get a hold of
Speaker 5: me definitely when that's going to be coming out. We'll
Speaker 5: be looking forward to that. And thank you again for
Speaker 5: this interview.
Speaker 6: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. I did too, and have yourself
Speaker 5: a great evening, Peter, Thank you doctor.
Speaker 6: Good night,