After his friend left and before we started off, Harris told me that Parente had recently called him to check me out, to see if I was okay. He wanted to know if I was honest. Harris told me that he assured him I was. He also warned me not to cross Parente.
Harris knew that I already knew a great deal about the history of outlaw biker gangs in Ontario, so he concentrated on Parente and other goings-on in the Hammer. According to Harris, Parente had joined the local chapter of Satan’s Choice in the late 1960s at the age of 18. In an earlier interview, Parente confirmed this. It was a good time to get established in that particular gang. They were big and still getting much bigger. So I asked Harris what Parente was like back then.
He was the exact opposite of hesitant in his answer. “Unlike a lot of guys, as soon as we started noticing him in Satan’s Choice, he’d talk to us,” Harris said. “Always had something to say, usually tried to be funny.” But as personable as he was, Parente also had a darker side, Harris pointed out. “He got in fights, and could sometimes be confrontational.” Parente himself told me his first conviction was for assaulting a Hamilton police officer he witnessed beating up a man he’d already handcuffed. Harris confirmed that.
I asked Harris what Parente looked like in those days. He told me that the bikers all dressed alike back then, with leather (or even more often, denim) jackets or vests, jeans and T-shirts. They also favored long hair and beards, and Parente was well stocked in both departments. “He had this huge mop of black hair and a big, long beard,” he told me, then thought about it for a second. “He kind of looked like Rasputin.”
And that’s part of why he got his nickname “The Wop.” While most of Satan’s Choice at the time could trace their roots back to the British Isles or elsewhere in Northwestern Europe, Parente was very clearly Italian.
But I pointed out to Harris that other prominent members of the Hamilton Satan’s Choice — like Anthony Pantonella — were also of Italian ancestry. He laughed. “Pantonella? He was a skinny kid with a big blonde afro. They called him ‘Cottonhead.’ But Parente looked Italian, he acted Italian.” Harris mentioned that he spoke with his hands. I’d seen that myself firsthand.
From my conversations with him, I knew Parente did not mind being called “The Wop.” He had even called himself “Mike the Wop” at least once in my presence. So why did he balk at being called Mario?
“He thought it sounded like a girl’s name,” said Harris.
Parente was, Harris maintained, a likeable enough guy despite being on the other side of the fence. Interestingly, Parente — who referred to most of the other cops we both knew as “bags of shit” — expressed respect, if not admiration, for Harris. Although he did point out that the big man could be more physical than he had to be at times.
Harris said that Parente was always up for a joke, and had a jovial way of expressing things. “One of the things I noticed about him early on was that he was always trying to improve himself, to educate himself,” he said. “He always wanted to be more eloquent; and if he learned a new word, you could tell because he would use it over and over again in conversation until he found a new one.”
Hamilton was one of the Satan’s Choice chapters that patched over to the Outlaws in 1977. Harris immediately noticed a change in Parente. He became more confident. “He was always willing to talk to you, no matter what the situation was like when he was with Satan’s Choice. But once he became an Outlaw, he really worked on his personality and he started speaking for the club. He was their spokesman.”
He’d offhandedly mention a club event, and Harris would say something like “I’ll see you there.” And that never failed to get a smile out of Parente. Another time, later in Parente’s career, after he had been arrested a few times, Harris ran into him at a bar patio in Hamilton’s trendy Hess Village. He was with two other men with Outlaws jackets on. Before he even saw their rockers, Harris identified them as being from out of town, probably from the United States. He sighed and yelled: “Mike, you’re getting too old for this; when are you going to give up the life?” Parente, he said, laughed and replied: “It’s the only thing I know.”
And he was not shy about expressing his association with the club. “He was on his bike all the time,” Harris said. “And he wore a lot of jewelry. Not just the Harley stuff all the other guys wore, but always things with the Outlaws logo on them; he was very proud to be part of the club.”
One of the pieces of jewelry was inscribed with the initials GLGC, Outlaws parlance for “Good-Looking Guys Club” — which is what they liked to call themselves. Although the transition from Satan’s Choice to Outlaws was mostly smooth, there was a minor war between the Hamilton Outlaws and their former brothers in the Kitchener Satan’s Choice that left one dead on each side before a truce was established.
There was another problem in Hamilton, a more racially mixed city at the time than any other in Ontario, that involved the Good-Looking Guys Club. Although they weren’t actually Satan’s Choice members, three men, friends of Parente’s — Lloyd Blaquierre, Freddie Weise and Michael Bierce — were very close to the Hamilton members of Satan’s Choice, and, according to some, looked like they could eventually become full-patches. But there was a problem — they were black. “The Outlaws said it was whites-only, and they had to abide by that,” said Harris. “So those guys were out; you could be Jewish or Mexican, but you just couldn’t be black.”
So Blaquierre, Weise and Bierce formed their own club. It was officially known as the No-Name Motorcycle Club, but the phrase “Not So Good-Looking Guys Club” was spray-painted on the alley-side wall of the old Cannon Street East storefront they used to rent.
According to Harris, Parente and the newly minted Hamilton Outlaws continued to associate and party with the Not So Good-Looking Guys Club, but “they sure didn’t like that name.” It wasn’t to last, though. The trio later beat a man to death one night over a long-forgotten dispute and dumped his body in Hamilton Harbour. Their subsequent arrests led to the little club’s extinction.
Over those same years, Stadnick climbed the biker ladder in an entirely different way.
Although both were from Hamilton, Parente and Stadnick would consider themselves from different places. You have to consider the social geography of the city. Hamilton is built at the western end of Lake Ontario, and is divided by an escarpment the locals call “the Mountain.” Created by the retreating glaciers thousands of years ago, it’s not a mountain in the traditional sense, but a nearly vertical cliff that separates two plains. The main part of Hamilton is very flat, then the escarpment lifts about 300 nearly vertical feet and the rest of the city is on another flat plain. The major north-south streets of the city continue up the cliff, but they have the prefix “Upper” added to their names; Ottawa becomes Upper Ottawa atop the mountain, Gage becomes Upper Gage and so on.
Walter “Nurget” Stadnick
Those who live on the Mountain generally consider those in the rest of the city (which they call “Downtown”) to be more ethnic, densely packed and poorer; while those below the Mountain (which they simply call “Hamilton,” saving the title “Downtown” for the busiest and oldest part of the city) generally consider their neighbors 300 feet up to be suburban, unsophisticated and boring. Although they share a city, the two groups don’t mix all that much, although some Mountain residents work down the hill and — before Downtown fell into decay, and malls on the edges of town took over — many of them did their shopping and enjoyed the nightlife down there.
While Parente lived Downtown — doubly so, as he lived in neighborhoods in or close to the city’s Central Business District — Stadnick came from the Mountain. Born to Ukrainian immigrant parents, Stadnick was one of three boys who grew up comfortably in a small, tidy house near a large park.
Always very small — topping out at five-foot-four or five-foot-five depending on who you talk to — and odd-looking, Stadnick was still very popular. That may well have been because he was a drug dealer. Arres
ted in 1971 (aged 24) with enough hashish to distribute, Stadnick always had money. After high school, he financed a motorcycle gang for himself and his friends, and he named them the Cossacks.
From everything I’ve been told, they weren’t all that impressive. They rode small bikes, mostly British in origin and paid for by Stadnick, and they drilled holes in the tops of their helmets and pulled their hair through them — because Stadnick thought it would look cool. “They weren’t a big deal,” Harris said. “Nobody paid them any attention.” Another police officer told me they were the most polite gang he’d ever encountered.
But over the years, they evolved into a more traditional motorcycle gang. Called the Wild Ones (perhaps in reference to the Marlon Brando movie, but probably not), they switched to Harleys and stopped doing silly things with their hair. And they behaved like the other big-time gangs. Besides drug trafficking, the Wild Ones are alleged to have been in the employ of Hamilton’s Italian Mafia. Although they were careful not to step on important, Papalia-connected toes, the Wild Ones are frequently said to have specialized in bombing bakeries and other businesses whose owners fell behind in protection or loan payments.
During most of the 1970s, the Wild Ones were seen as also-rans in the Hamilton biker scene. At the time, the city was dominated not just by Satan’s Choice, but also by the Red Devils.
Said to be the oldest 1-percenter (admittedly outlaw) club in Canada, the Red Devils have a more benign reputation than other big-time gangs. There are other, Hells Angels-allied biker clubs around the world called Red Devils, but they are not related to the Hamilton club, which is proudly unaffiliated.
Based on the Beach Strip — a very narrow piece of land that connects Hamilton to neighboring Burlington and protects Hamilton Harbour from Lake Ontario’s winds and waves — they are known to keep mainly to themselves. They ride and party and are rarely involved in the sorts of organized crimes law enforcement has come to find commonplace in outlaw biker gangs. They have little time for the politics of the bigger biker gangs, but are generally on positive terms with all of them. “They can party with the Outlaws one night and the Hells Angels the next,” said OPP biker specialist Len Isnor. “They get along with everyone.”
Before Satan’s Choice became the Outlaws, they were fairly tolerant of the Wild Ones, considering them not much of a threat, sometimes partying with them or even employing them occasionally. But, like everything else, those circumstances changed in the fateful summer of 1977.
The same factors that made the Outlaws expand to Ontario made Hells Angels desire the province just as much. And, although Stadnick was responsible for the bulk of the Hells Angels expansion in Canada, it did not start with him. That honor belongs to former Popeyes boss Yves “Le Boss” Buteau, who became Hells Angels Montreal Chapter president and Stadnick’s early mentor and champion.
Buteau had made major inroads with some B.C. gangs who later patched over to the Hells Angels of nearby Washington State before being brought into the Canadian Hells Angels fold many years later by Stadnick. And he had a particular interest in Ontario.
It made sense. Not only was it physically close to Montreal, but its economy (particularly in and around Toronto) was rapidly surpassing Quebec’s and it had many major border crossings.
But there was one problem — it was already full of motorcycle gangs, most of which were satisfied with the equilibrium the way it was. The province was also home to a set of powerful Mafia families who weren’t too interested in change either.
At that point, the primary gangs in Ontario were the Outlaws and what remained of the still-loyal-to-Guindon Satan’s Choice. Of course, there was no way Hells Angels and the Outlaws could have any sort of alliance, and Satan’s Choice had already shot down the idea of cooperation with Hells Angels — although they were far more powerful at the time of that decision — making them a hard sell at best.
So Buteau instead targeted the other, smaller gangs with varying levels of success. One such gang was Stadnick’s Wild Ones. Although Stadnick and his men were very interested in forming an alliance with Hells Angels, things did not go well for them once the Outlaws found out.
“As soon as the Wild Ones began to associate with the Hells Angels, the Outlaws told them they shouldn’t do that,” said Harris. “And they probably shouldn’t have, as it led to several deaths.”
It was the first biker war between the superpowers in Ontario. It was fought between the Outlaws and the Wild Ones, who were, in essence, the Hells Angels’ proxy. Over the next few months, the 15-member Wild Ones suffered terribly. Dennis Stewart was killed by a car bomb. Another car bomb took off Danny Powell’s right leg. Alvin Patterson’s store was shot up while he was in it, and the same thing happened to John “Cataract Jack” Pluim’s talent agency.
Two more Wild Ones — Peter Urech and Derek Thistlewaite — died instantaneously when a bomb they were trying to make blew up during construction. But Outlaws hadn’t been the intended target of the bomb. Informants later told Harris that it was meant to eliminate or at least intimidate a Hamilton woman who had been gang-raped by members of the Wild Ones, to prevent her from testifying in court.
In fact, the Wild Ones never actually managed to do anything to retaliate against the Outlaws in Hamilton. They talked about it a lot, but never managed to put anything together. And when Stadnick returned from the fateful Le Tourbillon summit meeting with Hells Angels to report that fellow members Gary “Gator” Davies and George “Chico” Mousseau were dead (along with Montreal Hells Angel Jean Brochu), it was over for the Wild Ones. Those who weren’t either dead or dismembered quit. Many of them continued to be friends and even business partners with Stadnick in the future, but none went back to the biker lifestyle.
But Stadnick continued to operate in Hamilton. Alone and wary as a Hells Angels associate — and later a prospect of the distant and notoriously violent Montreal South (Sorel) Chapter — in an Outlaws town, he continued to make friends and sell the brand, but he generally laid low in his hometown.
As Harris and I drove around, he showed me all kinds of biker-related landmarks. He showed me a house Parente used to own, but never lived in, instead choosing to rent it out. Then another house he actually lived in with his girlfriend, although he didn’t own it or actually pay any rent. Harris pointed out a roofing company owned by a full-patch Hamilton Hells Angel who used to be an Outlaw. Then he laughed when he told me about how another Hells Angel won the contract to pave the new East End police station’s parking lot.
Then he showed me the James Steet North restaurant Zucca’s, where a wise guy’s Yukon Denali was recently shot up and many say what’s left of the Italian Mafia still meet.
I asked him if the Mafia still hold much sway in Hamilton, traditionally their base in Ontario, after all the killings and arrests.
“Oh yeah,” he said vehemently. “They’re still around. Look at the Royal Connaught situation, lots of people got paid, but not a thing’s been done.” He was referring to Hamilton’s last great hotel, which still lies in ruins on the south side of King Street despite tons of public money having been paid out for its restoration. But he admits they’re nowhere near as powerful as they were in the Papalia heyday.
As we kept driving around the city, we stopped to check in on a minivan with a homemade trailer that had been driving the wrong way on a one-way street until it collided head-on with a garbage truck. The minivan was crushed and the homemade trailer was upside-down about half a block away, but Harris’ officers seemed to have it all under control, so we left.
Harris then took me to 402 Birch Avenue, right where it meets Burlington Street in the north end amongst the giant, now-mostly empty steel factories and other metal-fabricating businesses. There was nothing there. Literally. I told him I had been there before — having been told it was where the Outlaws clubhouse was — but I thought I had written the address down incorrectly or confused it with Birch Street, a few blocks to the east. “Nope,” he told me. “City got
rid of it. Used to be a row of houses right there, and the Outlaws clubhouse was one of them.” Then he pointed at a triangle of patchy grass and cracked pavement. Then he pointed at the curb. “And that’s where Jimmy Lewis died,” referring to the killing that landed Parente in prison.
Then we drove around the corner of notorious Sherman Avenue. To me, it looked like the most worthless bit of territory in all of the rust belt; but many Hamiltonians know that it is one of the most fiercely fought-over stretches of land in organized crime history. “There, 409 Sherman Avenue North. That’s where the Sherman House used to be,” he said. “It was an old-style strip bar where the Outlaws used to hang out; it was owned by Billy Roberts and his wife. They had a ‘talent agency.’ ” There’s nothing there now but a parking lot surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire. It was empty except for a couple of rusty old dumpsters.
I mentioned that there used to be a lot of strip joints in Hamilton. “Yeah, there were nine at one point,” he said. “Now there’s just one.” We both know he’s talking about the infamous Hamilton Strip, formerly known as Hanrahan’s.
“What? Bannister’s is gone?” I asked, dumbfounded. The downtown strip joint was an institution. I was first brought there one afternoon when I was 15 by some school chums — they were pretty loose about ID back then — but my memories of the place are not fond.
In fact, I knew it was no longer called Bannister’s because its owners had gotten into some serious trouble, but there had always been some kind of strip joint in the building under one name or another.
Harris told me that there hadn’t been a strip joint in the building for years and that the only other one nearby was in Burlington. He added that the Outlaws used to hang out there, but don’t anymore. “People just don’t feel comfortable in those places anymore,” he said. “And they can get anything they want these days from the Internet.”
Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle Page 8