While the Woodbridge Loners didn’t patch over to Bandidos, the others — including Kellestine’s Chatham Chapter — did. It happened while Kellestine was in prison and Muscedere was acting in his place. Muscedere was made president (el presidente in Bandidos’ parlance) of Ontario and vice-president of Canada, second in rank behind national president Alain Brunette (who had replaced the recently convicted Faucher).
Soon thereafter, in 2002, the combined forces of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), OPP and Sûreté du Québec (SQ) launched Project Amigo, which was originally aimed at eliminating the Rock Machine from Canada. Since the club’s name had changed, but its membership by and large had not, it was now aimed at Bandidos. And they cops did a pretty good job, using evidence gathered during the Hells Angels-Rock Machine war, they arrested almost every single Bandido in the country. By Winterhalder’s own admission: There were 65 [Canadian] Bandidos in prison or out on bond awaiting trial. There were another half-dozen who had gone underground to avoid arrest. Left on the street and not in trouble with the law were fewer than 15 Bandidos in Ontario — and none in Quebec!
Bandidos actually issued a media release that admitted that the club was dead in Quebec, but survived in Ontario and was planning to expand into Western Canada. Since the evidence was gathered against the original Rock Machine, the more recent patch-overs — including Muscedere’s and Kellestine’s former Loners — were not part of the raid.
Years later, in 2003, they found themselves as the only Bandidos chapter in Canada. After the arrests from Project Amigo left the Canadian club with barely more than a dozen members, all in three distant Ontario chapters, they were consolidated into one chapter based in Toronto. Muscedere was their president and, with Brunette behind bars for a long time, found himself as national president as well.
The few remaining Canadian Bandidos didn’t have a clubhouse, but instead met in a run-down bar in Toronto’s notorious Parkdale neighborhood. Few of them lived in Toronto, though, and many of them had long commutes to their meetings.
Faced with the prospect of having just one small, loose-knit chapter in the whole country, Bandidos went on a major recruiting drive. They established probationary chapters in Winnipeg and Edmonton — two cities that had been particularly receptive to Stadnick’s Hells Angels sales pitch — with bikers who had become disillusioned with or passed over by the big guys.
The Edmonton experiment ended on January 30, 2004. Two men from the Rebels, the club charged with leading the Bandidos expansion into Edmonton, went for a night out on the town. Joey Morin and Robert Charles Simpson were just getting out of Morin’s car when they were approached by some other men. Morin was somewhat famous in the city after he pulled three men from a blazing truck as a teenager in 1989. But because he avoided media coverage and award ceremonies — including the Governor General’s Award for Bravery and the St. John’s Ambulance Award of Merit — he was known throughout the city as the “Shy Hero.”
But there was little heroic about what he was doing that night. He and Simpson were headed into Saint Pete’s Mens Club, a large and popular strip joint in the northwest section of the city. Although owner Peter Bodenberger claimed his club had no affiliations with any particular gang, people in the area knew it as a Rebels’ hangout. Neither Morin nor Simpson were wearing colors when they arrived. Just as they slammed the doors of Morin’s car, the men who had approached pulled their guns and started firing.
The police never said how many shots were fired (or even how many shooters there were), but there was enough hot lead in the air to nearly sever Morin’s arm. The police did admit that both men had been shot in “nearly every part of their bodies.”
Simpson died at the scene. Morin was rushed to Royal Alexandra Hospital where he lingered a few hours and died in the arms of his mother, Sharon Trottier.
Although some Ontario Bandidos attended the funerals, what was left of the Rebels — who had gained a great deal of notoriety in 1991 when a member named Daniel R. “Coyote” Wolf wrote a PhD thesis about life in the club that was later published as a book — renounced their Bandidos membership, and threw their lot in with Hells Angels.
It was during this period — just after Project Amigo and the demise of the club’s hopes in Edmonton — that Kellestine got out of prison. He went in a Loners chapter president and came out a Bandido. The bosses in Texas made it clear that they did not want Kellestine in charge, so Muscedere did not step down for him to return as president when he was released in August 2004. Instead he offered him the position of sargento de armas (sergeant-at-arms). Kellestine accepted, but was well known to be angry at the fact that he was now taking orders from his old flunky.
The Bandidos gained some traction in Winnipeg, a city with a long tradition of rival biker gangs and strong-willed factions. Their recruiting took off when a small, anti-Hells Angels gang signed on. They had been called Los Montoneros. Police recognized them as a Bandidos puppet gang when some were arrested and on their crest was the acronym SYLB — “Support Your Local Bandidos.” They also had a yellow-on-red patch, the reverse of the Bandidos red on yellow. It’s commonplace for puppet gangs to wear the reverse of their parent club’s colors, such as the Black Pistons’ black-on-white patch which indicates their relationship with the Outlaws, who wear white on black.
The media often reports that the name Los Montoneros means “the Wolf Pack” (and the Montoneros may well have believed that themselves), but it actually has a more complex meaning. In Spanish, the suffix “-ero” means someone who does something, like a profession, much like the English “-er.” And “monton,” depending on where you are in Latin America, can mean to pile or stack or it can simply mean a lot of something. The name Montoneros originally came into use in the 1960s when the left-wing Argentine guerrilla group Movimentos Peronista Montoneros fought against that country’s right-wing dictatorship. Basically, it means “the workers” or “the masses.”
Before long, Los Montoneros started wearing a new patch, the familiar “fat Mexican” of Bandidos. And under the logo was a rocker that read “probationary.”
Their leader, Michael “Taz” Sandham, was a big tough guy who had been an auxiliary police officer in Ste. Anne, Manitoba, and a full constable in East St. Paul, Manitoba. Both of those communities are small and relatively affluent suburbs of Winnipeg. He worked very, very hard to keep his law enforcement past a secret from his fellow bikers.
Michael “Taz” Sandham
Sandham had spent a lot of time communicating with the Toronto Chapter, eventually coming to a party on Kellestine’s farm. His aim, he told the guys back home, was to get Winnipeg elevated from a probationary chapter to a full chapter (or at least to get a timetable on when they could expect that to happen). But he went home disappointed. Muscedere had little to say on the matter, and Kellestine kept telling him that they just didn’t know enough about him or his guys to move forward.
There are lots of different opinions and even a few fabrications about what happened next. But what we do know is that, by early 2006, the Canadian Bandidos were a gang very much divided.
In December 2005, the Bandidos leadership in Texas officially revoked the membership of the only remaining official Canadian chapter. Most sources said that the Americans felt that the Canadians were not pulling their weight financially, and others indicated that the Americans were unnerved by how sloppily the Canadians went about their business, believing they were flagrantly courting prosecution.
While those concerns may have been valid, the Bandidos’ Texas leadership’s major complaint was that the Canadians wouldn’t communicate with them, a matter made worse by the fact that none of the American Bandidos with any authority to check up on them could cross the border because of felony convictions and/or outstanding warrants. Bill “Bandido Bill” Sartelle, the Houston-based national secretary boss, wrote an e-mail to every Bandido chapter in the world indicating the Texans’ official position: To whom it may concern: For the past year or more
, we, BMC USA, have attempted to make communications with Canada. We have directed face to face visits from whoever is in charge up there. Up till now there has been no visit from the proper person. It has been decided that due to a lack of participation, Canada’s Charter is being pulled. Effective immediately: Return all Bandido patches and property to the following address [Sartelle’s home in Friendwood, Texas]. In approximately 30 days we will make notification to all that we no longer have a Chapter in Canada and that any person wearing our Patch, in Canada, is not sanctioned. Bill 1%er
The Toronto/Canada president, Muscedere, responded by sending increasingly pleading e-mails back to Texas in an attempt to get them to reconsider. He wrote to Sartelle: ... there is no reason too take something the canadian brothers value more than there own lives when a brother is down you reach out your hand too help him up not kick them I feel like a knife has been driven in my heart would you beleave it my own brother has done what my enemys could never do without my death ...
That rubbed the Texans the wrong way; they clearly wanted a less philosophical and more practical discussion. “You can’t come here, we can’t come there, but you do not want to answer any questions,” Sartelle wrote. “There are issues that need to be resolved. I have made attempts to get these answers, but have not gotten fuck all.”
Sandham had a different, and very telling response. He wrote to Sartelle: “I am just hearing about this problem with Toronto. I hope this does not reflect on us [the probationary chapter in Winnipeg] ... Also, Bandido Wayne ‘W’ would like someone their to call him. He is in London, Ontario [Kellestine’s home phone number].”
When Muscedere’s e-mail exchanges with the Texans failed to move anything forward, another Toronto Bandido named George “Crash” Kriarakis tried his hand at convincing the Americans to reverse their decision and let them stay in the club. He wrote on international guestbooks and forums that “Ontario is standing tall,” indicating they were refusing the Texans’ orders to give up their patches.
When Sartelle repeated his demands, Kriarakis confronted him directly. “Give us a fair and reasonable chance,” he implored, then changed tack and insulted Sartelle, calling him “a peace of work.”
Sartelle, clearly a more careful speller but still not a consummate grammarian, wrote back: “Yes, I am a piece of work, and proud of who I am.” His demand stood.
George “Crash” Kriarakis
When attempts to negotiate with the Texans failed, Muscedere wrote begging messages on the guestbooks of Bandidos’ sites around the world, appealing to them to stand up for the Toronto Chapter, which Muscedere claimed was being treated unfairly. Nobody — not even their Scandinavian sponsors — came to their aid, or if they did they were quiet about it and not very successful.
Finally, Muscedere sent the following e-mail to every Bandidos chapter in the world: We ask that our Brothers make there voice heard from all over the world and stand tall with us in support of us as we have all our brothers. We would like a worldwide vote from all our brothers from around the world before we return our Bandidos property.
The highest-ranking member of Bandidos, el presidente Jeff Pike from the Houston Chapter, had the final word on the matter when he sent an e-mail to Muscedere that told him: “Bandidos don’t vote, they do what the fuck they’re told.”
Although they kept their Bandidos patches, the Toronto Chapter (many of whom, like Muscedere, actually lived in Southwestern Ontario and commuted to the club meetings) renamed themselves the No Surrender Crew, a name borrowed from a particularly violent faction of the Irish Republican Army. The Toronto version of “No Surrender” referred to the fact that these Bandidos wouldn’t give up their patches without a fight.
Kellestine was a different story — as he always seemed to be. With some excessive drug use and bad business ideas, he had gone into severe debt, and one of his biggest creditors was the club itself. He had also forged a bitter divide between himself and the rest of the club by complaining bitterly of their lack of desire to make money and because they always called him late for meetings, not taking into account how far away he lived. And he had made some new friends outside the club. The crystal meth trade was flourishing and growing in Southwestern Ontario, and Kellestine had acquired several close associates in the business of manufacturing and retailing the drug. They assured him it was easy money, exactly what he needed to get out of his money troubles. Still, Muscedere and the bulk of the Toronto Chapter did not want to get involved with Kellestine’s new friends or their business. It was, they decided, just too dangerous.
But some others did want to get involved. Kellestine had reached out to Winnipeg’s prospective Bandidos, who lived in a place where meth had been very popular for a much longer time. The members of the probationary chapter there had grown very impatient with Muscedere, whose incompetence and poor relationship with the Texans they felt was the real reason they had been prevented from getting recognized as an independent full-patch Bandidos chapter.
At the start of April 2006, it all came to a head. The Americans had ordered Muscedere and his men to relinquish their patches more than five months earlier. But the No Surrender Crew were determined to stay on as Bandidos anyway, and wanted to do it without Kellestine and his meth. Kellestine wanted to make money selling meth and, if possible, remain a Bandido. Winnipeg wanted to be Bandidos making money selling meth and saw Muscedere and his crew standing in the way.
The Americans had given Kellestine the task of collecting his chapter’s patches and returning them to Texas in March 2006. The job was too big for him, and he knew it. So he stalled. But when four representatives of the Winnipeg prospective chapter arrived unannounced at his Iona Station farm to ask him why he hadn’t stripped his brothers of their patches (strongly intimating that they’d pull his own patch unless he acted quickly), he knew he had to do something.
The Winnipeggers were tough guys, sent on purpose to intimidate Kellestine. The tacit message was that if he didn’t take care of it, they would do it themselves and they would take care of him, too.
Besides being a former cop and martial arts instructor, Sandham had been in the Canadian military, had undergone special-weapons training and had been known to associate with members of the Winnipeg Outlaws. He was easily the most important member of the prospective chapter and president-in-waiting should Winnipeg ever become a full-patch chapter. But the members of his gang were pressing him to do something about Toronto, and he, too, was in danger of losing his status among them unless he acted.
Sandham was actually with Kellestine at a March 2006 meeting with the American Bandidos at the Peace Arch Park on the British Columbia-Washington state border when the original orders to pull Toronto’s patches came down. The park is unique in that there’s a picnic table there that allows people on opposite sides of the border to meet face to face without entering the other country. This is important to bikers of many clubs because many of them are banned from crossing the border due to felony convictions or outstanding warrants.
The orders to “unpatch” the No Surrender Crew came from Peter “Mongo” Price, a 350-pound monster with long hair he liked to dye a brilliant shade of orange. Price was the Washington State Bandidos sergeant-at-arms, and was known to carry two guns, two knives and a chain with him at all times. He is said to have told Kellestine that if he succeeded in removing Toronto’s patches he would be in charge of the Toronto chapter and be Canadian national president, while Sandham would become president of the newly official Winnipeg Chapter, and second-in-command of the Canadian Bandidos. He also indicated that if Kellestine failed, he would be in the same boat as the rest of the Toronto chapter and the duty (and rewards) would then fall to Sandham.
Police recorded Kellestine talking to Keswick-based full-patch Cameron Acorn just after the meeting. He told him that “The people in the States are super, super, super fuckin’ choked.” In biker parlance that means upset or disturbed. When Acorn acknowledged that he knew that, and that Kellestine ha
d been out west to talk with them about the situation, Kellestine told him: “And don’t say a word, just ... uh ... just leave it at that.”
Later in the same phone conversation, he told Acorn that there was trouble on the horizon: “For some strange reason they [the Americans] seem to ... oh, fuck ... anyways there’s gonna be some major changes, man ... I’m telling you that right now you protect yourself ... it’s not my doing, I want no part of this, but I’m gonna try to salvage as many guys as possible.”
When Sandham arrived at Kellestine’s farm, he brought along full-patch Dwight Mushey — a former kick-boxer turned boxer who had a rather disheartening 7-32-1 record as a pro. He had already been arrested for selling meth at least once back in Manitoba. Also with them was prospect Marcello Aravena — a professional tae kwon do instructor and strip-club bouncer. There was another man in the group, another big guy, Mushey’s workout partner who was a full-patch and is now in the federal witness protection program and may only be referred to as M.H. He was a police informant before April 2006, but did not have any significant information about the upcoming meeting to share with police.
The four men showed up, they said, at the urging of an American Bandido who was identified as Keinard “Hawaiian Ken” Post. Post wanted to know why it had taken Kellestine so long to pull Toronto’s patches.
Instead of just giving up and allowing the Winnipeggers to pull his patch, Kellestine explained his situation and recruited them to help him and two local friends — career break-and-enter man Frank Mather, who was originally from New Brunswick but now lived with Kellestine, and 21-year-old Brett “Bull” Gardiner of no fixed address — to strip Muscedere and his men of theirs.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle Page 19