Both men received 20-year sentences, minus time served.
Chapter 14
“It was so cool; I can’t hardly describe it,” said Manny, an 18-year-old who happened to be waiting for a Fennell Bus on his way to his job at Mountain Plaza. “All these cops—with shields and guns and armor—were telling everyone to get off the block.” Manny did what they said, but he waited with a bunch of other curious people just around the corner, all looking to see why the cops were so excited. Selling baseball caps for a bit more than minimum wage could wait. This was important.
Although it was just June 8, it was already getting hot. Hamilton, even the mountain, is known around the area for its oppressive heat and mugginess, and the summer of 2005 was already starting to get bad. Manny could see the cops sweating and suffering under their armor. “There’s snipers on the roof of the bingo hall,” said a girl about Manny’s age. “They went up with these really big guns—I thought they were army guys at first—it was cool.” And, when Manny squinted, he could see the barrels of the rifles over the roof of the Princess Bingo Centre. The girl then pointed to more snipers on top of the high-rise across the street.
Now Manny was really interested. At first he thought it was a bank robbery, but the banks were closer to Upper Wellington and from what he could see, the snipers were pointing their guns the other way, up toward East 14th. There was nothing worth robbing up that way.
Without being asked, an older bald guy told everybody what he thought. “It’s for Chrétien,” he said. “He’s in town for Mac grad.” Indeed the former prime minister was in Hamilton that day for Convocation at McMaster University, but Mac was down the mountain. There were no snipers on top of its libraries or classrooms, just an ordinary security detail with handguns and walkie-talkies. And Jean Chrétien had no business at the Princess Bingo Centre or any of the buildings around it.
As the spectators were discussing the reasons behind the armed occupation, the roadblock opened up and a fleet of cars, led by a marked Hamilton cop car with lights flashing, went down the otherwise deserted street. The third vehicle in line was a big black Chevrolet Suburban with blacked-out windows and the word “Canada” on the driver’s door. It parked on East 14th, just outside the parking lot of the Crestmount Funeral Home. When the doors of the Suburban finally opened, Manny could see two guys in dark suits get out. As soon as they were standing up, they opened umbrellas. Then a third, smaller, man got out and hid behind the black umbrellas. He was followed by another guy in a suit. The four of them walked into the building past a lineup of cops in full riot gear. They also went by the funeral home’s sign, which announced services for “Andrew Stadnik.”
Walter Stadnick’s 92-year-old father had died at home, about four blocks north of Crestmount, three days earlier. There was a small, nondescript announcement in the paper that said the service was limited to family and a few close friends. A couple dozen heavily armed Hamilton cops would arrive as well. Andrew’s oldest son Eric had died a few years earlier from a heart attack and Gordon, who always had a problem with drugs and everything, had just gotten out of jail after getting into yet another fight. The youngest, and some say Andrew’s favorite, had made it to the service despite living a long way away and under unique circumstances. Transported from the Special Handling Unit of Ste-Anne-des-Plaines maximum-security prison 400 miles away, the man Andrew had named Wolodumyr Stadnik was allowed a half hour of private visitation with his father’s body. According to an observer who attended the funeral and briefly glimpsed Walter, the former biker king was silent and slipped away without incident. He’d arrived shortly after noon and by 1:00 p.m., he was on the road back to prison.
It would probably be his last time out of prison for a long time. Although his lawyer, Alan D. Gold, is mounting a long-promised appeal, few seem optimistic it will succeed. Randall Richmond, the Hamilton-born prosecutor who sent Stadnick away, doesn’t seem very impressed. “Yeah, yeah, the appeal,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for the defense to file their appeal, but it’s been a long time. Walter Stadnick and Donald Stockford are in jail and I’ve got lots of other work to do.”
Kathi Anderson, Stadnick’s common-law wife of many years, still adamantly maintains that he is nothing more than a member of a motorcycle enthusiasts’ club and that he was convicted on nothing more than conjecture and circumstantial evidence. If what they were saying was true, she points out, why hadn’t she seen any of the millions that was supposed to have passed through her husband’s hands? She’s got a point. Although Anderson and Stadnick did live well in a nice house with Harleys, luxury cars and expensive wardrobes, theirs was a lifestyle more befitting a successful banker or real estate agent than an organized crime kingpin. His opponents say that the money was beside the point for Stadnick. Although he was willing to buy nice things for himself and Anderson, his real goal was to be in charge of the organization. The money was just a bonus.
Ten days after Stadnick and Stockford were convicted, Justice Jerry Zigman presided over their proceeds of crime trial. Noting that the pair had cleared over $2 million in profits from selling drugs from March 1999 to December 2000, he decided that each of the defendants would pay a $100,000 fine and forfeit their homes (or at least the equity they had in them) and all of their vehicles. Stockford also lost $34,000 in cash the police found in his home. Prosecutor Brigitte Bishop declared it a major victory, although she had asked Zigman to fine each man $10 million. Stadnick gave up three vehicles, including his Harley. Anderson and Stockford’s wife, Christine, managed to reach a deal with the government in which they could keep their houses by paying the equity ($90,000 for Anderson and $50,000 for Stockford) through second mortgages.
The idea of Stadnick reducing his tenure in prison by turning informant stretches credulity far beyond the breaking point. Stadnick built the Canadian Hells Angels into his own empire, and he’d never do anything to harm it for a few measly years off his sentence. What would he do with them anyway? Get police protection and live a normal life with a job like some nobody? Although he’d astutely and efficiently run what amounted to one of the most profitable and powerful corporations in the country, he’d have nothing more than a high school education (specializing in auto shop) and a long prison term to put on his résumé. No, it makes far more sense to stick out his sentence and behave as the model prisoner in hopes of early parole. Depending on the opinion of the parole board, Stadnick should exit prison somewhere between the ages of 61 and 64. He could enjoy his retirement with the help of his friends or even rejoin the biker world, this time being even more careful than before.
Besides, things haven’t worked out so well for the informers. Dany Kane is dead, probably by his own hand. Aimé Simard was stabbed more than 100 times in his cell in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, about a week after he requested a transfer because he feared for his life. Stéphane Gagné and Serge Quesnel are still in jail. Yves “Apache” Trudeau spent seven years in protective custody and then was freed under a witness-protection program. After losing three government-supplied jobs, the mass murderer went on welfare. It worked out pretty well until he was discovered by police sodomizing an underage boy. In court, Trudeau pointed out that prison can be a very dangerous place for informants and pedophiles (not to mention mass murderers). The judge was not impressed; he was given four years and was stripped of his federal protection.
Most of the other bikers who played a big part in the great Hells Angels-Rock Machine war are now either dead or imprisoned. A census of Quebec prisons would reveal a veritable Who’s Who of Nomads, Hells Angels, Rockers and other bikers. Most of them, like Stadnick, won’t be out for a while. And some are with him in the SHU, the only supermax prison in Canada and the only one in which guards carry loaded weapons on routine patrols. At least one prisoner who was recently released from the SHU has told me that the old bikers, in particular the still-swaggering Boucher, are doing well and looking forward to their releases. He doesn’t think that Boucher or any of the others wield any significant po
wer outside the prisons but would likely be welcomed back into the clubs with positions of honor.
Stadnick, he said, mainly keeps to himself and a few close friends and generally falls under most people’s radar. But it hasn’t been all easy behind bars for the top bikers. Boucher has survived at least one murder attempt, perhaps more. On August 15, 2002, a 36-year-old inmate from Saskatchewan managed to get close enough to Boucher in the prisoners’ dining hall to stab him once in the right underarm with a makeshift knife. Before he could strike again, a group of inmates who were surrounding Boucher wrestled the knife from him and attacked his assailant before guards stepped in. “The four guys with Mom grabbed the native guy, drove him into a shower stall, beat the living crap out of him and stabbed him 21 times,” said a source who witnessed the incident.
Although Boucher was essentially unharmed (he required no medical attention), while his assailant eventually died from his wounds, it was a stark reminder that the Hells Angels are not the only gang, or even the most powerful gang, behind bars. The would-be assassin was a member of the Indian Posse, a gang made up of Native Canadians. Most inmates say they have far more members and power than the bikers in Canada’s prisons.
With so many Hells Angels behind bars, especially the important ones, it’s tempting to think of them as a weakened and declining empire. According to police forces all over the country, the opposite is true. While they may be the No. 2 gang in prisons, they are still solidly in front on the streets of Canadian cities and towns. With 34 chapters in Canada, the Hells Angels are still on top of the organized crime heap. Although police intelligence officers claim that their activity has been reduced in the Maritimes and Quebec, which is no surprise considering the massive number of arrests, those same officers admit that business is booming for the Hells Angels in Ontario and Western Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) claim that the Toronto area has the greatest concentration of Hells Angels in the world. Things are even better for them out West, where crystal meth use has reached epidemic proportions. According to one Saskatchewan biker cop, “There’s tons of crystal meth out there, and the Hells Angels are controlling it all.”
A street-level dealer who recently moved from Toronto to Edmonton told me, “These days, you can sell meth anywhere there’s white people . . . of course I get it from the bikers—that’s what they’re famous for.”
Perhaps more important is the fact that Stadnick’s legacy lives on. According to the Hells Angels head office, there are currently 22 Nomads chapters worldwide in places as disparate as Brazil, Finland and Nevada. While the man himself is behind bars, he can feel secure in the knowledge that his philosophical contribution has helped the club immeasurably.
And, as the Hells Angels saved themselves by turning to selling illegal drugs in 1965, they have recently gone to legal means to raise funds. Although the Hells Angels would never allow a non-member to wear the winged skull logo or the name, the club has opened a number of retail stores to sell what they call “support gear”—licensed items with pro-biker designs and logos. With slogans like “Support 81” (the 8 stands for H, the eighth letter of the alphabet and 1 for A) and ACAB (an acronym for All Cops Are Bastards), Hells Angels-approved gear is selling like proverbial hotcakes. I visited one of the two Toronto locations and almost bought a T-shirt. On a black background, a muscular man with heavily tattooed arms on a Harley is lovingly holding onto a smaller Harley with a toddler aboard. The slogan reads “Big Red Machine/First Lesson.” Other stores have opened in places like Thunder Bay, Ontario; Moncton, New Brunswick; and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. “Obviously we want to make money off them,” said Donny Peterson, the former Para-Dice Rider who has become a de facto Hells Angels spokesman. “And we do make good money off them.” Another store is planned for Halifax.
Of course, the authorities haven’t stood still. Operations like Project Dante in which the RCMP, OPP and Sûreté du Québec (SQ) arrested 16 Hells Angels in the Kingston and Ottawa areas continue and arrests pile up. Hit particularly hard have been the Bandidos, who did eventually swallow up what remained of the Rock Machine, making the last remaining major Canadian motorcycle gang a subsidiary of an American super-club.
Advocates of tough anti-gang legislation cheered on June 30, 2005, when a Barrie, Ontario, judge ruled that the Hells Angels were indeed a “criminal organization.” At the extortion trial of Woodbridge Hells Angels Steven “Tiger” Lindsay and Ray Bonner, Justice Michele Fuerst found them guilty not just of demanding $75,000 from a Barrie businessman, but also for having “presented themselves not as individuals, but as members of a group with a reputation for violence and intimidation.” Since Lindsay and Bonner used nothing more than the man’s fear of the Hells Angels to force him into payment, it was clear to Fuerst that the club was itself a weapon. Of course, Fuerst’s ruling did not outlaw the Hells Angels, but it did open up members and associates to harsher penalties if they are convicted of any crime. As one Toronto-area biker said to me: “Great, now if I get into a bar fight, I can get 14 years tacked on to my sentence because of what some guys did in Quebec ten years ago.”
But despite all the arrests and threats of harsh punishments, the bikers, especially the Hells Angels, continue to survive, even expand. “With Operation Springtime, we took out the brains of the organization,” said one OPP officer. “But it didn’t matter; they put together such a well-thought-out system that taking the managers out of the equation didn’t affect it all that much.” They can thank Walter Stadnick.
As has been the case for more than half a century, there are legions of young men who will work hard, humiliate themselves and give up everything they have just for a chance to wear the colors. I talked to an old friend of mine who counsels troubled youth in suburban Montreal. The boys he sees are from the very pool that biker gangs have always recruited from. Though some of them are smart, they are all doing poorly in school and most have had some trouble with the law. “If they have one common thread, it’s the alienation,” said the counselor. “That and a habit of wearing denim and leather.” They’re about the same age Daniel Desrosiers would be if he were still alive. Although none of them would admit that they want to join a motorcycle gang, every single one of them apes the biker look. They all know who “Mom” Boucher is and all of them know who the local puppet gang is.
I asked them about popular culture. Fewer than half knew who Jay-Z is and one declared that “nobody around here listens to rap.” Instead, they maintain, all the kids are into Metallica, Slayer, Pantera and even Led Zeppelin, a band that broke up ten years before many of them were born. Theirs is an entirely different youth culture than the one they see on TV, one not significantly different from the one that informed Boucher, Stadnick and all the other big bikers.
One city where motorcycle gangs have never had a problem finding disaffected youth is Hamilton. A walk around downtown indicates that things aren’t going very well for the city. Of all the storefronts on King Street, the main drag, the only ones that appear to be doing any business are the ones that deal in what at least some people would consider vice: tattoo shops, hemp shops, fast-food restaurants, pawn shops, bingo parlors and the like. At the corner of King and Hughson is a large building that used to be the S.S. Kresge department store. Poor cousin to the also-defunct Right House across the street, Kresge’s was well known a generation ago for its bustling lunch counter and a pet shop that housed a parrot that could swear reasonably well in at least three languages. Now the curse words are written in black magic marker on the building’s west wall where people wait for the Cannon and Barton buses. The store, later renamed Kmart, closed in 1994. Since 1998, the building has housed Delta Bingo, which had just lost its lease in the city’s East End. There was some opposition to allowing a bingo parlor to move into one of downtown’s most prominent buildings—one city councillor even called it a “symbol of poverty”—but it beat an empty building.
The back of Delta Bingo fac
es King William Street, the downtown’s artsy district. There are bookstores and art galleries, nightclubs and restaurants and the city’s massive police headquarters. One of the strip’s most popular restaurants was La Costa, a family-style Mediterranean bistro with an adventurous menu and a respectable wine list. For 11 years, La Costa stood at the corner of King William and Hughson and won the “Best Italian Restaurant” title from the readers of The Hamilton Spectator eight times. But in a chain that spread from suburban Toronto to Calgary, the Hamilton location was the only La Costa that lost money. It even started with a bad omen: two days before it opened, a woman was stabbed to death on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. “That poor woman. I couldn’t believe what happened,” said La Costa owner Chris Des Roches. “In the months that followed, it was a big struggle to get established; people wouldn’t come downtown after that.”
But as other stores closed and violent crime became more common downtown, fewer and fewer families came to Hamilton to eat out. Those that did often reported to Des Roches that they were harassed by aggressive panhandlers, had their cars broken into or were even mugged. A month after a random, almost fatal stabbing in the Jackson Square mall two blocks away, La Costa shut down its Hamilton franchise on July 5, 2004. “The downtown has deteriorated so much that people don’t come downtown anymore; Gore Park is full of gangs,” said Des Roches. “We really tried to keep it going; we did everything to keep customers happy. But when my customers tell us they are afraid to come down on Saturday night, you can’t change that.” The day the restaurant closed, there was a sign posted in the window that thanked loyal customers and explained that it was just too difficult to do business downtown. Within hours it was painted over.
About two miles to the northeast stood a narrow three-storey building with no windows and a giant metal door. The police had confiscated 269 Lottridge St. when they convicted Johnny K-9 and the Hamilton chapter of Satan’s Choice with proceeds of crime offenses in 1998. They had been looking for a buyer for the lonely former variety store surrounded by factories almost ever since. In March 2002, they found someone. A man identified as John Q. Public bought the building for $40,000. He then leased it to an organization called The Foundation. Less than a year after Operation Printemps sent Stadnick and Stockford to jail, the Hells Angels returned to the city. The Foundation was one of six puppet clubs established in Southern Ontario that year. “Walter never wanted a Hells Angels’ presence in town; he liked the idea of living away from the business,” said Sergeant John Harris, a former biker cop who followed Stadnick’s career. “But with him gone it didn’t make much sense not to have one here; lots of the Toronto and Kitchener guys lived in or around Hamilton anyway.”
Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle Page 57