Unrepentant

by Peter Edwards

  The story eventually emerged that the eight bikers had been murdered by fellow members, including Boxer’s supposed friend Kellestine. Despite his low opinion of the Bandidos, Campbell was impressed by accounts of Boxer’s final moments, and how he had stuck up for a Jewish prospect, Jamie (Goldberg) Flanz, to Kellestine. Campbell and Evelyn had met Flanz once at a party years before, and considered him a good guy. Boxer’s defence of a Jewish brother enraged Nazi-loving Kellestine. Then Boxer had the balls to laugh in Kellestine’s face as he looked into a loaded gun, an instant before Kellestine pulled the trigger. Campbell thought back to how, after Jimmy Brockman had shot him outside the Royal Hotel in Whitby, he had suddenly become calm and dared Brockman to pull the trigger again. Perhaps Boxer felt the same way in his final seconds of life. “I have respect for the guy [Boxer Muscedere], just for how he went out.”

  Campbell found there was something naive, and yet familiar, about how Boxer Muscedere was blinded by talk of brotherhood from the mouths of men like Kellestine, who ultimately betrayed him. “I’ve been excessive in my loyalty to people. Look at Boxer. I identify with him because of the blind loyalty. So many times I’ve had that. I don’t think that Boxer had that meanness in him that I have. He was a romantic. Wanted it to be the way he had imagined. I wanted it to be the way I pictured it in my mind. It never is.”

  In 2006, Campbell packed for a trip to Costa Rica with a friend named Howie, who was confined to a wheelchair. It was intended as a pleasure trip. “I planned ten days. I wasn’t even gone ten hours.”

  He could tell there were problems as soon as he got to the customs counter at San José. “She’s typing and looking at me. Looks at the screen again. I said to Howie, ‘Something’s up.’ She called a guy over. The guy said, ‘Stand here.’ ”

  Campbell and his friend waited for the next ninety minutes, until a non-smiling man approached him. “He said, ‘Come with me.’ He had ten guys with him. He said, ‘You’re not welcome in my country,’ three times. I didn’t ask him why.”

  The man said Campbell would be flying back to Canada on the same aircraft that had brought him to Costa Rica. Rain was falling as he was marched out to the jet, and Campbell was handed a plain umbrella. “At least I’ll get a souvenir,” he thought. An official gruffly demanded the return of the umbrella when they reached the aircraft.

  “They put me by one of those marshals. He was reading and farting all the way back.”

  In Toronto, a customs worker asked Campbell, “Where are you coming from?”

  “Costa Rica.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “About an hour and a half.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t like it there.”

  “What? Go stand over there.”

  The next official Campbell spoke with was interested in his luggage. He went inside an office, and when he emerged he said, “You didn’t tell me you’re a Hells Angel.”

  “It took me five days to get my luggage back.”

  ———

  Campbell had been thinking hard about switching to the Nanaimo, B.C., charter of the Angels. The charter had pre-approved his membership, and Campbell had lined up a job there driving a truck. There was plenty to like about the move, from the charter’s beautiful wood-lined bar to Vancouver Island’s spectacular natural beauty. On the other hand, it was tough to think of being on the other side of the country from Janice and Kylie and the grandkids.

  Campbell sensed something was odd when he rode to B.C. in 2006 for an anniversary party of the Haney charter. Haney is a particularly serious charter, and their secluded clubhouse in the woods is nicknamed the “House of Pain.” “When you go there, you go to party.” Court records would later reveal that Campbell was subjected to a “mud test,” or given rough, hazing-like treatment by charter members. New members in B.C. are often mud-tested, or challenged physically. Sometimes they’re beaten. Sometimes those beatings come from members wearing rings.

  Court records show that Campbell was physically shunned during his Haney visit. Two members in particular repeatedly walked away from him. Finally, he confronted them individually with words along the lines of, “What’s the problem? If there’s a problem, get it the fuck on.”

  The members replied with something like: “We’re sick of new guys from Ontario coming out to parties talking like they’ve been in the club for fifteen years.”

  “I’m not a new guy,” Campbell replied. “I’ve been around for forty years. If there’s a problem, let’s get it the fuck on.”

  Instead, it was smoothed over. Nothing more came of it during that visit, but things weren’t resolved between B.C. and Ontario Angels either. As Campbell rode back to Ontario, tensions in the club remained close to the surface, ready to explode.

  CHAPTER 28

  Ratwell

  I liked him. Everybody liked him. He had a great personality. Great sense of humour. We had a lot of laughs together.

  LORNE CAMPBELL on a Hells Angels turncoat

  Campbell was in the Angels’ Keswick clubhouse, an hour’s drive north of Toronto, when a visitor he had never met before started talking to him.

  “You from Oshawa?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know Lorne Campbell?”

  “Yeah. When was the last time you seen him?”

  “I’m with him all the time.”

  “Oh yeah? I’m Lorne Campbell.”

  The man held out his arms and said, “Punch me in the face, man.”

  Campbell declined, although he agreed that the stranger deserved a five-knuckle massaging. That sort of thing was getting more commonplace now. Once, at a party, a woman gestured towards Campbell and argued with Evelyn that he wasn’t really Campbell at all. Campbell enjoyed eavesdropping on the debate between his wife and the stranger who talked about Lorne Campbell as if she were an authority on the man.

  A Hells Angels patch brought increased attention not just from police but also from hangers-on, some of whom were eager to turn informer for the chance at big dollars from the police. Others who sidled up to the Angels were trying to use the club’s tough reputation to seal their own shady business deals, pretending they had a tight connection to bikers that just wasn’t there.

  A police operation by the provincial Biker Enforcement Unit served as a profound wake-up call for the Angels about the dangers of informers within their ranks. Dubbed Project Shirlea, it ran for three years, culminating in charges laid in April 2003 against members of the Keswick, Toronto Downtown, East Toronto, North Toronto and Simcoe County charters on a variety of charges relating to cocaine, marijuana and prescription drugs flowing from Quebec into Ontario. While Campbell wasn’t charged, Shirlea also effectively dismantled the Road Warriors, the eastern Ontario affiliate club that Campbell had run for a short while.

  A guard at the Newmarket courthouse escorted Hells Angel Dave (Shakey) Atwell to the basement bullpen to join other prisoners facing Shirlea charges. Atwell was the sergeant-at-arms of the Downtown Toronto Angels, a position intended for tough men. He weighed in the neighbourhood of 285 pounds, which made him look imposing enough for the job of enforcing club rules, but Shakey Dave couldn’t stop sniffling or crying like a little boy who had been given a schoolyard wedgie as he told the guard about how his father was a respected businessman. Shakey Dave also boasted, between tears, of playing university football for the Western Mustangs, which would have been news to anyone who was actually familiar with Ontario university football. The guard told him he should dry his eyes before he joined the other prisoners in the bullpen, sounding very much like a concerned teacher comforting a skittish child on his first day of kindergarten.

  After Shakey Dave got bail, Campbell was disgusted to see him in the courtroom hallway, joking with police. “I called Atwell over. He was talking to the cops like he was their friend. I asked why he was talking to the cops. He said they took his father’s computer and he was trying to get it back.”

  Campbell was even
more disgusted that Shakey Dave tried to defend his behaviour. “That’s your fucking lawyer’s job. You don’t walk over and talk to the cops. They’re not your friend.”

  Despite his tears and comfort with police, there was still something likeable about Shakey Dave, who had previously belonged to the Para-Dice Riders. Shakey Dave was among the PDR members who folded into the Angels in 2000. He was the kind of guy who needed to be liked, and certainly lots of senior Angels seemed to enjoy his quick banter. Donnie Petersen, the well-respected spokesman for the Angels for Central Canada, was the best man at his wedding, while Atwell was master of ceremonies at the wedding of Downtown vice-president Doug Myles.

  Shakey Dave did have a willingness to pitch in on club business. He alternately held the posts of the charter’s co-treasurer, road captain and sergeant-at-arms. A road captain’s responsible for making sure club runs are well attended, while the duties of a sergeant-at-arms are security and discipline. Security tasks were natural for him, since he was a long-time salesperson at a local store that specialized in secret listening and filming devices. His club duties included regularly sweeping the Hells Angels’ Eastern Avenue clubhouse for hidden recording devices.

  He tried to say that he was called Shakey Dave because he was a tough guy who could shake people down, but no one seemed to buy that. A more likely explanation was the pronounced twitchiness that his fondness for cocaine gave him. Somehow, despite his proportions, he exuded vulnerability. Part of the reason was his tendency to talk like a guest on Oprah or The View, spouting psychobabble like, “I was having a pity party” and “I was in a bad place personally.”

  Shakey Dave would say he was in a bad place physically in the fall of 2005, when another Toronto Hells Angel approached him about how someone should go about killing a police agent involved in the Project Shirlea operation. That only made Shakey Dave shakier. He had been working as a police informant since the previous March, feeding bits of information to the cops. None of the bikers had a clue that Shakey Dave had once applied to be a Durham police officer and hadn’t made the cut. Anyone who has ever been a prison guard or a cop, or anyone who has ever applied for those jobs, is barred from entry into the Angels or any other outlaw biker club.

  Shakey Dave’s Project Shirlea drug charges had fizzled when the court found that the wiretap used against him was improper. That should have calmed him down, but instead Dave got even shakier. After the other Angel told him of the murder plan, Shakey Dave became an active police agent, working full-time to put his clubmates in a bad place, namely jail. His information now appeared in police files under the heading “Agent 3859.”

  Around that time, the Sudbury charter of the Hells Angels was folding, as Campbell was profoundly dissatisfied with the quality of membership candidates. Little did Campbell know that, as he was discussing shifting his membership to the Angels’ Downtown Toronto charter, Shakey Dave was wearing a police body-pack recording device to Downtown meetings. He also wore it when he partied and snorted cocaine with the Redline crew, an Angels-affiliated club in London. Shakey Dave would later say that at times he snorted coke in clubhouses to “keep up appearances,” since he had a reputation as a frequent cocaine user.

  Shakey Dave remained an outgoing, chatterbox type of guy, and on April 5, 2006, he was able to pull Mehrdad (Juicy) Bahman into talking about submachine guns. Bahman belonged to the Richmond Hill Foundation, a Hells Angels junior support club. He boasted to Shakey Dave that his Uzi was beautiful and he would show it to him sometime, then added that he had plenty of security cameras at his home.

  On May 31, 2006, Shakey Dave’s body pack picked up Toronto Hells Angels discussing the folding of Campbell’s Sudbury charter. Members of the Downtown Toronto charter weren’t all excited about the prospect of absorbing Sudbury’s remaining members.

  “I don’t think we should take four guys as a package deal,” said Scottish-born Toronto member Mark Stables. “I think we should assess each one of these guys by themselves because, ya know, I don’t have a problem with Lorne Campbell. I get along great with him. Ian Watson, on the other hand, I’m not impressed with that guy really.” (In the end, Toronto accepted just Campbell from the Sudbury charter.)

  Member Carl Stoyan told charter president John (Winner) Neal that he’d also welcome Campbell. “Fucking Lorne Campbell is a fuckin’ heavyweight.… I’m fuckin’ happy to have the guy fuckin’ here.”

  Vice-president Doug Myles was captured by Shakey Dave’s hidden recording device saying he welcomed Campbell as a solid member, although he was considered no financial wizard. “Lorne is a great guy, just don’t do any business with him. He’s … no good with money, but stand beside ya in a bar and everything and uh he’s a great guy.”

  In mid-April 2006, the Downtown Hells Angels heard a rumour that there was an informant in their midst and that he was a former Para-Dice Rider. A police source also told them they could expect a raid at the Eastern Avenue clubhouse in six weeks. Rumours are part of the fabric of life for an outlaw biker, and this one didn’t generate any particular fear at first.

  A report filed to the Ontario Provincial Police biker squad on September 27, 2006, read: “Agent 3859 attends a Hells Angels meeting. Larry Pooler tells the Agent about going to the Indian Reservation with Lorne Campbell and getting a whole bunch of cigarettes. He buys them for ten and sells them for fifteen or twenty a carton.”

  Shakey Dave’s hidden bug picked up Donnie Petersen saying he had a certain respect for Bernie Guindon’s old rival Johnny Sombrero, who was still alive and kicking on the fringes of the outlaw biker scene. “[Johnny Sombrero’s] a strong man. His whole life he’s been strong.” The charter’s vice-president, Larry Pooler, replied that he had heard stories about how Sombrero “checked in,” or requested to go into protective custody (PC), while behind bars. Campbell has nothing but scorn for those who check in. “That’s about the weakest thing you can do in jail.… There are guys who would rather die than go to PC.”

  The hidden bug picked up Pooler laughing at the thought of Sombrero requesting protective custody and Petersen answering back: “Not Lorne-Campbell-tough, I guess.”

  On the surface, Shakey Dave didn’t seem too worried about the rumour of a rat in their midst. Under the surface, he felt increasingly alone and stressed. The more stressed Shakey Dave felt, the more he snorted cocaine, and the more he snorted cocaine, the more Petersen and John Neal (no relation to Carmen Neal) chided him to clean up his act. Oddly, Shakey Dave was getting the same anti-drug advice from his police handlers.

  On September 27, 2006, a police bug picked up a conversation at the Hells Angels’ clubhouse where the topic was Paris Christoforou, the sergeant-at-arms for the London, Ontario, charter, and Peter Scarcella, a Toronto-area mobster. The two men were both in prison for their roles in a case that had mortified the Ontario Hells Angels and the general public and left a mother of three permanently injured.

  Back on April 21, 2004, Louise Russo had been standing at the counter of a sandwich shop in Toronto when a van pulled into the parking lot and two men inside opened fire. Christoforou’s bullets missed, but a second shooter, mob associate Antonio (Jelly) Borrelli, shattered Russo’s spine. Both men were aiming at Sicilian Mafioso Michele Modica, who was trying to evade a gambling debt. Modica escaped without a scratch, while Russo was paralyzed for life.

  At the time of the shooting, the Angels were in the midst of a public relations blitz aimed at countering the bad press coming out of the Quebec drug wars. The club had posted a billboard alongside the northbound Don Valley Parkway in Toronto with the words “Still Fighting for Democracy & Freedom.” They had also taken out newspaper ads, run toy drives for sick children and made an online push in support of food banks. Immediately after the shooting, the Hells Angels’ Central Canadian branch issued a statement saying the club “extends our heartfelt sympathy” to Russo and her family. The statement described the shooting as an “indiscriminate dreadful action,” adding that the club was “sickene
d by the senseless act of violence that has violated Mrs. Russo’s life.”

  Scarcella only became involved in a plot to murder Modica after Russo was shot. Once caught, Borrelli was sentenced to ten years in prison while Scarcella and Christoforou each plea-bargained for nine-year prison terms. Each of these sentences was on top of time served awaiting trial. Their deal also included a $2-million contribution towards Russo’s medical care. The botched hit, appalling publicity and prison time didn’t help relations between the Angels and Scarcella’s mob group.

  “It is true Paris did punch out Scarcella,” Petersen was recorded as saying. Shakey Dave’s wire picked up Angels talking about how Christoforou had been transferred out of Ontario to Donnacona Institution in Quebec because he was considered “incompatible” with an inmate.

  For his part, Campbell considered the accidental shooting of Louise Russo to be another sign of declining standards in the outlaw biker world. In a well-done hit, there are no family or children or bystanders in the line of fire. The shooter has the nerve to walk up close to his target and isn’t afraid to look his target in the eyes. Any fool with a gun and a vehicle can do a drive-by. “That’s why I hate drive-bys. If you have an enemy, walk up and shoot the enemy in the head. Don’t shoot somebody else.”

  In July 2006, Campbell had plans to go fishing with Evelyn, Shakey Dave and Shakey Dave’s wife. They rented a cottage and Campbell brought along some rare Hells Angels movies. Things started badly when Shakey Dave dropped Campbell’s big-screen television and VCR while unloading it from their SUV. Evelyn, much less than half his size, carried them inside instead.

  When the TV and VCR were hooked up, Campbell pulled out his prized copy of the 1983 movie Hells Angels Forever, starring Ralph (Sonny) Barger. Shakey Dave recoiled like a vegan served a heaping platter of steak tartare and abruptly said no, he wasn’t interested in watching that.