Unrepentant

by Peter Edwards

  Rain made the three-day trip seem much longer, and the nearby pickerel and trout remained safe from the bikers. There was some excitement when Atwell’s little pug, Brutus, ate Campbell’s eyewear as Campbell was stepping out of the shower. No one thought much about Shakey Dave’s dog being named after an infamous traitor, but its eating habits were jarring. “I just heard crunch, crunch, crunch. His little pug was eating my glasses.”

  That same summer, Shakey Dave managed to maroon his truck in a ditch by Campbell’s home. That didn’t come as a shock, since he had somehow steered Campbell’s hand-held snow blower into the same spot the previous winter.

  “How do you do that?” Campbell asked after the truck became stuck.

  “Maybe I’m dumb,” Shakey Dave replied.

  “Maybe you are,” Campbell thought.

  William (Mr. Bill) Lavoie hosted many demons in the seething cauldron between his ears. None was worse than the real-life haunting provided by Steven (Hannibal) Gault, a biker he had sponsored into the Satan’s Choice. Gault was a career rat who had been informing to police since his high school days, and Mr. Bill was a career outlaw biker with thirty-three years in the Satan’s Choice before he joined the Angels in 2000. Mr. Bill didn’t catch wind of Gault’s true nature until after he had sponsored him into the Choice and suddenly he was faced with a challenge much like putting a pin back into a grenade.

  Gault had once belonged to the Travellers, a group of swindlers who targeted seniors living on farms in eastern Ontario with renovation scams. One elderly farmer was bilked for $260,000 for repairs to his property that were never done.

  Gault’s behaviour only got worse when he joined the Choice. “After he got his full patch, he thought he was king of the world,” says Gault’s former wife, Linda. Gault was nicknamed “Hannibal” for his taste for blood, which he demonstrated one evening in the eastern Ontario town of Campbellford when he bit off a chunk of a man’s ear in a bar fight. “When we would make him steak for supper, his was just with spices, raw, not even on the grill for a little,” Linda recalls.

  After Gault was allowed into the Angels in the mass patch-over of 2000, there was plenty more partying, cocaine and transgression, including a 2002 conviction for attempting to harass a Durham Region police officer and his family. A year later, Gault had a restraining order filed against him, forbidding him from having contact with Linda’s family after she said he threatened to blow up their home with them inside.

  After their breakup, Linda began telling others in the biker world about her ex’s deepest secret: that he was working undercover for the police. It might have sounded like something the angry ex-lover of a biker would say, but it also happened to be true. In fact, Gault received more than a million dollars for his undercover work with police that helped land twenty-one Ontario Hells Angels and associates behind bars for drug, weapons and criminal organization charges.

  One of the few people who listened seriously to Linda’s warning was Mr. Bill, but his behaviour was already so bizarre and paranoid that he wasn’t taken seriously now that he was right. “Mr. Bill was trying to tell people Gault was a stool pigeon, even though he was the one who got him in.”

  By September 7, 2006, Mr. Bill had retired from the Angels in good standing. He was sixty now, making him somewhat of a greybeard in biker circles. Mr. Bill was killed that same day while riding his red Harley on County Road 8 near his home just south of Warsaw, near Peterborough. A car was stopped at an intersection, waiting for two trucks to pass through. When the trucks were gone, the car pulled into the intersection and crashed into Mr. Bill, killing him.

  The name of the driver who killed Mr. Bill wasn’t released to the public, presumably to shield him or her from angry bikers, but charges were laid against the driver for failing to yield. Something about the story didn’t sit right with Campbell as he attended Mr. Bill’s funeral with more than a hundred other bikers. It wasn’t an official Hells Angels funeral, since Mr. Bill had retired from the club, but they all wore club colours and black arm bands with the words “In Memory of Mr. Bill” as they rolled through Peterborough. Roads are filled with inattentive drivers, and it’s easy to see how a motorcycle could be hidden from view behind two trucks. Still, the weather had been good on the day of the crash and Mr. Bill was riding on a familiar stretch of road. “Mr. Bill was a good bike rider. He was eccentric, but he was a safe rider.”

  Shakey Dave’s recording device picked up bikers discussing a shooting at the Club Pro strip club in Vaughan on December 2, 2006. Bouncer Frank (Cisco) Lenti, formerly with the Bandidos, Satan’s Choice and several other clubs, had opened fire on West Toronto Hells Angels and associates, believing he was the target of a hit. Squeezing off seven shots in six seconds, Lenti killed David (Dred) Buchanan of the Angels and gravely wounded prospect Carlo Verrelli, while sending Angel Dana Carnegie running for his life. Many bikers, including Campbell, liked and respected Lenti even though he wasn’t with their club. Shakey Dave’s police notes for December 4, 2006, stated: “Petersen says up until this happened he had a good relationship with Frank and that Frank saved his life once.”

  On January 30, 2007, police were able to record a phone conversation between Campbell and member Robin Moulton. The topic of discussion was the need to toughen up membership requirements. “I agree we could tighten it up,” Campbell said. “… I agree with tightening it up.”

  On February 6, 2007, Shakey Dave’s bug caught Campbell again. This time the topic was drug dealing. Shakey Dave said he would pay Campbell to set up a meeting with Shaun Robinson, a fellow member, for a cocaine deal. On February 12, 2007, Robinson said he had spoken with Campbell “about grabbing some white,” and agreed to sell a “plate” of cocaine to Shakey Dave.

  Nothing happened for the next week.

  At 10:50 a.m. on February 20, 2007, Shakey Dave made an audio note with a tape recorder: “I received the device and my instructions to talk to Lorne Campbell about a price of cocaine that he received from Shaun Robinson.” Shakey Dave noted that he drove to a Tim Hortons doughnut shop on Weston Road in Toronto, where he met Campbell, who was parked in his Oldsmobile Cutlass.

  “I parked and went up to him,” Shakey Dave continued in his audio note. “He looked stressed … he was speaking very low and he whispered the … number thirty-four. I didn’t hear him, so I stuck my head in the car window. I said, ‘Speak up, for fuck’s sakes.’ … He says, ‘Thirty-four thousand,’ and he put up his index finger, meaning for one. I said, ‘Yeah, that’s it. That’s good.’ I said, ‘What about you?’ and he said, ‘Well, what about me?’ I said, ‘Okay, well, I’ll give you a G-note on top of that,’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

  Shakey Dave then added that he gave Campbell fifty dollars for gas to drive to Kitchener. “I know he’s tight for cash. I didn’t mind doing this. It’s, ah, sort of an investment in credibility.”

  Shakey Dave’s body pack recorded him talking with Campbell:

  “Yeah, okay,” Shakey Dave said. “All right. Part of the thing was not to get you too involved.…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Campbell said.

  “See, I’m smart and I don’t get anyone else involved.…” In true Shakey Dave fashion, he praised himself for his discretion and smoothness. “Or try to be, anyway, except for the constant lying.”

  Campbell responded to the joke, saying, “Oh yeah, fuckin’ liar.”

  On February 23, 2007, the deal was over.

  “Yeah, we’ll do this again next time,” Shakey Dave said to Campbell. “You’re the man,” Campbell replied.

  On February 26, 2007, Shakey Dave called Campbell and got himself invited to see him at his home near Orillia. There, Shakey Dave made what appears to be an effort to pull Campbell into some sort of incriminating statement.

  First he handed over a payment for arranging the meeting. “That’s the two hundred.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Then he commented on the kilo of cocaine he’d purchased from Robinson. “There was a fi
sh stamped in it. Do you know anything about that? Was that anything to do with you?”

  “That sounds pretty fishy to me,” Campbell said.

  Shakey Dave pressed on: “Buddy, I looked at it. I went, ‘Wait a minute.’ ”

  “Yeah,” Campbell said.

  “Big fish.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, man. I have no idea.…”

  The next day, Shakey Dave was crying on Campbell’s shoulder, like a nervous schoolboy. Others in the club suspected he was a rat and Shakey Dave let on that his feelings were bruised. They suspected him because he was trying to start up drug deals with Angels who weren’t drug dealers. There were also questions about how he somehow managed to buy a new truck and a new Harley, after scrounging for money not long before that.

  “What did you do? Win the lottery?” Campbell asked.

  Shakey Dave mumbled something about having a job but didn’t go into any details, looking even shakier than usual.

  Evelyn and Campbell gave Shakey Dave and his bride an abstract glass sculpture in March 2007 for their wedding the previous summer. Shakey Dave and his bride were there for the weekend, and Evelyn had stuffed two chickens so that there would be plenty of seconds and even thirds if their hefty guest brought his appetite.

  Shakey Dave and his bride showed them an album of photos of their wedding in the Dominican Republic, and the Campbells presented them with their belated wedding gift. Then, without any warning, Shakey Dave stood up and made up an odd excuse about how something had just come up. “They really liked it [the gift]. Then they took off.”

  “There was something wrong,” Evelyn says.

  Finally, Myles confronted Shakey Dave about the rumour that he was a rat. There was no conclusive outcome to the conversation, but discussions about such topics seldom end nicely. Myles clearly offended Shakey Dave. Shakey Dave’s debriefing notes record that Campbell offered to listen to him in person, but Shakey Dave was too busy tending bar at the clubhouse to take him up on it. “The Agent tells Campbell he just finished a heart-breaking meeting with Doug Myles. The Agent says that guys are talking behind his back and he’s very upset. Campbell tells him to come up and the Agent says he can’t because he has to do his bar shift tomorrow but he’ll talk to Campbell tomorrow night for sure.”

  The Angels kept the Downtown Toronto clubhouse open twenty-four hours a day, ready to receive members from out of town whenever they might drop by. This was Shakey Dave’s turn to make sure Angels could get in and police and hostile bikers stayed out. When his shift was over, Shakey Dave disappeared forever from the outlaw biker life.

  CHAPTER 29

  Don Jail Inmate #0994271886

  I told them, “You guys jump me, I’ll hunt each one of you down and I will kill you. I am no bluff.”

  LORNE CAMPBELL

  On Tuesday, April 3, 2007, Campbell was cleaning his $40,000 gun collection, which included some rusted-out ones he had inherited from Mr. Bill. “The guns were in terrible shape. He would talk about guns all the time, but they weren’t cared for. They were very rusted. I wouldn’t fire any one of them. I wouldn’t even give them to somebody.”

  The cleaning done, Campbell forgot to store them safely again, and so when Evelyn tidied up, she put them back in their locked cases. The whole incident didn’t seem like a big deal at the time and might easily have been forgotten, if not for what happened hours later.

  Campbell couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen. A lot of things didn’t quite sit right. He had a nagging feeling that his fishing buddy Shakey Dave might have turned rat. There had also been rumours of a pending raid for months. Indeed, an Internet blogger had posted a supposedly confidential judge’s order allowing federal authorities to seize the Hells Angels’ fortified clubhouse on Eastern Avenue. The court document was posted on at least five Internet sites, including one for true-crime aficionados, where it appeared on March 25, 2007, only eleven days after it was drafted. The blogger who posted it identified himself only as “drmm,” “drmmfamm” and “a researcher from Toronto, Canada.”

  Then there was the strange mud test by Haney, B.C., members, and the cryptic comment that members there were tired of junior Ontario members coming west and acting as if they had been in the club for fifteen years. Why would someone say something like that to Campbell, whose loyalty was unquestioned and who had been on a Harley longer than many of them had been alive?

  And what about Shakey Dave’s increasingly shaky behaviour? He had refused to hug Evelyn a couple of times over the past few months, saying he had a bad cold. “That’s because he had a wire,” Evelyn says now.

  Just in case there was a raid, Campbell had already moved a lot of his Hells Angels gear, such as sweatshirts and T-shirts and photos and even golf balls, out of the house. That included Angels charter photos from around the world, club guidelines for Canada, membership rules, contact information for bikers in Canada and abroad, incorporation papers, and the 2007 Ontario Hells Angels calendar, with bikers posing like pro wrestlers by their bikes while enraptured strippers looked on in the background. Still inside the house were more mementoes and clothing, as well as his colours, which he still wore whenever he climbed on his Harley.

  Campbell dozed off on his couch watching television one night and was awakened at six the next morning by a loud banging sound. “What the fuck’s that?” he thought. Next came the tiny sparkles that are released by police percussion bombs. “I looked up and there was little sparkles coming down. I wasn’t so stunned that I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

  His senses hadn’t yet cleared when a strange man shouted from inside his house, “Lie down on the floor!”

  Sparkles still hung in the air and now there were also police in riot gear, with helmets and facial shields. Campbell refused to lie down, but as his hands were pulled behind his back and cuffed, he didn’t fight back. It wasn’t the best way to start the day, but it wasn’t the worst morning of his life either. “I just thought I was not going to be found guilty and I would get bail the next day.”

  Evelyn was new to this. Fortunately for Campbell, she had stored away his gun collection or that would have led to a new raft of charges for unsafe storage. Evelyn demanded to see a search warrant before police carried out his vest with his club colours on a coat hanger. Evelyn ordered the officers to stop immediately. “They belong to the club,” she said, grabbing the vest.

  “Yes we can,” said the officer, pulling them back. He showed her the search warrant, which allowed them to take anything with “Hells Angels” on it. They carried out club plaques and photos, as well as twenty-three shotguns and rifles and a compound bow. Evelyn’s cellphone was ringing non-stop now, with friends and members wondering what was going on. The Downtown Toronto charter of the Hells Angels on Eastern Avenue had also been raided that morning, as had the homes of other members. The raids were the culmination of an eighteen-month operation called Project Develop, which involved some four hundred officers and relied on information from a paid police agent. The only home in his club circle that wasn’t raided was that of Shakey Dave Atwell.

  As her phone buzzed, Evelyn turned it face down so that police couldn’t read the numbers on its call display. It was a shock, but it could have been worse, as Campbell had prepped her on what to do during a police raid. “ ‘Don’t get intimidated. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to go off the handle.’ I felt for Ev. I had been through stuff like that before. She hadn’t.”

  After that morning’s pre-dawn raids, there were 111 charges laid against twenty-eight members and associates. The foundation of the case was the betrayal of Shakey Dave, soon to be referred to in the club as “Ratwell.” Some Angels tried to convince themselves that Shakey Dave must be suffering inside, but Campbell didn’t buy that for a second. “A lot of guys would say he can’t look at himself in the mirror. I don’t believe that. The guy loves himself.”

  Campbell later said the worst was yet to come for Shakey Dave, an
d it likely wouldn’t be in the form of a beating or a bullet from former buddies. Some people in the biker world expect a Hollywood-style happy ending when they go into a witness protection programme. “They think everything’s gonna change. They’re going to get a place with a white picket fence. But they’re the same guy at the end of it all.”

  On the surface, the charges against Campbell didn’t look so bad. He was charged with a drug trafficking conspiracy for agreeing to take a thousand dollars for introducing Shakey Dave to Shaun Robinson for the cocaine deal. He had been captured on video and audio with Shakey Dave, telling him the price for a kilo of cocaine was “thirty-four,” or $34,000. That would be hard to beat. There was also a charge of contributing to a criminal organization, something all of the accused faced. The criminal organization charge was one that Campbell felt they all had to fight for the sake of the club. If they were branded a criminal organization, then added time could be tacked on to any future criminal convictions, on the grounds that crimes were committed to benefit a criminal group. Something about the criminal organization tag rattled Campbell on another level as well. Outsiders might consider it strictly semantics, but Campbell felt there was a crucial point at stake. “It’s a motorcycle club with criminals in it, not a criminal organization. That’s an important distinction.” Campbell may have looked stoic as the fight began, but he was concerned his club might be taking a serious hit. “I have the same emotions as everybody else, but I don’t show them.”

  Locked up in Toronto’s Don Jail, Campbell was denied bail, which was troubling, but he remained optimistic he could have that overturned. What concerned him more was that Evelyn now had to make a two-hour drive down to see him, and then drive back home alone. “She would never complain to me. Never once.”

  On one of her first visits at the Don, Evelyn told him of the strange experience of driving through crowded downtown Toronto. “I gave this homeless guy ten dollars so he could take the subway to Pickering,” she told Campbell. She noted that the stranger told her a taxi would cost a hundred dollars, which was far too much.