The newsletter also contained a suitably crude humour section, including jokes like this: “As an airliner is about to crash, a female passenger jumps up frantically and announces, ‘If I’m going to die, I want to die feeling like a woman.’ She removes all her clothing and asks: ‘Is there someone on this plane who is man enough to make me feel like a woman?’ A man stands up, removes his shirt and says, ‘Here, iron this!’ ”
On a loftier note, the Big House Crew newsletter included a quotation by deaf-blind American author Helen Keller: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” Requiring less contemplation was a note from a military journal, which advised: “If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up to him.”
Campbell received plenty of personal correspondence too, including a sketch of a warrior-like nude woman sent by Chris (Mad Dog) Pedias of Ajax and a postcard from a biker in the Netherlands, with toned women’s butts bursting from orange thongs like ripe cantaloupe. He got cards from countries he had never visited, written by people he had never met, like HAMC Black Forest in Lahr, Germany. Campbell also collected poignant reminders that he wasn’t home for big moments, such as photos of his granddaughter Chaedra’s first Communion.
He found it hard to reply to all the letters, constantly surrounded by the racket of young convicts nearby. He did write to Evelyn, though, on June 12, 2007: “Well, I guess we talked enough on the phone for one day. But this card says it all. I Love You, Lorne XOXO Oh! Happy Father’s Day.” He drew a happy face beside it. Evelyn sent him a Father’s Day card from their two dogs.
Campbell had expected quick bail, since his charges weren’t that severe, but he didn’t get it. It particularly irked him when five suspects from the Driftwood Crips street gang did get bail. Moreover, the province was ordered to pay each of them two thousand dollars towards their legal costs after a judge ruled their constitutional rights had been violated because they had waited too long for bail hearings. They’d been charged with cocaine possession, participation in a criminal organization and weapons trafficking.
A guard Campbell got along with warned him to keep trying. “You should try to transfer out,” the guard said. “It’s going to blow up.”
The smoke was so thick in Campbell’s range on July 24, 2007, that he couldn’t see two metres in front of his face. A prisoner had deliberately set two mattresses and some bedding on fire. “It was horrible. We couldn’t breathe. They took the Russian—we called him Boris—away on a stretcher. We wet our sheets in the sink and put them up to our faces. In no time, they were black. We had to keep switching spots on the sheet.”
Staff brought in a half-dozen huge fans to blow the smoke down an elevator shaft as inmates remained locked in their cells with dampened sheets over their faces. It was still dark a couple of hours after the fire began, when Campbell heard a strange click, click sound on the floor. A prisoner warned him to put his hands over his ears, but there wasn’t time. “It almost blew my ears out. It went off right before I got my hands on my ears.” The bombs released little sparkles, like the ones that had filled his home when he was arrested. The prisoner warned Campbell that soon the jail’s tactical unit would appear. Sure enough, paramilitary officers in riot gear were on the range quickly, making sure prisoners didn’t attempt to bolt or seize control.
Evelyn was just outside at the time, and her blood pressure rose as she saw paramedics wheeling the Russian from the jail on a stretcher. Once she was told it wasn’t her husband, she could only wait and worry that he’d be the next to be carted out, wounded, burnt or suffering from smoke inhalation, and lifted into an ambulance. Campbell’s diary for the day reads simply: “2 percussion bombs.”
Three days after the fire, Campbell handed in his work for his “Gospel Echoes Team Certificate” and received a small diploma with a gold seal and a Bible with a black cover, with “Lorne Edgar and Evelyn Darlyn Campbell” embossed on it in gold. To get it, he had to write a series of tests. Among the questions: “Think of a church you have attended and describe what made you feel welcome or unwelcome with that group.” Campbell’s answer: “I’ve attended church in the past and felt that I didn’t fit in. It seemed to me the members hung together without helping some new person.”
Another question: “In the space below, describe the most forgiving person (friend, father, mother, etc.) that you know other than God.” Campbell’s answer: “My wife Evelyn is the most forgiving person I know. No matter what the circumstances, she sees the good of the situation.”
Question: “Tell about a fear you struggle with and how you are facing it.” Campbell’s answer: “I have a fear that comes when the lights go out in complete darkness it frightens me a bit because I can’t see anything and when I hear a noise it gets worse. Now when that happens I just pray to God and I find that I feel peaceful and fall asleep real easy.”
Among the others was a question that elicited a response which was particularly mindful of those less fortunate: “Tell about one area of injustice you would like to see changed.” Campbell’s answer: “I would like to see the homeless people taken off the streets, fed and clothed. If they have special needs then let all the fat cats in government positions cut their paychecks in half and donate it to the cause.”
He gave the Bible to Evelyn for Christmas.
It was all quite touching and inspirational, as far as it went. It would have been far more uplifting if Campbell had actually completed the course himself. In truth, the answers were written for him by his cellmate, a homeless armed robber named Donny, who had Old School tattooed on his arm. “I never wrote one word of that,” confesses Campbell. He became interested in the course when he saw Donny receive his own personally embossed Bible. “I said, ‘Where the fuck did you get that?’ You get so fucking bored in there that you want to get stuff that nobody else’s got. I got him to do that whole thing. He was happy to do it and he was religious.”
Campbell nourished an interest in Native spirituality, studying a publication called First Nations Scribbles. It included articles on cultural genocide as well as more feel-good topics like “Chasing away the blues.” Included were tips that were impossible for him to follow in the foreseeable future, such as “Increase exposure to natural sunlight” and “Take a winter vacation (somewhere warm!).”
He received a card dated September 7, 2007, with the cute little face of a dog on it. The card was clearly not from Evelyn. It read:
Hi Pal
This dog is wondering why this photo is in this card after being thrown out of the car window coming home from Doug + Lois’s. I sent Ian a picture of the horse I used to screw when I rode the Range.
Respect always
Randy Quaid.
Odds were that the card wasn’t from the troubled actor, but rather from Campbell’s close friend Larry Vallentyne. He was in the habit of sending him rude cards and signing the names of celebrities and notables, including Elvis, the cast of The Andy Griffith Show and Luca Brasi, the chilling mob enforcer from The Godfather.
Campbell received a more earnest letter dated September 10, from Doug Myles, the Downtown Toronto Hells Angels vice-president. Myles was writing from the Metro West Detention Centre to explain why he was leaving the club: “Bottom line I have 3 kids, my two youngest … 10 and … 4 are suffering because their Dad is not there. I have to put them first. It tore my heart out to hear them cry, it tore my heart out to retire! … the club has been my life for the last 20 years plus, I will miss it big time!”
Campbell thought of Evelyn, and it hurt him to imagine how she must be feeling. He wrote to her in an attempt to cheer her up on September 18:
Hey You: I know its upsetting … I know it doesn’t seem like it but there are better days ahead.
The good thing about it all is that we have each other and if nothing else, that matters.
On Thursday, October 19, it all became too much for Campbell. He was ordered out of his cell for a search, and when he returned, his glasses were gone. “I had put my glasses on a little steel table. Your cell is small. You don’t lose your glasses. I looked all around my cell anyway.”
The guards told him to look again.
“Listen, my glasses are not here,” Campbell protested. “You probably put them in the garbage by mistake.”
It wasn’t just about the glasses. It also wasn’t just about the noise, which never seemed to stop, or that those making the noise were so young and spoke in such a thick island accent that he struggled to make out what they were saying, even if he didn’t really want to follow their conversation anyway. It wasn’t even that he had no clue when he would finally walk out of this hellhole or hug Evelyn or play with his dogs or sit on his Harley or feel the sun on his face. It was about everything.
“You move me off this range!” Campbell shouted. “Get me downstairs where there’s more mature guys!”
The guard balked.
“You motherfucker! I’ll stab anybody in the eyeballs!”
Campbell was moved downstairs the next day.
On October 25, Campbell was called on by the jailhouse chaplain, which was always a bad sign. As they walked together to see Campbell’s lawyer, the chaplain couldn’t stop talking about drug dealers he knew in Oshawa. Campbell couldn’t figure out where this was going until they joined the lawyer and together they revealed the chaplain’s purpose. Campbell’s mother had just died of dementia while sitting in a basement chair at the age of eighty-three. He’d never got the chance to say a proper goodbye. His journal entry for that day reads simply: “Mother died.”
His request to attend her funeral was denied.
Campbell received an outpouring of correspondence from bikers around the world, many of whom he had never met. A Hells Angel from Colorado wrote: “I am a member of the Denver Colorado charter and I heard about your mom. I lost my mom about a year ago. It was tough for me. I got thrown in jail on the way home from her service!!! Still in a bunch of shit over it!!!”
Sympathy cards also arrived from Angels and supporters in Illinois, including a “Mean Green” and “Friend Curtis,” as well as from Eastside Germany, Sonoma County (California), North Toronto Brothers, Hartford (Connecticut), the Redline support club in Milton (Ontario), Southwest Wales, Alberta Nomad, and a Prospect charter in France that included a Cisco, TiTi, Rocco and Paolo. There were also condolence notes from the Swiss Riviera, Stuttgart, London (England)—signed by Boz, Marcus, Grant Hangaround, Dodgy Dave and Jon—East End Vancouver, Kitchener, Kelowna, Antwerp, Essex (England), Haney (B.C.), Southend Brothers (Denmark) and Aalborg (Denmark)—where three members had the nickname “Beast” and one the moniker “Bastard.” The Angels charter in Rome wrote, “A warm embrace!” and signatories included a Graziano, Giuseppe, Ugo, Gabriele, Maurizio and Nico. There was also a note from Millhaven that read, “I can’t believe these fucken creeps won’t let you go to your moms funeral, maggots, pieces of shit,” signed “Shawn C.”
“I was surprised only because I never thought people would know about it. I wasn’t surprised the Hells Angels sent stuff because that’s what Hells Angels do around the world. It was nice.”
Perhaps jails have always been a dumping ground for the mentally ill, but things had got far worse since Campbell’s earlier jail stays, which had come before a number of long-term care facilities were shut down by the province in the 1990s in a cost-cutting move. Every night, a particular inmate in the Don lay on his stomach and banged his head furiously on the bed until he went to sleep. Another was an accused arsonist and drew brightly coloured pictures with crayons of fires consuming houses and families.
An inmate who was over seventy years old lost control of his bowels in the shower and was beaten mercilessly by third-floor gangstas. It was as if he was being punished just for being old. “There’s no morals at all in the county buckets. No morals at all. They’re all brought up with no fathers and no morals.”
There were also strange omissions of security by inmates, for instance how gangstas were willing to turn the other cheek after an inmate was caught stealing things from their cells.
“Why do you want him on the range?” Campbell asked.
“We know his family.”
“He’s a box thief. He’s going off the range.” Campbell turned to a guard and made it clear that the inmate had to go. “This guy don’t belong here.”
The thief was immediately transferred to another part of the jail.
Campbell read news of the outside biker world in articles delivered by Evelyn in her care packages. He felt a sense of personal loss when he learned that London, England, Hells Angel Gerry (Gentleman Gerry) Tobin had been shot in the back of the head while riding his Harley on the M40 motorway on Sunday, August 12, 2007. The former Calgary resident had been heading home from the four-day Bulldog Bash motorcycle festival with a prospect and a hangaround, one of whom was visiting from Poland and the other a Polish immigrant who had lived in England for six years.
There was also a sense of surprise as Campbell read of Tobin’s murder. Campbell had known him since the late 1980s, back when Tobin was still a member of the Grim Reapers. He always considered Tobin a nice, inoffensive man, and his murder seemed so out of place for the English Hells Angels. Campbell thought back to how Queen Elizabeth II had waved at Snob and other bikers during her Golden Jubilee celebrations and wondered how things had gone so wrong.
The attack had been carried out with military precision, as a green Rover 620 pulled up alongside Tobin’s Harley and someone leaned out of the window, squeezing two quick shots from a handgun. One of them hit Tobin in the back of the head, just under his helmet, killing him instantly and sending his Harley careening down the crowded motorway. When police looked into the background of 35-year-old Tobin, they found nothing sinister. In Alberta, he had weathered a troubled childhood, and by his early twenties he was leading Bible studies and spoke of becoming a missionary. Tobin moved to England ten years before his death, working as a mechanic at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Mottingham in south London. While he had given up on his dream of becoming a missionary, Tobin had no criminal record in either country.
It was natural to once again curse the Outlaws after hearing news of the shooting, and there was speculation in the press that the hit had been ordered by American “overlords” in the club. The Outlaws had about 200 members in England, compared with 250 Angels. The Outlaws had moved into England only in 2000 and quickly claimed the area around Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire as their turf, even though the Angels were already operating the highly profitable Bulldog Bash there. The location of the bike festival put both clubs in an untenable position. Under the biker ethos, turf is of paramount importance. So are appearances. If the Angels moved the location of their Bulldog Bash, they would lose respect. If the Outlaws looked the other way, they would seem bullied and weak.
In the end, an investigation showed that Tobin had been killed by members of the South Warwickshire chapter of the Outlaws solely for the colours on his back. Tobin’s killer had never met him, and that didn’t matter; he wore a Hells Angels patch and that was enough. The fact that the killing wasn’t personal somehow made it all the more chilling. “I’ve had enemies. Outlaw enemies. I’ve had Bandido enemies. I’ve had Golden Hawk enemies. I’ve had Loners enemies. I would never wait and shoot someone on a fucking road because the club’s an enemy. It’s very, very cowardly. And anybody that’s done it in any club I’ve belonged to is a coward. Just don’t do it. Be a man about it and if you’re going to shoot someone, be close enough to see what you’re doing.”
CHARTER 31
East Detention Centre
We’re all Hells Angels. Suck it up. Act solid. Act together. Don’t let anyone see us disorganized. Do not argue in
front of people. Do not talk about Hells Angels.
LORNE CAMPBELL giving a pep talk to co-accused
Campbell showed up for one bail hearing with no footwear after a guard took his shoes to X-ray them for security reasons and was slow bringing them back. The floor was cold and Campbell was cranky.
“They took my fucking shoes,” Campbell grumbled. “It’s like fucking Nazi Germany.” His lawyer, Tony Bryant, could only hope against hope that the Jewish judge a few feet away didn’t hear.
“I thought, ‘Oh no, this is not a good start,’ ” recalls Evelyn.
There was no bail that day. The worst part for Campbell was seeing how hard it was on Evelyn. He hated jail, but at least he was familiar with the routine. “I’d look at Ev and Ev would be distraught. It hurts.”
News came in a March 10, 2008, letter that one of Campbell’s co-accused, a Hells Angel nicknamed “4X4,” had denounced the club. Campbell knew that this sort of thing had the potential to make them all look bad. The black guards’ protests were still continuing on and off on May 1, when Campbell wrote Evelyn:
Unrepentant Page 32