The Notorious Bacon Brothers

by Jerry Langton

  But that's not entirely true. I do talk to bikers and others who are said to be in the drug trade, and it always works at as some variation of the following conversation:

  Biker: I'm an outlaw.

  Me: Okay, what laws do you break?

  Biker: None of them. You can't prove anything.

  Things are slightly different for this book. Since so many people were killed, I spoke with a number of the friends and families of victims of the violence, and they, almost to a person, took a different tack. I'm not talking about innocent victims like Mohan and Schellenberg here, but the people who had adopted the gangster lifestyle and paid the ultimate price.

  They invariably told me that their deceased friend or family member was a good person who had simply fallen into danger either for being in a gang or having friends that were. They all seemed to think that joining the gangster life was inevitable, that economic and social conditions in the area made it impossible for a large sector of the population to do anything else. You may recall the kid from Prince George who told cops he got involved in the drug trade because his only other option was minimum wage. He's a definitive example of how many young people were thinking at the time: that the drug trade was the quickest, easiest and perhaps only way to earn any real money. The camaraderie, the women and even the violence (itself a draw for many young men) were all bonuses.

  It's an old story, one we've heard a million times. Just like the crack wars that began in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood in the 80s and spread around the world—and it could be argued that the troubles in the Lower Mainland are a terrible vestige of that first spark—it all began with some kid, bored in math class, idolizing the drug dealer in his Cadillac full of girls.

  And just as the generations before them in other places created distinct looks and cultures, the drug dealers in the Lower Mainland (and the countless others who emulated them) had clearly defined habits, rituals and modes of dress. Shaved heads were de rigueur, and the few that kept their hair tended to care for it and style it slicked back with an almost obsessive passion. Tattoos were a necessity and indicated not just affiliations, but personality traits and philosophical and religious beliefs. Working out and having a hard body bulging with muscles was desirable. Professing belief, or at least strong interest, in eastern religions was standard, as was the practice of martial arts, especially mixed martial arts, the type of fighting made popular by the UFC.

  Despite my years of research and writing, and the fact that I grew up in a poorer, more violent time in a city as drug-addled and full of crime, they all told me the same thing: “You just wouldn't understand.”

  They're right, I don't understand. And hardest of all to understand is how, even as the gangs of the Lower Mainland careened toward all-out war and citizens like Eileen Mohan led public campaigns to end the lenient treatment of convicted thugs, gang culture continued to hold sway over the hearts and minds of so many while the justice system seemed as ineffectual as ever.

  Chapter 8

  Paralysis: 2008–2009

  One of those people I wouldn't understand was Joe “J Money” Krantz, even though I've actually been called by that same nickname. He looked the part, with tats, pumped-up muscles, lots of jewelry and a habit of wearing his hair in cornrows. Adopted, Krantz had a hard time fitting into mainstream society, and what his friends called “feelings of inadequacy” drove him to work out obsessively. Though never truly big, he was very strong and served as manager of the World Extreme Fighting Fight Team and a mixed martial arts trainer to some pretty big names at his World Extreme Fighting Club. He even fought a few times.

  On April 15, 2008, police raided his home. In it, they found 4.5 ounces of cocaine, 8.7 ounces of crack, 2 ounces of heroin, a 9mm handgun, a .380-calibre handgun, two sets of brass knuckles, body armor, schedules and a ledger for his runners (both day and night shifts), and product inventory sheets with codes for cocaine and heroin. And, so that there was no confusion as to who his friends were, the police found clothing and paraphernalia with logos from the Independent Soldiers' Kelowna chapter and the Hells Angels' Nomads chapter. The drugs were all divided into single-use packages, and the handguns—both loaded—were found out in the open on the kitchen counter.

  They also found Krantz's 8-year-old daughter, who was not in the house at the time. After his arrest, she was interviewed by a social worker, whom she told, “Dad is always selling little white rocks.” She described how Krantz broke a large rock into smaller pieces and put the “rocks” and the “dust” into little bags. She also described backpacks full of cash and a machine her dad “used to grind the green moss” that was put in rolling papers and smoked. She did, however, point out that she had never seen guns or ammunition around the house.

  The girl assumed her dad had been arrested for the little white rocks and told them he often talked about hockey equipment (his records indicated that various drugs were given code names like “helmets” and “shoulder pads”).

  She also described a strange existence at her dad's house (at which she lived only on weekends), in which she was subject to great wealth—including a big-screen plasma TV and a queen-sized bed in her room—but also great secrecy. Her dad and his girlfriend had forbidden her to talk about money. She recalled one time in which she innocently mentioned that she was glad they were “rich,” and her father hit her, confined her to her room and took away her Nintendo DS as punishment. She also talked of traveling with her father while he took what were almost certainly drugs to various people to “sell for him” and how she had seen him share a smoke with a lady whose “house st[ank].”

  Six months later, on October 20, 2008, Krantz was just closing up his strip-mall gym, the World Extreme Fighting Club, at about nine in the evening when he was killed by a spray of gunfire.

  It's not uncommon for the death of a gangster to be memorialized, but after Krantz was shot, the community came alive in a festival of mourning. Facebook pages popped up extolling him as a great guy and, invariably, a great father. Most of the people who posted on them used pseudonyms. A couple I spoke with via e-mail extolled his sense of humor, his style, his kindness and generosity and, always and above all, his attentiveness as a father. When I brought up the fact that I don't think a good father, much less a great one, hits a child for an innocuous remark, takes her on drug runs, and has her live part-time in a house full of dangerous drugs and loaded weapons, they all said the same thing: “You just don't understand.”

  So hard did his community take Krantz's death that a number of videos memorializing him showed up on YouTube, at least two of which showed pictures of his daughter. And then something truly surprising happened. A few days after his death, a mural in his honor appeared on a wall at R.E. Mountain Secondary School in nearby Langley. It depicted a red heart wrapped in a gold ribbon surrounded by 11 huge diamonds. Along with his name, its three bits of text read: “Rest in peace,” “Tragically gunned down October 20th 2008” and “Always missed but never forgotten one love always.”

  Many of those same people were surprised and even saddened to see the mural painted over, despite the fact that it was a tribute on a public high school to a man facing drug and weapons charges who was gunned down by fellow gangsters.

  Later, when his girlfriend, Nicole Cooper, reported on Facebook that “social services” would not pay the $1,050 she requested for a gravestone for the man who drove a tricked-out Cadillac Escalade with 22-inch spinners and a vanity license plate that read “JMONEY,” it was met with outrage and dismay from her supporters.

  Everyone involved in the drug trade in Canada knows American cops are not like Canadian cops and, more important, American judges are not like Canadian judges. If you get caught down there, you're very likely to spend a long time behind bars, God knows where, with God knows whom.

  Smart traffickers, like Clayton Roueche and many Hells Angels, do their best to stay out of the United States, doing their business in Canada and vacationing in Mexico or plac
es like the Dominican Republic.

  But the United States is where the money is, so somebody has to go there, despite the obvious risks. And, due to a three-year investigation, the American authorities knew who it was. Robert Shannon was a Maple Ridge truck driver, and his friend, Abbotsford's Devron Quast, managed a car dealership. But American authorities also alleged that they had higher-paying jobs running a drug exporting business for the B.C. Hells Angels and that Shannon had even once paid to have a rival murdered.

  In June 2008, an undercover officer lured Shannon, Quast and some associates to Ferndale, Washington, with the lure of a big haul. (Ferndale is a humdrum town not far from the Canadian border whose claim to fame comes from the fact that every time town authorities paint over the Metallica logo on its main bridge it reappears, as if by magic, soon thereafter.) At the house, authorities arrested Shannon, Quast and some of their American contacts—Todd Gabriel, Chance Gerrior and Korinne Doggett. Arrested later were Phillip Stone of Abbotsford, Richard Jansen of Chilliwack, Tomohisa Kawabata of Vancouver (whom they said paid $3.3 million for a load of marijuana to be delivered to New York City) and Jesse Holmes of Blaine, Washington, who they alleged rented a warehouse in Bellingham for the weed.

  What was shocking about the Shannon arrest was the magnitude of it. Not only did the Americans seize 1,300 pounds of cocaine, 7,000 pounds of BC Bud and $3.5 million in cash, they learned of a sophisticated operation run on behalf of the Hells Angels, who were fortunate to escape indictment, although it came out in court that full-patch Hal Porteous once stepped in to intimidate a debtor on Shannon's behalf. Shannon, attempting to look much more youthful than he really was, can also be seen in a self-aggrandizing (and unintentionally funny) rap video Porteous made about his gangster lifestyle. The investigation revealed that Shannon was the leader of a group who transported weed over the border primarily in hollowed-out logs on timber trucks, but also in RVs and even in a church van. Their business was so developed, they offered insurance to their suppliers, giving them a $425 payout for every pound of weed confiscated by law enforcement. It was also learned that Shannon ordered the killing of Independent Soldier Jody York, who owed the organization $70,000. Shannon let York off the hook after the would-be assassin shot and missed.

  And, as is the fear among Canadian drug traffickers, the American courts came down hard. Shannon was sentenced to 20 years (which in the United States really means 20 years). Quast, seeing which way the trial was heading, cut a deal with prosecutors in which he totally gave up everything on Shannon and received a lighter, 75-month term. Before he turned, Quast received letters from Shannon at first imploring him not to cooperate with prosecutors, then threatening him if he did. In a truly pathetic move, Shannon even threatened Quast's grandmother, who was in a nursing home.

  While it looked like the Americans were doing a pretty good job of putting Canadian gangsters behind bars, some disturbing facts about how known gangsters are treated north of the border came to light.

  At 10:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve 2008, a man walked into the Mission Memorial Hospital's emergency room. He'd been shot. He was bloodied and in poor shape, but not in immediate danger of losing his life. As is always the case in Canada, the emergency room staff called the police because a firearm was involved; but they quickly realized that they might have been involved in something larger when they were undressing him and saw he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

  The man was Dennis Karbovanec, admitted killer, longtime Red Scorpions member and extra-close associate of the Bacon Brothers. Police arrived to question him and begin an investigation. It's not a crime to get shot, and Karbovanec refused to talk about who shot him or why, but he was actually already in trouble.

  With a warrant already out for his arrest, on October 23, 2008, Karbovanec had been stopped by police. They found he was wearing a bulletproof vest and had a loaded handgun with a silencer in a hidden compartment in his leased GMC Yukon Denali. He was charged with 11 counts of weapons possession and other infractions. The officers who had the Denali stopped claim Jonathan Bacon drove up in a black Mercedes-Benz and motioned for Karbovanec to come with him. He only left, without Karbovanec, after the cops had drawn their weapons.

  Knowing who was really in charge, Abbotsford police negotiated with the Bacon Brothers to facilitate a deal for Karbovanec. They promised to drop all but one small charge on the condition that the Bacons surrendered their friend's entire cache of weapons. On Karbovanec's behalf, Jonathan Bacon brought Abbotsford Detective Lyle Simpson 114 sticks of dynamite, a hand grenade, 7 handguns, 2 shotguns, a hunting rifle and an Uzi submachine gun. Karbovanec was then released on $15,000 bail.

  When news of that deal and of vacation pictures of Kabovanec and the Bacon Brothers, among others, enjoying great times at Mexican resorts while facing tons of charges in Canada emerged, people became outraged. Social media and the comment areas of mainstream media were alive with people complaining about the fact that accused murderers could be gallivanting around the tropics. It appeared as though their own law enforcement and courts were doing nothing to keep the bad guys off the streets. The police knew who the criminals were; there just didn't seem to be anything they could do about it. What made it more galling was that the same kids committing the same crimes just a few miles to the south were being put away for long stretches.

  And the rough justice of the gangs continued unabated. Joshua Hedrick was a tough guy who worked as an enforcer with the Crew, the Prince George crack dealers and enforcers. He'd been arrested several times for aggravated assault and other violent crimes. He was a friend of Scott Payne, the leader of the Renegades. But he had been, according to police, reducing his involvement with the gang and living at his mother's house in Maple Ridge.

  On January 11, 2009, he received a phone call at his mother's house at about 8:30 p.m. He took the phone out to the back patio to talk and never returned. His family found the phone on the patio table and were immediately suspicious.

  They reported him missing on January 13, and police became more suspicious of his whereabouts when he didn't show up to appointments with his parole officer.

  In August, a boater on the Fraser River near Douglas Island in Port Coquitlam discovered a badly decomposed body in the water. Tattoos and other factors led the coroner to identify it as Hedrick's.

  January 16, 2009, was an ordinary day for Abbotsford police until they received a number of calls from people claiming they had seen a man with a gun at Sevenoaks Shopping Centre. When police arrived, witnesses pointed out the group of men they had seen with the firearm. The cops were not surprised to see that the men in question were all three Bacon Brothers. They were searched and questioned, but no gun was found. Jonathan was wearing a bulletproof vest, but since it wasn't stolen, there was no basis to charge them and they were released.

  The fact that he was wearing a bulletproof vest in a mall in broad daylight was a testament to how dangerous the Bacon Brothers perceived their lives to have gotten, especially after the Karbovanec shooting. And they were right.

  Four days after the Sevenoaks incident, Jamie was driving his black Mercedes-Benz SL55 convertible northwest on South Fraser Way when he pulled up beside an SUV stopped at a red light at the intersection of Sumas Way. It was about 10 minutes before four in the afternoon. As he was waiting for the light to change, the back window on the right side of the SUV slid down and someone inside the truck fired at Bacon. Six shots went into the Mercedes (another blew out the back window of a nearby pickup truck, but the driver was unhurt). Jamie floored it, speeding through the intersection, down South Fraser, before merging onto West Railway Street, where he hit the median and crashed into the front entrance of a Keg restaurant. Police, alerted to the area after the first shots were fired, found Jamie a few hundred yards away from the wrecked Mercedes. He was wearing a bulletproof vest under his trademark hoodie. It probably saved his life.

  People I've talked to who knew many of the people killed in Vancouver's gang wars invariabl
y tell me that the person who was killed was a good person, not just a gangster. They were kind or generous or good with children. They had a quality or number of qualities that transcended gangster life.

  Of course they did. The drug trade, at least at the top end, is extremely lucrative and is one of the increasingly rare career choices for those who are not educated or bright enough to establish a legitimate career. Or, for those who can, the drug trade offers a very lucrative, even glamorous, option. In the Lower Mainland, with spiraling prices and declining employment, the drug trade attracted thousands. Many of them were otherwise ordinary people lured by the easy money, camaraderie and glamorous lifestyle.

  One of them was Andrew “Dru” Cilliers. He had received minor acclaim in February 2004 when he and two friends, Simon Prodromidis and Andrew Henderson, pulled an unconscious man from a burning car. What the papers did not say was that Cilliers was out on bail awaiting trial for a drug trafficking charge in 2002. Found guilty shortly after the heroic incident, he received a six-month conditional sentence (which meant no jail time if he made weekly visits to a parole officer), nine months probation and, for reasons not made clear at the time, a ten-year firearms ban.

  Some years later, Cilliers, who had a job at an auction house, moved into 6267 131A Street, a nice reddish brown house at the corner of 62B Avenue. He had originally moved in with his girlfriend, but after many arguments loud enough for the neighbors to be aware of, she left in the summer of 2008. Dru was not alone long, though. Soon after the girlfriend left, Dru's brother moved in.

  Friends and neighbors considered Dru affable and hardworking. But he had revenue streams aside from the auction house, and he had friends who might have been operating on the far side of the law. Len Pelletier—best known as the Hells Angels associate who'd been shot at while dropping his son off at school and the cousin of notorious Nomad Bob Green—just happened to have cosigned on the lease of a Harley-Davidson for Cilliers.