Police found the suspect vehicle, a Ford Explorer, burned out from the inside.
A hastily put-together press conference informed the media that one person was dead and others were injured in a shooting. But the media had already run with the story, reporting that the dead man was Jonathan Bacon and that Amero was the badly injured one.
They were right. Well, mostly. Jonathan Bacon, the front-seat passenger, was indeed dead. Amero, the driver, was in critical condition. But the blond woman who had been so badly hurt was not Trebble. In fact, it was Leah Hadden-Watts. The 21-year-old waitress also happened to be the niece of Michael “Spike” Hadden, owner of Haney Hawgs, a Harley-Davidson customization shop. He was also a full-patch member of the Haney chapter of the Hells Angels and allegedly their president. His son, Jesse (Leah's cousin), was also a full patch.
Hadden-Watts had taken a direct hit in the neck. Surgeons removed two of her shattered vertebrae, but she was left a quadriplegic, unable to move anything but her head again for the rest of her life.
Also shot while inside the Cayenne but far less severely hurt was Hadden-Watts' roommate, Lyndsey Black. She made a full recovery.
The mystery man who emerged from the car after the shooting and fled the scene was James Riach, Independent Soldier and newly minted member of the Wolf Pack.
The Kelowna shooting was a sobering moment for the people of British Columbia. It made them well aware that masked gunmen with automatic weapons could strike with absolute impunity. It was like Mexico, where the cartels had the cops outgunned and outsmarted, and killed whom they pleased when and where they pleased. There was no way these guys were ever going to get caught unless they were overcome by feelings of guilt or bragged about what they had done in front of an informant. Nobody in their right mind would take that bet.
But, perhaps more important, it showed one sector of the population, those who could be swayed by the gangster lifestyle, that nobody in it was safe. The Bacon Brothers, whose arrogance and visibility were synonymous in the area with the concept of the gangster who lived above the law, had effectively ceased to exist.
Jonathan—the oldest, the smartest, the boss—was dead. The other two brothers—both of whom were looking at long prison sentences—were lost without him. Neither had the intellect, charisma or connections to do what their big brother had. Without him, they were just another pair of thugs.
It also meant the end of the Wolf Pack, such as it was. Before it had even gotten off the ground, one of its members was dead, another was in critical condition and another had abandoned his critically wounded friends at the scene of the shooting.
The only other member—Randy Naicker, who was not in Kelowna at the time of the shooting—was well known to have a price on his head. Naicker was eventually gunned down outside a Port Moody Starbucks at about 5:30 p.m. on June 25, 2012. Many of his friends were quick to back up his claim that he had left the gangster lifestyle after the Kelowna shooting (scared straight, as it were). But those old debts don't just go away.
And one other effect of the shooting was that it removed any of the last lingering notions that full-patch Hells Angels could still operate by proxy and avoid punishments, both legal and extra-legal.
At the time of the hit, many observers of organized crime in the area speculated that the Hells Angels were to blame. Jealous of Amero's success on his side project, they said, they thought they'd eliminate him, or at least take him down a peg or two.
But that proved to be a ridiculous assumption. Amero was a quick healer who proved little worse for wear shortly afterward. He was welcomed with open arms back into the Hells Angels' fold. Indeed, the next time he made the news was in July 2012. At the corner of Viger and Saint-Hubert in Montreal, Amero ran a red light and crashed his large, black SUV into a car driven by a 21-year-old woman. Despite severe damage to his own vehicle and dozens of eyewitnesses, Amero kept on driving, and was finally pulled over by Montreal cops at Saint-Hubert and René Lévesque. Amero then failed two Breathalyzer tests and was charged with impaired driving, impaired driving causing bodily harm and hit and run.
Police at the time considered his presence in Montreal to be more than just tourism. With drug and vice markets far outstripping Vancouver's, Montreal had been the epicenter of Canada's Hells Angels since they arrived in 1977. But a recent police raid, Operation SharQc, put 111 full-patch members behind bars. In the past, the Canadian Hells Angels have been known to move members to chapters with their membership reduced by arrest, just to keep them alive and to keep the cash coming in.
The Kelowna shooting did not do much to affect the drug trade in British Columbia physically, but it probably did psychologically. For years, many at-risk youths had idolized the gangsters they saw on the news. The talked like them, dressed like them and—with disturbing frequency—wanted to grow up like them.
But there was a big difference now. All their idols had fallen. Bindy Johal? Dead. Clayton Roueche? Serving 30 years in the United States Jonathan Bacon? Dead. Suddenly, the gangster lifestyle was not looking as attractive as it had a few years earlier.
Of course, drugs were still sold after that, but the violence took a huge downturn. The war was over. The Bacon Brothers were among the losers.
The two surviving brothers had little to be hopeful about. Both were facing trials in which the Crown's cases were overwhelmingly strong.
Jarrod Bacon's trial along with his girlfriend's father, Wayne Scott, was a media sensation and, at times, absurd.
Early on, he lashed out at his enemies. He said that members of the media should “lose their licenses” for printing lies about him and his brothers and for implying his parents were involved in drug trafficking or at least aware of their sons' activities. “You want to talk bad about me or my brother, that's all good because I signed up for that,” he said. “But they are good, hardworking normal people. They had nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
He accused the RCMP of playing dirty by using Scott, who had no criminal record, to get to him. “It's pretty gross that the police targeted a working guy to get at me,” he said. “I feel bad for Wayne. He is a victim in this.”
And he pointed out that GL, a lifelong trafficker, had gotten rich on the taxpayers' dime just to bring him down. “They paid this guy an obscene amount of money so he could retire on a beach somewhere.”
Jarrod admitted that he turned to crime after being expelled from school for fighting. In fact, he said, he had made violence his career. When asked what his role in organized crime was, he responded that he was a “professional street fighter.”
Realizing that a trafficking conviction would almost certainly net him a longer prison sentence than a robbery conviction, he argued in court that his intent was not to purchase the drugs, but to steal them. When Crown Attorney Peter LaPrairie asked him, “You and Wayne Scott agreed to obtain 100 kilograms of cocaine from GL so you could profit from it, right?” Jarrod snapped back, “No, this case is an attempted robbery. There never was any money at any point in time. My intention the whole time was to rob him. You should save that little speech.”
LaPrairie called him a liar and pointed out that Jarrod had admitted to lying in court back in 2008 to get out of solitary confinement.
Jarrod went into more detail about his robbery plan. He said he did not have to bring any weapons because he could easily overpower GL, who was older and smaller than he was. In fact, he claimed that GL would “turtle” (fall into a defensive ball) after a single slap. Then he boasted, “I could take GL with one hand tied behind my back.”
He claimed that neither Wayne nor Carly Scott had any idea of the robbery plan. “Wayne had no clue what was going to happen,” he testified, adding, “I do not discuss my business with girls. Period.” Perhaps he didn't realize that his statements exposed both of them to the idea that they were sincerely attempting to broker a huge drug deal.
When a recording appeared in which Scott told GL that Bacon's parents were involved in the deal, Jar
rod vehemently disagreed. “Wayne wasn't being truthful with what he said,” he testified. “All he said was that he came over for a dinner and I was off to the side and writing, and he said they must have known. But they didn't know. How can you hear what was written on a board?”
He also denied a Crown assertion that his friend Brian “Shrek” Dhaliwal was involved, putting up cash for a potential deal. “I don't know how you can slander a person who has no role in this whatsoever,” he said.
Finally, Jarrod blamed the whole thing on his own drug addiction, claiming to be a regular user of Oxycontin, cocaine, steroids and marijuana. “I would crush and snort between two and four Oxys a day,” he said. “I did blow on the weekends.”
The drugs, he said, made him paranoid, desperate and indifferent. When he was high, he said, he would breach his bail conditions to annoy the police and because he just didn't care “When I was on drugs, I would breach the conditions whenever I wanted,” he said in court. “When you are injecting steroids and you are snorting Oxycontins, you don't care about anyone's feelings. You just care about doing more pills, and that's it.”
When asked how he acquired the drugs under heavy police surveillance, he admitted that he would have them delivered to Scott's house (even when Carly and their toddler son were there), which contradicted his earlier testimony that neither of the Scotts were involved with or even aware of his part of the drug trade. “I was on drugs but I was also trying to maintain a normal life,” he said. “I was wired to Oxys really badly in August. I was a slave to the pills. It's a disgusting habit.”
It was while he was high, Jarrod said, that he decided to rob GL. “When he was pressing, saying, ‘I'm going to be in Abbotsford, I can get you drugs and show them to you,’” he testified, “I was like, ‘Okay, perfect, this guy is getting robbed.’”
But while Jarrod and his defense team were concentrating on robbery as their motive, they seemed to have forgotten that no matter how Jarrod came by the drugs, the simple possession of 10 kilos of cocaine was tantamount to a confession of trafficking. No matter how he acquired the drugs, he was—in the court's eyes, at least—a trafficker.
As the trial drew to a close, there was little to debate but the sentencing. The Crown, citing Jarrod's long record, family history and admission of a violent past, asked for 21 years. The defense, acknowledging all that but pointing out that he was the father of a young son and that his decision-making ability was hampered by drugs, asked for eight.
On May 4, 2012, Justice Austin Cullen laid down the sentence. Pointing out that there was no evidence that Jarrod had ever held a job, and drawing attention to his previous run-ins with the law, his family's criminal past and that “the circumstances of his life and experience to this point do not permit much optimism for his rehabilitation or inclination towards leading a law-abiding life,” he sentenced Jarrod Bacon to 12 years.
But, of course, it was more complicated than that. Cullen gave Jarrod almost five years' credit for the time he had already spent behind bars, leaving just seven years and two months on his sentence. Barring complications, that meant the latest he would be released would be July 2019, when he would be 36 years old. Since he would be eligible for parole after half his sentence, that means he could apply as early as July 2013.
The Crown quickly appealed. They claimed that Cullen had “failed to give due consideration to the principles of denunciation and deterrence” and that he had also neglected his duty to make an order of delayed parole eligibility for the client. It's unlikely the appeal will get far since the sentence was much longer than is normal in such cases, and since there was no actual cocaine involved, the sentence was on thin ice to begin with.
Scott's sentencing was adjourned until September 2012.
The case against Jamie Bacon and the other alleged Surrey Six conspirators seemed secure after their old friend Dennis Karbovanec admitted his involvement. After pleading guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and one count of conspiracy, Karbovanec was sentenced to life with no chance at parole for 15 years. In the overwhelmingly likely case that the others are found guilty, they should expect harsher sentences (depending on their involvement, of course) because they did not confess.
As always, though, there were complications. Surrey RCMP Sergeant Derek Brassington appeared to be a real cop's cop. He had worked 14 years in major crimes, the last seven in homicide. He had even married a fellow Surrey RCMP officer. As one might expect, he was a key investigator in the Surrey Six investigation.
But before the trial, he was reassigned and then later suspended when information surfaced that he allegedly had an affair with a key witness. Not only was the unnamed aspiring model in question an old girlfriend of Karbovanec's, but she had also had an affair with another of the accused, none other than Jamie Bacon. Oh, and she was pregnant, allegedly with Brassington's child. Brassington faced serious charges of obstruction. His lawyer blamed his “inappropriate relationship” with the young woman in question on the stress of working homicide for seven years. Also charged were Brassington's boss, Inspector Dave Attew, and Constables Paul Johnson and Danny Michaud, who allegedly knew of the affair and did nothing about it.
Of course, a witness who was romantically involved with both an investigator and an accused murderer on the same case was a major complication. Her testimony could be swayed in either direction. But it was unlikely to allow the accused conspirators get off—at least that's what the person who knew most about the case had to say. Nor would the controversy about lawyers overcharging the government that emerged during the trial. The case was simply too important to be derailed by relatively inconsequential matters. “Obviously, it will raise serious questions about witness tampering, [and] overtime being charged when it shouldn't have been. The defense lawyers will try to make this case even more complicated,’” said Eileen Mohan, mother of the murdered Chris Mohan. “They [the accused] cannot be let go just on a technical ground.”
The Bacon Brothers are gone. One's dead, the other two in prison. The surviving ones will be released some day, probably sooner than the public would prefer, but they won't reassume their old positions of power—not without their dead brother Jonathan, who was clearly their leader.
The cynical opinion would say that the demise of the Bacon Brothers operation had very little impact on the drug trade in British Columbia. And there is something to be said for that opinion. The Bacons were players to be sure, but the amount of drugs they moved was hardly a big proportion of the total. And in situations like this, there is always someone else who takes their place. The Bacons certainly never moved anywhere near as much product as Roueche, and while there was a noticeable dip in the amount of drugs moved after he went down, it was short-lived. As long as there is a ridiculous amount of money to be made trafficking drugs, there will be no shortage of people volunteering to try their hand at it.
Despite that basic truth, things have changed for the better in British Columbia. No longer are daytime shootings commonplace. Drive-by assassinations now seem like a thing of the past. It's still a very dangerous game, but one could say that the war is over.
The very public collapse of the Bacon dynasty had something to do with that. People, when they join the drug trafficking world, often are intellectually aware of the dangers involved but do not have the visceral fear of death or imprisonment that perhaps they should.
But there was something different about the Bacons. They were middle-class boys next door, kids with a comfortable past and an enviable future. But when it was all said and done, they went three up, three down after they decided to pursue careers in trafficking. The fact that they were so easy for many people to identify with made the reality of their fates sink in for many. Suddenly, the twin specters of long imprisonment and murder seemed very real and had to be factored into any decision to enter the game or not.
And there was also their involvement in the Surrey Six murders, which caused revulsion among the public. It was one thing for gangs
ters to kill gangsters (and that happened at a sickening rate for a while), but to see two innocent people die like that for no reason was sobering. And there was no way to escape it. A massive public outcry galvanized around grieving mother Eileen Mohan made sure that anyone who was involved in trafficking had to be constantly reminded of the innocent victims of the world they were in. It was enough to break the spirit of Dennis Karbovanec, as hardened a criminal as any.
The lasting effect of the dramatic and very public saga of the Bacon Brothers was not to reduce the amount of drugs trafficked in and out of the province, but rather to put a definite cap on the violence which had, up until then, been escalating out of control.
Just a few years earlier, there were legions of high school kids in the area who idolized the Bacons and wanted to be just like them. The fancy cars, fancy clothes and legions of girlfriends seemed like they were pulled directly from a schoolboy fantasy. But now that the area's most prominent drug traffickers were rotting behind bars or six feet underground, the gangster lifestyle didn't seem so attractive after all.
Without realizing it, and certainly without trying, the Bacon Brothers actually made British Columbia a safer place.
Index
A
Abbotsford, British Columbia
Aburto, Marlin “Marlo”
Ahmed, Mohamad
Ahuja, Rabinder
Alemy, Koshan
Alemy, Nicole Marie
Alexander, Christina
Alkhalil, Khalil
Alkhalil, Mahmoud
Allen, Greg
Alekseev, Aleksandr
Alekseev, Eugeniy
Alvarez, Rob
The Notorious Bacon Brothers Page 23