Hard Road
Page 30
Wolf started his study while a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Alberta in the mid-1970s, and his work captures the mindset of Canadian bikers during that time period. He went on to become a psychological anthropologist at the University of Prince Edward Island. The Rebels nicknamed him “Coyote” because he wore a coyote skin on his helmet.
Wolf explained how bikers react when a member dies while pushing life’s limits:
Members who die by vigilantism, riding hard or law enforcement have a good chance of becoming martyrs. Rather than take the death as a warning that they should change their ways, and start riding safer or living more peacefully, instead the death is taken as a reaffirmation of their lives, as if there is a point to running head on into a truck while high on speed. Running smack into a truck while high on speed isn’t taken as something cautionary, but rather as a romantic expression of life on the edge, where the ultimate epitaph is: “He lived and died like a biker.”
Funerals for men who die in such ways are emotional, sometimes grandiose affairs. Wolf continued:
Such funeral runs are often accompanied by acts of defiance, like ignoring helmet laws, firing weapons at the graveside and draping a casket in the club’s colours. In such a way, the surviving members don’t become demoralized. Instead, they see their rebel values celebrated. The Choice would doff their helmets, daring the police to do something about it. Giving way to good sense, officers would instead accompany the bikers to the gravesite to make sure nothing worse happened.
CHAPTER 22: Pigpen Goes South
Regarding Florida, articles that helped include Michael Griffin and Jim Leusner’s “Woman Recalls Life as ‘Property’ of Outlaw Enforcer,” Orlando Sentinel, December 17, 1995.
There’s something paradoxical at play about outlaw bikers and the military. While bikers love the outlaw image, they also see themselves as genuine patriots and the embodiment of freedom, and each wave of military service provides a fresh jump to biker ranks, from World War II to the present.
Rod MacLeod was close with Jacques (Sonny) Lacombe of the Choice, a well-off biker with a big estate, Bouvier guard dogs and a chemical factory. They made enough money that they would take vacations in the Caribbean together. “They’d ship their bikes down,” Kirby said. “That was expensive.”
Stairway Harry Henderson’s obituary reads:
HENDERSON, Harold ‘Stairway Harry’ Age 64 of Dayton passed away Saturday Jan. 3, 2009. He was a 42-year member of the Dayton Outlaws. Survived by his wife, Sandy, 3 brothers Robert, Michael and Danny Henderson, and one sister Helen Caudle. There will be a viewing at the Outlaws Clubhouse Friday Jan. 9, 2009 starting at 6:00 PM. The funeral will begin at the clubhouse Saturday at 12:00 PM followed by the procession to Woodland Cemetery. If desired, donations can be made to ‘Stairway’s’ wife Sandy in care of the Dayton Outlaws 272 N. Lansdowne Ave. Dayton, OH 45427. Condolences can be sent online at www.RogersFuneralHomes.com
CHAPTER 23: Last Olympic Hope
Lorne Campbell, Bernie and Jack Guindon described the UAW hall fight.
CHAPTER 24: Strange Clubmate
One of the more frightening Montreal Satan’s Choice members was Mike French, who was born in 1950. French, who was nicknamed “Crazy Mike,” was a product of the Queen’s School in lower Westmount and the Weredale House boys’ home in west-end Montreal. The boys’ home was closed in 1977.
French was very active in the biker wars against the Popeyes. He was found murdered in November 1982 in Kahnawake. He was said to have boasted about killing Sharron Prior in Pointe-Saint-Charles seven years earlier.
Sharron Prior was sixteen and pretty. She disappeared from her home on March 29, 1975, after going to meet a friend at a Pointe-Saint-Charles pizzeria, a five-minute walk from her home. She was found four days later in a Longueuil apiary. She had been raped and beaten repeatedly and suffocated on her own blood.
French’s suspected killer was a hitman in the West End Gang, but the murder was never solved. The killing was considered by many to be “sort of community service.”
CHAPTER 25: Mountie Radar
Retired RCMP officer Mark Murphy was great here, as was his book, Police Undercover. The True Story of the Biker, the Mafia & the Mountie, Hushion House (East York, 1999).
The police operation was confused when a caterer named Tony was found in the hallway of the Venus Spa, with a .22 calibre bullet hole in his head. That murder was never solved.
CHAPTER 26: Body Seller
Guindon later heard that the Outlaws wanted to take his life around this time, even though he was off the streets anyway. “They were quite pissed off about what was going on. They thought we might be going HA [Hells Angels]. There were rumours to the fact that they weren’t really pleased.”
CHAPTER 27: The Big Split
Cecil Kirby said he quit the Satan’s Choice in March 1976.
Kirby had been active in the mid-1970s with Duke in robberies, including one of a Willowdale gambler’s house. By that point, they had things down to a science of sorts. They would phone the house and if no one answered, the plan was afoot. “You can go through a milk box if you know how to do it,” Kirby said, describing how a smallish and flexible man like Duke could tuck his right arm on an angle and wiggle in.
The plan was to go into the gambler’s home and get what they could in twenty minutes or so. The gambler kept about $15,000 in a wad in his jacket pocket, which was convenient. They had heard he sometimes kept $100,000 in the trunk of his car.
Later, when Kirby hooked up with the Commisso crime family, he said he was asked, “Did you do a house?”
He answered, “Oh yeah,” but no money was returned.
By 1977, the Hells Angels had already expanded out of the United States into Australia and England. Now, they had their first francophone charter and the promise of more expansion, as they were close to other small but tough Quebec clubs like the Missiles in Saguenay, the Sex Fox in Chibougamau and the Marauders of Asbestos.
On the night of Saturday, June 8, 1999, a police tactical team moved in on a house in the upscale Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights and arrested Outlaws leader Harry (Taco) Bowman on multiple charges of murder, murder conspiracy and drug dealing. He had been on the run for two years and was on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list.
He was accused of the 1982 murder of a member of his club and the 1991 murder of the president of a rival club, the Warlocks, in Orlando, Florida, as well as plotting to kill officers and members of Hells Angels.
On Friday, July 27, 2001, in Florida, Bowman was sentenced to two concurrent life prison terms plus eighty-three years for ordering the murder of rival gang members, drug trafficking and fire bombings. Jurors concluded that Bowman used Outlaws clubs in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale to further his racketeering.
CHAPTER 28: Prison Blues
George McIntyre of Hamilton’s Parkdale Gang helped here. He was sent to prison on October 27, 1983—his twenty-fifth birthday—when Guindon was finally preparing to come out. McIntyre was heading for a three- to five-year manslaughter stretch. Since he originally faced the possibility of a life sentence for murder, the manslaughter term looked pretty good in comparison.
His legal troubles came when his buddy Mike Watson was trying to defend his title in the Canadian Amateur Bodybuilding Championships in their hometown of Hamilton on August 16, 1980. When Watson was ranked in second place, the hometown crowd erupted.
McIntyre quickly heard about Guindon from other prisoners. “He had a ridiculous reputation in Collins Bay,” said McIntyre, who used the word “ridiculous” as a compliment. He said Guindon earned respect by stepping up and pleading guilty to misdeeds that other club members had actually committed. “Anytime he did, it was because he decided to. Sometimes he made sacrifices for his brothers. Sometimes shit happens and that’s just the way it was.”
McIntyre replaced Guindon on the inmate committee, where his responsibilities included settling confli
cts between inmates and the system, picking movies and organizing social events. There were some drugs then, but not nearly the level there would be decades later. There was also some general feeling about what was right and what wasn’t. “The prison is a totally different place now,” McIntyre said. “The rules of the street had some bearing then. It’s not like that in prison now. They don’t have the ethics. It sounds silly to talk about ethics, but they did have them then.”
McIntyre recalled some soldiers coming by once to play floor hockey with the inmates in Collins Bay. “They quit halfway through.” The problem was the inmates were bodychecking everyone, not just the opponent with the puck. “They said, ‘We can’t do this. If they think the puck’s going to you, they hit you.’ ”
He also recalled a prisoner bringing a knife with him to play prison hockey. “He didn’t use it, though. I said, ‘What are you trying to prove? We’ll never get hockey again if you pull a knife. If you want to beat the guy over the head with your stick, that’s fine, but don’t use a goddamn knife.’ ”
That said, it was tough to put fear into some inmates to watch their behaviour. “They don’t care,” McIntyre said. “They are doing life anyway. They’re not going to get out.”
Brian Leslie Beaucage, one of the wilder prisoners in the Kingston Penitentiary riots, was also in Millhaven. “Brian was well liked in jail. A pretty solid individual. He didn’t back down from nobody,” said Guindon. “He was an all-round good guy, as far as I was concerned.”
CHAPTER 29: Quiet Expansion
A youthful Walter Stadnick showed ability in auto shop at Hill Park Secondary on Hamilton Mountain and hung around the Cardinal variety store in the city’s Birdland district. He and some teenaged friends rode Triumphs and BSAs and formed the Cossacks, a youthful Hamilton biker gang. Their most notable feature was the tufts of hair sticking up out of their helmets, which was an effort to give them a Cossack-warrior look. Stadnick’s Cossack club of Hamilton had no connection to the Cossacks Motorcycle Club of Texas or a club by the same name in the former Soviet Union.
By 1978, Stadnick had graduated from the Cossacks to the Wild Ones, who had a clubhouse on Hamilton Mountain on West Avenue. The local Satan’s Choice chapter had just patched over to the Outlaws, much to Guindon’s chagrin. There were no Hells Angels in Ontario, and it was a lonely time to be part of a smaller club like the Wild Ones, even with their serious mob ties. Stadnick and two Wild Ones rode off to Montreal, hoping to attract Angels support. Only one of them would ride out of Montreal alive.
At the time, the Montreal Hells Angels chapter president was Yves (Le Boss) Buteau, the former Popeyes boss. He was seeking allies like Stadnick to counter the Outlaws expansion.
Stadnick knew he was riding into a war zone. In March 1978, Montreal Outlaw Gilles Cadorette was killed instantly when a bomb was placed under his car while it was parked at a Bordeaux Street bar. In April, Athanasios (Tom Thumb) Markopoulos of the Outlaws was slain by two hitmen.
The Outlaws caught wind of Stadnick’s trip, and a pair of killers from Detroit and Miami tagged along behind them to Le Tourbillon bar in the east end, near Jarry Park, on October 12, 1978.
Stadnick settled into a booth with fellow Hamilton Wild Ones Guy (Gator) Davies and George (Chico) Mousseau. Sitting with them were Hells Angels Louis (Ti-Oui) Lapierre, Bruno Coulombe and Jean Brochu. Two clean-cut men who looked like cops approached them. Cops are generally annoying for bikers, but even they can have their uses. Sometimes, their very presence makes things safer. Who’s going to attack while two members of the Sûreté du Québec are in the room? There was no great concern about the two strangers walking toward them until one of them pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and the other drew a pistol. Within minutes, Davies and Mousseau were dead while Lapierre and Coulombe were injured. Stadnick was able to slide under the table and was the only target left unscathed.
Stadnick was now in the Hells Angels fold and in the centre of a war. Soon, Guindon would hear of Stadnick’s rise, but he was in no position to actually meet him. “I didn’t see too much of Stadnick…You knew of him.”
The wrongful conviction of the Satan’s Choice bikers is described in detail in the excellent book Conspiracy of Brothers: A True Story of Bikers, Murder, and the Law by Mick Lowe, Random House Canada (Toronto, 2013), and in a chapter of my own book with Lorne Campbell, Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels Biker, Random House Canada (Toronto, 2013).
CHAPTER 30: Reunited
Some of the violence involving the Wild Ones was from their own hands, like when Derek Thistlewaite and Peter Michael Urech blew themselves up in a quiet residential neighbourhood early in the morning of Wednesday, May 23, 1979, in a botched attempt to intimidate a woman who was scheduled to testify that she had been gang-raped. Pieces of their van ended up on a rooftop three houses away, and others flew two hundred to three hundred feet.
A week later, on Wednesday, May 30, 1979, more than sixty police officers from five forces raided twenty Hamilton homes and clubhouses connected to the Outlaws, Wild Ones and Red Devils. They didn’t come up with much, as charges ranged from unpaid parking fines to possession of explosives and restricted weapons. Some of the bikers taunted the police that they should have come earlier in the week, when they might have gotten more of what they were seeking.
Goobie was in Collins Bay in 1975, where he was reunited with bikers. Regarding the prison cafeteria attack, the same kitchen helper who almost beheaded a disgruntled diner also brained a suspected human rat with a putter taken from the mini-putt range.
CHAPTER 31: Reconnecting
After his son Jesse’s suicide, George Chuvalo told CBC Television: “It’s like everything you breathe in is grief [and] you just can’t believe your son is dead. You just can’t believe your son has died.” Things only got worse for Chuvalo. In 1993, another son, George Lee, was found dead in a hotel room with a needle in his arm. Two days after his funeral, Chuvalo’s wife, Lynn, committed suicide with a pill overdose.
Teresa Guindon-Mader’s website is www.mountainofhopefoundation.com.
CHAPTER 33: Hospitality Industry
They chose a different spelling for their camp than “Shan-gri-law,” the spelling used in the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon.
Harley Davidson Guindon is a strong writer and many of his comments quoted here were written by him. I think he has the potential to be the next Roger Caron, writing-wise.
CHAPTER 34: Nightmares
Harley Guindon was a huge help here. The woman he considers his real mother (not his biological mother) helped a great deal too. She did not want her name made public and I have respected this. Also helping me was Maggie Pearce-O’Shea, a former friend of Guindon, and Angel from Oshawa.
CHAPTER 35: Big Brother
The biker world had forged more links with the mob since Guindon went behind bars in 1975. The family of Vito Rizzuto had replaced the Cotronis and Violis in Montreal, while in the Greater Toronto Area, power was shared between seven ’Ndrangheta, or Calabrian Mafia, families, although there was still a Sicilian Mafia influence. Hells Angels in the Montreal area were now off-loading planes carrying drugs for Colombian cartels. Some bikers were working toward building their own direct drug connections with South American suppliers.
Organized Crime Committee Reports, 1989 and 1990, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, gave general descriptions of numbers and growth during those time periods.
The Canadian chapters of Outlaws were a fresh force for Guindon to consider. On January 22, 1985, there were mass Outlaws arrests across Ontario. Ninety members were arrested and houses and clubhouses were hit. Guindon’s old friend Sonny Lacombe was in the Outlaws now, and he was indignant the day of his arrest. Suspicions were everywhere, and a rival club was thought to be behind any misfortune except rain.
“The Hells Angels should be proud of you,” Lacombe chided a police officer as he was taken into custody.
CHAPTER 38: Moving On
Guindon’s sympathetic side also came out when he heard reports that an Oshawa Christmas toy fund had been robbed. Guindon and the club dipped into the bail fund box to make up the difference, but the charity turned down their offer, fearing it would be bad optics with the general public.
One year around 1990, Guindon rode 25,000 to 30,000 miles through Canada and the United States.
CHAPTER 39: Unwelcome Guests
Several articles provided information about the David Boyko murder. They include Paul Wiecek’s “They’ll Come to Bury a Biker: Real ‘Dog’s Breakfast’ Expected in City,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 15, 1996, A5; Tony Davis’s “Biker’s Funeral Draws Crowd,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 19, 1996, A5; Doug Nairne’s “ ‘Vicious’ City Biker Found Slain in Halifax,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 14, 1996, A1; and “Establishment of Hells Angels a Bloody Tale,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 15, 2005, B6.
CHAPTER 40: Biggest Party Ever
The Hamilton Red Devils were Canada’s oldest outlaw motorcycle club when they suddenly gave up their name in November 2014. Their history could be traced back to 1949. They had thirty-one members and chapters in Hamilton, Chatham and Sudbury when they suddenly bcame members of the Maritime-based Bacchus Motorcycle Club. The move came as the Hells Angels ushered their support club—also named the Red Devils—into Ontario.
Guindon was with Suzanne Blais that spring at a Friday the 13th biker run in Port Dover, Ontario, when weekend riders and members of established clubs all take to the road and congregate in the Lake Ontario fishing town. Suzanne later recalled: “As I was being introduced to his friends, he said, ‘Meet my lady friend Suzanne, who is my oldest friend. I’m going to give her a trophy one of these days. She was the only girl I knew while a teenager who managed to escape my clutches and keep her virginity.’ At which point I piped up with, ‘Yes, but I had to move to Toronto to do it.’ ”