Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (40 page)

Fallen Angel
is a collaborative effort. It is the combined voices of dozens of police officers, bikers, lawyers, drug dealers, journalists, neighbors, politicians and all kinds of other people who had something to say. For reasons that are obvious, a significant proportion of them would rather I didn't use their names. They are the people—like Diane the nurse, Bob the cop and Vincent the, to use his own phrase, “wealth redistributor”—who are referred to by first name only and not always their real first name. Others are referred to by no name at all if their connection to the story requires no further context. Of course, some of my sources had agendas to push and some weren't always honest. There were times when two people would claim the exact opposite of each other with equal stridency. In those cases, I had to find the answer somewhere else or not at all.

Of the people who are named, there were some that I consider truly essential. Sergeant John Harris of the Hamilton Police Service rose above all others. His knowledge of crime in his city and the entire country is extraordinary and he delivers it all in such a wittily matter-of-fact way that I sometimes think he should be the one writing the books. Similarly, his fellow sergeant in Hamilton, Steve Pacey, added a remarkable amount of drama as the man who went face-to-face with the bikers so many times and was the one who exposed so much of the inner workings of the Hells Angels when he searched Stadnick's home. They may have been given the job of ridding the streets of outlaw bikers, but they both clearly understood that their adversaries—especially Stadnick—were people with rights and dignity and real, sometimes very deep, personalities. If there's a hero to this story from a law-enforcement perspective, it's Quebec prosecutor Randall Richmond. A man of courage, conviction and staggering intellect, he stood firm and repeatedly did his job brilliantly under bizarre conditions.

I could not have written much of anything without the people on the street who, through drug sales, drug use or simply hanging out in certain parts of certain cities and towns, gave me a perspective with more depth and color than I could have gotten from police and prosecutors. Thanks go to people like Brian and Mike and others who weren't entirely sure that being a Hells Angel was all that bad an occupation and kept reminding me that it's not us against them.

Many thanks also go to the great Leta Potter people and the folks at John Wiley & Sons Canada, especially to Don Loney for the pep talks at The Pour House pub. Thanks also to Eric in the Bronx for his research and perspective, to Mark for his constant guidance and mockery, and to Karen, who read the last few thousand words and shook me from my deeply held opinion that I am the worst writer in the world. And, of course, deepest thanks go to Tizz, Dida and the H-Dogg, the collective reason I do anything.

It's hard to tell what people think of your book. When the first edition of
Fallen Angel
came out last March, it received quite a bit of attention. There were some good reviews in some major newspapers (there was also one bad one, but I was told its writer had his own issues on the subject) and sales were much better than expected. It also received a lot of attention on radio and TV, although this could well have been because its release virtually coincided with teh Shedden Massacre—an incident in which eight members of the Bandidos motorcycle gang were executed then dumped in a farmer's field in southwestern Ontario. The images, particularly the giant white belly of a dead biker hanging out of the back of a Nissan Murano SUV, were everywhere and people wanted to know more. Because of the renewed interest in bikers, I was on TV and radio regularly. While some pretty impressive people, like CTV's Mutsumi Takahashi and Global's Robin Gill, had told me they were impressed by the book, just as many interviewers made it clear (some almost proudly) that they hadn't read it and didn't ever intend to. Worse yet, I didn't run into anyone I knew who didn't make a joke about how I arranged for the Shedden Massacre to boost sales.

At the height of the media interest in bikers, I was killing time in Hamilton between two interviews and wandered into a bookstore in Jackson Square, the big mall downtown. I was curious to see if they had any copies of the book. When I didn't find any, I asked the clerk. “Oh, we're sold out of that,” she told me. “And we don't put it on the shelves anymore—as soon as we put them out, people would steal them—we have to keep them behind the counter.” I'm not sure if I hit my target audience, but it made me strangely proud.

It was a tough book to write in the first place and a project I took with some anxiety. Looking for help and maybe a little inspiration, I called Daniel Sanger. He'd just written
Hell's Witness
, an excellent book that follows the career of Dany Kane, the biker informant who played a significant role in the rise and fall of the Hells Angels in Canada, and it was clear he knew what he was talking about. When I told him that
Fallen Angel
would be in large part about Walter Stadnick, he was mildly surprised. “Great subject matter,” he said. “But you've got a lot of work in front of you.”

Indeed I did. By all accounts, Stadnick is an extremely intelligent and capable man who excels at nothing better than keeping out of trouble. In the same period his notorious colleague Maurice “Mom” Boucher was convicted of 43 times, Stadnick received two traffic tickets. Of course he was arrested a couple of times, but could not be convicted until 2004, more than 20 years after he is said to have joined the Hells Angels. Every single one of the police officers, lawyers, politicians and journalists I spoke with were of the same opinion—that Stadnick was the man who built the Canadian Hells Angels from a bunch of cocaine-crazed louts on bikes in Montreal to the biggest, strongest and most efficient crime organization in the country. But none of them knew how or why. They all knew a part of the story and were eager to tell me their little bit. Putting it together, as Sanger told me, would be the hard part.

But
Fallen Angel
is not a biography of Walter Stadnick. If it was, it wouldn't do him justice. In
Fallen Angel
, the story of a remarkably complex and secretive man is just an allegory for the bigger picture. He was smart and charismatic, but he came of age in a time and place where his talents weren't worth much. When he started gainng money and popularity through being a biker, he knew he'd found his niche. He moved up through the minor leagues to the big time. Although he was tiny by biker standards and couldn't speak any French, he went to the Hells Angels' clubhouse in Montreal, and before too long, he was their president. Stadnick traveled the country using charm and persuasion to sign up other men and other clubs, until his gang ruled the bikers from coast to coast.

He then formed a new gang, the Nomads, who told the Hells Angels what to do. He did it all by staying a few steps ahead of the police and staying out of trouble. His story mirrors that of the Hells Angels, who started out small and without direction and quickly gained enough momentum to dominate organized crime in this country.

Fresh from the gang wars in Kingston, Robeson David had seen his share of violence. Using public outrage over a massive tax increase as a ruse, armed gangs of men battled in the streets—raping, looting, burning and shooting with a callous casualness that caused ordinary citizens to create refugee camps in police stations. More than 500 people were murdered in less than two weeks. David, an officer in the Jamaican Defense Force's SWAT unit, led his men into the worst of the fighting. “It was more like war than police work,” he said, his seriousness and Jamaican accent making him sound distinguished. “But desperate crimes call for desperate measures.” He wasn't joking.

Despite his experiences on the front lines, even David had to admit his assignment for the morning of March 28, 2001, caused him some anxiety. He was told that he and his men would have to capture and arrest the kingpin of the Canadian Hells Angels. “This isn't about a bunch of boys with cricket bats anymore,” he said. “This is the Hells Angels, professional killers—we didn't want to mess with them.” Such was the reputation of the world's best-known motorcycle gang that an assault rifle-toting SWAT officer would rather face open gang warfare on the mean streets of Kingston than arrest one Angel at a luxury hotel.

The Ritz-Carlton Rose Hall, located just outside of Montego Bay, is a hell of a place. The 5,000-acre beachfront spa and golf club is easily the best hotel on the island. Nestled between verdant hillsides and the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, the beautifully appointed and tastefully decorated Ritz is the only Jamaican resort to earn AAA's coveted five-diamond rating.

Standing out amid all the luxury was a short man from Canada. Dressed garishly, even among the sea of tourists eager to party on the laid-back islands, he didn't present an impressive figure. At 5-feet 4-inches, his stout body and short limbs gave him an almost primitive appearance and his shoulder-length hair indicated that his profession probably didn't take him into an office every day. His face and hands, badly burned in a motorcycle accident 18 years earlier, did little to soften the edges of this hard-looking man. “Yeah, he was scarred up a bit, but that's not why he was funny-looking,” said Shaun Plank, a hotel employee. “He had tiny, sunken-in eyes and a great big mouth. It made him look nasty—you don't play with a man who looks like that.”

But Walter Stadnick was there to play. He had no business, official or otherwise, other than to celebrate his 22nd anniversary with his common-law wife, Kathi Anderson. Disappointed that the Ritz was booked, he spent the first part of his vacation at the Wyndham Rose Hall just down the beach.

The Wyndham is a nice place, too. It's not the Ritz, but at $395 a night for a decent room, it's out of reach for most hard-working Canadians. A former sugar plantation surrounded by 18 holes on an impeccable golf course, it mainly attracts well-heeled businessmen who like golf and women who'd like to meet them. Stadnick stood out there, too.

About 1,800 miles to the north, Steve Pacey wasn't sipping margaritas and checking out passing bikinis. If Stadnick looked out of place at a luxury hotel, Pacey stood out even more among the other cops in the Hamilton police force, even when he was with the men and women of the Ontario Provincial Police's Biker Enforcement Unit. At 6-feet 2-inches and 265 pounds, he was an imposing presence. With his shaved head, wild goatee, diamond stud earring and arms wrapped in tattoos, the man dressed in denim and black leather looked more like a prisoner than a colleague when he was with other cops. But he wasn't their enemy; he was their secret weapon. He went where the bikers went and, except for the drugs and violence, he did what the bikers did. To a newbie, he looked like another biker. To the bikers, he was close enough that they got sloppy around him after a few too many cold ones. Pacey knew more about Hamilton's bikers than anyone else. And he knew that, although most cops associate Hamilton with the traditional Italian Mafia, it was the bikers who called the Steel City home who really ran things in Canada, and it was Stadnick who called the shots for many of the bikers. “There are traditional organized crime members in this city who are very active,” he said in 2001. “But in terms of sheer volume, Walter's influence spreads way beyond Hamilton.”

At this point, it was pretty clear to everyone that Stadnick was not exactly Ned Flanders. Despite the fact that there exists no record of Stadnick ever holding a job, he lived pretty high on the hog. Unlike the more commonplace breed of
nouveaux riches
who expose themselves to scrutiny by buying an ostentatious mansion, Stadnick played it cool. He bought a small and comfortable house near the ridge of the 300-foot hill they call “the mountain” in Hamilton. Assessed for insurance purposes for an atrociously low $156,000, Stadnick's Cloverhill Road residence was an opulent, if not entirely tasteful, monument to the biker lifestyle.

From the street, the only indication that this wasn't an ordinary house was the oversized Canadian flag and the mailbox painted in the bright red and white of the Hells Angels. A few steps out back revealed that work had begun on an in-ground pool. Overlooking it was a recently finished second-floor balcony. A peek in the first floor windows would reveal a sumptuous glass, black marble and gold plate motif worth well more than the estimated value of the entire house. Climb up to the second floor and you'd see an office with a PC, scanner, fax and—what every legitimate businessman needs—a paper shredder. Next door was a bathroom featuring a new whirlpool with a wall-mounted TV. Beyond that was the red-and-white master bedroom with an expensive four-poster bed and a his-and-hers closet filled with custom-fitted Armani suits and enough women's shoes to make Imelda Marcos envious. Parked out front on most days were a late-model Chrysler luxury car, a Blazer SUV and, perhaps most revealing, a brand-new Jaguar with Quebec plates. The beloved Harleys lived in the garage. Stadnick's attempt to blend in didn't fool the cops. As one Hamilton officer mused aloud: “How can you have a guy like Stadnick—who's never had a job in his life—living in a gorgeous little house, with a place in Quebec, a place in Winnipeg—traveling all over the world wearing Armani suits?”