The Notorious Bacon Brothers (27 page)

Although the victim complied, one of the men hit him over the head with the bat anyway. The trio then fled. Police described the hit as “potentially lethal.”

Left for dead, the dealer managed to crawl to a nearby Tim Hortons, at which he called 9-1-1.

With all the arrests, assassinations and intimidations, the drug trade was in a state of flux. There was no real shortage of manpower (there never is) but a shortage of leadership. The number of people who are confident enough that they can run a drug-trafficking organization and stay alive and out of jail are few. And by 2011, jail and the grave had taken quite a few of them from British Columbia.

But one very well-known one remained. Despite having two brothers behind bars, despite being out on bail, despite the police-issued warnings, despite media following him everywhere, despite everyone knowing that many, many people would love to see him dead, Jonathan Bacon was still walking the streets, still taking meetings and still living the life of a gangster.

The old gang structure in British Columbia was falling apart like European alliances in the 1930s. The UN, Red Scorpions, even the mighty Hells Angels were in serious disarray. But as alliances dissolve, new ones are formed, and those still in the upper reaches of the game put aside old differences and got together.

Back when he went to high school in Langley, Larry Amero was a skinny little guy who was frequently bullied. But by the time he was an adult, he had been transformed into a steroid-fueled behemoth. His thigh-like arms were unable to fall naturally at his sides because of his ridiculously pumped-up lats, giving him a wide-armed, ape-like stance.

He also started covering himself with tattoos. His right hand, entire back, left arm and the left side of his chest were extravagantly inked. But the most important tattoo was on his otherwise inkless belly. In an arc, the intricately decorated letters spelled out, in all caps, “Hells Angels.”

Indeed he was a full-patch member of the White Rock Chapter of the Hells Angels. And he had a long records of arrests for drug trafficking and manufacture. Over the years, he had been associated with all the players in the Hells Angels sphere of influence: Randy Jones, Bob Green, Villy Lynnerup, Hal Porteous and the like.

But he also had other friends. In fact, over the years, he had become quite close with three men in particular, none of them Hells Angels. They were Jonathan Bacon, Randy Naicker and James Riach. Together they were about to become the Wolf Pack.

Chapter 12

Bacons' End: 2011–2012

Randy Naicker was an interesting fellow, to say the least. Fiji born, he admitted that he had helped to found the Independent Soldiers but claimed it was just a company with a clothing line and had nothing at all to do with gangs or drug trafficking. He came to media attention in 2005 when he was arrested for the kidnapping of Harpreet “Happy” Singh. While out on bail for the Singh kidnapping and extortion charges, Naicker found time to attend the notorious Castle Fun Park meeting. Naicker threw his considerable weight around while he was behind bars, instructing two of his men to brutally assault a UN member in their block. He may not have known it at the time, but when word leaked back to the UN, they vowed he would pay with his life. Released on day parole, Naicker spent his nights at a halfway house near Vancouver's trendy Cambie Village. On September 29, 2009, two armed men burst into the halfway house. Checking the sign-in book at the front desk, they saw an entry that said Naicker had just left on his way to a convenience store. They tore out after him. But the book had confused another resident, Raj Soomel, for Naicker. The gunmen found Soomel and assassinated him in front of horrified shoppers, then fled.

James Riach, another Independent Soldier who had attended the Castle Fun Park meeting, was at a lower level than Naicker, and had been arrested on weapons charges in 2008.

Years later, after their spate of arrests and assassinations, Riach, Naicker, Amero and Jonathan Bacon had become quite close. Police, media and even members of the public frequently reported seeing them together. In fact, several witnesses said they saw Amero and Jonathan Bacon touring around Burrard Inlet in Amero's high-powered and gaudily painted speed boat
Steroids & Silicone
. Yeah, he named his boat
Steroids & Silicone
. Eventually, the Port Moody police stopped the boat with Bacon and Amero on board for a chat.

But what they didn't know at the time was that Bacon, Amero, Naicker and Riach were doing more than just hanging out. Looking to cash in on the sudden scarcity of drugs on the streets, they were forming their own organization.

Known as the Wolf Pack, this new organization would be a side project for Amero, who would remain a Hells Angel. It's not unusual for Hells Angels to have moneymaking operations on the side, as long as their fellow members are made aware of it and offered a chance to be involved. The notorious Montreal chapter had set up a corporation of sorts called the Table that was dedicated to the sale of drugs and included non-members, as well as a number of full patches.

While the Castle Fun Park meeting, at the time, appeared to be a summit meeting between the Independent Soldiers and the UN, as represented by the Bacon Brothers, in the clearer light of 2011, it appeared more as though it was a recruiting meeting, with the Independent Soldiers (acting, as they always did, as the Hells Angels' proxy) luring the Bacon Brothers away from the increasingly independent and unreliable UN to the more docile and malleable Red Scorpions.

It also looked very much like a planning meeting to wipe out the upstart Lal brothers. A plan that later resulted in the Surrey Six massacre.

It's almost a year later, and Jason (not his real name) is still scared. Not only will he not let me publish his name, he also doesn't want his workplace or any description of his physical appearance to make it into print. All I can tell you is that he was working in “the area” when the big hit happened, and that he's in his early 20s. Still, he'll talk, and so few will.

“I was on my way to work, and I heard gunshots,” he told me. “It wasn't like bang-bang; it was more like buh-buh buh-buh buh-buh.” That makes sense: several witnesses reported that the assassins used AK-47s, and Jason's description is not inconsistent with their signature sound. I had been skeptical on this point because mainstream media have a habit of reporting almost any gun capable of automatic fire as AK-47s.

“Then I heard people screaming and brakes screeching,” he said. Again, this makes sense as there was a good deal of traffic going by, and when one sees an assassination, one tends to panic.

Jason says he ran outside and saw people running in every direction. He saw one old man trip on the curb and land on his face. Cars, he said, were going everywhere. A few moments later, he doesn't know how long, the sirens started, tons of them. Once the cops started rounding people up, reality set in. Something serious had happened, but Jason was still confused as to what exactly it was.

Then he saw the white Porsche full of bullet holes, and he had a pretty good idea.

What actually did happen can be pieced together from eyewitness reports and surveillance camera footage.

It was August 14, 2011, about 2:45 p.m. A white Porsche Cayenne with six people crammed into its five seats was leaving the Grand Bay Cafe at the Delta Grand Okanagan Resort & Conference Centre. Just as the vehicle was exiting the parking lot, it was approached by two masked men in black pants and black hoodies carrying AK-47s. Despite the masks, eyewitnesses said they could tell the masked men were white. To the left of the truck, the gunmen opened fire, shattering the driver's side windows and sending 7.62mm shells into the passenger compartment. One witness said that his military experience told him exactly what it was—automatic weapons fire. Another witness, who refused to be named but claimed he'd seen a heavily tattooed man and two women enter the Porsche, described what he saw to the
Vancouver Sun:

I pretty much seen some guy with a mask unload a clip, ran back out here to the sidewalk, ran back in unloading a clip, jumped in a silver Explorer and hoofed it that way. At least 30 shots, at least a full clip. I went back to look and those guys in the vehicle had blood all over. Everything about the shooter was black: the ski mask, his clothes and the gun.

Once they finished shooting, the men then jumped into a silver SUV that had pulled up and sped away. They were followed by another, smaller vehicle. At exactly the same time, a speedboat took off from the resort's dock at a very high rate of speed, headed across Okanagan Lake.

Surveillance cameras captured the moment when the Porsche's rear door was forced open from the inside. A man, white with dark hair, managed to extract himself from the wreckage. He was obviously hurt, but not severely so. After quickly surveying the scene, he ran, blending into the chaos as witnesses and others fled.

That's when police and paramedics began to arrive. The first two ambulances took care of the two men taken from the front seat—they appeared to be more seriously hurt. The next two took the two women who were still in the back.

A police helicopter zoomed in to survey the scene. Just as aerial officers reported seeing the suspect SUV speeding south near Gyro Beach, the paramedics pronounced that one of the men (the one in the front passenger seat) was dead on the scene. Eyewitness reports and video showed that paramedics worked frantically on a large, young white man with short dark hair. His clothes were taken off to help find the wounds, and his chest and arms had a number of tattoos, none of which would be seen if he were wearing a shirt.

The escaping SUV—now described by police as a Ford, perhaps an Expedition—was reported to have stopped on Gordon Drive, south of the city. The occupants fled. At that moment, 9-1-1 received a series of frantic calls reporting shots fired on the same block. It was later discovered that the “shots” were actually loud pops from a propane cannon, a device some farmers use to scare away birds.

Back at the scene of the crime, many eyewitnesses expressed grave concern for one of the victims. A slim young woman with long blond hair, she had been removed from the back seat but was not moving. She was alive, but things did not look good for her.

Rumors started to fly on social media. It was obviously a gang hit. Nothing was taken, automatic weapons were used, it was clearly well-planned in advance and the victims appeared to be young people with large amounts of disposable income.

And since the Hells Angels were in charge of every gang in town, the overwhelming majority of accusatory fingers pointed directly at them. The only dissenters were those who thought outsiders were attempting to make a significant crack in the Hells Angels' hegemony.

Fueling the fire was the fact that 80 Hells Angels and their friends had shown up for a golf tournament at nearby Michaelbrook Ranch Golf Club, despite the local chapter having only about a dozen members.

While social media were going wild with speculation, mainstream media caught a break. Jesse Johnston, crime reporter for News1130 in Vancouver, received a text that the dead man was Jonathan Bacon. He reported it immediately.

Suddenly things were coming together. Jonathan had been seen partying with his close friend and Hells Angels full patch Larry Amero in the same part of town the night before. Stills and video of the scene were showing up on mainstream media, as well as the Internet. Many claimed to recognize the badly injured man (shown still sitting in the driver's seat, his face turned toward the camera) as Amero. Many then speculated that the blond woman who had been shot was his longtime girlfriend Sarah Trebble.

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.