The Notorious Bacon Brothers (13 page)

But for a while, he could get no peace in his beloved mountains because of the huge amount of air traffic. “It was especially bad at night,” he said. “I go up there for peace and quiet, and I might as well have camped out by the airport.” Interestingly, Enright was certain that the government was behind all the action in the skies. “To tell you the truth,” he said. “I thought it was the DEA looking for weed.” In fact, what was flying above his head
was
weed.

It was a crazy time. Sure, there was money to be made in dial-a-dope. But it wasn't the big time. The abundance of weed had driven the price way down. Operating a dial-a-dope operation could easily net you the lease of a nice Acura SUV, but if you wanted to pay down a fully loaded, customized, armor-plated Cadillac Escalade with hydraulic gun racks and an innards-shaking stereo system—and many, many young men did—you needed to branch out from the Lower Mainland.

There was an absolute surfeit of weed. A tradition of locals growing pot for themselves and their friends had morphed into a huge and sophisticated industry as organized crime pushed growers for more profits. Using methods like hydroponics, aeroponics, grow lights and artificial daytimes, British Columbia farmers had found the way to get not only the highest yield of marijuana, but also the most potent. In fact, the best of the local strains—known collectively as “B.C. Bud,” set the smoking world alight. It was so prized, so valued, that in some places, it was actually bartered kilo-for-kilo with cocaine, a feat unimaginable with any other strain of marijuana.

The provincial government estimated there were 22,000 marijuana grow operations in B.C., and in 2005,
Forbes
magazine estimated these harvested $7 billion in product. That was just too much weed for the province, and prices reflected that. Weed was cheap, competition was fierce and profit margins began to get thin.

But people were willing to pay a premium for weed elsewhere, especially the now world-famous BC Bud. Most of the sophisticated Lower Mainland and Okanagan traffickers already had systems in place to export drugs to Australia and Japan—in fact, the United Nations (the New York City–based multinational organization, not the Abbotsford-based street gang) has determined that one of the leading suppliers of cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy to both countries is Canada.

But while trafficking easily concealable drugs like cocaine, meth and ecstasy is one thing, moving marijuana is quite another. While very small quantities of stimulant drugs can yield a high profit, there's no way to make money hiding weed in the fake bottoms of frying pans. No matter what the selling price, to make money moving weed, you have to have significant volume. Even when dried and vacuum-packed, weed is bulky and cumbersome.

But across the border, they would pay through the nose for BC Bud. And if you could get the stuff as far away as Los Angeles or Chicago, you could get very rich very quickly. And that's what traffickers did. Like French wine merchants who serve the locals their worst and save the best for export, many drug traffickers in the Lower Mainland collected their best weed for the United States—where the real money was.

Getting it over the border wasn't hard. At first, they drove it over, but after 9/11, the Americans worked much harder to secure their borders. Driving over frequently opened the traffickers to increased scrutiny and the potential for arrests and the stiff sentences given out by U.S. courts.

But while the official crossings presented something of a challenge, the security along most of the border was a joke. For the most part in the Lower Mainland, the border itself is little more than a two-lane road, called (depending on which town it's in) 0 Avenue, Townline Road or Boundary Road. On the Canadian side, there are farms and scattered suburban housing tracts, while the American side is mostly wooded, with a few raspberry fields. Getting over is simple. Look both ways, cross the road and you're in the other country.

Naturally, traffickers took—and continue to take—advantage of this. The primary method for cross-border trafficking was to hire some teenager or twenty-something, give him (or her) a backpack full of weed and send him over the border.

But there are a few problems with that. The most weed a backpacker can usually take over the border is just a few pounds. The road is patrolled by police, and backpackers crossing the border—especially if they are in large groups—are liable to be apprehended. And they can talk. After arrest, backpackers can save themselves by turning in their contacts, and some have even been known to implicate their bosses by bragging in front of the wrong people about what they do and who they know.

There are other methods, of course. Canoes and kayaks are popular on the coast, but they are prone to federal scrutiny on both sides of the border. Some people use dirt bikes or ATVs, but the noise they make tends to invite unwanted attention. A few people have tried giant slingshots and makeshift catapults with limited success. Tunneling is an expensive, time-consuming and dangerous option, but it has been taken. A pair of Canadians built a tunnel from a Quonset hut in Langley that opened up in a friend's living room in Lynden, Washington, but they were arrested before they could complete a single shipment. The men, who were given nine-year prison sentences by a U.S. court, said they expected to move at least 300 pounds a day through the tunnel.

In order to move large amounts of product over the border quickly and safely, more and more trafficking organizations took to the air. Even the smallest Cessna can carry as much as 300 pounds of weed and can fly literally under the radar, spend a couple of undetected seconds on the other side of the border, land briefly or even just drop a package, and return.

As more people realized how safe and efficient the method was, the airways over the British Columbia–Washington border became very busy, especially at night. Drugs were being ferried over the border constantly. Law enforcement knew it was happening but could do little about it. It was such a commonplace activity that in 2006, when Jane Gerth was driving on Highway 17, 15 minutes away from the Canadian border, and saw a black-and-gold backpack in a ditch beside the road, she slammed on the brakes. The wife of a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent, she knew what was in the bag. When she unzipped it, it almost burst as the $20 and $10 bills packed tightly inside started pouring out of it. After a night of excited counting, Gerth had found $507,270 in U.S. currency. Since it was used as evidence in a raid that netted the arrests of three men who grabbed a replacement bag set out by police, Gerth was allowed to keep her prize, plus the interest that accumulated as the trial went along.

It was so easy to get mass quantities of weed over the border this way that it became very popular, and private pilots were in huge demand. Helicopters, which did not require airports and their complications, were extremely prized, and their pilots were worth their weight in gold.

One of them was Dustin “Princess” Haugen. Though only 24, the doughy, weary-looking Haugen was an experienced helicopter pilot and drug trafficker. He had never been caught red-handed, but had spent a few days in jail as a suspect in a helicopter-based trafficking ring and was released when a case against him failed to coalesce. A reporter for
Playboy
magazine rode along with some helicopter traffickers—many people I spoke with believe that Haugen was one of them—and quoted them as boasting they were more efficient than FedEx.

Haugen met Jonathan Bacon, and the two quickly became friends. At the time, Bacon was just another small-time dial-a-doper, but he was one with big plans. In fact, Bacon was so sold on the idea of helicopter trafficking, he started to take flying lessons in Langley. To get things started, Bacon rented a serviceable helipad in Abbotsford, near the border, from which Haugen flew a leased Bell JetRanger frequently. Despite the fact that the JetRanger could carry four passengers or up to 1,300 pounds of cargo, Haugen's flights never listed any cargo and rarely any passengers.

In March 2005, Haugen took his girlfriend—aspiring hairstylist Christina Alexander—on one of his flights. But he landed poorly, wrecking the helicopter and killing Alexander. Police investigated, but could find no drugs, large amounts of cash or witnesses willing to deny Haugen's story that he had been taking Alexander on a sightseeing trip (in the dark), so no charges were laid.

But the incident had an effect on Bacon. He stopped taking flying lessons and more or less fired Haugen, letting his lease on the helipad expire without financing any more trips.

Haugen, though, was less affected and went right back to work for other clients. On May 9, 2006, as part of Operation Frozen Timber, police on both sides of the border watched and photographed as Haugen and an associate named Daryl Desjardins took off in Canada and landed in the woods just over the border.

Desjardins had a long history as a drug trafficker and was a close associate of the United Nations. He had actually once run afoul of the group back in 2003, when Roueche found out that he had been overstating his status in the gang, claiming he was one of the big bosses when he wasn't. After a “talk” with gang enforcer James Coulter, Desjardins continued to traffic in association with the UN and presumably snapped Haugen up as soon as he heard that Bacon had let him go.

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also photographed Haugen and Desjardins land and hand over five hockey bags to three young men with a large blue GMC pickup truck. They allowed him to take off and arrested the men in the pickup. Inside the hockey bags, ICE agents discovered almost 300 pounds of BC Bud shrink-wrapped into one-kilo packages. Desjardins and Haugen were arrested when they returned to the helipad near Desjardins' home after a brief stop near Chilliwack.

After Haugen served time in Canadian prison, he was extradited to the United States for trial there. Traditionally, that meant a much longer sentence, so when the Washington judge sentenced him to time served, rumors that he had made a deal, probably ratting on someone higher up, abounded.

While Jonathan Bacon may have abandoned the helicopter plan, he did not stop trafficking. The Abbotsford police—like pretty well everyone else—knew very well that Jonathan was a major source of drugs in the area. Though still keeping very close ties, he had moved out of his parents' house and rented another one on Winfield Drive ten minutes to the south to live with his girlfriend, the blonde and apparently surgically enhanced Rayleene Burton. Neighbors have told me that there were “expensive-looking” cars and trucks coming to and from the house at all hours and that “tough-looking guys” always seemed to be hanging around.

But his neighbors weren't the only people whose attention Jonathan had aroused. The police broke up a home invasion at a grow op and arrested him under suspicion of breaking and entering, and robbery. They were shocked to find that not only was he wearing a bulletproof vest, but it had been stolen from the RCMP.

A lack of cooperation from the victims of the break-in led to the Crown's case falling apart, and Jonathan was convicted simply of possession of stolen goods.

But the evidence gathered in that case allowed police to put Jonathan under surveillance, and in the spring and summer of 2005, officers watching the house saw as many as 15 transactions in which Jonathan exchanged a package with various other men. They never actually saw drugs or cash change hands, just packages. Eager to put him out of business, the Abbotsford police requested a search warrant for the house. It was denied. The local Judicial Justice of the Peace who reviewed the application declared that the reasons the police gave for the warrant fell “short of supporting reasonable grounds to believe that the items to be searched for [would] be at the requested location.”

Constable John Forster, who was leading the investigation, was actually in the process of revising his search warrant application when he received a telephone call on August 4 from one of his officers watching the house. He was informed that Bacon was meeting with a friend named Godwin Cheng.

Forster knew that Cheng was no choirboy. He had been arrested in February 1996 along with Jaswant “Billy” Rai and Rabinder Ahuja for a massive gang beating in which they had uttered death threats. All three were also suspected of being drug traffickers and UN members. He also happened to be out on bail after an April 19, 2005, arrest in which police found marijuana, cocaine and a loaded handgun at his Hawksview Place townhouse, less than a mile from the Bacons' house.

He and Jonathan were in Cheng's car, the officers on the scene told Forster, and it looked like they were making a deal. Forster told them to make an arrest.

The cops stormed the car, and the two men inside surrendered without incident. Inside the car, police found eight ounces of marijuana, 92 hits of meth, 15 ecstasy pills, 4 small packages of cocaine, $2,600 in cash and a number of cellphones.

Upon seeing the bust go down, Burton fled from the house and sped away in an SUV. She was stopped two blocks away. After she was arrested, a brief search of the vehicle yielded $88,000 in cash.