The Notorious Bacon Brothers (30 page)

Walter Stadnick is not an imposing man. At five-foot-four, his face and arms scarred by fire in a motorcycle accident, he would not spring to mind as a leader of Canada's most notorious biker gang, the Hells Angels. Yet through sheer guts and determination, intelligence and luck, this Hamilton-born youth rose in the Hells Angels ranks to become national president. Not only did he lead the Angels through the violent war with their rivals, the Rock Machine, in Montreal in the Nineties, Stadnick saw opportunity to grow the Hells Angels into a national criminal gang. He was a visionary—and a highly successful one.

As Stadnick's influence spread, law enforcement took notice of the Angel's growing presence in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. However, Stadnick's success did not come without a price. Arrested and charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder, Stadnick beat the murder charges but was convicted of gangsterism and is currently serving time.

Fallen Angel
details one man's improbable rise to power in one of the world's most violent organizations, while shedding light on how this enigmatic and dangerous biker gang operated and why it remains so powerful.

When the old-school Mafia in Hamilton fell apart following the death of Johnny “Pops” Papalia, a frenzy ensued for who would control Ontario's drug and vice traffic. The leader of the Hells Angels, Walter Stadnick, had had his eye on Canada's most lucra-tive drug market for years but had been kept out largely due to the mafia syndicate that only reluctantly employed bikers of any stripe for their dirty work, and Papalia's refusal to use any Hells Angels.

The war to fill the power vacuum in Ontario would hinge on the broadly supported Stadnick's Hells Angels, a handful of smaller clubs too proud or too useless to join them, and Mario “The Wop” Parente's Outlaws, the top motorcycle club in Ontario since the 70s. Other challengers would emerge from the ever-shifting allegiances of the biker world, including the Bandidos from south of the border, whose presence in the province would end in a bloodbath now known as the Shedden Massacre. Against all of these competing interests stood the various law enforcement agencies responsible for keeping the general peace and shutting down as many operations as they could.