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He generally steered clear of the gang members but was confronted by them in 1973 when he was a 14-year-old paperboy. “Our shack at 26th and Main won recognition for the fewest complaints in the city. Our supervisor said, ‘You guys did great, I'm going to buy you some burgers and pop,'” he recalled. “The day came, and he brought the burgers to the shack. And just as soon as he dumped them on the table, the Riley Park guys came over and said, ‘These look good, and we're gonna help ourselves,' and ate them all. The supervisor didn't do a thing. He was too scared to get involved. To look back, it's sort of funny now. Whenever I see the character of Nelson Muntz on
The Simpsons,
I think of the kids who became Riley Parkers.”

Though their appearance may cause him to grin now, Chu remembers that some Riley Park gang members were far from small-time miscreants. “I remember one student from my Grade 5 class who was a hardcore Riley Park gang member,” he said. “I later played rugby with him at Tupper before he was expelled. Then, in his 20s, he was arrested for murder. By that time he'd gotten pretty heavily into a life of crime and violence. He's dead now.”

The most notorious of the Park Gangs was the Clark Park gang from the Kensington neighborhood. Through informants, Vancouver police discovered not only that they were selling drugs, but that they had also incited some hippie gatherings to riot and attack police. Constable Ken Doern went undercover and infiltrated the gang for five months in 1972. He was unable to prevent an attack on two police officers by Clark Parkers, who used dog chains with lead weights tied to them, but he did learn of a plan to violently disrupt a Rolling Stones concert at the Pacific Coliseum later that summer. The cops decided that the planned attack had political overtones far more important than proving who were the toughest guys in Clark Park, so they formed a strategy to prevent, or at least lessen, the effects of the assault.

Alongside the standard security, there were 50 uniformed officers present and another two dozen in full riot gear hiding in a nearby building. The doors opened at six, and things got ugly right away. About 2,500 angry people who had bought fake tickets were milling around the parking lot, many of them already drunk or high, or both. Police and security were still dealing with them when the Clark Parkers showed up at nine, as the Stones were into their first set.

Instantly recognizable in their checkered lumberjack shirts (what's called a “Kenora dinner jacket” in Ontario) and steel-toed boots, the Clark Park gang made their presence known by throwing a homemade smoke bomb into the crowd and then empty bottles at the Coliseum's glass doors. The police rushed in, and the crowd grew more aggressive, throwing bottles, planks from a nearby fence, rocks, pieces of concrete, and even Molotov cocktails. Aware that the riot would become uncontrollable once the 17,000 people inside the building came out at 11:30 p.m., the police called in reinforcements from the RCMP. Unable to quell the mob by other means, the RCMP executed a mounted charge at 11 p.m., which finally led to the combatants retreating.

The riot left 31 police injured, including 13 who were taken to hospitals. Among the 22 arrested was a man who was wielding a chain with a sharpened hook on one end and a leather handle on the other.

Keenly aware that the Clark Park gang was a serious threat to security, the police formed a new group called “the H-Squad.” Made up of big, tough cops—the minimum height was said to be six foot four—the H-Squad hung out in Clark Park, posing as regular citizens. The official plan was that if any gang members tried to rob them, assault them or sell them drugs, the cops would arrest them. Others have told me it didn't exactly work out like that. The cops, said to be armed with baseball bats, were rumored to have sought out gang members and beat them or thrown them into Burrard Inlet. No matter what happened, the Clark Park gang ceased to exist after a while, and the other Park Gangs also calmed down. But those same bored, alienated white youth soon found another way to bond and make money—outlaw motorcycle gangs.

In Vancouver, as with the rest of Canada, outlaw motorcycle gangs started small—usually just a group of high school friends—and only succeeded if they were tough enough to protect their territory and smart enough to make powerful alliances. Perhaps realizing this, in 1977, two prominent Vancouver-area outlaw motorcycle gangs—the Gypsy Wheelers of White Rock and the 101 Road Knights of Nanaimo—decided to join a prominent East Vancouver outlaw motorcycle gang called “the Satan's Angels,” becoming chapters of that club. Sensing their opportunity, the Satan's Angels did their best—through threats of violence and actual violence—to chase off other prominent clubs like the once-powerful Ghost Riders.

Suddenly, the Satan's Angels became the most prominent outlaw motorcycle gang in British Columbia. They became known for their annual summertime pilgrimage to the Okanagan Valley. A fruit-growing Mecca, the Okanagan invites thousands of migrant pickers every year. These days, many are from Mexico, but back in the 70s and 80s, they were almost entirely French Canadian. And they were not well-liked by the locals. Derisively called “Frogs,” they had a reputation for wild parties and petty crime. And they had experienced run-ins with both the police and the bikers before.

After a few locals raided a camp set up by French Canadian fruit pickers on the night of June 26, 1980, causing damage and injuries, no charges were laid. But the local Osoyoos RCMP detachment promised to keep investigating. They also warned the French Canadians to leave town for the next week to avoid having a problem with the Satan's Angels, who were having a “run” in the area. Many pickers left immediately, and those who didn't pitched their tents in the safety of the orchards they worked in. “We heard a rumor the bikers were coming to clean up our French problem for us,” joked RCMP Sergeant Lou Turcott.

The reputation of the Satan's Angels spread, and they were soon approached by Sonny Barger's Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels to become prospective chapters of the big club. The Hells Angels were eager to expand back then, especially into areas with lucrative drug markets. A few years earlier, in 1977, the New York City chapter had sponsored Canada's first Hells Angels chapter in Montreal, but they had no connections on the West Coast and—you can call this irony if you want—they were all French speakers.

The Satan's Angels jumped at the chance to be part of the big club, but the guys in Oakland had one condition: the Satan's Angels had to eliminate, chase off or subdue every other outlaw motorcycle gang in British Columbia. The Satan's Angels went to work, and by the summer of 1983, there were just three outlaw motorcycle gangs left in the province—the Satan's Angels, the Tribesmen of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and the Highwaymen of Cranbrook in the mountains near the Alberta border. The agreement was that the Tribesmen would be a prospective Satan's Angels (and later Hells Angels) chapter, while the Highwaymen would become what outlaw motorcycle gangs call a “support club” and law enforcement calls a “puppet club”—a smaller gang that pays tribute to the parent club and performs various tasks for its members.

To celebrate, the newest chapters of the Hells Angels threw a huge party. Delegations from Oakland and Canada's other chapters in Sorel and Laval, in Quebec (along with their friends from prospective chapters in Sherbrooke, Quebec; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Hamilton, Ontario) arrived. Oakland's brass and Canadian national president Yves “Le Boss” Buteau withheld the Satan's Angels' new patches until they got rid of some of their less dedicated members. Still, there were more than enough bikers to go around, and the Hells Angels opened chapters in East Vancouver—some of the most lucrative drug-selling territory in North America—on December 22, 1983; in Haney (now part of Maple Ridge, British Columbia) on June 13, 1987; and in Burnaby on July 23, 1998.

The Hells Angels soon emerged as the top dogs in the organized crime world in Vancouver. They trafficked drugs and prostitutes from the Chinese and also from Quebec—especially, law enforcement contends, from the Hells Angels new Sherbrooke chapter. Taking a cue from other successful crime organizations, the British Columbia Hells Angels were rarely ever caught doing anything wrong. Instead, they invested their money in legitimate business—often strip joints and bars—and hired, coerced or extorted others to do their work for them, often using prospective membership as a lure.

That gave rise to a large group of loosely associated young men who were unofficially affiliated with the Hells Angels but ready to do their bidding at the merest hint. Called support crews, they were easy to identify. Uniformly white—because non-whites could forget about ever becoming a full-patch Hells Angel—they tended to wear red and white, the club's colors, and have words like “Support 81” either on their clothes or tattooed on their skin. The number 81 is a none-too-sophisticated code for Hells Angels, derived from the fact that H is the eighth letter of the alphabet and A is the first.

But being on top did not make the Hells Angels invincible. Although, as is often the case with outlaw motorcycle gangs, the people the Hells Angels had most to fear were their own “brothers.” And that also extended to their friends and associates. John Ginnetti, whom everyone called “Ray,” was a flamboyant guy with a quick temper. Ginnetti met and befriended a number of Hells Angels and their associates when he was a successful car salesman on the Kingsway in East Vancouver in the 1980s. He quit that job and became first a direct marketer, then a stock broker and financial adviser, first working for Canarim Investment (Vancouver's largest at the time), then going independent. Police allege that a big part of his business came from legitimizing the investments of his pals in the Hells Angels. He made no secret of the fact he had friends in the club. He had run into trouble once, when investigators burst into his telemarketing company in 1986. Inside they found an illegal boiler-room operation with “sucker lists” of potential scam victims. Just as they were about to confiscate a bag alleged to contain $50,000, an employee threw it out the window. The investigators allege Ginnetti caught it and drove away.

Ginnetti was a temperamental man and once came to blows with volatile actor Sean Penn at a Vancouver restaurant (the pair had to be separated by waiters). He had hired Roger Daggitt—a former mixed martial arts fighter before he became an enforcer for the Hells Angels—as his full-time bodyguard. The position required that Daggitt quit his post with the Hells Angels, mostly because Ginnetti worked with other criminal organizations, including some Russians. Quitting the Hells Angels is not always an easy thing, but Daggitt's size and ferocity made it possible.

On May 9, 1990, Ginnetti's wife opened a closet in their lavish West Vancouver home to find his bloody remains. He had been shot once in the back of the head with a .380 semiautomatic handgun. At the time, he had been actively promoting a stock called Genesis Resources, a gold-mining company, and making wild claims of future profitability.

Many people who were ready to accuse the Hells Angels changed their minds when a dozen of them—including East Vancouver sergeant-at-arms Lloyd Robinson—attended his funeral. Seeing the bikers' seemingly sincere grief made it look like they were not involved in his demise. Less than a week later, a Russian-born cocaine dealer named Sergey Filonov was heard to be drunkenly bragging about his involvement with Ginnetti's murder. On their way home from a bar that night, Sergey and his brother Taras were attacked in front of Trev Deeley's Harley-Davidson dealership on Boundary Road. Sergey was shot and died, while Taras was badly hurt when he was beaten with a hammer. Two men—Shannon Aldrich and Miroslav Michal—were arrested and charged with the attack, but were released after Taras refused to testify.

It was later revealed that the Filonov brothers had stiffed the Hells Angels on a $250,000 drug deal. According to police, the Filonovs had made the deal, but once the cash was on the table, they pulled out their guns, took the money and ran. Taras had later been kidnapped and released when his brother coughed up a $200,000 ransom, but it didn't end anything. Bad blood existed between the Russians and the Hells Angels. Days later, Eugeniy Alekseev, reported to be part of Vancouver's Russian mafia, had just finished dinner with his brother, Aleksandr, and Russian-born Vancouver Canucks star Pavel Bure when he used a remote starter to fire up his Mercedes-Benz. The car blew up.

Two years after Sergey was killed, a student discovered Taras's body in a forested area behind the University of British Columbia. He was handcuffed, and a shotgun blast had obliterated his face. Aleksandr Alekseev went missing in 1994, and Eugeniy was found with a bullet hole through his head in a Mexico City hotel room in 1995. The always-obliging Mexican police reported his death as a suicide.

Ginnetti's murder remained unsolved until police tracked down a career criminal in California's notorious Lompoc prison in 1995. Jose Raul Perez-Valdez, a Cuban, was serving an eight-year sentence for kidnapping and trafficking cocaine. He could not be extradited until he had finished his sentence in the U.S. When he finally appeared in court in Canada, he admitted that he had killed Ginnetti for $30,000. And he said he was paid by Daggitt.

While it would have been fascinating to hear what Daggitt had to say about the accusation, he had long since been silenced. On October 6, 1992, his son and he had been enjoying the show at the Turf Hotel, a run-down strip club once frequented by serial killer Clifford Olson, when somebody put three bullets in his head. He died before he hit the ground.

The man who killed him was a professional hit man from Montreal named Serge Robin. After his first murder conviction back in 1977, Robin made a bid for freedom. While being transported to prison, he produced a rolled-up aluminum can he had hidden in his rectum and had threatened his guards and driver with it, claiming it was a pistol. As the van he was in stopped on a gravel shoulder, the cop car behind it radioed for help. By the time Robin emerged from the truck, he was surrounded by cops with their weapons drawn. One of them had the unfortunate task of taking his can away from him.