How the Hells Angels Became Canada's Most Powerful Crime Family
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Did I hear you're shopping for a car? Because I've been at it for ages. Such a time suck, right? Not really. I bought it on Carvana. Super convenient. Oh, then comes all the financing, research. Am I right? Well, you can, but I got pre-qualified for a Carvana auto loan in like two minutes. Yeah, but then all the number crunching and terms, right? Nope. I saw real numbers as I shopped, found my dream car, and got it in a couple of days. Wait, like you already have it?

Yep. Go to Carvana.com to finance your car the convenient way. November 28th, 1998, in a courthouse in Montreal, Canada. Everyone is waiting for a verdict in one of the wildest cases Canada has ever seen. On trial is Maurice Boucher, the most dangerous man to ever be nicknamed mom.

Mambouché is one of the leaders of the Quebec's Hells Angels. And if you think they're just some Harley Davidson enthusiasts in leather vests with long hair and beards that traffic some occasional meth, you're sorely mistaken. By the late 90s, the Quebec Hells Angels are the most dangerous criminal organization in Canada, controlling hundreds of millions of dollars in drug trafficking, extortion, loan sharking, prostitution, any piece of criminal action as they continue to expand nationwide.

They're also not afraid to kill. They make a habit of it, often, using dynamite, hitmen, anything you could think of. They're organized. They wear custom suits and drive Mercedes. They have intel and surveillance units that gather data on the police and on their enemies. And they're not even afraid to go to war against the state. In fact, that's what Mom stands accused of. Ordering the murders of two prison guards, completely at random...

solely to show the authorities in Canada that the hells aren't to be messed with.

But it's not just the state that he's waging war against. His Quebec Hells Angels are on the warpath in an attempt to monopolize the entire street-level drug trade and distribution in Quebec, worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars a year. The Hells Angels, along with their various puppet and affiliate clubs, have been shooting and bombing their way to victory over an alliance of independent drug trafficking crime organizations.

led by a rival outlaw motorcycle club called the Rock Machine that once controlled Montreal's biggest coke market territory. Strangely enough, the leaders of the Rock Machine were once in a motorcycle gang with mom and they were friends. But business is business. When the Hells Angels decided they wanted to take over Montreal, they gave the Rock Machine and everyone else an ultimatum.

Rock Machine said no, emphatically, with their guns. That,

That was in 1994, and there's been four years of bloodshed ever since. At this point, there's been over 90 murders, but when the war finally ends a few years later, the numbers will be insane. Over 160 people killed, 20 more missing, 300 wounded, hundreds of other attempted murders, dozens of explosions and firebombings. This afternoon, though, everyone is waiting to see whether or not the architect of the Quebec-Biker War is going to walk free.

despite the confessed murderer saying he did so on the orders of mom. When the jury finally comes back, six men and six women, they announce their verdict. Not guilty. The police are stunned. The bikers in the crowd celebrate and hoist mom up on their shoulders, parading him out of the courthouse, knocking down reporters and anyone else in their way. That night, one of the main detectives on the case is doing his part-time job, refereeing a championship boxing match at the sold-out Molson Center.

All of a sudden, huge cheers erupts. Mom and his goons are walking through a cheering crowd, getting a standing ovation, all in their Hells Angels leathers, laughing and smiling as they take their seats in the front row. Something like an icon, reaching folklore status. A police informant in the Angels would later tell the cops that they had no idea how powerful Mom had just become. Quote,

Boucher is considered a god. The prison guard thing? That's nothing compared to what's coming. This is the Underworld Podcast. Welcome back to the audio experience that dares to ask the question, how many podcast episodes is it possible to do about two different groups of guys shooting at each other over the right to sell powders that make you feel funny in your brain at incredibly high profit margins?

I'm one of your hosts, Danny Gold. I am joined, as always, by Sean Williams. We are two journalists who have traveled all over the world reporting on all sorts of fun things. Sean, some big cricket news, huh? The U.S. just trouncing the competition. How's that make you feel, you loser? No one here even knows what's going on. We're just winning at it. Oh, man. Tell that to the next taxi driver you're heading into Flushing with. But, yeah, it's good. I mean, you know, those guys know the rules of cricket. No one watches The Sopranos. It's kind of flipping the rules a bit, but...

I mean, talking to guys selling stuff, why are we not getting sponsored by booze companies yet? I just want to use this moment to shout out booze companies that we are all about getting them on board. Half our audience are going to be drinking, have drinking issues. I would do host red ads for like any booze at all. Like Old Man Bitter, Cuervo. Is there anything you wouldn't do? Is there any booze you wouldn't sell?

No, no, there's booze I wouldn't drink, but there is not booze that I wouldn't sell. Good. Okay. As always, for all you new listeners, we have a lot of them recently. You can support us and get bonus episodes for a very low price by going to patreon.com slash underworld podcast and signing up or doing it on Spotify and iTunes, those little things on the...

on the page. We are on social media too where we do short one minute videos. What else? If you want to email us, advertise with us, tell us about an idea, tell us about crimes that you've committed, the underworldpodcast at gmail.com is where you can reach us. Yeah, and if you just like found us, you can also buy t-shirts because that's what you want to do if you've just found us, right? So yeah, you can do that on our website. Yeah, underworldpod.com. Go to the merch thing. There's stuff there. Okay, so...

This episode. I mean, there's a new season of Shorzy, so it just kind of makes sense that we should dip over into Canada to do this one. Okay, what is Shorzy? I don't know that one. It's a Canadian TV show. It's a spinoff of another Canadian TV show called Letter Kenny, which is about like rural Canada and all the sort of shenanigans that get up there. It's kind of like it's always selling in Philadelphia, but for a Canadian town with 3,000 people. All right. You know, it's fantastic. But yeah, this is a story I've wanted to do for quite some time because it really is just...

mind-blowing the amount of violence and mayhem that our neighbors to the north were powerless to stop. And motorcycle gangs, you know, over-the-top TV shows notwithstanding, are fascinating criminal organizations. That, to be honest, I actually don't know that much about. As a

As opposed to, you know, street gangs, cartels, militant groups, stuff that I think Sean and I have covered in person. This is something that I haven't done. I don't think Sean has either. Maybe in Australia or New Zealand. Have you gotten up to that a bit or met some of these guys? It's actually coming up. It's coming up. I'm going out there in a few weeks, actually. I'm going to do some biker-based stuff. But yeah, I haven't done it before. It's all kind of new to me. Yeah, you better hope they don't hear all the stuff that you've been saying about bikers in general off the air. Hopefully they're not listeners. But

But yeah, we're mostly going to be talking about this war in Canada, not the actual structures, rules, the ceremony of all them. There's a guy though on social media. He's fantastic at this stuff. He knows like all the history. I think Outlaw Archive is the Instagram or social media account. I think his name is Bo Bushnell, I want to say, but he is like a serious expert historian on all this stuff. So definitely go check him out if that's the kind of thing that you're into. Yo, I actually did do a motorcycle gang story once.

on a Kurdish gang, I think in Germany or Sweden, that went to northern Iraq to provide support or aid in the fight against ISIS. But it might have been a little bit shadier than that, but I didn't really do a deep dive. Yeah, I feel like I spoke to some of those guys too at the time, and I feel like there might have been something coming back

on the ride from the middle east but yeah what would you call that like did you did you get your trip out there like what would you call that kind of story is it a lost leader no i don't even know i mean look i've been out there for a while doing other stuff and that was just like you know it was a vice story it was just an easy thing to do we took her as most of a gang traveling to iraq or german whatever so at uh you know easy easy sell but of course the biggest motorcycle gang in the world is the hell's angels i think still right oh yeah they're also the most well-known motorcycle club i think by far

I'm kind of using gang and club interchangeably, which I think you can do with the Hells Angels, but with others, maybe you can't. I don't know. They're actually named after a B-17 bomber group in World War II. And after the war, motorcycle clubs slash biker gangs that were springing up all over with a lot in California. I think especially in Southern California, the Hells Angels really formed in Northern California.

Some people say it was mostly vets looking to get a rush, kind of used to playing by their own rules. They were rebelling and all that. I've kind of seen that disputed sometimes. Whatever the case, the first Hells Angels Club is founded in 1948 in San Bernardino in Northern California. I should say that a lot of the information in this episode comes from the book The Road to Hell, which is by Julian Scher and William Mardsen.

They're two Canadian journalists. There's also a really good CBC podcast episode on the biker war and some great reporting in the Montreal Gazette and other Canadian publications. There's another guy, Jerry Langton, who has done a ton of work on the Canadian biker gangs, but I was not able to get any of his books in time. The hell sprang up in the late 40s.

And by the 60s, there's 500 of them. And they've gone international in England, Switzerland of all places, West Germany. And this is the Hunter S. Thompson era, right? They're sort of what you imagine biker gangs to be. The rebels, long greasy hair, beards, partying for five days straight, passing out on someone's front lawn. You know, they're criminals, I would say, but not organized crime. You know, they'd beat the crap out of somebody, maybe a murderer guy or rivals, traffic something, but not like a mafia.

But the end of the 60s, it also sort of signals a new beginning for the biker gangs, especially with the murder at Altamont. This was the Rolling Stone concert where the Hells were providing security and they stabbed to death a young concert goer and the whole thing was caught on film. The concert had gotten ugly. There were fights in the crowd between them and everyone else. And this kid pulled a gun on them and was stabbed to death.

That's also the year that Easy Rider came out. I think, yeah, that's 69. And Hunter S. Thompson's famous book came out, I think, in 67. So there's a whole kind of romantic lore developing around them and biker gangs in general. There's also this amazing clip on YouTube if you look it up. It's a CBC talk show, I think.

And Hells Angels kind of rides his bike on stage to confront Thompson. And they have like a joint interview and argument with him, which is fascinating stuff. Yeah, actually, that reminds me of the I think the interview that we put on the Patreon recently. I went up to the north of New Zealand, spoke to this old guy called Dennis O'Reilly, who was like a biker back at that time.

And he was saying, like, you've got to really parse the difference between organized and disorganized crime. Because back then, most guys were just getting, like, wasted and getting into fights and scraps on the streets and stuff like that. I mean, there was, like, some dealing of low-level drugs, but I don't think it really consolidated until later on, right? And by the way, oh, my God, that...

That Hunter Thompson book is just amazing. I'm reading them because I'm suffering with block at the moment, which is not something to complain about that much. But yeah, The Great Shark Hunt is like a collection of his works. And I'm reading at the moment. It's just amazing, man. Just gets hammered in various hotel rooms and passes it off on assignments. And yeah, that's what I want to do with the rest of my life.

It is what you do. You just make a lot less money. Yeah. But that's a great way of putting it. And you'll kind of see why I'm stressing the fact this wasn't organized crime is because I think a lot of people have this perception of motorcycle gangs as

Even now as disorganized crime, right? But you're going to see what happens with the Canadian Hells Angels. And it really is, you know, they're like a mafia. It's amazing what they are able to do and how organized it is. But yeah, of course, there's still mayhem and stuff like that. But yeah.

The 70s is really when some biker gangs transition into what we would consider organized crime from being, you know, disorganized hoodlums interested in drugs and partying and all that. Yeah, I know that like around here, and I'm sure it happened out there too, like they were basically just ready networks of guys who would do anything for a buck, right? So they were just perfect for drug organization. Yeah, the interest now starts lending itself towards being a criminal money-making organization.

So the Hells, they start in the US and Canada has its own biker clubs, gangs popping off, especially in Quebec. The Popeyes are the first big Quebec biker gang. And they did things like run protection for other gangs and the Montreal Mafia. The Rizzutos, if you guys go back, we did a full episode on them a while ago. Fascinating, extremely powerful mafia organization in Montreal. There's also Staden's Choice and a few others. And at first, the cops don't take them too seriously as criminal organizations. They don't appear smart or organized.

Dangerous, yes, but not like the mob. This actually continues into the 80s, even after the Hells Angels arrive, and they just kind of think, you know, the police just kind of think that they're knuckleheads, you know? Yeah, I mean, they said that about us too back in 2020, eh? So they're not laughing now, are they? I think they probably still are. In 1977, the Hells Angels arrive in Canada and patch over a 35-member Popeye Club outside Montreal.

Patching over refers to incorporating the club or it could be a single person into your club from another one or their club from another one or just making someone a full official member. You know, like the patches they wear on their vest is kind of where the saying comes from. Montreal, again, is an important choice. We talked about this in the Rizzuto episode. The city has a massive harbor. There's vices all over. There's corruption all over. And it's an easy drive to New York City.

and pathways to the rest of Canada. It's also a major, major hub for drugs.

There's actually a conflict that comes about at that time called the First Biker War. And it's when another big U.S. biker gang, the Outlaws, allies with Satan's Choice, the biggest Canadian biker gang at the time. And they fight it out with the Hells Angels and the Popeye Club in Quebec and Toronto. The Hells Angels actually win that one, I think, in Quebec and push their rivals out of Quebec province. If you guys don't know, Canada is divided into provinces, though they don't really focus on Toronto or the provinces in Ontario. We're not going to go into too much because the Big Biker War doesn't happen until much later in 1994.

Though this one was plenty violent with dozens killed. And to get there, to 1994, we need to introduce Maurice Mambouchet, the most infamous and at one time the most powerful criminal in Canada.

He's born in a small village in Quebec in 1953, one of eight kids, but his parents soon moved to a rough part of Montreal. His dad's an iron worker and a strict disciplinarian and also an abusive drunk who beats him and his mom. He himself, he's a mediocre student, drops out of high school at 17, leaves home at 18 to kind of roam the streets of this white French working class neighborhood in Montreal. You know, he's on the street basically at this time doing all sorts of drugs, eventually becoming so paranoid he sleeps with a gun.

He's doing hash, LSD, amphetamines, heroin, cocaine. So it's basically like how Sean was on an average Tuesday when he lived in Berlin. I mean, the only hash I do now, Danny, is the $24 brunch at my local hipster cafe. Am I right? It's a solid option for a morning. You can't go wrong with hash. You know, it really beats waffles any day of the week. Correct.

In April of 73, he's arrested for shoplifting. Again, Sean was arrested for shoplifting a whole bunch in Berlin too. The parallels are stunning. I'm just going to say that if you have a kid, everyone's going to know this. If you have a kid and a pram, let's just say it's very easy and cheese is expensive. Don't broadcast your crime, Sean. We don't want the New Zealand authorities cracking down on you.

A year later, it's breaking and entering. You know, weirdly, there's a criminologist who does a profile of him around the same time. And they say he was depressed and worried about the future. His girlfriend was pregnant at the time and he didn't know what to do. Which is, if you think about it, like imagine you're this criminologist in 1976, whatever, some like grad school nerd. And you do this study. And this random like petty vagrant criminal who you do the study on like 20 years later is the most powerful person.

criminal in your country. I mean, that's got to count for something, right? Like you got to get graduate with honors for something along those lines. Pretty impressive. In 1976, he's arrested for armed robbery. He gets arrested a whole bunch, including a sexual assault charge in the early eighties, where he put a gun to the head of a 16 year old and forced her to have sex with him.

Yeah. So he's not a nice person. He gets 23 months in prison for that. By that time, he's also in a white supremacist motorcycle gang called, what else? The SS. You know, I've seen it reported elsewhere that it was just a motorcycle gang. Like in that book, I don't think they call it white supremacist, but the name is the SS and other sources said it was white supremacist. So I'm going to go with that. But interestingly, he was one of the only Hells Angels. The Hells Angels, I don't know if in Canada they were letting black people in. I think in the US they have.

But he had a black bodyguard when like in the midst of the war. I think he was a Haitian gang member. But yeah. Okay. He's got a black friend. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That is exactly kind of what I mean. He trusted the guy with his life. It counts for something, I guess. Interestingly, two other members and founders of the SS are Salvatore and Giovanni Cassetta, who would go on to be the founders of Rock Machine.

Boucher joins the assassin 82 and Salvatore and Boucher end up getting close. I mean, it's quite funny that Italian fascists are so bad in a war that like the neo-Nazi kids even cosplay as Germans. Yeah. I don't even know if it's, you know, cause Boucher is French, right? So I think it's a weird Canadian size thing. Like, you know, I don't think of the Italians I know as, as being like Italian Americans as being like that. But, uh, there's like a really, one of these like self-published Amazon books that I read that I use much of, but it talks about how Salvatore had connections with,

With the Rizzuto's because he was Italian as well. But like, that's not really how it works. So I don't know. I didn't find a ton on that though. They do work together a lot. What you're saying is not all Italians, basically. That's what we're saying. Yeah, I like the Italians, you know. Cosetta himself, he's born in Montreal. He grows up rough, becomes a petty criminal. All these guys kind of have a very similar backstory. Stealing cars, kind of loving the outlaw motorcycle life. And he actually starts the SS in 1976. He does a short prison sentence for being an attacking the officer who kind of caught him.

He was in and out of prison a lot in the early 80s, and he was also accused of a gang murder while he was locked up. There wasn't enough evidence to do anything. He gets started dealing drugs around that and becomes a pretty decent sized player in the game in Montreal. Is B&E like battery? What's that? B&E? No, it's breaking and entering. Oh, breaking and entering. Oh my God. Yeah, cool. Yeah.

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Now, Mambuche at this time, he's described as like kind of crazy, like we said, drug addict, scraggly, long haired, just a real, real kind of waste man. He's kind of a bum, but he's also muscle for the SS. They'll send him to fight anyone and he doesn't, you know, attacking bar owners who won't let them deal or whoever else they're extorting. He's starting to get a rep, but then that sex assault charge happens. Uh,

I think in 84 and he gets locked up. All right. Maybe canceling people is okay sometimes. In that instance, I think it's more than allowed. During that time in the early 80s, the Hells Angels are trying to expand all over Canada. Remember, they landed there in 77.

But they prefer a takeover instead of a war, patching over a smaller club into becoming hells, which at that point, they're kind of legends in the biker world, right? And they bring international connections. So it's sometimes an easy sell, though you got to go to... God, I almost had a Canadian accent there. You got to imagine most outlaw bikers don't love authority and handing over authority over them to somebody else just doesn't take. Another issue is that

When you patch over members instead of going through the full process of becoming a full-fledged member, it can lead to some screw-ups. Usually becoming a member involves being what's known as a hang-around for years. Then you become a prospect, and then you become a full-patch member. This can take the better part of a decade. It involves having to display a lot of loyalty, put in a lot of work, and in some cases, committing murder.

It's a good way to vet people though. And those who aren't committed or major screw ups, they usually can't hack it. Yeah. That's actually how we got, uh, Dale to edit the podcast as well. But, um, yeah, I mean, this, this is all good. Like, because next week we're going to do a bit about this as well as a guy who's going to patch over from one biker gang to another. And, uh,

Yeah, it does not go well for him either. So just keep this in mind. I know you remember everything that we say on the show, guys, but keep this one particularly in mind for next week's as well. Right. So this kind of, I think this also leads to this screw up. So in 1985,

There's a major turning point for the Hells Angels in Canada, and it's known as the Lenoxville Massacre. So there's a few different chapters of Hells Angels in different locations in Quebec at this point. I think there's four. One of them is the Laval chapter. They apparently have a problem with getting high on their own supply. Instead of being disciplined drug dealers looking to make money, they're partying for days at a time, and they blow through all of their blow.

One of the other chapters is not happy. There's like a divide, you know, when some of the hells want to launch full force into being criminal business moneymakers. And by that, you know, organized criminals. This chapter, they want to just lead the renegade biker party life. So how does this problem get solved? It gets solved with five bodies of men from that chapter being pulled out of the St. Lawrence River. It's a Hells Angels on Hells Angels straight up massacre.

There's so many potential cold opens with these guys. I mean, this was one I considered, but it's crazy. Says a reporter from La Presse to the National Post, at that moment in 1985, the Hells Angels were doing a cleanup to become a real criminal organization. Before that, they were disorganized and unruly. They were like a street gang. A hitman who claimed to have done 43 murders and later turned informant, this led to the first big biker trial. He talked about this incident. And after this happens, the Hells Angels in Quebec, they're decimated. A bunch of

are murdered. Like we said, I think one more gets murdered in that same incident. They catch him like a week or two later. A bunch end up being imprisoned and there's just a lot of bad blood and internal issues. So yeah, they need to be recruiting heavily. And when mom gets out of prison in 86, he joins the Hells Angels. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they need a new rebrand. Like maybe get the name in Helvetica. Hells Angels or one word, maybe a full stop at the end. Just jazz it up. Jazz it up a bit. Make it relatable to Gen Xers.

Gotta get into copywriting, man. There must be so much more money in it. I don't think you'd be too good at that. But yeah, so he, so Mom right away gets into the new Hells Angels ranks. Salvatore Casetta, on the other hand, he's appalled at the massacre. He sees it as a violation of biker code, brother-on-brother murder, and he decides he wants nothing to do with the Angels. So in 86, he forms his own motorcycle club, a new club slash gang, with his brother and a few others, and calls it Rock Machine, which I mean, the

The name just seems like very French Canadian to me. You know, that's all that's all I'll say about that because they're huge now. But Sean, he was making fun of it right before we started recording, just doing a funny French Canadian accent, just really, really going after it, which I found, you know, a little distasteful. Yeah, I mean, but that was only because you did that impression of Drake. But I mean, here's the difference, right? I'll speak like this, but you don't have the you don't have the stones to repeat what you said, right? We are we are not the same.

Interestingly, Drake has a lot of connections to the Hells Angels in Toronto. If you ever hear him shouting 8-1, that's a quote for Hells Angels.

Is it really? And I think he lives next door to one of the prominent ones. Yeah, his security, like he's tied in. I think he uses them as security in Toronto. All right. Where, like we said, they're probably the most powerful organization in Canada. But yeah, no, true story. Rock Machine recruits a bunch of members to join. At some point, they get over 100. They establish contacts with other organized crime groups like the Irish West End Gang, which controls the ports, the Italian Mafia, the Rizzutos, and they start dealing large amounts.

That's a big part of how these gangs made their money, drugs obviously, but also extortion, especially at bars, restaurants, strip clubs. They're big in the sex industry, which is big in Montreal, prostitution, strip club agencies, all that stuff. It's just something that Montreal has been known for for decades. They also ran like tattoo parlors, bike shops, and just things like that.

Remember, the Angels, they're weak at this time. And Rock Machine apparently sells their products for cheaper, so they quickly corner the market in the nightlife areas of Montreal and are doing better than the Angels. Here's how the website Pan American Crime describes it. Quote, "...the Casetas and the Rock Machine, as all outlaw biker gangs at the time, functioned as mid-tier dealers for these mafia groups and distributed the narcotics to other bikers for sale, as well as street-level dealers and other small regional DTOs." That's Drug Trafficking Organizations.

Even the emerging Hells Angels knew better than to obstruct personal and business relationships established by Cosa Nostra. Giovanni Casetta was known to be particularly close with several prominent mafia members. Also, Casetta and Boucher, you know, they're friends from their earlier SS days, so Rock Machine and the Angels are cool at first. But in the late 80s, early 90s, the Hells are starting to expand and grow.

By this time, when Boucher becomes a member in 86, he's given up the drugs, gotten kind of scared straight by the previous year's massacre, and he's starting to show real leadership qualities and charisma. He rises up the ranks pretty quickly, especially because, like we said, the Angels have been decimated. He also earns the nickname Mom for one or two reasons, either because he pestered his men with questions for specific details for operations and crime things and whatnot, or because he pestered them about looking professional, you know, their wardrobes, getting haircuts and stuff like that.

attention to detail, basically. I mean, maybe he just cared for them all and he just wanted the best for them. You ever think about that? That is, that could be it too. You know, the Hells, they also started attacking the outlaws in 89 and 90, forcing them out of Quebec. The Hells are expanding nationwide in Canada at this point on the West coast of Vancouver and Toronto, all over Ontario. We're not going to really go too far into that, into the other provinces, but a lot of it is thanks to a guy named Walter Nurgut Stadnik, who becomes national president in 1988. Yeah.

He had been a longtime biker gang guy. He was once in one called the Wild Ones and had fought with the outlaws. They shot up a bar he was at killing one of his friends. He once got into a deadly bike crash with a priest and burnt up his face. He's long thought to have been the brains behind the Hell's national expansion, and he was instrumental in them expanding into Ontario, where Toronto is. It's also Canada's richest province. When he took over in 88, the organization nationally was kind of leaderless.

But with him taking over and mom taking over in Quebec, the Hells Angels become a force to be reckoned with. Yeah, I mean, we've been recording this for what, like half an hour now? I mean, I don't really, what is Canada? Like, what is it? I don't know. I don't really get what Canada is. I get what the US is, kind of. But what, who lives in Canada? What do they do? Like, what do they eat? Like, what do they think about? I just don't get what Canada is. Like, you get it? I don't get it.

Yeah, man. I like Canada, man. I spent a lot of time in Montreal. Montreal is probably the best city, one of the best cities in North America, to be honest with you. I don't know, dude. I mean, I like to make fun of Canadians too because they definitely have a superiority or complex. Sorry, inferiority complex about America, especially when you travel and they try to lecture you. But I don't know, man. Canada's cool. The French-Canadian thing is cool.

It's weird, but it's like New Orleans, I guess. But they have poutine, which rules probably one of the best food items of all time. Isn't it just chips and gravy or something? I don't know. Yeah, with cheese. With cheese, dude. With good gravy and good cheese. I like it. I don't know. I spent like a couple nights in Toronto once and it was, I think I like this place, but like, what is this place? I don't really get it. Like what? I don't know. I don't know. I'm confused. Go to Montreal in the summer. You'll have, it's incredible.

All right. Incredible. Incredible city. I will. Anyway, moving on. Dadnik was only five foot four, but he had a brain like a CEO. He was very good at staying out of jail. You know, he had a vision. He travels all over for the angels. He maintains the respect of the bikers, other bikers, gangsters, street gangs, mafiosos, all that sort of stuff. So he's apparently a very smart, educated person.

well put together individual. I feel like all of every single one of these people we like profile in the 80s would have a podcast now, like all of them, every single one. Hey, I mean, there's definitely a market for it. He makes a major mistake though in 1993 when he starts a puppet club in Ontario called the Demon Keepers.

Puppet clubs, they're started usually by members of their own, and they're kind of made up of young bikers who want to eventually join the Angels. But they have to prove their mettle. So each full-patch member, I think, has the rights to start a puppet club, but usually it's like the higher echelons do. Yeah, so it's a place for these young bikers to prove themselves, to do wild shit. Says an FBI agent who investigated biker gangs to Details Magazine, quote, "...people don't realize how powerful that makes them. Each of these guys has 9 to 30 criminal minions out there working for him all the time."

Now, this major mistake that he makes is putting a guy named Danny Kane in as the president of the Demon Keepers. Kane's born in 1968 in rural Quebec, poor family, leaves home at 16, gets involved with crime, strip clubs, biker gangs, all that, eventually selling drugs and making cash. He also sells guns and he teaches himself to make bombs.

He's eventually charged with a whole bunch of crimes for beating someone badly over a drug debt and does a little time before he decides to get involved with the hells in Quebec. Are these guys ever involved in like the Quebecois, like separatism, all that stuff? I don't really know how well white nationalists gel with French separatists. I mean, are they friends or foes? I don't know. But are they involved in that kind of movement? That's an interesting question. We're going to talk about some of them.

something crazy that happens at the end of this episode involving that movement. And we'll go into that a tiny bit, but stay tuned. So they put him to work. They put this guy Kane to work as a hang around, which means he's working 24 seven as like a gopher, a bodyguard, delivery man. And he's starting to get pissed. It's like pledging,

The most dangerous fraternity of all time, except they make you do tons of crimes and you don't get anything for it. He doesn't like being an underling. He feels like he's not being rewarded for his efforts. Eventually, he's asked to leave the Demon Keepers in Ontario and told to make their presence known, which means they have a plan to murder some of the outlaws. But he gets caught with the guns before it can kick off. He gets four months in jail and the hell's embarrassed. They shut down the Demon Keepers.

By now, when he gets out, he's soured on the organization. He feels like they're making him do a ton of work, just taking advantage of him. He's taking all these risks. He's not seeing enough money. They also hold them back from getting fully patched over despite all the stuff he's doing. And what he does to get revenge is he seeks out Canadian law enforcement to become an informant for years.

He's wearing wires, giving full reports. A lot of the crazy stuff we know about the Angels in Canada is from Kane. He's also going to prove to be a very controversial police informant because he was still doing big crimes, including a whole bunch of murders while working for the police. I think the author is on the road to hell, pin at least 11 murders on him, at least partially from like 1994 to 1997, something along those lines.

But let's back up for a second because 1994 is a gigantic year. It's the start of this biker war. In 93, Cozzetta and a bunch of other rock machine guys, they get busted buying coke in Florida from an undercover DEA agent. Up until then, the rock machine in the hells had been cool, like I said. Cozzetta goes on the run, then gets caught in 94 and ends up having to do some time in Canada.

I saw some reports that said he was charged with trying to import 11,000 keys, which is an insane amount. But I think he was caught with 200, which is still like not a bad effort. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I guess this is like Medellin era stuff, right? So maybe they are shifting that much gear. But yeah, wowzers, that is massive. I always had the impression the bikers were kind of low down the ranks, but maybe that's just because I've been out here and they kind of are in some ways. No, dude, not.

I don't know how powerful they are in the States, but not like that's what I'm saying. Canada is very, very different. The biker gangs there, and you'll see why, are extremely powerful and extremely well connected. Anyway, after Gassetta is locked up and Rock Machine is weakened, Mom decides to make his move. The Angels have been getting stronger and bigger, and he wants Rock Machine's turf to deal. Remember, they have the prime territory in Montreal.

He starts a puppet club in 1992 called the Rockers. And at this point, it kind of gets confusing with these puppet clubs and affiliates and all that. Later on in 95, mom forms a nomad club, which is like kind of an all-star team of Hells Angels who are the most crazy, violent, biggest dealers. They're the ones who lead the war effort and they're called nomads because they can move in and out of any territory without having to answer anyone.

Again, to the nomads, you actually had to commit a murder. But basically, to simplify things, think of the nomads, the rockers, all that as angels, even though they're technically not full members. But yeah, 1994, Rock Machine takes some blows from law enforcement.

And Mom starts sending in his rockers to take over downtown Montreal bars that Rock Machine had been dealing out of. He wants that territory. And not only that, he wants everyone's now. He's decided the Hells are going to have a monopoly on all distribution and dealing in Quebec. So he gives an ultimatum for all the gangs that are doing their thing there.

You get your stuff from the angels or you don't get it at all. This is all very like the first rule is there are no rules kind of thing, but there's, this is also a great primer for some of the stuff I'm going to breeze past the next week show. Like,

Yeah, the nomads are involved, but I think they're very different down under now. I think they're a lot more like calcified and they're a different thing altogether. But yeah, this is cool. Well, I don't know if those are the same nomads, right? Because from my understanding, like I said, I'm not like biker gang stuff is all, you know, I'm green when it comes to most of that. But my understanding with nomads was like any organization can have a group of nomads. It's like a type of club.

maybe in the Outlaws or in the Angels or something like that, right? That just, they can go all over and they're like an all-star team. So I don't know if it's actually like their own. But I know there were like, you know, one of the old like Bronx gangs was the Savage Nomads. So I don't know. But yeah, it's a little confusing. This is confusing too, the Coke deal, right? Because I know the Rizzuto's kind of ran the trade, but I think what it is is the Rizzuto's handled the importing because they had all the connections in Venezuela and whatever else. And then there was the distribution, which is, you know, the level below them, right?

which the Angels were looking to control. So essentially, the Hells Angels tell everyone to bend the knee. And Rock Machine says, hell no. And they form together with a bunch of other drug dealing organizations, something called the Alliance, to fight the Angels. And this begins the brutal Quebec biker war, the deadliest biker war on record. Here's a quote from a former Hells Angel member in court, as reported by the Montreal Gazette.

Quebec's biker war was already hatching, but it started from July 13th, 1994, because that was the first murder. A guy named Pierre Daoust in his Harley shop, and after that, it was clear the war had begun.

The Gazette continues, Dost, a 34-year-old member of a Hells Angels support club called the Death Riders, was working in his custom cycle shop when the three men, whose faces were hidden by masks and a motorcycle helmet, called out to him twice to make sure they had the right guy. They proceeded to pump at least 16 bullets into him, who was taken to a hospital and declared dead hours later.

The murder received little media attention, but to many people involved in drug trafficking in Montreal, a very clear message had been sent. In the months leading up to his death, the Hells Angels issued an ultimatum. With very few exceptions, anyone dealing drugs in Montreal would have to buy from them or else.

So on July 14th, the Alliance tries to kill another Hells Angel member. Then on the 15th, the four chapters of Hells Angels in Quebec, they meet and they start deliberating whether or not they're going to go to war. In August, they decide they're going to declare war on Rock Machine and the Alliance.

The other big hitters in the alliance include the Pelletier clan, who I couldn't find a ton on, but I believe they were or are a French-Canadian drug trafficking gang. And this is wild, actually, a secretive group called the Dark Circle who provide most of the funding. These guys are Montreal businessmen who own bars, restaurants, things like that, and were heavily involved in drugs and money laundering.

And the first few years of the war, very few people know who they actually are, especially the angels. There's a committee of five of them that made the decisions. And the chairman ends up being a school teacher who owns a bar. Just wild, wild stuff in Canada. And what happens with them in a few years, it's just, it's more insane out of a movie type stuff. But we're going to get to that. Yeah, this is, this is incredible stuff. Dark Circle, that's mad.

It's a wild story. The Angels, of course, begin to retaliate and they soon take out the head of the clan, the Pelletier clan. By December 94, the nomads are formed by Mom and they're gathering intelligence on Rock Machine. Plotting moves, planting bombs, getting machine guns. And when I say gathering intelligence, like they were doing things like paying off Canada's version of the DMV to get the home address of people they wanted to kill, which, you know,

In this day and age, I can probably do that in five minutes online, especially with Nexus Nexus. But back then, apparently it was very, very hard.

They're even using car bombs to kill a Rock Machine member. You know, explosions become a hallmark of this war. They happen like every week all over the city. Mom is setting up execution squads. They're on total war footing. They're even building fortified bunker bases like at their clubhouses, I think in downtown neighborhoods. It even goes international. A Rock Machine member who had killed a Hells Angel was on vacation in Acapulco when another Hells Angel member shot and killed him at a bar, which I thought like,

You know, damn, these guys are screwed now. But mom had contacts all over Mexico and arranges for a big payment to get the guy out of jail when he's caught. Mom apparently had contacts all over, even in some police departments in Quebec. Yeah, your mom's got contacts in Mexico. I should have made that joke about half an hour ago, but I'm going to run with it now. That's beneath you. Even you, that's beneath you. You know, like kind of I've been saying, like these aren't your typical biker gang knuckleheads.

Moms already buying property in hotels in Mexico as investments, laundering money through it and all that. These guys are much more like a mafia than your quintessential motorcycle gang. So the war goes back and forth, hits, gunfire, assassinations, bombs. I think there's 40 killed within the first two years of it.

But the cops, like I said, they're a little slow on it. They mostly view it as trash checking out the trash, bikers killing bikers. And honestly, the police and the judicial system in Canada, they seem kind of inept, like as bad as Western Europe and Scandinavia. I think your bias is showing there, Danny. They're just countries that aren't good at solving violent gang problems because I don't think they have that much experience with it. That's why they're the most dangerous countries in the world. Yeah.

I mean, Sweden's up there. But yeah, everything changes on August 9th, 1995. There's a group of children playing in a park when all of a sudden a car bomb explodes nearby. It kills the driver of the Jeep, who's a 20-year-old named Mark Dubé, instantly. But shrapnel hits one of the children in the head and gets into his brain. He's a 10-year-old and he dies four days later.

The Hells Angels right away claim they didn't do it, but they still offer cash to the boy's mother who refuses it. She says, quote, it disgusts me. I'll never forgive the act. This has been going on for five years and the government has done nothing.

This is like a shockwave through the streets of Montreal, Quebec, all over Canada. Footage of the carnage, of the explosion, of the funeral, it's all over TV. People are furious at the police. No one seems to know anything. The informant, Danny Cain, remember him? He tells the police later that this psychotic member of the Angels, I think Steiner is the last name, who loved making bombs, had just ordered a few. But most of the Angels don't even know what happened or what was going on. And Dubé is a loose associate of them, not Rock Machine. Okay.

Kane sort of lays the blame on the Angels in a previous report that he had given. He had mentioned that Mom, you know, who was leading the charge, was pissed off at the Angels. He thought they weren't getting after Rock Machine enough and even suggested killing one of their own to galvanize the troops.

So that's from the Road to Hell book, which was published, I think, in 2004. I've since seen some people say that the guy they killed, it was the Angels who did it, but the guy was mistaken for somebody or was involved with planning to kill mom. It's never been solved as far as I know. Either way, this is a wake-up call for law enforcement and the police and authorities. They finally realized they have to do something.

The entire province, like I said, is up in arms. Politicians are calling them out. In September of 1995, they launch Wolverine, which is a massive task force going after bikers. They start to track down some leads, but law enforcement, they're dogged by corruption in

internal conflict, infighting between different factions. I think it's like the city police and the province police and the federal police all don't get along and don't trust each other. There's just general ineptness. Not to mention the prosecutors in the city are overworked and outmatched by these really good defense attorneys. Yeah, your mom's outmatched by a defense attorney. You know what? I'm just going to let that one lie. Yeah, it's not good enough. Even for me. That is a hell of a low bar. You got to come in quicker than that, buddy.

That was a good follow-up.

Mom, at this point, he's just kind of operating on another level. And in fact, in a wild twist of fate, he may have been responsible for Quebec not separating from Canada, according to some. This is what I talked about earlier with the Quebec separatist. For those who don't know, some people in Quebec's French-speaking population for decades wanted to secede from Canada and form their own country. And, you know, some of those French Canadians took it very, very seriously. They were like wild separatists.

Yeah.

Yeah, they even had Jack Mesrine, who was like France's most notorious criminal. They had him in their ranks for a while. I mean, that's definitely one for another show. It's a great movie if anyone wants to watch it. Right, but they had these referendums too that I think they had one before that didn't go through. And they had this vote in 1995. I think it was the second time they actually did it, right? It's a referendum on whether they should seek independence and the Hells Angels for some reason are against it. And they hang up posters all over the city telling people not to vote for it.

Generally, these posters had all been ripped down, but because it's the Angels putting these ones up, nobody dares to touch them. The NoVault wins by like an incredibly small percentage. I think only something 10, 20,000 maybe people. So it was just really small for that part of Canada.

Oh, there's a book called The Hell's Angels at War that makes the claim that mom and the Hell's Angels may have kept Canada whole, which again, I don't know, but it wouldn't even be in the top five wildest things that happened with this group in this war. But yeah, they actually made the case that because of them, Canada stayed whole. I don't know what the motivation was. I'm sure it had to be- I guess borders are bad for business generally, right? They don't want another country popping up. Exactly. It's a lot easier to smuggle something, but

between a country than between two countries because there'd be another border if you're getting stuff in from Montreal and you want to take it to Toronto, right? Just makes your life a lot harder. So that makes sense. That's a good assumption. I don't know if it's 100% true.

Either way, by the end of 1995, the Hells Angels have now risen up the food chain of organized crime in Canada to become incredibly powerful, if not the most powerful organized crime group in the entire country. But they're still fighting a two-front war against Rock Machine and the Alliance and against the Canadian police and judicial authorities. And things are only about to ramp up

even further there's just so much here that we couldn't fit it in one episode so we're gonna do a part two so uh yeah tune in for that and until then support us at the patreon.com such the underworld podcast or spotify or itunes click that thing give us a little bit of cash to keep this going and thank you again for um you know putting up with us listening we uh we enjoy your support yeah thanks for putting up with us guys

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