The Notorious Bacon Brothers (26 page)

The autopsy also revealed that Machiskinic's body contained a “potentially lethal” amount of cocaine and an “elevated” level of alcohol.

The coroner did not rule out murder, suicide or misfortune.

Unsatisfied with the investigation and sure the police were not taking the matter seriously, activists—organized and experienced after the Pickton investigation and trial—declared her death a murder. A vigil was held in hopes of drawing attention to Machiskinic's fate on October 4, 2010. Police arrested three of the participants for trespassing.

At a “town hall” meeting on October 6, 2010, Vancouver police chief Jim Chu faced a series of often shouted criticisms of his officers' unwillingness to help the women of the Downtown Eastside. All Chu could do was to repeat that police could only help victims if witnesses come forward. “The Vancouver Police Department has a commitment to provide safety for all,” he said. “The police department is greatly enhanced if you help us.”

One woman, who said she lived in the nearby Europe Hotel, responded by saying that she had seen a woman abducted by a man and reported it to police, but they refused to take her seriously even though she had a license plate number for the vehicle.

One of the most well-known activists, Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Battered Women's Support Services, said she knew what was going on: Machiskinic was murdered over a drug debt. “The rapes and the beatings are standard [punishment]. What is a little bit unusual are women's heads being shaved ... and women coming out of windows,” she said. “I know of about six in the last two years. They're not deaths all the time, but to injury or deaththey are thrown out of windows. We know this is a way that drug dealers deal with debts.”

And she was hardly alone in that opinion. “There's been a few women lately thrown out of windows, at the Balmoral, the Regent,” said Gladys Radek, organizer of Walk 4 Justice, an organization in support of missing and murdered women. “Women missing fingers, wearing wigs because their heads have been shaved ... ”

Sadly, history backs up their opinion. Hells Angels associates all over B.C. had used violence and even murder to punish debtors. Fingers, even hands, had been severed over relatively small debts. While many make the point that the life of an addict like Ashley Machiskinic may not have been of utmost importance to police, it would certainly mean nothing to a dealer unable to get any more money from her.

Whether Machiskinic was murdered or not will never be conclusively determined unless someone, perhaps the perpetrator, comes forward. But what's important to remember is that murders and torture over drug debts were happening and are happening. It's a dispiritingly familiar manifestation of the old cliché about drug addiction and supply. People, often in sad circumstances, turn to stimulant or opiate drugs, which are highly addictive. In order to support their habit, they give everything they have or can get their hands on. When they run out of anything of value, they fall into debt with their dealer, leaving them at the dealer's mercy. The drug dealers in British Columbia are not merciful people.

One of the Hells Angels–affiliated gangs that sold drugs in the Downtown Eastside was the Game Tight Soldiers, who had originated in the neighborhood and were not known as being very merciful. But business had been good, and the gang had expanded to drug-hungry Prince George. A few days after Machiskinic's death, one of the Game Tight Soldiers' founding members, Eric Fiske, and an unnamed female associate went into the woods to retrieve a bag left there for them by another associate. But they did not know that the associate who left the bag there was working with the RCMP.

When Fiske threw the bag into the back of his pickup, the officers pounced. He was charged with possession of two loaded handguns, a MAC-10 submachine gun with ammunition and 228 grams of cocaine. A subsequent search of his home turned up 56 more grams of cocaine, 159 doses of heroin, 1.5 kilograms of marijuana and other related drug-trafficking paraphernalia.

Although Prince George is a 10-hour drive from the Downtown Eastside, Fiske's arrest was a stark reminder of the drugs and violence that linked him, the Game Tight Soldiers, the Hells Angels and the entire trafficking world with victims like Machiskinic and Irving.

In truth, though, victims like Machiskinic and Irving are a lot rarer than dead bodies of the gang members themselves. Fighting for territory with rivals, holding out or not paying on time (even if your stash had been stolen or your grow op robbed) were often punishable by death. Everyone wanted their piece of the pie, and nobody liked to share.

As glamorous and attractive as the gang lifestyle appeared to be, there was also the grim reality that members—from the high-flying, Maserati-driving overlords to the lowest street-corner crack merchants—woke up every day knowing that they faced death. One mistake, one accident, and their next trip could be to the morgue.

One of those gang members was Gurmit Singh Dhak, one of the founders of the increasingly powerful Dhak Gang and the man who'd been in injured in the 2007 Quattro shooting. With the vast reduction in size and scope of both the UN and the Red Scorpions/Bacon Brothers, gangs like the Dhaks were gaining business as drug-hungry users looked for suppliers and quality product.

But Gurmit, who had been shot in a crowded restaurant years before, knew that the gang life was not a good life, despite its obvious rewards. In an effort to dissuade at-risk youth from following the same path he did, Gurmit agreed to speak with the Odd Squad, a group of police who make presentations to the region's youth to inform them about the dangers of the gangster lifestyle in hopes of de-romanticizing it.

In a video of the interview, Gurmit, wearing a Raiders cap, answers their questions politely, calmly and knowledgeably. When asked what he thought his future was, Gurmit replied:

Oh, I'll either probably wind up dead, or ... my future in gangs is ... if I could turn back time, I would never do it again. Every day I've got to look over my shoulder; I've got to worry about my family, I've got to worry about, like, if I jump out of my car, am I going to get shot? Or, you know, I could be walking in the mall, and walking out and getting shot. I don't know.

When asked if he wanted to get out of gangs, he told them: “Oh, I want to get out. But it's too late now to get out. I have too many enemies.”

He then said he'd “do anything” to keep his own kids out of gangs, that “deep down” all gangsters were scared and that schools should do more to inform kids exactly how dangerous being in a gang is.

That tape was made in June 2010. At 5:50 p.m. on October 16, 2010, Burnaby police responded to 9-1-1 calls about shots fired at the Metrotown Mall. When they arrived, they found the bullet-riddled body of Gurmit Singh Dhak slumped over the wheel of his black BMW SUV. Police referred to it as a targeted hit and pointed out that although the mall was open, there were very few people near the site of the shooting and that nobody else was hurt.

With so much of British Columbia's gang population behind bars or scared to act, more and more veteran gang members were forced to do work they would ordinarily slough off to others. A perfect example of this is what happened to Joseph Bruce Skreptak.

A full-patch member of the Hells Angels East End chapter, Skreptak was one of the founding members of the Kelowna, or K-Town, chapter. In 2005, police busted a huge grow op in a house he owned, but he managed to get off scot-free because he testified that the marijuana in question belonged to his tenants and that he had no knowledge of their activities. His truck was even parked outside the house when the raid went down.

That brings to mind the Hells Angels' recipe for success in Canada: they mastermind the operation and make the big bucks, but when the hammer falls, there's always someone else, someone lower down the proverbial totem pole, to take the blame.

But those people were becoming rarer, and sometimes the Hells Angels had to take on jobs they previously thought were below them.

In October 2010, police saw a luxury SUV speeding and driving erratically in Salmon Arm, a town near Kelowna. Officers stopped the car and, using the smell of marijuana as a validation, affected a search. Inside the vehicle were several firearms (including a sawed-off shotgun), bulletproof vests, a baseball bat, an axe handle, bear spray and a device specifically designed to jam cellphones. A number of Hells Angels opponents who had been killed or had gone missing had their cellphones jammed just about the time they had gone missing or been attacked. Arrested were Skreptak, Carl Ennis, Dennis Miner and Cory Montemurro on numerous charges, but all were eventually acquitted. Since all, according to police, were “sporting” Hells Angels paraphernalia, each must have been at prospect level or higher. The officer who stopped them was not only sure he'd done the right thing, but was also surprised by their audacity. “I think it's fair to say they were up to no good,” said RCMP Staff Sergeant Kevin Keane of the Salmon Arm detachment. “It was snowing and the roads were under winter conditions, and these people were going down the road pretty quick.”

A couple of weeks later, on November 1, 2010, Skreptak was arrested for breaking into a Kelowna residence and allegedly beating up a father and son. The dad was sent to a hospital, but the son was less badly injured.

A few years earlier, the suggestion of a full-patch, especially one of Skreptak's long standing, beating up a father and son instead of pawning it off on some underling would have been preposterous.

And there was still tension in Prince George, where a number of loose organizations (all answering to the Hells Angels, but not to each other) were experiencing friction. One local gangster who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way was Joey Arrance. The owner of the Twisted Soul Tattoo and Body Piercing Shop downtown, Arrance had also been also a prospect (or striker) for the Renegades. He'd been charged with sexual assault as a result of an incident at the Renegades' clubhouse in July 2010 and, on September 19, 2010, was arrested again after a search of his home revealed a 10mm Glock pistol, spare magazines, a defused hand grenade and a bulletproof vest. Also charged were the two other residents of the house—Arrance's girlfriend, Kirsten Fredin, and her wheelchair-bound mother, Linda Fredin. By that time, Arrance was a member of the Game Tight Soldiers.

While Arrance was behind bars at a Prince George Regional Corrections facility, someone torched his shop. Less than 24 hours later, arsonists set fire to his home. His girlfriend's mother, Linda Fredin, was in the house at the time. She was airlifted to Vancouver to be treated for burns and smoke inhalation, but succumbed to her injuries a few days later on December 3, 2010.

And the Hells Angels in Kelowna were just as sloppy. Dain Phillips was not involved in gangs or the drug trade. But when the former minor-league hockey tough guy heard that a couple of local brothers were giving his own sons a tough time, he went over to their place to see if he could iron things out with their parents.

Instead of a discussion, he was beaten to death with a baseball bat, hammers and other objects on June 11, 2011. Charged were Robert Thomas, Norman Cocks, Robert Cocks, David McRae, Matthew McRae, Anson Schell and Thomas Vaughan. Interestingly, Thomas and Norman Cocks were full-patch members of the Hells Angels, while Robert Cocks was president of the Throttle Lockers, yet another puppet club, this one based out of 100 Mile House.

Flabby, pig-faced Thomas fled. All the others were taken into custody, and all but Norman Cocks were granted bail. It marked the first time in 28 years that a full-patch B.C. Hells Angel had been charged with murder.

Thomas eventually turned himself in. He too, was denied bail. In a bizarre twist, while they were waiting for trial in North Fraser Pretrial Centre, both of the full-patch Hells Angels were involved in fights, which they lost. Thomas got into an altercation with Matthew Johnston, one of the accused Surrey Six killers and a well-known Red Scorpion. Thomas was knocked cold, while Johnston was uninjured. Cocks had his nose broken by Stephen Matheson, a prisoner charged with robbery who had low-level gang connections.

In previous years (and to this day, in most places), an attack on a Hells Angels full patch in jail or prison generally meant a death sentence. But on the British Columbia scene in 2011, that preferred status had declined so significantly that neither of the men who assaulted Thomas and Cocks saw any significant retaliation behind bars.

But it's not as though the Hells Angels didn't have friends behind bars. And they'd soon get more. With so many arrests in Kamloops, the Independent Soldiers there needed a new leader. They got one in Jeff Oldford, whose résumé included a theft conviction in April 2008, a sexual assault arrest in December 2010 and a trafficking arrest in April 2011.

Steve Bodie was a small-time drug dealer in Kamloops at the time. He was definitely on the Independent Soldiers' radar, as well as the cops'. He was at his North Kamloops home when he answered a knock on the door on August 5, 2011. Five men, armed with baseball bats and guns, burst in. After they blocked his escape, the men proceeded to beat him brutally, breaking many bones in his ribcage, hands and fingers.

They then threw him in a truck and took him to a deserted roadway about 10 miles from town. He was dumped by the side of the road, the truck running over one of his battered hands as they drove off.

Bodie managed to get to a nearby farmhouse. The residents dialed 9-1-1. Police raided Bodie's house without a warrant. They said they were concerned that another resident of the house could be in danger. He wasn't there, but two of the alleged assailants were. Eventually rounded up and arrested were Oldford, Brett Haynes, Adam Colligan, Greg Brotzel and David Byford.

The Independent Soldiers must have been desperate for cash because less than a month after the Bodie attack, on August 21, 2011, almost the exact same crime occurred.

Another, unnamed, drug dealer received a call from a female acquaintance asking him to meet her near the Aberdeen Medical Centre. The woman then took him into an alleyway in which two men—one with a gun, the other with a baseball bat—were waiting. The two thugs threatened the dealer with the weapons and demanded his cash and drugs. They took his cash, wallet, backpack and cellphone.