The Notorious Bacon Brothers (5 page)

He had been busy on his trip to Vancouver. In the week before he offed Daggitt, Robin had killed small-time cocaine dealer Ronald Scholfield in his car out front of the Downtown Eastside's notorious Cobalt Motor Hotel, and on the following day he murdered another street-level dealer named Robert Pelletier. Although Robin pled guilty, he refused to give details as to who wanted Daggitt dead. It was up to the media and public to guess.

While all this was going on, one of British Columbia's most prominent Hells Angels met his own end. Michael “Zeke” Mickle was the popular president of the Nanaimo chapter for years when he stepped on a ferry to the mainland on the night of April 30, 1993. He was never seen in public again, and his cellphone account had been deactivated by an unknown party. When the RCMP went looking for clues, they were inundated with a number of anonymous tips that all claimed Mickle was beheaded by an unnamed Vietnamese gangster who had just moved to Vancouver Island and was out to prove he did not fear the Hells Angels. They didn't fall for it and later found more reliable sources who informed them that Mickle had started using the drugs he had been selling and had gone into considerable debt with his “brothers” in the Hells Angels. The case has never been solved, but nobody's looking for the Vietnamese kingpin anymore.

Despite their hard-earned reputation for xenophobia, the Hells Angels (at least, their close associates) did not mind dealing with the Italian Mafia from Montreal and Colombian cartel members when it came to cocaine.

If there is a Canadian dream, Eugene Uyeyama appeared to have achieved it. By December 1995, he had a brand-new luxury car and a gorgeous cliff-side house in Burnaby with a swimming pool and a deck that gave him views of Burrard Inlet to the west and the Coast Mountains to the east. More important, the woman he had loved and pursued for a dozen years had finally said yes and married him. His new bride, Michele, delighted him when she told him she wanted to start a family right away. After they returned from a two-week Caribbean cruise, they went Christmas shopping, and Eugene noticed that Michele was checking out baby clothes.

Somewhat less enviable was the life of Bobby Moyes. Addicted to heroin since his teens, Moyes was a career criminal. Despite 40 convictions, including many for violent crimes, and a string of bank robberies, the Victoria native was on day release after serving a sentence at the minimum-security Ferndale Institution for armed robbery. At night, he checked into the Sumas Centre halfway house, and by day, he shared a house in Coquitlam with a drug trafficker he met in Ferndale named Roberto Salvatore Ciancio. “It was very generous,” Moyes said, referring to Ciancio's offer to put him up. “Sal allowed me to live there and never asked anything of me.” That would change.

Ciancio was well known in the area as a bad dude, someone you did not cross. A rough-looking guy with bad skin and worse teeth, Ciancio was intense and had a hair-trigger temper. He was hooked up with very powerful people, and many thought he had something to do with the 1983 contract killing of Joe Philliponi, a reputed made man and nightclub owner, that was eventually pinned on a drifter named Scott Forsyth and the man who would become Ciancio's father-in-law, Sid Morrissroe, a surprisingly wealthy plumbing contractor. Ciancio had been in prison for shooting at some cops who'd caught him stealing a tractor-trailer. He was also said to be close to Anthony “Big Tony” Terezakis, a drug trafficker with close ties to the Hells Angels.

And Moyes was no angel either. He had first been arrested in 1975 for armed robbery and been given a five-year sentence. While serving time, he was convicted of three counts of attempted murder when authorities learned he held down a sheriff named Gib Perry while a friend stabbed him 30 times but failed to kill him. With the escorting sheriff down, Moyes and his associate escaped prison, went to a nearby farm house, bound and robbed the family, and were finally taken down in a gunfight with police. Moyes and his friend were using guns stolen from the farmers. That sentence was for 15 years. But he was released on parole in 1980 only to be arrested weeks later in Montreal for violating his release conditions. The operation to find him uncovered enough evidence to sentence him to 15 more years for nine armed robberies. In 1986, he walked away from the fenceless Ferndale Institution and was caught some nine months later having committed more than two dozen bank holdups. That got him a life sentence. The Supreme Court judge said he had a “dreadful record involving crimes of violence” and that the life sentence was necessary “to put a stop to [his] predatory activities for as long as possible.”

But he was out on the streets again in August 1993 with the condition that he attend psychological counseling and not consume any intoxicants, including alcohol. But when he was caught drinking and driving in October, his freedom was reduced to day parole, meaning he had to spend his nights at the Sumas Centre. Years later, Moyes admitted that he had lied repeatedly to the parole board, including feigning an interest in Native Canadian spirituality, even though he is not a Native Canadian. “I know how to make the rules work for me, just like a lawyer,” he boasted.

Through what later became contentious court testimony, Moyes brought to life a grisly murder.

By December 1995, Moyes was working steadily for Ciancio, who had opened up an auto body shop, and did odd jobs for him. Moyes said that Ciancio's shop was partially bankrolled by his friend and fellow trafficker, Peter Chee.

On one occasion, Moyes said, Ciancio told him he needed him to do a job. Moyes thought that meant beat someone up (something Moyes later testified he had done for Ciancio several times before), so he agreed. They then agreed to talk in one of Ciancio's cars, a Fiat Spider convertible. Moyes said that the pair then drove to a restaurant in New Westminster and that Ciancio told him that a large quantity of drugs had been confiscated and that there was a rat in “their group” who would have to be eliminated before Christmas.

Moyes told the court that the following day he met with Ciancio and Chee. They told him, he said, that the target was Uyeyama and that they knew he was a rat because “nothing had stuck to him.” He said they gave him an address, told him that Uyeyama's wife worked at a nearby grocery store and that Uyeyama had a brother who hung out at the house and occasionally slept over. They made it clear that anyone in the house would have to be killed. Chee, he said, did not want it to look like a home invasion or robbery, but that it should look like an assassination.

Moyes said that Ciancio then introduced him to an old friend whom he didn't completely trust but wanted to go with Moyes, named Mike Samardzich. The trio, Moyes said, then moved to Samardzich's old Cadillac because they couldn't fit in the two-seat Fiat, then drove by Uyeyama's house.

On December 20, 1995, Moyes had done it again. He had managed to have his day parole changed back to full parole effective the following day under the condition he attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that night. He didn't.

That day, he drove Ciancio to the airport. Ciancio was going to Montreal to visit his father. His wife, Tammy, later said in court that Ciancio told her “a couple of people had to be taken out, and if I'd been around, I'd have been a suspect.” Ciancio left a gun and some money in their shared laundry hamper. Moyes also claimed that Ciancio told him that if they found any money or drugs in Uyeyama's house, Ciancio would share it with them.

At the same time he was supposed to be at the AA meeting, Moyes claimed that he and Samardzich rang the Uyeyamas' doorbell. Moyes described himself and his associate as “impeccably dressed” and said they were holding wrapped gift boxes. Michele answered but did not unchain the door. Moyes was disappointed to see her. “I thought at the time that this was a really screwed-up thing,” he said. “The woman wasn't supposed to be there. It changed everything.”

He told her he had some Christmas presents from “the boys.” Michele was no gangster, but she was also not naive enough to mistake what her new husband did for a living. “The boys” clearly indicated someone the visitors thought she would be familiar with, but I have also been told that in the Lower Mainland's crime circles, it usually refers to the Hells Angels. Still, she was cautious. Michele told the pair to leave the gifts outside. Moyes said that normally he would, but there had been so much rain that the porch was soaking, and the gifts would be ruined.

As soon as she reluctantly unchained the door, Moyes dropped his box and thrust a handgun under her chin. Once they were both inside, Moyes told Samardzich to “take care of” Michele. He knew she was not the target. Instead he began to search the house, finding Eugene asleep in the master bedroom. Thinking quickly, he pointed his gun at Eugene and shouted “Police!” before ordering him out of bed. As soon as Eugene was standing, Moyes grabbed him by the hair and forced him to the ground, face down. Pulling him arms behind him, Moyes tied him by the wrists with an electrical cord.

He called Samarzdich into the bedroom. According to Moyes, Samardzich, with a gun up to Michele's head, told Eugene he'd kill her if he did not tell them where the money was. Moyes kicked Eugene to encourage him to talk. Then he unwrapped one of the “gifts” to reveal a curling iron, which he threatened to “shove up his ass” unless he talked. It did not take Eugene long to give in, telling the invaders that the cash was in a nearby closet. Moyes searched the closet and pulled out a bag of cash. But it didn't save Michele's life. Moyes claimed in court that Samardzich saw the loot, and then used an electrical cord to strangle her, throwing her lifeless body at Eugene's feet. Eugene began to struggle. According to Moyes, Samardzich tackled him and grabbed his feet, holding him down as Moyes strangled him. At their trial, Moyes' version of events was rejected by the court and Samardzich was acquitted.

With both of the Uyeyamas dead, Moyes then unwrapped the other box they had brought. That Christmas gift was a red plastic can full of gasoline. Moyes then drenched the corpses and left a trail back to the front door. Throwing the can inside the house from the porch, Moyes then lit the trail and closed the door as the house erupted into an inferno.

Eugene Uyeyama was indeed an informant. In fact, he was the RCMP's most highly paid informant in British Columbia history at the time. The order to assassinate him came from the then-mighty Cali Cartel in Colombia. His death was part of what the RCMP called “an internal security review” by the cartel and their allies.

On October 5, 1995 (less than three months before he was killed), Uyeyama had proved his worth to the RCMP when he brought them an ordinary-looking 11-inch aluminum frying pan. He revealed to them that the Colombian-made pan—which he had spirited away from a shipment earlier that week—had a false bottom that was covering a disc of tightly packed powdered cocaine. Now aware of how the drugs arrived in Canada, all the cops had to know was when.

Their source of information was silenced just before Christmas when Uyeyama and his wife were killed, but not before his disclosure that, on February 12, 1996, a new shipment would be arriving. Inside a 40-foot container aboard the
MV Los Angeles
was a huge number of pots and pans from Colombia, all of which, the police discovered, had false bottoms concealing cocaine. The RCMP didn't manage to arrest any major players, but they did get almost 1,000 pounds of coke off the streets.

In March 1997, Moyes was arrested in Matsqui, British Columbia, for driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident. Despite his almost absurd number of arrests and convictions, it did not land him behind bars. Instead, his parole was reduced to day parole, meaning he had to go back to the Sumas Centre every night.

Even with those restrictions, Moyes told the court, Ciancio hired him and another man, a hulking friend of Moyes' from Ferndale named Mark Therrien, to kill again.

Ray Graves was a 70-year-old drug trafficker who lived with his 56-year-old wife, Sonto, and her son from a previous relationship, 37-year-old David Sangha, on a farm in Abbotsford. They were trouble. Graves, despite his age, and his wife were out on bail at the time fighting an attempted murder charge after another reputed cocaine dealer, Balbir Singh Sandu of nearby Chilliwack, was shot at on the Graves' farm.

Moyes claims that Ciancio told him that Graves and his wife had fallen $500,000 in debt with “Carlos,” a mysterious Colombian who ran the Cali Cartel's operations in the Lower Mainland, and had to be eliminated. There was also a rumor circulating at the time that the pair had turned police informants.

Moyes recognized Therrien as another guy who had to sign in every night at Sumas. What he did not know is that Therrien had previously worked for the Graveses on their grow op and had left on bad terms. He had a score to settle.

On September 9, the murderous pair drove to the Abbotsford farm and ran into Sangha outside. Therrien said he had to speak with the Graveses, so Sangha led him inside. They immediately drew their guns and quickly overpowered the family inside. They then tied all three of them to kitchen chairs with duct tape. With the family at their mercy, Therrien and Moyes began to demand they reveal where their cash and drugs were hidden. They wouldn't talk. Therrien then took matters into his own hands and slashed Sangha's throat. Panicked and watching her son bleeding out, Sonto told them they could find what they wanted in an upstairs bedroom. Therrien ran up the stairs, returned with both cash and drugs, and then executed both of the Graveses with throat slashes.