Giovanni Muscedere

Muscedere was born in Windsor, Ontario in 1959, the son of Italian immigrants, moving to Chatham at the age of 12.[1] Muscedere grew up in an Italian-speaking household and he always spoke with an Italian accent, which he tried to hide by mumbling.[2] As a child, he was often bullied for being a "wop" and a "dogan" (derogatory Canadian slang for a Roman Catholic), and fought back, acquiring a great reputation as a fighter, which led him to take up boxing as his hobby.[3] Muscedere's friends and family believed the childhood bullying had scarred him, making him adopt a tough persona to hide any weaknesses, which explained his love of boxing and later motorcycles.[3] One who knew him stated: "He didn't really want to be somebody anybody could look down on. He wanted respect".[2] Muscedere enjoyed some success as an amateur boxer, but his early marriage and his first child's birth prevented him from becoming a professional boxer as he would have liked, forcing him to take a job in order to support his family.[4] Muscedere worked at a factory making automobile brakes in Chatham from 1979 until his murder, a job he hated as he found it very dull, but it gave him a good salary.[5] After his first and second wives divorced him and were awarded custody of their children, Muscedere took up riding motorcycles, finding in the world of outlaw biking a surrogate family for those he had lost with his divorces.[6] Muscedere had a strong sense of masculinity informed by traditional Italian values, for instance always paying the child support payments to both his ex-wives on time and in full on the grounds it was dishonourable for a father to let down his children.[5] In 1997, Muscedere joined the Annihilators Motorcycle Club led by Wayne Kellestine.[7]

Muscedere deeply believed in biker "brotherhood", being known as a man who was utterly loyal to his friends.[8] One who knew him said: "He was all or nothing. If he liked you, he liked you, and if he didn't like you, you knew".[5] Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent with The Toronto Star stated about "Boxer" Muscedere: "Boxer's fatal flaw was that he didn't discriminate between false and real brotherhood. If someone played the brotherhood card, he was vulnerable. Pretty good way to manipulate him; some things were sacred, and brotherhood was. It's funny, some of these guys do have moral codes. Maybe not like ours. But to (Muscedere), brotherhood and family trumped everything."[9] Muscedere was very loyal to his biker "brother" Kellestine, often donating money to help Kellestine pay the mortgage on his farm from his own salary, despite the fact that his other friends had warned him that Kellestine was just using him.[10] Muscedere did not share Kellestine's views about non-whites, Jews or homosexuals, but Kellestine was the man who let him join the Annihilators, which made him his biker "brother".[11] Having been bullied for being his ethnic background as a child, Muscedere didn't understand why Kellestine always referred to black people as "niggers", First Nations people as "redskins", gays as "faggots", East Asians as "gooks" and Jews as "kikes". When asked if he shared Kellestine's racial views, Muscedere often said that: "They all have a mother. People are who they are. They just have to be given respect. Look at how people look at us".[11]

On 2 June 1999, Kellestine's Annihilators, based in Iona Station near the city of London, joined the Loners club in Woodbridge led by Gennaro "Jimmy" Raso.[12] In face of the challenge coming from the Hells Angels, Kellestine decided he needed allies, and with the Outlaws being unwilling to accept him, he had decided to merge with the Loners instead.[13] Kellestine, the Annihilators president, became the new president of the Chatham chapter of the Loners at the time of the merger in 1999.[14] Following Kellestine into the Loners was another Annihilator, Giovanni Muscedere.[15] For Kellestine and Muscedere, joining the Loners was a step up in the outlaw biker world, while the Loners – a disproportionate number of whom were Italian-Canadians from middle-class families – could barely hide their disdain for the Annihilators, whom they viewed as rustic bumpkins from southwestern Ontario.[16] The Loners had accepted the Annihilators because of the need to increase their numbers in face of the challenge from the Hells Angels.[16]

At the time that Muscedere joined the Loners, he became close to another Loner and fellow Italian-Canadian, Frank "Bammer" Salerno, who to a certain extent displayed Kellestine as his best friend.[17] In October 2001, Joe "Crazy Horse" Morin, president of the Edmonton chapter of the Rebels outlaw biker club, first contacted the Bandidos with the aim of "patching over".[18] At a party at Kellestine's farm, Morin and the other Rebels were not impressed with Kellestine's eccentric behavior, seeing the Bandido treasurer Luis "Chopper" Raposo get high on various drugs and a "coked out" Muscedere lose his temper and beat up one of his "brothers" over a trivial matter.[19]

On 5 June 2002, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Sûreté du Québec targeted the Bandidos in Quebec and Ontario in a joint operation, Project Amigo. Amigo was initially facilitated under a different name and its initial purpose was to target the Rock Machine due to its participation in the Quebec Biker War; when the Rock Machine patched over to the Bandidos in January 2001, the operation was renamed and shifted focus to the Bandidos Canada. Every single Bandido (all of which were former members of the Rock Machine) in Quebec was arrested as were most of the Ontario members.[20] The investigation was the end of the Bandidos in Quebec, finally ending the Quebec Biker War.[20] As Project Amigo was originally started as an investigation of the Rock Machine, the former Loners in the Bandidos largely escaped charges, but Project Amigo crippled the Bandidos in Canada.[21] The Bandidos' Canadian national president, Alain Brunette, was charged with conspiracy to import drugs, and Muscedere, as the only senior Bandido not in prison or facing charges, became his successor.[22]

Following Project Amigo, the Canadian Bandidos consisted of fifteen members in Ontario spread over three chapters who were consolidated into a single chapter based in Toronto, although its members were actually scattered across southern Ontario.[21] Despite Muscedere's status as president of the Bandidos in Canada, he was overlooked by club leaders in other countries in favor of Glenn "Wrongway" Atkinson, the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Bandidos. George Wegers, the president of the Bandidos in the United States, preferred to deal with Atkinson, and Jason Addison, the president of the Australian Bandidos, sent Atkinson a box of Bandido T-shirts to hand out to followers, instead of Muscedere.[23] In July 2002, Kellestine was sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of 22 counts of violating the laws governing guns, after the police discovered various illegal firearms at his farm in 1999. Unlike the Hells Angels who had clubhouses with security cameras, steel doors, and computers in Toronto, the Toronto Bandidos had no clubhouse after June 2002.[24]

Reflecting their embattled status within the world of outlaw biking, Atkinson suggested the name "no surrender crew" for the Toronto chapter, which was adopted.[25] Boosting the profile of the Bandidos somewhat was the decision of veteran biker Frank Lenti in the fall of 2002 to join the Bandidos; he was a more experienced biker leader than Muscedere.[26] The Hells Angels had offered Lenti a chance to "patch over" several times in 1993 and 1994 when was the president of the Loners, but he declined, instead offering HAMC leader Walter Stadnick a chance to join the Loners.[27] Another experienced outlaw biker who joined the Bandidos was James "Ripper" Fullager, who had been active in outlaw biking since the 1960s and whose home in Toronto was a favourite hangout for the Bandidos, where Fullager recounted his past adventures and gave them advice.[28] Atkinson later stated that he left the Bandidos because of Muscedere's leadership, saying Muscedere was addicted to cocaine, his judgement was poor, he lacked political savvy and was not connected to reality, preferring to focus on promoting so-called biker "brotherhood" by devoting much time to the design of Christmas cards to his fellow Bandidos instead of making difficult decisions.[29] Muscedere was incapable of managing finances – both his own and that of his club – and his moods were volatile.[30] However, Muscedere was regarded as loyal to his friends and he often said he did everything "top left", which his way of saying "from the heart".[31] Moreover, Edwards wrote that Muscedere was regarded as far preferable than Kellestine with his "... mercurial mood swings and stream-of-consciousness rantings, in which he somehow equated the Confederacy, the American Revolution and Nazism with goodness and Canada. Boxer Muscedere could barely read and write and didn't play historian, but he was straightforward, honest, fearless and loyal to a fault, which just fine with them".[31]

In January 2003, Joe Morin of the Edmonton Rebels visited Toronto to discuss "patching over".[18] Despite his misgivings about the Bandidos, Morin felt in face of the challenge from the Hells Angels that joining the Bandidos was the best way to ensure the survival of his chapter, and agreed that the Edmonton chapter of the Rebels be granted "hang-around" status with the Bandidos.[32] The Victoria Day weekend in May is usually start of the riding season for outlaw bikers in Canada.[33] For Victoria Day in 2003, it turned out that only Muscedere, Lenti, Atkinson and George "Crash" Kriarakis actually owned working Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which humiliated Lenti, who complained about "bikers without bikes".[33] In June 2003, the Hells Angels threatened to put "jailhouse contracts" on the lives of the imprisoned Quebec Bandidos if they did not agree to retire from organized crime forever.[34] Muscedere submitted to the ultimatum, and stated that henceforward the Bandidos would expand into western Canada, with Muscedere talking about a drive to the Pacific.[34] In June 2003, Kriarakis was eating in a restaurant in Vaughan where he was surrounded by a dozen Hells Angels and was ordered to go out to the parking lot to be beaten, as Vaughan was considered to be "their" territory.[35] One of Kriarakis' friends called Lenti on his cellphone, who promptly raced off in his tow truck to help Kriarakis, while Kriarakis was badly beaten up in the parking lot.[35] Upon arriving, Lenti was furious to see that Kriarakis had called the police to report the assault, telling him that outlaw bikers never report to the police a crime committed by other outlaw bikers, even against themselves.[36] At a meeting of Fullager's house, Kriarakis was taken to task for his violation of the outlaw biker code, which publicly humiliated the Toronto Bandido chapter.[37] Morin, who was considering "patching over" to join the Bandidos, expressed much doubt after the Kriarakis incident, saying the only members of the Toronto chapter who impressed him were Atkinson and Lenti.[36] On 30 January 2004, Morin was murdered together with his friend, Robert Simpson, in the parking lot of an Edmonton strip club, Saint Pete's, possibly by the Hells Angels.[38] Muscedere was greatly offended that the men from the new chapter in Winnipeg that was trying to establish at the same time as a chapter in Edmonton did not show up for Morin's funeral while he and other Toronto chapter members attended.[39]

In July 2004, Muscedere opened a new Bandido chapter in Winnipeg, whose members were only probationary members. In August 2004, after being released from prison following his conviction on gun and drug charges, Kellestine become the sargento de armas of the Canadian Bandidos, and was displeased at the way his former protegee Muscedere now overshadowed him. Edwards wrote that outlaw biker clubs claim that they are all about freedom, but in reality outlaw biker clubs are rigid, rule-bound organizations run in a quasi-militaristic fashion with a strict hierarchy and rules governing every aspect of the members' existence.[40] Within that context, making Kellestine the sergeant-at-arms responsible to president Muscedere, a man whom Kellestine had given orders to when he was the Annihilators' president, was the source of great resentment to him.[41] One of Muscedere's neighbors in Chatham remarked to Edwards that "the puppet has cut his strings".[42] During the Taste of the Danforth festival in Toronto in August 2004, Atkinson met Kriarakis to tell him he was planning on leaving the Bandidos, saying that Muscedere had lost contact with reality, being short-sighted and ill-tempered; Kellestine was dangerous, and another club member, Michael Sandham, seemed like a shady character.[43] Atkinson wanted Kriarakis to follow him into the Outlaws, and when the latter refused, Atkinson remarked: "These guys are going to get you killed one day".[44]

In October 2004, Atkinson, the Bandido secretary who was well regarded by the club's "mother chapter" in Houston, resigned from the Bandidos to join the Outlaws.[45] When Atkinson arrived at Kellestine's farm to hand in his Bandido patch, Muscedere and Kellestine beat him bloody with the latter ramming a handgun into his mouth and threatened to kill him if ever saw him again.[46] In November 2004, Lenti quit the Bandidos, saying that Muscedere was addicted to cocaine and Kellestine was insane, and he was tired of dealing with both of them.[47] Unlike Atkinson, Lenti was not beaten as he had a fearsome reputation as a fighter who was known for his habit of gouging out the eyes of his enemies.[48] Lenti was a living legend within Ontario outlaw biker circles and his resignation was a great blow to the already waning prestige of the club.[47]

On 28 December 2005, the American leadership of the Bandidos, who had grown increasingly unhappy with Muscedere's leadership, expelled him and his followers, charging that they were failing to make money, not paying their monthly membership dues because they did not have the money, and were going about business in a "sloppy" manner, leaving them wide open to prosecution.[49] An officer with the Texas Department of Public Safety told the journalist Julien Sher of The Globe and Mail in 2006: "Because their numbers were so low in Canada, the U.S. Bandidos had tried to separate themselves from Canada. When you get to the point when you're not even breaking even – on drugs, like any other trade – you decide to close the business. If you're not bringing anything into the pot, you're a liability instead of an asset".[50] In defense of Muscedere, Salerno wrote in an email to Carleton "Pervert" Bare, the secretary of the Bandidos in the U.S., that the national president had tried five times to visit Houston.[51] Salerno wrote: "He was turned down everytime and the last time detained until he was deemed an undesirable and escorted back to Canadian soil. The next time he is caught trying to enter he will face criminal charges".[51] The rules of the "Bandido Nation" required that the leadership in Houston be consulted before the Toronto chapter could open any new chapters in Canada, and the leaders in Texas were stunned to learn via Sandham that there was a Bandido chapter in Winnipeg.[52] Sandham had written emails to Houston denouncing Muscedere for refusing to grant "full patches" to the Winnipeg chapter, which was the first time Houston had learned that there was a Bandido chapter in Manitoba.[52]

Muscedere took the expulsions, together with loss of their right to wear the Bandido patches, very badly, writing in an email to an American Bandido Keinard "Hawaiian Ken" Post, which, reflecting his semi-literate status, was full of spelling and grammatical errors together with a complete disregard for punctuation and capitalization, that read:

"my brother ken you will always be my brother there is no reason too [to] take something the canadian brothers value more than there [their] own lives when a brother is down you reach out your hand too [to] help them not kick them down I feel like a knife has been driven into my heart would you beleave [believe] it my own brother has done what my enemys [enemies] could never do with my own death".[53][54]

After being ordered to return their Bandido patches and property, Muscedere sent out an email to Bandidos chapters around the world calling for a vote to allow him and his followers to stay.[55] Jeff Pike, the international leader of the Bandidos, in an email told Muscedere: "Bandidos don't vote, they do what the fuck they're told".[55]

Muscedere and his followers took to calling themselves the "no surrender crew" after an ultra-violent fraction in the Irish Republican Army opposed to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, because they refused the orders from Houston to surrender their patches, saying they were going to stay on as Bandidos despite Pike's decision to expel them.[55] Outlaw bikers attach enormous symbolic importance to their patches, which show which club they belong to and what their position is within their club.[56] The patches belong to the club, not to the men wearing them, and must be returned at once if a member is expelled or resigns.[56] Within the world of outlaw bikers, it is considered extremely offensive for someone to wear the patch of a club that they do not belong to, and violence usually results when someone wears a patch of a club that they are not a member of.[56] The Bandidos patch, known as the "Fat Mexican", consists of a caricature of a Mexican bandit wearing a sombrero, holding a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.[57]

Pike was greatly displeased by the refusal of the "no surrender crew" to return their patches together with Muscedere's call for a vote to allow the Toronto chapter to stay, bluntly announcing the "Bandido Nation" was not a democracy.[58] At the same time, Sandham was writing emails to Houston disavowing Muscedere and the rest of the "no surrender crew", proclaiming in highly obsequious language that he was with Houston against the "no surrender crew".[59] Sandham had also told Kellestine at this time that the "no surrender crew" were planning to "patch over" to join the Outlaws without him.[52] Kellestine believed what Sandham had told him, and this bit of misinformation turned Kellestine against the "no surrender crew".[60] For Kellestine, outlaw biking was his life, and to be left alone without belonging to any club would be a sort of death for him.[61] A reprieve of sorts was won for the "no surrender crew" when George Kriarakis, who had no criminal record, was able to visit Houston and made a good impression.[62] Kriarakis was appointed president of Bandidos Canada, but, an unassertive man, he surrendered the title back to Muscedere.[63] The status of the "no surrender crew" was somewhat ambiguous afterwards, perhaps because it would be humiliating for Houston to have "no surrender crew" wear their Bandido patches without Houston being able to do anything about it.[64]

For their part, the Winnipeg chapter believed that Muscedere was an incompetent leader whose poor relations with Houston had prevented them from being granted full patches.[55] Kellestine had been ordered by Houston to "pull the patches" on the "no surrender crew" or be expelled himself, and in March 2006, Kellestine had asked the Winnipeg chapter for help.[55] Kellestine, who frequently consumed the drugs he was supposed to sell and who was deeply in debt with the bank frequently threatening to foreclose on his farm he brought in 1982, had discovered that selling methamphetamine was a lucrative business, and was greatly annoyed when Muscedere had ordered him to stop selling methamphetamine under the grounds that it was wrong.[55] Muscedere was addicted to cocaine, but he felt that selling methamphetamine was wrong and forbade all Bandidos from selling "crystal meth".[51] Stratford, Ontario is regarded as the "meth-making capital" of Canada as methamphetamine is usually manufactured in rural areas as it gives off an unpleasant smell and needs anhydrous ammonia as an ingredient, a fertilizer commonly sold in rural stores.[64] As there was huge demand for methamphetamine in Winnipeg, Kellestine believed an alliance with Sandham would make him rich as he knew many of the methamphetamine makers in the countryside around Stratford.[51] The indebted Kellestine frequently complained that the other members were more interested having the chapter serve as a social club rather than as a money-making concern, which echoed the feelings of the American leadership of the Bandidos.[55] Kellestine was behind in paying property taxes to Dutton/Dunwich township in Elgin County, owing the township some $10,303.30 in unpaid taxes, and frequently resorted to selling bootleg whiskey and smuggled cigarettes to pay his bills.[65] The crime journalist Yves Lavigne told The London Free Press: "On a scale of one to 10, this group of Bandidos rated somewhere between one and zero".[65]