REGION PART OF GANG TURF WAR

But Experts Say It's Too Early To Blame Bikers For Murders

Biker gangs have been fighting for control of southwestern Ontario for years.

The area in and around London, Ont., where the bodies of eight men
were found on Saturday morning, is part of a drug trafficking
corridor between Toronto and Windsor where narcotics cross the
border, said Lee Lamothe, an expert on organized crime.

"Everybody wants the same thing. They want control, they want money
and they want the turf," Mr. Lamothe said yesterday.

Gangs also find the rural area attractive for making synthetic drugs
and growing marijuana, Mr. Lamothe added.

Law enforcement officials in Canada estimate the country is home to
about 1,200 members of biker gangs -- mainly the Hells Angels, the
Outlaws and the Bandidos. Elgin County, where the bodies were
discovered, has hosted all three clubs in recent years. The gangs
have been fighting in southwestern Ontario since the 1980s.

Tensions escalated in the late 1990s when the Hells Angels pushed
west of Quebec to battle for a share of the drug trade. They set up
shop in London a few years later and recruited members from gangs.
They offered rival gang members in Ontario full memberships, or full
patches, without a probationary period if they abandoned their gangs.

"They want to be the only big dog in town," said Mr. Lamothe,
co-author of the recently released book Angels, Mobsters and Narco-terrorists.

A string of explosions, shootings, brawls and unsolved murders began
around the same time. Wayne Kellestine -- the former president of the
Annihilators, and later the Loners in St. Thomas -- survived an
assassination attempt in 1999.

Sean Gale of London pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder the
following year. At his sentencing hearing, a Crown attorney explained
the Loners were split over whether to join the Hells Angels. When
members of the Loners learned Gale was in discussions with the
Angels, Gale was pistol-whipped. Gale then conspired with other
bikers to kill Kellestine.

The president of London's Outlaws, Jeffrey LaBrash, was also shot to
death with a member of his gang outside a strip club in London in
1998. On the same weekend LaBrash and Outlaw member Paul Hart were
buried, a bomb exploded in a London bar. The men who shot the
Outlaws, brothers Duane and Paul Lewis, were later acquitted. Police
alleged the brothers had ties to the Hells Angels.

Biker gangs also have a history of internal violence. Mr. Lamothe
pointed out members of the Hells Angels turned on the gang's own
members in Lennoxville, Que., in 1985. Five members were shot inside
a gang bunker because of a fight between chapters. The victims'
bodies were placed in sleeping bags, wrapped in chains and tossed in
the St. Lawrence River. Three gang members were eventually convicted
of first-degree murder.

But Mr. Lamothe and other experts stressed there is there is too
little information to pin the weekend massacre on outlaw motorcycle gangs.

"It really sets everyone up for a kick in the teeth if it turns out
not to be bikers," said Yves Lavigne, a motorcycle gang specialist
who has written several books on the Hells Angels.

"Where will that leave us then? The Hells Angels will call a press
conference and say, 'See? No matter what, we get blamed for it.' "

Mr. Lavigne said there has been biker activity in the area but that
is hardly unique to the rolling farmland: "Show me a part of Canada
that doesn't have bikers in the area," he said.

"We can speculate all day and get nowhere. As much as you can
speculate about bikers, you can speculate about cults and Portuguese migrants.

"The truth will come out eventually."

Indeed, the widespread speculation about a motorcycle gang link drew
sharp criticism from Hells Angels supporters yesterday. On a Web site
run by the downtown Toronto chapter of the world's largest motorcycle
gang, several people posted comments attacking the reports.

"The blood is barely dry and the media is already putting the spin
linking the Big Red Machine," said one, using the common nickname for
the Hells Angels.

The supporter, from Canada, then compared it to Mexican officials who
immediately blamed the recent murder of an Ontario couple in Cancun
on two women from Thunder Bay, adding: "Very sad."

Another supporter said he will now be doubly victimized -- as someone
who is both a biker supporter and a tow truck driver.

"The stigma carries out to my business even worse now that a tow
truck was found at the scene of the multiple homicide near London,"
he wrote. "It's getting ever so much harder to live a normal, honest
life with all the media propaganda."

Mass Murders In Canada:

A partial list:

Ecole Polytechnique Massacre, 1989

Anti-feminist Marc Lepine shoots and kills 14 women in the halls of
Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique engineering school before killing himself.

Gargantua Fire, 1975

Gunmen force 13 people, including several Montreal underworld
figures, into a storage room in the Gargantua nightclub, shooting
some and killing the rest by setting the building on fire in what
police called a gangland "settling of accounts." Three days after the
fire, gangster Richard "The Cat" Blass dies in a shootout with police
at a Val-David chalet.

Chahal Shootings, 1996

Spurned husband Mark Chahal goes on a shooting rampage in Vernon,
B.C., apparently furious over the financial arrangements for his
divorce. He kills nine people including his estranged wife,
father-in-law and her sister before killing himself.

Shell Lake Massacre, 1967

Schizophrenic Robert Hoffman shoots nine members of the Peterson
family in Shell Lake, Sask., claiming later he thought he was
shooting pigs. He spares only a four-year-old daughter because "she
had a smile on her face." Hoffman is sentenced to life in an Ontario
mental institution.

Hogue Killings, 1-5

Former Vancouver police officer Leonard Hogue, part of a gang of
rogue cops accused of robbing banks in their off hours, hunts down
his wife and six children in their Coquitlam home and shoots them all
dead. Hogue, who was afraid that authorities were closing in on him,
then kills himself.

Johnson-Bentley Murders, 1982

Police find the remains of six campers, a man and his wife, the
wife's parents, and the couple's two daughters, in a burned out car
on a back road of Wells Gray Provincial Park north of Kamloops, B.C.
David Shearing of Clearwater, B.C., confesses, but details of the
murders are never revealed.

Solar Temple Deaths, 1994

Bodies of five members of the doomsday cult Order of the Solar
Temple, including an infant, are found in the burned ruins of a
chalet in Morin Heights, Que. The couple believed responsible fled to
Switzerland, where they were among 53 cultists who were killed or
committed suicide.

Abbotsford Drug Murders, 1996

Raymond Graves, 70, his wife, adult son and two friends are found
murdered on an isolated farm in Abbotsford, B.C. The Graves were
facing charges of attempted murder and cocaine trafficking at the
time of their deaths and police say their murders were linked to the
drug trade. Rival drug dealers Mark Therrien and Robert Moyes are
arrested six years later and convicted of the murders.

OC Transpo Shootings, 1999

Disgruntled Ottawa transit worker Pierre Lebrun walks into a bus barn
in suburban Ottawa and kills four employees. Lebrun, who had
complained of harassment in the workplace, then kills himself.

Fabrikant Murders, 19'

Engineering professor Valery Fabrikant shoots four colleagues in
Concordia University's faculty of engineering after learning he would
not be granted tenure. Fabrikant is overpowered and later sentenced
to life in prison with no parole for 25 years.

Source: National Post

Ran with fact box "Mass Murders in Canada" which has been appended to the story.