'IT'S THE END OF THE BANDIDOS IN CANADA'

Murder Charges Leave Biker Gang's Membership Depleted, Police Say

WHITBY, ONT. -- And then there were almost none.

In a move that effectively marks the demise of the Bandidos biker
gang in Canada, four more Ontario members and associates have been
charged with murder, this time in connection with the beating death
of a reputed cocaine dealer in Keswick last year.

The charges are only peripherally connected to the April massacre in
Southwestern Ontario of eight Toronto-area Bandidos, in which eight
other gang members or associates are charged, police said.

But with just a handful of members and low-ranking partners remaining
in Winnipeg, Canada's Bandidos appear to be a spent force, Ontario
Provincial Police Detective Inspector Don Bell told a media briefing
as the newest murder charges were announced.

"So the Hells Angels are left to pretty much dominate the landscape," he said.

In Texas, where the Bandidos have long been headquartered,
authorities said the same.

After protracted friction, Bandidos president Jeff Pike had already
revoked the Canadian affiliate's membership and barred the rump of
the group from wearing Bandido colours, a senior Texas Department of
Public Safety investigator, who monitors the gang, said yesterday.

"Jeff told them they are no longer sanctioned," the officer said.

The April slaughter near Shedden, west of London on Highway 401, and
the resultant arrests were already a major embarrassment, the officer
said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But "the last straw," he said, was the revelation that Canada's
Bandidos had let a former Manitoba police officer join their ranks.

The former policeman is Michael Sandham, 36, who along with two
Winnipeg Bandidos was charged last week with first-degree murder in
the Shedden killings.

In all, six members or close associates of the gang are accused of
perpetrating Ontario's worst gangland slaying, while two other people
are charged with being accessories after the fact.

"I think [the Bandidos parent organization] was very disappointed,"
the Texas official said. "They would turn back the hands of time if
they could. It's the end of the Bandidos in Canada."

And that was before the murder charges announced yesterday.

These stem from the beating death in December of Shawn Douse, who was
not a Bandido but rather a cocaine dealer who had dealings with the gang.

Of the four men charged with second-degree murder in the death of Mr.
Douse, whose burned body was found in Pickering, three are in custody
and an arrest warrant has been issued for a fourth.

Full-patch member Pierre Aragon, 24, of Oakville, was picked up
Tuesday in west-end Toronto.

Cameron Acorn, 25, of Keswick, also a full-fledged Bandido, was
already behind bars on an unrelated robbery charge. So, too, was
associate and Jackson's Point resident Randolph Brown, 35. The trio
appeared briefly in court in Oshawa yesterday and were remanded.

Prospect Robert (Bobby) Quinn, 26, formerly of Keswick and believed
to be in the Nelson area of British Columbia, is being sought.

As to why Mr. Douse was killed, "it was a retaliation type of
situation, a localized event arising out of an association between
the charged persons and Mr. Douse," said Detective Sergeant Rolf
Kluem, who heads the Durham Regional Police homicide squad. The
department teamed with York Regional Police and the OPP's Biker
Enforcement Unit to co-ordinate the laying of the charges.

"They were involved in drug trafficking and there was animosity
there. . . . There was a fundamental disagreement."

The Shedden killings, by contrast, arose from a Bandidos gang purge,
police believe. Biker sources have told The Globe and Mail they
occurred as a result of the slain men making overtures to defect to
the far more powerful Hells Angels, the Bandidos' long-time foes, who
number about 500 members or close associates, Canada-wide, spread
across 34 chapters.

Shot dead and stuffed into four vehicles in a farmer's field were
full-patch Bandidos George Jesso, 52, George Kriarakis, 28, and Luis
Manny Raposo, 41, of Toronto; Francesco (Bam Bam) Salerno, 43, of
Oakville; John (Boxer) Muscedere, 48, of Chatham, the chapter's
president; and Paul Sinopoli, 30, of Sutton. Also slain were Michael
Trotta, 31, of Milton, a Bandidos associate, and prospect member
Jamie Flanz, 37, of Keswick.

In two regards, however, there is a tangential connection between the
two sets of events.

Detectives believe Mr. Douse was killed in Mr. Flanz's house but that
Mr. Flanz was not present, and likely had no advance knowledge of
what would happen.

That scenario fits with an account by a friend of Mr. Flanz, who told
The Globe in April that the gregarious biker believed somebody was
trying to frame him for murder.

Two days after he was killed, Mr. Douse's body was discovered in a
forested area an hour's drive south of Keswick, displaying numerous
blunt-force injuries and badly scorched in an abortive effort to
destroy the remains. Dental records confirmed his identity.

Those gruesome circumstances "further expose the violent underbelly
of Ontario's outlaw motorcycle gang landscape," said Det. Insp. Bell,
who heads the multiforce BEU.

Second, Det. Sgt. Kluem confirmed yesterday that on the night before
the Shedden killings, undercover Durham officers pursuing the Douse
investigation tailed a group of Bandidos to the farmhouse of Bandido
Wayne Kellestine -- one of the six men now accused of murder in the
multiple deaths -- where a gang meeting was scheduled.

Det. Sgt. Kluem would not say whether the targets of the
surveillance, which ended shortly afterward, were among the eight men
found dead the next day.

"But as a result [of tracking the bikers] we were able to assist the
OPP," in the Shedden investigation, he said.