 Annihilators insignia | |
| Founded | 1988 |
|---|---|
| Founding location | Chatham, Ontario, Canada |
| Years active | 1988-1999 |
| Territory | Southwestern Ontario |
| Leader(s) | Wayne Kellestine |
| Activities | Drug trafficking, extortion, armed robbery, murder, assault, kidnapping |
| Allies | Outlaws MC |
| Rivals | Hells Angels |
The Annihilators Motorcycle Club was a Canadian outlaw biker club and organized crime group of the 1980s and 1990s.
The club began as the Queensmen Motorcycle Club based in Amherstburg. [1] The Queensman Motorcycle Club was established in the 1950s. [2] From 1977 to 2000, the most powerful biker club in Ontario were the Outlaws. In 1982, the Outlaw chapter in London, Ontario arranged to have the Amherstburg Queensmen move up to the London area to serve as a puppet club, which was renamed as the Holocaust Motorcycle Club and based in Chatham. [1] [3] Wayne Kellestine was appointed the president of the Holocaust club, whose name had been intentionally chosen with the aim of being offensive. [4] The logo of the Holocaust club was a white skull with a lightning bolt, which was clearly inspired by the SS logo of a totenkopf with two white lightning bolt runes that read "SS". [4] Kellestine had been seeking to join the Outlaws since 1977, and the decision to appoint him president of the Holocaust club was a sop to his ego as the Outlaws did not want him as a member of their club proper. [4]
The best known member of the Holocaust Club was Brian "Bo" Beaucage, who had been one of the leaders of the prison riot at the Kingston Penitentiary that took place between 14 and 18 April 1971. [5] Beaucage had a certain degree of fame in the Canadian underworld for his actions during the prison riot when he used a board with a nail sticking through it to execute two child molester prisoners. [5] In 1985, Beaucage quarreled with Kellestine, which led him to move to Kitchener, where he joined Satan's Choice, the enemies of the Outlaws. [6]
In 1988, the club was renamed as the Annihilators and relocated to St. Thomas, but Kellestine continued as club president. [7] The logo of the Annihilators was a mailed fist clenching the light-bolt runes of the SS. [3] The journalist Jerry Langton called the Annihilators "small-time crooks". [8] The journalist Peter Edwards called the Annihilators a "motley but tough" gang whose members joined with the hope of being promoted to the Outlaws. [7] The clubhouse of the Annihilators on 54 Mondamin Street in St. Thomas, was described as a decaying building with steel plates on the windows and security cameras all around. [7] Kellestine had a practice of tossing roofing nails into the parking lot to keep police cars away from the clubhouse, which he would then forget where he placed, thus puncturing the tires of any automobile that happened to park in the clubhouse's parking lot. [7] The Annihilators' clubhouse was known to locals as a "booze can" where contraband cigarettes together with stolen goods were sold by the Annihilators who spent their days and nights there drinking and playing pool. [7] The Toronto biker Frank Lenti called the clubhouse a "glorified chicken coop" that was dirty and smelly. [7] In an interview with the journalist Yves Lavigne, published in The London Free Press on 18 April 1998, the Annihilators were described by Lavinge as having "a low profile, making money on the drug trade." [9]
In February 1989, during the annual London Motorcycle Show, which was hosted at the Western Fairgrounds, the president of the Annihilators Motorcycle Club St. Thomas chapter, Wayne Kellestine became inebriated at the event. [10] Kellestine physically assaulted a police officer and then attempted to flee by hijacking a limousine, leading to a car chase that ended with him crashing the car into the Outlaws' clubhouse on Egerton Street. [10] Kellestine was charged with assaulting a police officer, theft, public drunkenness, property damage, resisting arrest and driving under the influence of alcohol, and was convicted on all counts. [11] The incident confirmed Kellestine's reputation as a "heat score" (underworld slang for a criminal who attracts police attention with his antics), which was why he was never invited to join the Outlaws, and why his club would cease to be a support club for them in the late 1990s. [11]
In January 1992, the Annihilators first attracted widespread attention when Kellestine led the police to the body of David Kenneth O'Neil, which was found buried in a shallow grave in a cornfield near Kellestine's farmhouse at 32196 Aberdeen Line outside of Iona Station. [7] O'Neil was wanted for killing Constable Scott Rossiter of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) on 19 September 1991. [12] The manhunt for O'Neil attracted international attention, being featured on the American television show Unsolved Mysteries . [7] During his time on the run, O'Neil constantly sought out the company of the Annihilators. [13] Michael Simmons, a police informer within the Outlaws, accused the Annihilators of O'Neil's murder, saying in an interview: "He wouldn't stay put. So they put him on ice". [7] After the murder, Kellestine together with three other Annihilators started to wear the SS runes patches on the front of their biker jackets, which within the outlaw biker subculture indicates one has committed a murder. [7]
In February 1991, Michael Simmons, the brother of Andrew "Teach" Simmons, the Outlaws' national president who lived in London, Ontario, became a police informer. [14] On 12 March 1992, the Ontario Provincial Police arrested 18 people, including two Outlaws with the rest being Annihilators. [14]
On June 2, 1999, the Annihilators Motorcycle Club, joined the larger Loners Motorcycle Club based in Woodbridge. [15] It was led by Gennaro "Jimmy" Raso. [15] In face of the challenge from the Hells Angels, Kellestine decided he needed allies and, with the Outlaws being unwilling to accept him, had decided to merge with the Loners instead. [16] Kellestine, the Annihilators president, became the new president of the Chatham chapter of the Loners at the time of the merger in 1999. [17] Following Kellestine into the Loners was another Annihilator, Giovanni Muscedere. [8] 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. [18] This merging of the Annihilators along with other clubs into the Loners was an attempt to increase the club's membership to deal with the incoming threat of the Hells Angels. [19] One prominent Loner, Irish immigrant Glenn "Wrongway" Atkinson, was heard to remark after meeting Kellestine for the first time: "Can you believe the type of people we're attracting?" [20]
The Rock Machine Motorcycle Club (RMMC) or Rock Machine is an international outlaw motorcycle club founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1986. It has eighteen Canadian chapters spread across seven provinces. It also has nine chapters in the United States and eleven chapters in Australia, with chapters also located in 24 other countries worldwide. It was formed in 1986, by Salvatore Cazzetta and his brother Giovanni Cazzetta. The Rock Machine competed with the Hells Angels for control of the street-level narcotics trade in Quebec. The Quebec Biker War saw the Rock Machine form an alliance with a number of other organizations to face the Hells Angels. The conflict occurred between 1994 and 2002 and resulted in over 160 deaths and over 300 injured. An additional 100+ have been imprisoned.
The Shedden massacre involved the gang-related killing of eight men, whose bodies were found in a field five kilometres north of Shedden, a small village in the Canadian province of Ontario, on April 8, 2006. Four vehicles, with the bodies inside, were first discovered by a farmer. The day after the bodies were discovered, five people, including one member of the Bandidos motorcycle gang, were arrested for the murders, and three more people were arrested in June 2006. The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) said the killings were an isolated event and there were no fears for the safety of local residents. The name Shedden massacre is a misnomer. The killings took place at a farm outside of Iona Station and Shedden was the hamlet closest to where the bodies were discovered in a farmer's field.
Wayne Earl Kellestine, better known as "Weiner" Kellestine, is a Canadian outlaw biker, gangster, and convicted murderer, currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder for his killing six out of the eight victims of the Shedden massacre of 2006.
The Rebels Motorcycle Club was an outlaw motorcycle club based in Western Canada that was founded in Red Deer, Alberta in 1968. It was one of the three dominant motorcycle clubs in the province of Alberta during the 1970s-1990s
Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club (SCMC) was a Canadian outlaw motorcycle club that was once the dominant outlaw club in Ontario, with twelve chapters based in the province, and another in Montreal, Quebec, at its peak strength in 1977. Satan's Choice grew to more than 400 members by 1970, making it the second largest outlaw motorcycle club in the world, behind only the Hells Angels.
Wolodumir "Walter" Stadnick, also known as "Nurget", is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who was the third national president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Canada. Stadnick is generally credited with turning the Hells Angels into the dominant outlaw biker club in Canada. The journalists Michel Auger and Peter Edwards wrote that much about Stadnick is mysterious, ranging from what is the meaning of his sobriquet "Nurget", to how a unilingual Anglo Canadian from Hamilton became the leader of the then largely French-Canadian Hells Angels. In 2004, the journalist Tu Thanh Ha wrote that Stadnick is "a secretive man little known to the public", but "he is one of Canada's most pivotal organized-crime figures."
Michael James Sandham, better known as "Little Beaker", is a Canadian outlaw biker, criminal and convicted murderer currently serving a life sentence for his role in the Shedden massacre of 2006. Sandham, a former theology student, soldier, policeman and outlaw biker was described by journalist Jane Sims as "a control freak driven by bizarre ambition" to take over the outlaw biker scene in Manitoba.
Francesco "Cisco" Lenti is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, best known as the co-founder of the Loners Motorcycle Club.
The Loners Motorcycle Club (LMC) is an international outlaw motorcycle club founded in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada in 1979. It has seventeen chapters in Canada, eleven chapters in Italy, eleven in the United States. They also possess several chapters in other countries across the world. The club was established by two prominent Italian-Canadian bikers, Frank Lenti and Gennaro Raso.
The Ontario Biker War in Canada saw the Hells Angels engage their long-term rivals the Outlaws Motorcycle Club for control of the province of Ontario. The war occurred between 1999 and 2002 and is also known as the London Biker conflict as a large majority of the events occurred in the city of London, Ontario. The Quebec Biker War, the largest motorcycle conflict in history was occurring during the same period in the province of Quebec.
The city of London, Ontario, Canada was established in 1826, and has since grown into Canada's 11th largest municipality. The city has had a long history of organized crime, with several high-profile incidents occurring there over the years. In 1901, London's first MP, John Carling, attributed the growth of London to three factors: the establishment of regional courts and administration in 1826, the arrival of the military garrison in 1838, and the arrival of the railway in 1853. From its position along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, the city has attracted investment in commerce, culture and manufacturing, and attracted criminal enterprises to exploit that growth.
Giovanni "John" Muscedere, also known as "Boxer", was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who served as the national president of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Canada from 2002 until his murder in 2006.
Frédéric Faucher is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who served as national president of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club during the Quebec Biker War (1994-2002). He played a significant role in the conflict and was responsible for facilitating the merger between the Rock Machine and the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, which took place on December 1, 2001.
Jamie Flanz, better known as "Goldberg", was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who was one of the victims of the Shedden massacre.
Luis Manny Raposo, better known as "Chopper" was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, one of the victims of the Shedden massacre of 2006.
Marcello Aravena is a Canadian mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, outlaw biker and gangster serving a life sentence in prison following his conviction on seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter for his role in the Shedden massacre of 2006.
George Kriarakis was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who served as the last national secretary of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Canada and was one of the victims of the Shedden massacre of 2006.
Francesco Salerno, better known as "Frank the Bammer" was a Canadian biker. He was one of the victims of the Shedden massacre.
George Jessome, better known as "Pony", was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, known as one of the victims of the Shedden massacre of 2006.
M.H. is a Canadian former outlaw biker, gangster and police informer who played a key role in convicting the accused in the Shedden massacre trial of 2009. Due to a court order, M.H.'s name cannot be revealed and he is only known by his abbreviation.