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From the moment the star witness at the Bandido trial joined the fledgling Manitoba chapter of the motorcycle club, there was no question about who was in charge.
And Michael Sandham told the new members that “any day” their probationary chapter would have its full charter, the witness — a police informant — testified today.
Sandham was president, secretary treasurer, rule maker and spokesperson for the Winnipeg-based chapter — a control freak driven by bizarre ambition. But approval never came from the sponsoring Toronto chapter — the men who would later be found shot to death on April 8, 2006 on a rural Elgin County road near Shedden.
Those seeds of friction inside the motorcycle club a year before the shootings were mapped out yesterday by M.H., the star witness, whose identity is protected by court order and whose testimony has been the most highly anticipated of the long trial.
M.H., 40, was one of a handful of members who joined the Bandidos in
Winnipeg and was at Wayne Kellestine’s Dutton-Dunwich farm the night the
eight men died.
In Winnipeg, he was friends with Dwight Mushey, 41, and knew Marcelo Aravena, 33, and Brett Gardiner, 25, through the Bandido connections. Those men, along with Sandham, 39, Kellestine, 60, and Frank Mather, 35, of Dutton-Dunwich, have pleaded not guilty to eight counts of first-degree
murder in the deaths of Bandidos Canada national president John Muscedere, 48, George Jessome, 52,
George Kriarakis, 28, Luis Raposo, 41, Frank Salerno, 43, Paul Sinopoli, 30, Jamie Flanz, 37, and Michael Trotta, 31, all of the Toronto area.
M.H. had met all of them, he said, after he decided with Mushey to join the Manitoba Bandidos. Within months, they were officers of the group — M.H. was sergeant–at–arms, while Mushey was secretary-treasurer.
Yesterday, M.H. looked more like an office executive than a motorcycle club executive.
He’s tall and broad-shouldered with neatly trimmed hair, glasses and wore a pressed blue suit. He smiled slightly when he talked about his wife and kids. He was forthright when he talked about his criminal past.
Assistant Crown attorney Tim Zuber asked him to identify each man in the long prisoner’s box. As M.H. said their names, Aravena, crossed his arms and scowled. Dwight Mushey stared at him.
M.H. said he never finished high school. He said he worked in various construction jobs and eventually found himself selling cocaine at a Winnipeg bar. He was a member of a Hells Angels puppet club and was busted twice for selling cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
By the time he finished a house arrest sentence on his second charge, the puppet club was no more and a Bandidos member contacted him to join their new club. He already knew Mushey, who co-owned a nightclub called Fat Daddy’s, through a job.
M.H. said he was contacted by Manitoba vice-president Jamie Korne and then met Sandham at a Winnipeg hotel. Sandham told M.H. and Mushey he was the president and passed on to them several pages of guidelines that promoted “the Bandido Way.”
He told them he had been an Outlaw in Woodstock, Ont. and ran the puppet club called the Black Pistons. He said he came to Winnipeg after a police crackdown on the Outlaws. He decided to drop his patch for Bandido colours.
The rules included regular “church” meetings, no needle use or smoking chemicals (“If it don’t grow, don’t smoke it) and Sandham had final say in everything.
“This club’s about sacrifice, get used to it,” one rule read.
One rule forbade any member to talk to the national chapter about internal problems — “they have enough on their plate anyway.”
M.H. explained Sandham made the rule because Korne was “going behind (Sandham’s back) and speaking to the sponsoring Toronto chapter. Sandham eventually eliminated the vice president job and pushed Korne out of the executive.
M.H. and Mushey didn’t spend nearly the required six months as prospects before they were executive members. Other Winnipeg chapter members lived in Saskatchewan and one in Calgary. Gardiner was a prospect member who lived with a Saskatchewan Bandido nicknamed J.B. (Just Bob). He moved in with Mushey in the summer of 2005 and wanted to be “fast-tracked” into the club. By the end of 2005, Aravena, who was the doorman at Mushey’s nightclub, became a prospect.
M.H. said he and Mushey helped form a Bandido puppet club called Los Montoneros from former members of other motorcycle-related clubs and Sandham ran the security checks.
But even after “jumping through hoops for the Toronto chapter,” the club still didn’t a charter, even after several trips to Toronto by Sandham, Mushey and M.H. to prove themselves.
One-on-one, M.H. said Toronto members liked them, but at meetings the discussion was often heated and the Toronto chapter wouldn’t approve them.
And they didn’t have patches.
“We actually made our own,” M.H. said on the advice from Kellestine who was in favour of expanding the Bandidos across the country and told Winnipeg the national chapter was not in contact with the international bosses in the United States.
“To him, it made no sense being a worldwide 1% club, we should be expanding,” M.H., said.
Kellestine, he said, disapproved of drug use inside the Toronto club and that some members were kicked out for no reason.
The patches were made by “a guy who owned a shop” that Mushey knew. Authentic patches should have been ordered by Toronto and sent from the
United States.
The trial continues today.
Jane Sims is a Free Pres justice reporter.