On the phone at the London jail, accused Brett Gardiner stuck by his story.

"We were drunk for two days watching pay per view . . . The only thing that comes to my head is this is just a big frame, " he said to friend Heather McDowell on May 13, 2006, more than a month after his arrest.

"None of us are involved in any of that . . ."

Gardiner was maintaining his story on June 2, 2006.

"Like, say (if) Bill Clinton was in that house, he would've gotten arrested himself, you know," he told her. "Anybody in that house would've got arrested."

Yesterday, the jury at the Bandidos murder trial listened in on private conversations of some of the accused during the days after eight Toronto bikers were found shot to death on April 8, 2006, near Shedden.

The Crown's case has focused on the internal conflicts within the biker club. The international executive in the United States had ordered the patches -- or memberships -- be pulled from Bandidos Canada, the same people who belonged to the Toronto chapter.

There was also friction over dues and patches with the probationary Winnipeg chapter the Toronto group sponsored.

Seven of the eight shootings are alleged to have happened execution-style at Wayne Kellestine's farm before the vehicles containing the men's bodies were driven 14 kilometres away.

Gardiner was charged with five others picked up at the farm in the days following the deaths. He told Heather McDowell he came to Ontario to work for Kellestine "'cause Wayne does shingling."

The intercepts the jury heard yesterday all involved members of the Winnipeg chapter, all of whom except Gardiner were out of custody and living in the Manitoba capital for two months after the shootings.

And they were proudly carrying on Bandidos business.

Marcelo Aravena a former mixed martial arts fighter, excitedly told his friend Lorica Allard a month after the deaths that "I got my vest."

Three days later, he talked about it again with Allard, asking how he looked in his biker colours.

"You got to admit though, eh, at least it's . . . worldwide, not . . . in the city only," he boasted.

Besides, he told her, he wouldn't be able to extricate himself from the club.

"Trust me it's too late," Aravena laughed. "The only way out for me is if I'm floating . . . in the river."

So excited was Aravena in the intercept, he asked accused Dwight Mushey, his sponsor, if he could be buried in his vest.

"I want the full thing, man," he said.

Some of the intercepts followed the Winnipeggers setting up two "church" meetings with a new member, Jeff (Bones) Smith, in May and recruiting new members.

But there seemed to be little communication between accused Michael Sandham, the president of the chapter, and the others until mid-May.

"Long time no hear," he said with a laugh on May 15, 2006, to another biker, who can only be identified as M.H. who has testified as a police informant at the trial.

In the phone intercepts from the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London, Gardiner told his girlfriend, Jessica McDowell, on June 16, 2006, the others had been arrested.

And he knew someone had given a statement to the police. But he didn't know Sandham had been a police officer and fiercely defended him.

Gardiner told her he'd decided he was "finished" with the biker club once he was released.

He'd told Mushey, even though he was promised full membership.

The trial continues today.

jane.sims@sunmedia.ca