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Dany "Dany Boy" Kane was a Canadian criminal who was a compliant police informant at the same time.^[1] Kane worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as an informant inside the Hells Angels for many years, and provided information to the police on the Hells Angels.^[2] Kane was also secretly a bisexual,^[3] which was uncommon for an outlaw motorcycle club. Kane was found dead of an apparent suicide in the garage of his suburban Montreal home in the summer of 2000.^[1]

Early life

Born in L’Acadie, Quebec, Canada, as a child Kane was brought up by caring relatives, attended private school and Boy Scouts and went on many expensive vacations.^[1] He grew up discontented with his life and wanted recognition in a bike gang in Quebec.^[1] Kane was a restless student who couldn’t sit still in class.^[4] When he was 16 he left school and took whatever work he could get.^[4] The neighbour of his parents introduced him to motorcycles and not long after he fell into the biker fraternity life of strip clubs run by the bikers in the small towns around Montreal.^[4] Ever since the 1960s, there has been an outlaw biker subculture in Quebec, and Kane embraced it as a way of rejecting the values of his middle-class family.^[4]

Personal life

Kane had a wife and three children and was secretly a bisexual.^[3] His secret homosexual lover was Aimé Simard.^[3]

Criminal life

Kane’s first crime was a break-and-enter when he was seventeen.^[4] By the age of eighteen, Kane joined a small biker gang named the Condors.^[4] While working for the Condors he earned around $700 a week making sure dealers had the product they needed.^[4] The Condors merged with a Hells Angels puppet group known as the Evil Ones, but Kane resented having to prove himself again to a new set of bikers and decided to branch out and sell drugs, guns, and cigarettes on his own.^[5] From 1990 to 1992 he was making $3000 a week from drug trafficking and sold between thirty and fifty guns and accessories.^[6]

In September 1992 Kane and two other men nearly beat two men to death. During the beating he accidentally shot one of the men in the head.^[6] Kane was convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnapping, assault, illegal use of a firearm and possession of a gun with the serial number filed off.^[6] He was given a 25-month sentence of which he only served ten months in prison and another five in a transition home.^[6] In January 1994, he was released to resume his criminal career.^[6] On April 1, 1994, Kane was found by police to have two loaded revolvers in his car and spent another four months in jail.^[3]

Gang membership

Puppet Clubs

Kane was a member of the outlaw motorcycle groups known as the Condors,^[3] the Rockers, and the Demon Keepers, all of which were the puppet clubs of the Hells Angels. He had ties to Maurice Boucher, the biggest name in the Canadian Hells Angels.^[2] When his business began to suffer because he did not belong to a group, Kane approached two members of the Hells Angels, Walter Stadnick and David "Wolf" Carroll, with hope that they could get him into the Hells Angels.^[7] After a year passed, with Kane doing what he thought was slave labour without being invited to the gang, he became annoyed with Stadnick and Carroll for not getting him into the gang.^[8] The Hells Angels is a hierarchical organization that requires recruits start in a puppet club. If they do well, they graduate to the title of hang around, where they can’t wear the patch but are considered an associate. Next, they become a prospect, where they get a half patch that shows the chapter’s title. If they continue to perform well, they become a full patch member and get the Winged Death Head emblem.^[8] Kane had to work as a bodyguard and a chauffeur to Carroll and Stadnick, as a "mule" delivering drugs, prostitutes and guns, and paying for all their meals and drinks at restaurants and bars, in hope that he would be promoted up the ranks as a reward.^[8]

Demon Keepers

Kane was upset because he had worked with the gang for several years and was not even considered a hang around.^[3] Kane’s luck then changed. Kane was "recruited by David (Wolf) Carroll and Walter (Nurgent) Stadnick to preside over three chapters of an Ontario puppet club called the Demon Keepers.^[2] The plan did not work out because Carroll was a serious alcoholic and never had money to support the gang which meant they could not intimidate drug dealers in cities such as Ottawa, Cornwall^[9] and Toronto.^[2] Kane called the Demon Keepers a gang of "no-talent imbeciles" while Carroll was often too drunk to lend him support and Stadnick was attempting to persuade the Satan's Choice and Para-Dice Riders gangs to "patch over" to become Hells Angels.^[10] Kane came to suspect that the Demon Keepers were just a ploy by Stadnick to apply pressure on Satan's Choice and the Para-Dice Riders to "patch over" to the Hells Angels, making him feel rather used.^[10]

Arrest

On 1 April 1994, Kane was arrested in Belleville, Ontario for having two handguns in his car, being sentenced to four months in prison.^[11] Once Kane was arrested Stadnick shut down the Demon Keepers.^[3] After Kane was released from jail for his April 1994 weapons charges, he began to hate the Hells Angels.^[12] He believed they had used them and told one of his police handlers that he wanted revenge.^[13] Kane had become frustrated that he was still a member of the Rockers, the Hells Angels' puppet club in Montreal, and had not been promoted to become an Angel despite all of his work for the club.^[14]

Police Contact

On 17 October 1994, Kane contacted Staff-Sergeant Jean-Pierre Lévesque of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to tell them he wanted to work as an informer.^[15] Kane's main contacts with the RCMP were Corporal Pierre Verdon and Sergeant Gaetan St. Onge.^[15] Kane had his first meeting with Verdon on 4 November 1994.^[16] By December 1994 he told Corporal Verdon about all of the above happenings as well as the Hells Angels business connections with top members of the Italian mafia as well as their plans form an elite group of bikers called the Nomads.^[3] Kane told Verdon that Boucher said that the new Nomad chapter was going to be "plus rock n' roll", an untranslatable joual (Quebec French) phrase literally meaning "more than rock n' roll", which roughly means something that is so "cool" that it is dangerous.^[17] Some of such business connections that Kane told the RCMP about was how the Hells Angels sent him twice to meet Moreno Gallo and Tony Mucci, members of the Italian mafia, to discuss drug trafficking.^[18] Kane’s reports gave unprecedented insight to the RCMP about how the inner echelon of the Hells Angels worked.^[2]

Informant years

Kane’s first stint as an informant lasted from 1994 to 1997 where he collected a total of $250,000.^[2]

Murder of Normand Baker

On 4 January 1995, Normand Baker, a member of the Rock Machine, was murdered in Acapulco, Mexico by a Hells Angel, François Hinse, who shot him in a bar.^[14] Kane informed the RCMP that Boucher had bribed the Acapulco police to have Hinse freed and on 15 January 1995 Hinse was freed.^[19] Verdon wrote: "Mexico has informed us of the liberation of Hinse despite all the evidence. It's a clear case of corruption...We understand that the HA [Hells Angels] invested a million Mexican pesos to buy the Mexican authorities. Events have proved C-2994 [Kane] right and once again demonstrated the reliability and importance of our source".^[19] In March 1995, Kane's cover was almost blown when Boucher was arrested for carrying a handgun, and an officer with the Sûreté de Québec told him that the RCMP had a "coded informer" whose number was C-2994 working within the ranks of the Angels.^[20]

Feud with Steinert

At the same time, Kane was caught between a power struggle between Carroll and another Hells Angel, an American living in Montreal named Scott Steinert.^[21] Kane described Steinert as the most aggressive of the Angels and as Boucher's right-hand man as he made more money than any of the other Angels.^[21] When Carroll asked Kane to drive him to Halifax in March 1995, Steinert refused to allow it and the two men almost came to blows over the issue.^[21] Shortly afterwards Kane was almost exposed as an informer when he mentioned that he had been present when one of Steinert's men, Richard Lock, together with a Mafiosi had beaten up the owner of the Crescent Bar in Montreal for refusing to pay protection money plus the 10% take on daily sales the Hells Angels and the Mafia expected from all bar and restaurant owners in Montreal.^[21] A Montreal police detective later accused Lock of beating up the owner of the Crescent Bar, which led Lock to believe it was Kane who was the informer.^[22]

In April 1995, Sergeant St. Onge was approached by a Montreal police detective who wanted to know who informer C2994 was, and was so persistent in demanding the identity of C2994 that St. Onge suspected he had been bribed by the Hells Angels, a suspicion later confirmed when the detective was arrested for taking bribes.^[23] As an informer, Kane-who was obsessed with sex-was noted for his odd behavior like calling St. Onge at about 2 am to say he just had sex with some stripper and then hand the phone over to have the stripper tell St. Onge about his sexual prowess.^[24]

Move to Montreal

By April 1995 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was paying Kane $2,000 a week.^[3] Kane committed at least 11 murders from 1994 to 1997 during his time as the most highly placed RCMP informer in the Hells Angels.^[25] On 3 March 1996, Kane killed Roland Labrasseur, a drug addict who had fallen behind in his debts to the Hells Angels by driving him out to the countryside south of Montreal, where he shot him in the head by a remote rural road.^[25] Kane was active as a bomb-maker and he blew up the Green Stop restaurant in Châteauguay after the owner refused to pay protection money to the Hells Angels.^[25] On 9 November 1995 Kane told St. Onge that he was going to Thunder Bay to sell cocaine for Steinert to the local drug dealers as the price for cocaine in northern Ontario was $50, 000/per kilo while in Montreal the price was $32, 000/per kilo.^[26] Kane stated that Steinert was very keen to move into northern Ontario, which was so lucrative for selling cocaine.^[26] Kane reported that Carroll together with a member of the Rizzuto family owned a bar in the town of St. Sauveur, which by 1997 had been so successful that Carroll had started building condos in St. Sauveur as it was "a great chance to launder a bit of money".^[27]

In October 1996, Kane was offered $10, 000 by Carroll and Stadnick to kill the Hells Angel, Donald "Bam Bam" Magnussen, the bodyguard to Steinert.^[28] Kane knew that Steinert would have him killed if he killed Magnussen, and to get out of the dilemma, asked his handlers to warn Magnussen his life was in danger.^[28] Kane was saved when Boucher declared that since Magnussen was a full patch Hells Angel, only another full patch Angel could kill him, and not a Rocker like Kane.^[29]

Magazine and Simard partnership

In July 1996, the RCMP gave Kane some $30, 325 to set up a magazine Rencontres Selectes, a magazine catering to those looking for casual sex whose revenue came from ads for strippers, phone sex and prostitution.^[23] Kane launched a website to go along with his magazine, which catered to homosexuals looking for casual sex.^[30] In November 1996, Kane used his own website to meet Aimé Simard whom he recruited into the Rockers.^[24] On their first date, the two men went to Simard's mother's house, where they had sex in the whirlpool.^[24] Both men lied to each other with Simard saying he had gone to prison for trying to kill a police officer (Simard had served a prison sentence for uttering death threats) while Kane claimed to be Hells Angel (Kane was only a Rocker).^[24]

Unlike the control freak Kane, Simard was reckless and out of control.^[24] As Simard was junior to him in the Rockers, he had to serve as Kane's virtual slave, chauffeuring him around Montreal, through Simard was a poor driver who twice smashed up Kane's cars.^[29] In February 1997, Kane and Simard were dispatched by Carroll to kill a drug dealer in Halifax named Robert MacFarlane.^[31] Carroll had been the president of the Angels' Halifax chapter from 1984 to 1990, and after moving to Montreal, he remained closely involved in the operations of the Halifax chapter, regularly going back to his hometown to inspect operations^[32]

Along the way to Halifax, Kane and Simard were pulled over in Oromocto, New Brunswick by the RCMP under the suspicion of smuggling drugs as the two men were dressed in such a flamboyant way that the two officers, Constables Gilles Blinn and Dale Hutley, thought they must be drug dealers.^[33] Kane and Simard co-operated with the two officers, but refused to allow them to open the trunk of their car, and lacking both probable cause and a warrant, the two officers did not search the car's trunk with the guns in it.^[33] The search caused a "silent hit" on the RCMP's computers as anytime a police officer contacts an informer it causes an alarm on the central computer system of the RCMP.^[34] However, the RCMP did not become overtly concerned about what Kane was doing in New Brunswick despite the fact that Kane had not mentioned to his handlers that he was going to Halifax.^[34] On 27 February 1997, Kane and Simard killed MacFarlane in an industrial park in Halifax.^[35] On 28 March 1997, Simard killed a member of the Rock Machine, Jean-Marc Caissy, in Montreal and was arrested for the crime on 11 April 1997.^[36] Simard agreed to become a délateur (informer) after his arrest, and in his confession mentioned that he and Kane had killed MacFarlane.^[37]

Trial

With pressure in Montreal from the newly formed federal-provincial Wolverine bike squad and the recent arrest of his partner, Simard, on an unrelated murder charge, Kane would be brought into custody by the Nova Scotia RCMP for 18 months but would then be released due to the RCMP’s contradictory evidence.^[1]

Police threats

Two RCMP officers from Halifax, Sergeant G.A. Barnett and Constable Tom Townsend arrived in Montreal to ask that Kane be extradited to Halifax to face charges of first degree murder for the killing of MacFarane, and first learned that Kane was the RCMP's main informer within the Hells Angels.^[38] The RCMP went out of its way to protect Kane as an internal memo noted "the disclosure...has the potential to cause significant negative media attention".^[39] In order to keep him from being questioned by the Wolverine squad, the RCMP arrested Kane on 30 April 1997 and sent him to Halifax.^[40] In Halifax, Constable Townsend tried to force him to confess to MacFarlane's murder by threatening to reveal he had been an informer, and to forestall that threat, Kane informed Carroll that Townsend was accusing him of being an informer, portraying it as an attempt by the Crown to force him to confess by falsely tagging him as an informer.^[41] St. Onge stated: "He was very smart. He knew Carroll had been accused of murder in Halifax and that the police had tried a similar ploy with him. And so he also knew that Carroll would understand and pass the word to the others that Kane was not talking".^[41]

French Trial

The French-Canadian Kane insisted on his constitutional right to have his trial in French, which delayed the proceedings as the Crown had to find a French-speaking judge, jury and Crown Attorney for his trial in Halifax.^[42] Kane's trial which began on 13 October 1998 was a farce as the judge Félix Cacchione ruled the pull-over in Oromocto was not warranted and ruled the evidence from it as inadmissible such as the computer search done by Blinn, through he did ruled that Blinn could testify that he identified Kane in a police line-up as the man he had pulled over in Oromocto.^[43] Simard was the main witness for the Crown, but to confirm his story required that Blinn and Hutley confirm that Kane was the man they had pulled over with Simard.^[44] During the trial, various police officers gave conflicting testimony about whatever Blinn and Hutley had picked Kane out of a police line-up on 6 May 1997 or not.^[45]

During his time in custody for a murder that he would be acquitted for, the RCMP would drop Kane as an informant.^[2] On 18 December 1998, Judge Cachione who become notably annoyed with the confusing and contradictory statements from various policemen about whether Blinn and Hutley had picked Kane out of a line-up or not, threw the entire case out, saying the Crown's conduct had been so "egregious" that it would violate Kane's rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to have the trial continue.^[46] Some of the detectives with the Montreal police believed that the RCMP deliberately sabotaged the trial to protect Kane.^[46]

Agent source

On August 23, 1999, a Montreal Urban Community Police Detective named Benoit Roberge approached Kane.^[2] In a few months time after that date, Kane would be under contract with the Surete du Quebec as an agent source, and not just an informant.^[2] This meant he had to detail everything he did with the Hells Angels, communicate with Roberge a few times a week, and testify about the things he did with the Hells Angels.^[2] In a 30-page contract Kane made with the police, he would have made upwards of $2 million and the total cost of his operation, including witness relocation and overtime and operating expenses for police handlers would have been over $8.6 million.^[1] Kane "kept them informed about what the top bikers in his circle were up to: where they were travelling; whom they were talking to; who had murdered whom and who was next; the Hells’ war plans against their Quebec rivals, the Rock Machine; their expansion plans into Ontario and Manitoba; and weapons and explosives purchases."^[3] Kane reported that the la messe ("the mass") as mandatory meetings for the Rockers were known were always presided over by a Nomad and every Rocker had to provide 10% of his earnings from crime to the Hells Angels.^[47] Kane stated that la messe were held at motels, and the members only learned of them the day before when a Rocker would hand out business cards with the name of the motel and the room that they were to meet.^[47]

Mersereau Murders

In the fall of 1999, Kane quite again become involved with murder plots initiated by Carroll.

Randy

A former Hells Angel in Halifax named Randy Mersereau had broken away to form his own gang, and was reported to have put out contracts on the lives of Carroll, Boucher and Mike McCrea, the president of the Angels' Halifax chapter as a prelude to joining the Bandidos.^[48] On 22 September 1999, Kane mentioned to Roberge he was going to Halifax to kill Mersereau for Carroll, saying "He told me to get a gun. We're going there [Halifax], I don't known when we're coming back, but bring a gun".^[49] On 23 September 1999, the Angels bombed the car ownership owned by Mersereau in Truro, injuring 7 people including Mersereau.^[49] Kane's assassin assignment presented a challenge for his handlers since if he was allowed to kill Mersereau, that would make them accessories to murder, or if he was not, then the Angels might suspect he was working for the police.^[50] To solve the problem, it was agreed that Kane would drive Carroll to Halifax, but on 24 September, as prearranged the Sûreté du Québec pulled over Kane outside of Rivière-du-Loup for speeding.^[50] The patrolmen found in Kane's car a .38 handgun belonging to Kane and a machine gun belonging to Carroll.^[50] Both men were charged with violating gun control laws.^[50] However, Randy Mersereau was last seen alive on 31 October 1999 and his car was found abandoned on the highway between Halifax and Truro.^[50] On 3 November 1999, Kane told Roberge that Carroll had sent a new team of assassins from Montreal to Halifax, who seized Mersereau from his car on the evening of Halloween, killed him with a 9 mm machine gun and buried him in a forest in the interior of Nova Scotia.^[50]

Kirk

After his murder, the leadership of the Mersereau gang passed on to his younger brother, Kirk Mersereau, who vowed to avenge his brother.^[51] On 31 March 2000, Kane told Roberge that Carroll was planning to kill Kirk Mersereau in the near-future.^[51] On 25 June 2000, Kane was ordered to go to Halifax at once, and the next day he met Carroll in a McDonad's in Truro.^[51] On 7:14 pm on 26 June, Kane phoned Roberge to say: "He Carroll wants to kill Randy's brother".^[52] Later that evening, Kane went to the Angels' Halifax clubhouse to meet Carroll and McCrea who agreed that Jeff Lynds, a follower in the Mersereau gang would kill his leader in exchange for being made a prospect with the Hells Angels and Kane would help him.^[52] Kane's handlers were desperately thinking of way to stop the murder plot without compromising Kane's cover, but on 30 June 2000, Mersereau was injured in a car accident, which led to the plot being cancelled. ^[53] On 10 September 2000, Kirk Mersereau and his wife Nancy were murdered execution-style in their farmhouse outside of Halifax.^[53] The Nova Scotia RCMP had have expressed much anger that neither the Sûreté du Québec or the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal ever shared Kane's information about the plots against the Mersereau brothers with them as Kane's information was only made public in 2003 during a trial in Montreal.^[53]

Death

In the summer of 2000, Kane was described as being highly depressed as he noted he was still working as a chauffeur for the Hells Angels, spending his days driving around the Nomad Normand Robitaille around Montreal while other Angels had no trouble assigning him their debts with one Hells Angel Denis Houle telling Kane he now had to pay off the $80, 000 drug debt that he had run up with the Sherbrooke chapter of the Angels.^[54] At the same time, Kane's patron Carroll had run up a $400, 000 drug debt which was forgiven, which emphasized Kane's lack of importance.^[55]

Kane was invited to a fellow bikers wedding in 2000, and to help protect his cover police gave him $1,000 to bring as a wedding gift.^[2]

A few short days after the wedding Kane’s body was found in his home with a confusing suicide note that mentioned his sexuality and conflict involved with being a biker and an informant.^[2] Kane's suicide note stated: "Who am I? Am I a biker? Am I a policeman? Am I good or evil? Am I heterosexual or gay? Am I loved or feared? Am I exploited or the exploiter?".^[56] Kane was found in the garage of his Montreal suburb home when he was 31 years of age in the summer of 2000.^[1]

Notes

References

• Sher, Julian & Marsden, William The Road to Hell How the Biker Gangs Are Conquering Canada, Toronto: Alfred Knopf, 2003.