When Hells Angels hitman Dany Kane was found dead in August 2000, a reporter asked Sgt. Guy Ouellette, a Quebec biker expert with the Sûreté du Québec, for his reaction.
“Curious,” Ouellette said, and he certainly wasn’t exaggerating. The death of Kane, thirty-one, born in St. Luc, Quebec, a village about thirty kilometres south of Montreal, was nothing if not curious.
Kane reportedly died of carbon-monoxide poisoning in his Mercedes in his garage, but his family noted that his face had apparently been severely beaten. His private life was equally curious. He was a family man, but also had a gay lover. Professionally, he killed at least two people for the gang and supplied explosives that were used in at least another nine killings between 1994 and 1997, but he was also a long-time RCMP informant, with source number 3683.
He left a note for his RCMP handlers which read, “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?” Kane’s death wasn’t particularly big news at the time, but eight months later, it leaked out that he was a major informer behind Operation Springtime, a massive crackdown by police on 122 Hells Angels across Canada.
In the trials against seventeen Angels that followed in May 2002 in Montreal, the court heard that police had offered Kane $1.75 million to infiltrate the Quebec Hells Angels. He was a “source agent” who wore a wire, recorded biker meetings, photocopied documents, and gave videotaped testimony for the police. As part of his cover, the RCMP sponsored his gay sex magazine, although some members of the Mounties feared that he might be a Hells Angels plant, spying on police for his biker mentor, David “Wolf” Carroll of Halifax.
Kane began co-operating with the RCMP in 1994, around the time of an unsuccessful effort by the Angels to move into Ontario. The bikers wanted to expand into Toronto, Canada’s richest drug market, but they had no chapters in Ontario. Angels national president Wolodumyr “Walter” “Nurget” Stadnick set up a puppet (support) club called the Demon Keepers, whose sole mandate was to prepare the ground for the Angels’ expansion into Ontario.
Kane was made president of one of its chapters, although he was only in his early twenties and spoke very little English. It was during this expansion attempt that Kane was stopped in Belleville on April 1, 1994. He served almost six months in custody for having two loaded revolvers in his car.
Sometime either while in custody or shortly afterwards, he agreed to work undercover with the RCMP, apparently having soured on the biker lifestyle. Meanwhile, the Demon Keepers were disbanded, and and Kane joined the Rockers, also a puppet club for the Hells Angels.
By the time of the mega-trial of 2002, his evidence had led police to the Hells Angels’ main Montreal counting-house, which was processing as much as $1 billion yearly. As a result, forty-odd associates pleaded guilty in drugs cases.
Partly because of Kane’s work, police were able to compile a list of 135 people the bikers were trying to assassinate. In April 2002, in a Montreal courthouse, it took ten minutes for the court clerk to read the list aloud.
Much of this evidence was gathered when Kane wore a body pack – a hidden microphone taped to his torso that helped investigators penetrate the most secret of biker meetings – what they called “mass” – where all the killings and drug business were discussed.
Kane captured five of those masses on videotape, including one of a top member of the Nomads chapter named Normand Robitaille, whom Kane was supposed to be guarding.
On the tapes, Robitaille was recorded telling others that the price of a kilogram of cocaine was increasing to $50,000, with no room for debate. The price of a quarter-gram of coke on the street jumped from $20 to $25.
“The price of a kilo is now $50,000. I made a deal with the Italians. That’s the price now,” Robitaille said.
This represented a $10,000 increase in the price. Kane apparently killed himself before he could collect the full amount owed to him by police, but defence lawyers for the Angels suggested he didn’t really die at all, and that he had really been given a new identity before his closed-casket ceremony.
Author: Hydroponify
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