Showdown: How the Outlaws, Hells Angels and Cops Fought for Control of the Streets
Control of Ontario's underworld wasn't decided in a day, a year, or any single event. It was a series of skirmishes, bloodbaths and blunders.When the old-school Mafia in Hamilton fell apart following the death of Johnny "Pops" Papalia, a frenzy ensued for who would supply, sell and control Ontario's drug and vice traffic. Vestiges of the old Italian outfits maintained a loose hand in drug trafficking until a series of murders and screw-ups did what no other organization had been able to do - unseated the Mafia from the hub of Ontario's vice pipeline. The leader of the Hells Angels, Walter Stadnick, had had his eye on Canada's most lucrative drug market for years, but had been kept out largely due to the mafia syndicate that only reluctantly employed bikers of any stripe for their dirty work, and Papalia's refusal to work the Hells Angels.A war to fill the power vacuum in Hamilton, and Ontario, was to begin, and would hinge on the broadly supported Hells Angels under the leadership of Stadnick, a handful of smaller clubs too proud or too useless to join them, and Mario "The Wop" Parente's Outlaws, the top motorcycle club in Ontario since the 70s and the main barrier to the Hells Angels' takeover. Other challengers would emerge from the ever-shifting allegiances of the biker world, including the Bandidos from south of the border, whose presence in the province would end in a bloodbath now known as the Shedden Massacre.Against all of these competing interests stood the various law enforcement agencies responsible for keeping the general peace and shutting down as much of their operations as they could. By building on interviews with Parente, members of the police and a variety of sources and informants in the underworld, Jerry Langton weaves together the violent tapestry that connects them all, laying open the world of organized crime in Ontario as never before.