Rock Machine
 |
This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (October 2011) |
 |
|
| Founded | 1986 |
|---|---|
| In | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Years active | 1980s–to present |
| Territory | Throughout Ontario, Quebec & Manitoba Canada,United States,Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Indonesia |
| Ethnicity | Mostly French Canadian & Irish Canadian[citation needed] |
| Membership | 200 members approx. worldwide[citation needed] |
| Allies | Bandidos |
| Rivals | Hells Angels (1986-2002) |
Rock Machine, or The Rock Machine M.C., is an outlaw motorcycle gang with six Canadian chapters, six United States chapters and eight chapters in Australia.[1] Formed in 1986 by Salvatore Cazzetta, a former friend of Hells Angels Quebec chapter president Maurice Boucher, the Rock Machine competed with the Hells Angels for the street-level drug trade in Montreal. The Quebec Biker war would see them and a number of other gangs form an alliance,[2] to fight a seven year conflict, which left over 160 people dead and countless injured, from 1994 to 2002.[3]
Heavily outnumbered, the Rock Machine became a probationary chapter of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in January 2000.[3] In 2007, the Rock Machine broke away from the Bandidos to become independent again.[4] The "new" Rock Machine claims to be a club of motorcycle enthusiasts frowning upon criminal behaviour.[5]
Contents |
[edit] Early history
Around 1982, Salvatore Cazzetta was a member of a white-supremacist motorcycle gang named the SS, who were based in Pointe-aux-Trembles, on the eastern tip of the Island of Montreal. A fellow member of the SS was Maurice Boucher, and the two became friends. As leaders of the gang, they became candidates to join the Hells Angels when that gang decided to expand its international operations into Canada.[6]
In March 1985, a Lennoxville, Quebec chapter of the Hells suspected the Laval chapter of wasting drug profits by using too much of the product themselves. The Laval chapter was invited to a Lennoxville chapter party. When the five Laval members arrived, they were ambushed and murdered. Two months later, at the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, divers located the decomposing bodies of the victims wrapped in sleeping bags and tied to weightlifting plates.[6]
What became known as the Lennoxville massacre was considered extreme even for the criminal underworld and gave the Quebec's Hells Angels a notorious reputation. Cazzetta found the event an unforgivable breach of the outlaw code and, rather than join the Hells, formed his own, smaller gang, the Rock Machine, in 1986 with his brother Giovanni.[6]
Fred Faucher, future leader of Rock Machine, would later say, "Sal once told me, 'Those guys, they operate their club in such a way that I didn't want to join them'".[6] Unlike the Hells, the members of the Rock Machine chose not to wear leather vests that could easily identify members, but rather wore rings with the insignia of an eagle.[7] The Rock Machines official club motto is: A La Vie A La Mort (As We Live As We Die).[4]
Boucher did not share Cazzetta's concerns and after finishing a 40-month sentence for armed sexual assault later that year he joined the Hells and began to rise through the ranks. For years, the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine co-existed peacefully. Police officials believe this was due to Boucher's respect for Cazzetta, who had connections to the Quebec Mafia, the only organized crime group that the bikers were unwilling to attack.[6]
[edit] Quebec Biker war
In 1994, Cazzetta was arrested at a pitbull farm for attempting to import eleven tons of cocaine. The recently-promoted Hells Montreal president Boucher began to increase pressure on the Rock Machine shortly after the arrest initiating the Quebec Biker war.[6] The much smaller gang Rock Machine formed an affiliation, "the Alliance", with Montreal crime families such as the Pelletier clan and other independent dealers who wished to resist the Hells' attempts to establish a monopoly on street-level drug trade in the city.[3][8] A violent turf war ensued with the Hells Angels.[9]
Boucher organized "puppet clubs" to persuade Rock Machine controlled bars and their resident drug dealers to surrender their illegal drug business. Rock Machine resistance led to bloodshed. On July 14, 1994, two members of the Hells Angels' top puppet club entered a downtown motorcycle shop and shot down a Rock Machine associate. "That was the beginning of the war," Ouellette said.[6]
That August, a Jeep wired with a remote-controlled bomb exploded killing a Rock Machine associate and an 11-year-old boy, Daniel Desrochers, who was playing in a nearby schoolyard. A month later, the first full Hells Angels member was shot to death entering his car at a shopping mall. Nine bombs went off around the province during his funeral."[6]
It was this turf war that prompted the Rock Machine to align itself with the Bandidos motorcycle club from Texas.[10][11]Ten individuals allegedly flaunting Rock Machine colours were spotted in a downtown Montreal strip club on Thursday July 21st 2011. The choice to show off in Montreal’s Chez Paree strip club is symbolic.One of the Rock Machine’s leaders was savagely beaten 10 years ago at the club by people tied to the Hells.[12]
[edit] Break from Bandidos
After the 2006 Bandido massacre (the Shedden massacre), which would claim the lives of eight prominent Bandidos members at a farm house in Shedden, Ontario, the Bandidos Canada would finally close its doors officially in October 2007 after a brief but pointless struggle by remaining members to stay open and remain Bandidos. Infighting, lack of support by the United States and European Bandidos, and the Canadian members' suspicions about their US counterparts' involvement in the murders in Shedden caused its closure, thus ending any hope of Bandido dominance in Canada.
The Rock Machine would again reopen early in April 2008, when several angry and disgruntled members of the now defunct Bandidos Canada "No Surrender Crew" would come together again to re-organize the club with a brand new look on old design calling themselves the Rock Machine Canada Nomads. What would start as an intended insult by resurrecting the Rock Machine name towards the United States Bandidos national chapter and in particular the Bandidos National President Jeffrey Pike quickly gained unexpected momentum spreading across Canada and over several countries including the United States and Australia.
The newly reformed Rock Machine has a well-known and documented hatred towards the Texas-based Bandidos national chapter. It would be very unlikely that the Rock Machine would ever return to the Bandidos ranks despite rumors mostly perpetuated by the book "The Fat Mexican" by author Alex Caine.
Caine claims that members of the Rock Machine made a secret deal in a hotel room meeting in London Ontario in 2008 with high ranking members of the Bandidos national chapter to re-open again in Canada. Caine gives unusually great details of this meeting in his book.
Members of the Rock Machine adamantly deny ever happened and call Caine a fraud and an attention-seeker. The club also claims that it now dismisses members who are involved in any known crimes or criminal activity.[5]
[edit] Members
Well-known former members of the Rock Machine included Peter Paradis (who later testified for the Crown at the trials of other members), Richard "Bam-Bam" Lagacé (deceased), Johnny Plescio (deceased), Tony Plescio (deceased), Renaud Jomphe (deceased), Frederic Faucher, Alain Brunette, Bruce Doran (an ex-convict from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario instrumental in establishing the Kingston, Ontario chapter), and Paul Porter (who later joined Hells Angels).
In 2000, the Rock Machine was absorbed into the Bandidos motorcycle club in a patch-over ceremony and would remain Bandidos for 7 more years with the Rock Machine club reforming early in 2008. Many Rock Machine members back then joined their former archenemy, the Hells Angels, when the Bandidos refused to immediately grant full status to many of the more junior patched members of the Rock Machine.
Some high-profile members to defect to the Angels included Paul Porter, Nelson Fernandes and Bruce Doran. These three joined the Nomads chapter of the Quebec Hells Angels. However, Fernandes died of cancer within months of becoming a Hells Angel, and Doran turned in his colours and returned to private life, but some members of the law enforcement community believe he is still very active and merely using his resignation as a cover to continue his involvement without the scrutiny of police.[13]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.rockmachine.ca/chapters.php
- ^ Sher, Julian; Marsden, William (2006). Angels of Death; Inside the Bikers' Global Crime Empire. Knopf Canada. ISBN 0676977308.
- ^ a b c Winterhalder, Edward; De Clercq, Wil (2008). The Assimilation: Bikers United Against The Hells Angels. ECW Press. ISBN 1-5502-2824-2.
- ^ a b http://www.rockmachine.ca/history.php
- ^ a b http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=b9f02309-f885-4e6e-b4b6-694bd69c06c8
- ^ a b c d e f g h http://www.julianrubinstein.com/hell.html
- ^ Martineau, Pierre I Was a Killer for the Hells Angels, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2003 (ISBN 0771054920)
- ^ Winterhalder, Edward Out In Bad Standings; Inside The Bandidos Motorcycle Club, Blockhead City Press, 2005/Seven Locks Press, 2007 (ISBN 0-9771-7470-0)
- ^ Langton, Jerry. Fallen Angel: The Unlikely Rise of Walter Stadnick in the Canadian Hells Angels. John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd.. ISBN 0-470-83710-1.
- ^ Sher, Julian; Marsden, William (2004). The Road to Hell : How the Biker Gangs are Conquering Canada. Random House. ISBN 0676975992.
- ^ Sanger, Daniel (2005). Hell's Witness. Viking Canada. ISBN 067004430X.
- ^ http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/07/24/biker-war-brewing-in-montreal
- ^ Cherry, Paul The Biker Trials: Bringing Down the Hells Angels, ECW Press, 2005 (ISBN 155022638X)
[edit] Further reading
- Out In Bad Standings: Inside The Bandidos Motorcycle Club; The Making Of A Worldwide Dynasty by Edward Winterhalder, published in 2005 by Blockhead City Press Owasso Oklahoma
- The Assimilation: Rock Machine Become Bandidos - Bikers United Against The Hells Angels by Edward Winterhalder and Wil De Clercq, published in 2008 by ECW Press Toronto, Ontario Canada.
[edit] External links
- CBC News In Depth: Biker Gangs in Canada
- CBC News In Depth: Canada's Anti-gang Law
- The Fifth Estate: The Road to Hell: The Rise of the Hells Angels in Quebec
- York University's Nathanson Center for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption
|
||||||||||||||||||||
