David Carroll

Early career

Carroll was born and grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He became the leader of a Halifax biker gang known as the Thirteenth Tribe Motorcycle Club, which had been founded in 1968. The 13th Tribe Motorcycle Club had reigned as the dominant outlaw motorcycle gang in the province of Nova Scotia as early as the 1970s and its members had an outwardly defiant and hostile attitude towards police authority. By 1971 it had gained a large following and had formed a relationship with the Popeye Moto Club, a notorious Quebec-based biker gang which, in 1977, would eventually become the very first Canadian chapter of the Hells Angels. The Halifax underworld is very closely linked to the Montreal underworld and David Carroll soon had an alliance with the Hells Angels of Montreal. Like many other biker gangs around the world, Carroll and the rest of the 13th Tribe MC had a strong admiration for the Hells Angels MC and sought to emulate its organizational structure in their own club.

The Thirteenth Tribe won the trust of the Hells Angels by providing, in the fall of 1984, bodyguards for Walter "Nurget" Stadnick as he was recovering in a Hamilton hospital from the traffic incident that disfigured his face. A nurse recalled: "It was crazy; most of the day there were these big, burly bikers outside his room. And the rest of the time it was these big, burly cops – it was like he was a rock star or something. You could tell these bikers were small-town boys; they weren't used to the cops like what we had here in Hamilton. They used to taunt and tease the bikers all the time – trying to start a fight, eh?". The 6′3″ (190 cm) policeman and former football player John Gordon Harris warned Carroll that if he did not cease his unruly behaviour, he would have him and the rest of the 13th Tribe arrested. On 5 December 1984, the Thirteenth Tribe became the first Hells Angels chapter in Atlantic Canada with Carroll as chapter president. This occurred on the very same day that the Gitans Moto Club of Sherbrooke had also been absorbed by the Hells Angels. A report from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) described the "patch over" of the Thirteenth Tribe as a move "to consolidate control of drug trafficking on Canada's East Coast".

Hells Angels

The Hells Angels hitman Yves "Apache" Trudeau was told by the West End Gang boss Allan "The Weasel" Ross that he should collect the money owed to him for four murders that Ross had hired him to commit from the Hells Angels chapters in Halifax and Sorel, which were in debt to Ross. Ross promised Trudeau that he was willing to forgive those debts if the two chapters paid the money owed to him to Trudeau instead. Carroll, as the president of the Angels' Halifax chapter, paid Trudeau $98,000. Carroll later learned that the Laval chapter was actually entitled to one-quarter of the money, and that Trudeau had used the extra money to support his cocaine addiction. Carroll met with Réjean "Zig Zag" Lessard of the Angels' Montreal South chapter to discuss the matter, and it was decided to take action against the Angels Montreal North chapter, to which Trudeau belonged. Carroll was involved in the plans for the Lennoxville massacre, working with Lessard to discuss plans to remove the Montreal North chapter, whom Carroll and Lessard had decided were a liability for the Hells Angels. In March 1985, Carroll went to Quebec to assist Lessard against the Laval chapter.

Carroll, who was present at the Lennoxville massacre of 24 March 1985, was charged with first-degree murder for his actions during the massacre, but was acquitted in 1987. Besides Carroll, two other members of the Halifax chapter, Randy Mersereau and Mike McCrea, were also charged with murder and acquitted. During his time in a Montreal jail while he was trying to raise bail, Carroll learned passable French. When Carroll returned to Halifax after his time in a Montreal jail, he was so poor that he took to shoplifting groceries to feed himself.

In Halifax, he worked as a pimp and demanded 40% of all the earnings made by the local prostitutes. One prostitute who felt that Carroll was the greediest pimp in Halifax complained to the police that he had given her a vicious beating because she refused to hand over 40% of her earnings to him. On 30 May 1986, Carroll was arrested together with the seven members of the Halifax chapter and charged with living off the avails of prostitution. Carroll together with the other accused was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison. Prison psychiatric evaluations credited him with a genius intelligence quotient. The arrests and convictions nearly put an end to the Halifax chapter because Hells Angels rules require that all chapters must have at least six active members at any given moment, and that any chapters with fewer than six members will have their charters revoked, meaning that all of the remaining members will be automatically expelled. With the arrests and convictions of the entire Halifax chapter for living off the avails of prostitution, Sonny Barger and the other American leaders of the Hells Angels were about to revoke the Halifax chapter's charter, leading Carroll to ask for the help of the Angel chapters in the Lower Mainland. In response, the Hells Angels in British Columbia sent out six of their members to Halifax to serve as temporary members of the Halifax chapter for an average of two weeks in rotation until Carroll and the others were released.

Quebec Biker War

During the Quebec biker war, Carroll displayed a raging hatred of the Rock Machine as Kane reported that Carroll "seemed to take the [biker] war personally" and that for him "there did not exist any peaceful means to end the conflict". Kane described Carroll as "a very bad businessman... Wolf makes a lot of money but he can't keep it". In his reports, Kane described Carroll as a hard-drinking Hells Angel who was "chronically broke". Kane reported that he would visit Carroll in his house to discuss drug deals and then go out with the Carroll family to their favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Morin-Heights, saying he found the juxtaposition of criminality and domesticity to be quite jarring. Carroll was described by journalists such as Julian Sher, William Marsden and Peter Edwards as an arrogant, ill-tempered bully with an intense contempt for anyone who was not a Hells Angel. Kane, in his reports, stressed that Carroll displayed abnormal amounts of anger and hatred towards the Rock Machine. Kane reported that, along with Boucher, Carroll was the Hells Angel who had taken out the most contracts on the lives of Rock Machine members. In his reports, Kane described Carroll as personally collecting intelligence on the Rock Machine, which was unusual for a "full patch" Hells Angel.

In the first days of February 1995, Kane reported that Carroll had planted a bomb in Quebec City that cost one person their leg. Kane found himself in the middle of a power struggle between Carroll and another Hells Angel, an American living in Montreal named Scott Steinert. Kane in his reports stated that Steinert was the most aggressive of the Angels as Kane described Steinert as a bully with a belligerent and unpleasant personality. Steinert served as Maurice "Mom" Boucher's right-hand man as he made more money than any of the other Angels in Montreal. Steinert often mocked Carroll, boasting that he made more money than he did, and Kane reported that the two men hated each other. The journalists Julien Sher and William Marsden wrote that the feud between Carroll and Steinert was like "the twisting schemes of ambitious and sometimes psychotic medieval princes". 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. Reflecting the power balance, Donald "Bam Bam" Magnussen, the bodyguard to Stadnick, went over to serving as Steinert's bodyguard as Magnussen believed that Steinert would soon be the new Hells Angels national president. Steinert formed a gang within the gang that he called the groupe de Cinq ("group of Five") that took over drug dealing along Crescent Street in Montreal and York Street in Ottawa, both of which were Carroll's territory. Steinert also started to sell drugs all over Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, which both Stadnick and Carroll considered to be their territory.

Feud with the Mersereau brothers

Carroll became involved in a feud with a former Hells Angel, Randy Mersereau, who had broken away from the Halifax chapter to found his own group. Mersereau was engaged in talks with the Bandidos motorcycle gang to have his gang became a Bandidos chapter, which Carroll took as a threat. Carroll also had a tense relationship with the Marriott family that dominated the drug trade in Spryfield, but who were willing to work with the Hells Angels. In 1998, Kane reported: "Carroll wanted to take control of the drug trade in that city [Halifax], but he feared that the HA [Hells Angels] in Halifax didn't have what it takes to do the job. It was time to 'shake things up'". In October 1998, a drug dealer in Harrietfield, William Wendelborg, was murdered in a contract killing with the killer being Billy Marriott. Marriott beat Wendelborg with a baseball bat and then injected him with enough cocaine to give him a fatal heart attack. The next month, Ricky Marriott of the Marriott family, together with his wife Gail, were found murdered in their home with the prime suspect being his brother Billy Marriott. Wilson was charged with hiring Marriott to commit the murders, and Kane's reports to the police stated that he had reason to believe that Wilson was acting on behalf of Carroll. Facing charges of first-degree murder, Billy Marriott was found hanged in his cell in the Halifax Correctional Centre on 7 August 2000. The police believe that Carroll was responsible for eight murders in the Halifax area between October 1998 and September 2000. In a plea bargain with the Crown, Wilson pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder on 7 April 2004, admitting that he hired Marriott to kill Wendelborg and Kane and Simard to kill MacFarlane.

In May 1999, Carroll was quite threatening to a group of visiting Loners led by their national secretary Glenn "Wrongway" Atkinson to the Angels' Sherbrooke chapter clubhouse, demanding to know why the Loners' national president Gennaro "Jimmy" Raso had failed to come to Quebec, saying he would not tolerate this insolence. Atkinson later told the journalist Peter Edwards that he had the impression that Raso's life would be in danger if he snubbed the Angels again. On 23 September 1999, Randy Mersereau was wounded by a bomb planted in his car dealership in Truro. The evening of 31 October 1999 was the last time that Mersereau was seen alive, and his car was found abandoned later that night along Highway 102 between Halifax and Truro. Kane reported on 3 November 1999 that Mersereau had been killed by a hit squad from Montreal, with his body buried in a forest. Mersereau's skeleton was only found in December 2010. Randy's younger brother, Kirk Mersereau, vowed to avenge him. Carroll met with Kirk Mersereau to deny that he was involved in his brother's murder. On 31 March 2000 Kane reported: "Wolf told me he tried to explain things to that guy, but he didn't understand. He told me that Randy's brother was going to die very soon".

Operation Springtime and disappearance

On 28 March 2001, as part of Operation Springtime, a warrant was issued for Carroll's arrest. He was charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder. At the time, Carroll was in Ixtapa, Mexico. Fearing that the Mexican authorities were corrupt, the Canadian authorities did not inform the Mexicans in advance of Operation Springtime. On the morning of 28 March 2001, an extradition request was filed with the Mexican government for Carroll together with two Hells Angels in Mexico, Yves Dubé and André Chouinard. Only Dubé was arrested and extradited while both Chouinard and Carroll disappeared with Ixtapa police claiming to be unable to find the two tourists. An affidavit from the Crown stated that Carroll had at least $1 million in a numbered bank account in Antigua. Chouinard later returned to Canada and was arrested in the Eastern Townships on 18 April 2003. In 2003, the chapter Carroll founded in Halifax in 1984 came to an end with the convictions of several of its members, which caused the chapter to fall below six men, leading to the charter of the chapter being revoked.

Carroll is believed to have fled to Brazil, which has no extradition treaty with Canada. Carroll was rumoured to have been seen several times in the West Indies between 2001 and 2009. Carroll was also seen several times in British Columbia and Ontario. The Canadian journalist Daniel Sanger wrote that it was most odd that Carroll had never been placed on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's most wanted list despite being wanted on charges of first-degree murder, gangsterism, conspiracy to commit murder and various drug offences. Sanger noted that people who are on the RCMP's most wanted list are wanted for crimes less serious than alleged to have been committed by Carroll. The Interpol notice on Carroll reads: "Hells Angels have chapters in more than 20 countries and information suggests that Carroll has frequented a number (of them) including Brazil, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United States (as well as countries in South America and Europe)." The last sighting of Carroll was reportedly in Australia in 2012.

Books

Auger, Michel; Edwards, Peter (2012). The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 978-0771030499.

Cherry, Paul (2005). The Biker Trials: Bringing Down the Hells Angels. Toronto: ECW Press. ISBN 978-1550226386.

Derry, Paul (2009). Treacherous How the RCMP allowed a Hells Angel to kill. Regina: Coastal West Publishing. ISBN 9780981240831.

Edwards, Peter (2010), The Bandido Massacre; A True Story of Bikers, Brotherhood and Betrayal, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, ISBN 978-0307372765

Langton, Jerry (2006). Fallen Angel: The Unlikely Rise of Walter Stadnick and the Canadian Hells Angels. Toronto: Harper Collins. ISBN 144342725X.

Langton, Jerry (2010). Showdown: How the Outlaws, Hells Angels and Cops Fought for Control of the Streets. Toronto: John Wiley. ISBN 978-0470678787..

Lavigne, Yves (1999). Hells Angels at War. Toronto: HarperCollins. ISBN 0002000245.

Sanger, Daniel (2005). Hell's Witness. Toronto: Viking Canada. ISBN 0-670-04430-X.

Schneider, Stephen (2009). Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0470835005.

Sher, Julian; Marsden, William (2003). The Road To Hell How the Biker Gangs Are Conquering Canada. Toronto: Alfred Knopf. ISBN 0-676-97598-4.