Jury selection was scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of six men charged in connection with a mass slaying in rural southwestern Ontario three years ago.
Eight members or associates of the Bandidos outlaw motorcycle gang were found shot to death and stuffed in four cars abandoned in a field in Shedden, southwest of London, in April 2006.The six accused face eight counts each of first-degree murder.
They are: Michael Sandham, 37, a former Winnipeg-area police officer who became a full-patch member of the Bandidos; Dwight Mushey, 39; Marcelo Aravena, 32; Wayne Kellestine, 59, a notorious local biker whose rural property in Dutton-Dunwich, near the field where the bodies were dumped, is alleged to be the site of an execution-style slaying; Frank Mather, 35 and Brett Gardiner, 24.Meanwhile, another man and a woman are charged with acting as accessories after the fact to the killings.
Among the eight men killed in the massacre were six full-patch members of the Bandidos, most from the Greater Toronto Area. They were: George Jesso, 52, Frank Salerno, 43, George Kriarakis, 28, Luis Manny Raposo, 41, Paul Sinopoli, 30; and John Muscedere, 48. The other victims were associate member Michael Trotta, 31, and Jamie Flanz, 37, a prospect for membership in the gang.
Police labelled the killings an "internal cleansing" of the Bandidos, a Texas-based motorcycle gang, second in size and underworld prestige only to the Hells Angels.
However, the gang's strength in Canada had dwindled at the time of the massacre and the purge virtually wiped out the gang's small Ontario chapter.