RCMP search Truro-area property in Hells Angel disappearance

OFF THE WIRE

By DAN ARSENAULT Crime Reporter
Thu, Oct 14 - 4:29 PM

Police are searching a house and property near Truro for the remains of a former Hells Angel who disappeared on Halloween 1999.

Once a member of the biker gang, Randy Mersereau was charged with first-degree murder in the March 1985 slaying of five Quebec Hells Angels, but he and three others were acquitted in 1987.

On Wednesday evening, police started setting up their search for him at 74 Peppard Dr. in Onslow Mountain, just north of Truro. The RCMP’s Northeast Nova Major Crime Unit, Bible Hill detachment and forensic identification service were all at the scene.

“The search includes the residence and property,” Nova Scotia RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Brigdit Leger said late Thursday afternoon.

“The investigators on this file are pursuing information that was brought to their attention.”

She wouldn’t say where that information came from or any other details. She also wouldn’t say if police will be digging into the ground there.

She said police might be there for a while.

“They will remain there until all possible information is gathered.”

In their book, The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs Conquered Canada, Julian Sher and William Marsden wrote that former gang member Dany Kane said Mersereau deserted the Hells Angels, infringed on their drug turf and put a contract on three high-ranking members. The book said Kane claimed Mersereau was then executed with a machine gun equipped with a silencer and later buried with the gun.

Just weeks earlier, Mersereau was injured along with six others when a bomb exploded in the office of an auto dealership in Bible Hill. Late in 1999, after his disappearance, his car turned up on the side of Highway 102 between exits 9 and 10.

In his book, Fallen Angel: The Unlikely Rise of Walter Stadnick and the Canadian Hells Angels, Jerry Langton said Mersereau insulted the Hells Angels by becoming a competitor for the Halifax drug trade and had been rumoured to be in discussions to start a local chapter with the rival Bandidos.

Mersereau’s brother, Kirk Mersereau, was shot dead with his common-law wife Nancy Christenson in their Hants County home in September 2000. No one has been charged in those killings.

Deborah Whooten, a neighbour on Peppard Drive, saw the police arrive Wednesday evening.

“It was still light out and they spent the night here.”

She said police haven’t told the neighbours anything about their search, and she had to show her driver’s licence in order to drive past a roadblock to get to her house.

Whooten heard of the Mersereau disappearance, but didn’t know if he had any ties to the area.

She doesn’t know how long the current owner has been at 74 Peppard.

The listed owner of the .63-acre property is Vangie Dawn Beal.

The Hells Angels' only chapter in Atlantic Canada started in December 1984 with the creation of the 13th Tribe. After a number of killings and police raids they quietly closed the chapter in August 2003.

This January, the local East Coast Riders Motorcycle Club patched over to form a new chapter of the Hells Angels-affiliated Bacchus club, which had already been established in New Brunswick.

The next month, one of the Bacchus members, James (Rustie) Hall and his wife Ellen Hall were killed at their Barr Settlement home. The killings remain unsolved.

(darsenault@herald.ca)