Original subtitles

You ain't crew, no crew. This is my crew. I'm crew, not crew. You're going

down your pump just like Monster Man. You pump step.

Wrestler Johnny K -9 was a complex man.

In the ring, he played a vicious heel.

To his fellow wrestlers in the locker room, he was a big -hearted teddy bear.

But away from the ring, he led a life of violence and mayhem that was shockingly

real. I tried to give him advice about not being in crime to take full

of the wrestling.

He wouldn't listen.

He could be laughing so hard that you think he's going to pass out, and the

thing you know, he might have somebody by the throat, and you're thinking,

I'm about to witness a pretty heinous crime here. He fed an insatiable

for power and infamy as a high -ranking member of the Satan's Choice biker gang.

Johnny was very power -hungry.

He wanted to rise to the top as quickly as he can.

Johnny Canine is out on bail in connection with charges he's facing

the bombing of the Sudbury police station.

You're reading the newspaper article, and it's like, uh, yeah, that's Bruiser.

That's my guy. And they're like, yeah, well, apparently he blew up a police

station in Sudbury, Ontario.

It's just like, what?

Double assassinations and blowing up police stations? Really?

I just couldn't bring myself to think that he's a bad person that deserves to

punished for anything.

That's what blows everybody's mind.

Both sides of his dual life would ultimately implode, leaving a defeated

broken man in the wake.

He f***ed up.

He f***ed up big time.

If you were a star in the WWF in the mid to late 80s, chances are you probably

beat Johnny Canine somewhere along the way.

I remember seeing him as kind of a job guy on WWF TV probably in

85, 86, 87.

Johnny Canine was one of those.

You know, look, the term offends some people. It doesn't offend me because I

used to do it as jobbers, right? They're the guys that lose on television to the

star.

That's all made quick work of Johnny Canine.

Television was the opportunity to get stars over.

So the big -name stars, the Hulk Hogan, the Randy Savages, have to beat

somebody.

WWF would hire local people at all the TV tapings, and they would come in, and

you would be the guy that gets beat. The job. You're not under contract, so you

got labeled as a jobber.

Young John K -9, something lacking.

He's like caught in a twilight zone or something.

If you're a wrestling fan watching WWF, you knew who Johnny K -9 was. You knew

he was going to drop to his knees and do that act.

What is that thing he does before each match?

He's not significant of something, but he got me.

He loved wrestling and was known for that, but locally he was also known as

tough kid who'd grown up on the wrong side of the law.

He made money legally.

And then he dipped his foot in crime. So there was this balance of, you know,

legal and illegal activities.

This is Johnny Canine. Is there a reason for that name?

It's a long story.

I used to work in a bar.

One time I got arrested. I had an assault police charge.

And they threw me in the back of a paddy wagon.

And I was looking. I saw a dog car come up. And I seen Canine. I go, that's the

name I'm going to use when I go in the ring. Because I'm a dog.

I know he had been to jail and prison because when I met him, he had just been

released.

My name is Tracy Edwards, and I was married to Johnny Kenine.

I met him in 1993 in Hamilton, Ontario.

I was an exotic dancer doing a rollerblading show.

And the thing with Johnny was when he walked into a bar, the whole

stopped what they were doing.

And that blew me away. I was on stage and I could just see the way the whole

changed. And I looked over and he just looked at me and I was like, whoa.

And that was it.

From the moment I looked at him, I knew we would be together.

After gigs dry up for Johnny at regional WWF TV tapings, he pursues stardom on

the independent wrestling circuit. I first met Johnny K -9. It was in

Ontario. It was a show for an older wrestler by the name of Ricky Bolton.

I'm Scott D 'Amore, executive vice president for Impact Wrestling, and I

longtime professional wrestler and friend of Johnny K -9's.

I saw it on the cart that was posted outside in the hallway that I was

wrestling. At that point, he was canine dog of war.

But I knew he was Johnny Canine. And I hadn't seen him since his WWF days. And

then I walked into the locker room and I see, I'll call it the new improved

Johnny Canine, right? This isn't the 220 -pound Johnny Canine. This guy is

muscle on top of muscle.

He's not that lean bodybuilder muscle.

He's that big, thick, like I'm going to cave somebody's skull in.

And he had the Fu Manchu, he had the tassel of hair, and he's got, like, the

shorts, and he's got the flip -flops.

And he was just sitting back, and he's like, hey, kid, yeah, yeah, it's me and

you tonight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me and you. It'll be good. And I mean, I just about shit my

pants right there.

And we had a good match, and that's what led to me getting booked all the time

in the U .S. with him.

Johnny in the ring, to me, was just unbelievable to watch.

He'd get in the ring and start swinging his head around, doing this thing, and

the eyes would be bulged out, and he'd be screaming at everybody.

You're all scared!

Really coming across, like, scary.

Johnny Canine was one of the toughest guys out there.

He told the guys all the time, hit me, I don't care, I want blood.

There's no...

Blood? Then we're doing it again. You've got to get blood.

He always wanted to be tougher than everyone around him because of his

childhood. He grew up in a very abusive home.

At Christmas time, his dad would get so drunk and beat his mother and the kids.

He would chase them around with a broom.

He was five years old and he was so scared.

and he would climb his little body under the steel bed frame and hold on with

his little fingers and his feet.

So when his dad went with the broom under the bed, he couldn't get his

body.

Johnny's traumatic upbringing would eventually fuel his tough guy persona in

out of the ring.

You never quite knew when that switch was going to go off.

One time, me and him were at a show in Ohio.

We wrestled each other. And when you're young, you're always scared to check

your envelope. Because back then, you always got paid in cash.

I didn't want to disrespect the promoter by checking the money in front of him.

So he just got, oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Well, I get in the truck.

I look at my envelope. I'm like, ah.

And Ken is like, what's wrong? I'm like, nah, nothing. He's like, did he short

you? And I go, yeah.

I no longer get the words out of my mouth.

And he's gone.

And for a 300 -pound man, he's moving.

And I'm chasing after him, so I don't know what he's going to do.

By the time I catch up to him getting in the locker room, he has the promoter by

the throat, and he's holding him against the wall.

The guy has got to be 18 inches off the ground.

And it's gritted teeth.

You're going to short this kid after he got in the ring and wrestled me. You

want to get in the ring, and you want to take shots from me, huh, punk?

You give that kid his money.

And I'm sitting there going, oh, my God, like, we're going to get arrested.

We're in another country.

He's scared the hell out of that person. We let him go. He dropped to his knees,

gasping for air.

And this guy's just throwing money at him.

We get in the truck, and K -9's got that big smile on his face, and he's feeling

good about himself. And he goes, kid, I don't think that guy's going to short

you on money again.

And I'm like, no, no, but, Johnny, I'm also pretty sure that guy's never going

to book us again.

And sure enough, he never did.

This is a really big, tough -looking guy, and a lot of people feared him. But

me, he was a gentle soul, you know?

He was like the stand -up comedian type guy. Like, he just always made me laugh.

He would order a pizza and answer the door naked.

I'm like, what? Put on some underwear or something.

No, no, no. Watch this.

The door would open, and 300 pounds, rock -solid muscle, completely naked.

And the pizza guy would be like, yeah, that'll be $20, please, sir. And I would

laugh so hard.

He was so funny.

I think Johnny Canine needed to be the center of attention in some ways, and he

loved all eyes on him, whatever he had to do to make the boys laugh.

There's this place in Taylor, Michigan where we used to wrestle for MTW.

Midwest Territorial Wrestling. And we have one hell of a card here tonight.

There was a band that was going to play before the show.

K -9 walks up and of course he's like, hey buddy, you mind if I play the drums?

So he gets on there. We do not believe he can play the drums at all. He starts

actually playing the drums and he's not half bad.

He's just loving it because everybody's eating it up.

Then he gets on the microphone.

and starts singing. And of all his skills, singing is not one of them.

Wrestlers are falling off of chairs, laughing so hard. And the more we laugh

put it over, the more he's going to do it.

And that's actually the territory or the company where we were wrestling the

night that Jim Cornette discovered K -9.

I'm Jim Cornette. I've been a promoter, matchmaker, announcer, manager in

professional wrestling for 40 years, and I was the promoter and matchmaker for

Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

Smoky Mountain Wrestling was one of the last of the pro wrestling territories in

the United States. It was started specifically to be an old -time

southern wrestling feel, and to do that, we not only needed established

wrestlers that the people knew that were stars to them,

New names, new wrestlers, new ways to make matches.

The team that I was managing, the Heavenly Bodies and I, were booked on an

in Michigan.

When we got there and saw the guys in the locker room, I saw this big, bald

-headed, jacked -up guy. He looked like a turn -of -the -century carnival

strongman. He had a big, round head, bald, these big, bulging eyes that he

make that face.

He had this giant tattoo across his stomach.

True to the crew, I said, there's got to be some way that we can bring this guy

to Tennessee where they've never seen him before and make a believable animal

out of him. We need a heel. We need a badass.

I sat down and talked to him in the locker room that night. I said, would

interested in coming to Tennessee and working for me three or four days a week

if we can come to some agreement? Yeah, Jimmy, I'm all over it.

We asked him one time in the locker room, the tattoo, true to the crew.

Oh, guys, I was in jail one time.

And all of the guys in jail, we decided we were going to get that tattoo when we

got out.

And I said, well, once you got out of jail, you know, is anybody going to

No, Jimmy, you don't understand.

These guys, you say you're going to do something, you do it.

That was the first time that I got an inkling that Bruiser had a checkered

I don't know if Bruiser chose a life of crime or if the life of crime just chose

him.

After a fortuitous encounter backstage with Johnny Canine, promoter Jim

prepares for Johnny's arrival at Smoky Mountain Wrestling in Tennessee.

I didn't think that Johnny Canine was a great wrestling name. I thought, what

can you call this guy?

Well, Dick the Bruiser was one of the most famous major box -off attractions

wrestling. When his promotion was in its dying days, he had a television show

called Bruiser Bedlam.

Jim rebranded a lot of guys, like the Thrill Seekers. Jericho and I had

a sudden impact, but to him, I think the Thrill Seekers would resonate better

with his audience.

We're gonna rock America!

I'm Lance Storm, spent time in Smoky Mountain Wrestling in 94.

The moves you're seeing now, you don't see many American wrestlers making these

moves. These are international moves.

Cornette's like, oh, I'm bringing this new guy in, and it was Bruiser Bedlam,

and I'm like, who's that?

Oh, he used to be Johnny Canine. I'm like, okay.

I remember he was on his way down to the States.

It was a really cold day, and he was driving a Jeep at the time. He had his

top on with no coat. I go, what are you doing?

He says, don't worry.

It's going to be so hot, so fast, I don't give a shit.

And he would pull up that hill in that open -air jeep, no matter how cold it

was.

Wearing the most minimal of shirts, maybe like a string gym tank top.

And he's this gigantic dude in the tank top shorts and flip -flops. He's just

like, oh, my God, who is this guy? You know, is he going to be a crazed maniac

or what?

But 10 seconds of meeting him, he's just like, hey, buddy, how you doing?

Hey! And, you know, his demeanor was, you know, just Big Teddy Bear.

To cement Bruiser Bedlam as his new monster heel, Cornette books him in a

event match against the promotion's top babyface, Bullet Bob Armstrong.

His first night in, we had a handicap match against Bullet Bob Armstrong, who

was the all -time legend in wrestling of that area.

And Bruiser beat him.

The cover!

One, two, three!

People were like, you beat Bob Armstrong?

Nobody beat Bob Armstrong.

That instantly gave him a little credibility in their eyes.

We did videos with him where he could drive a 10 -penny nail through a board

with his bare hand.

One time, he said, Jimmy, I could break a beer bottle over my head.

Okay. So we got the camera rolling. He's got the bottle in his hand. Bam!

It didn't break.

I'm like, Bruiser, you know, we can gimmick that. No, I can do it.

Second take. Bam!

Now the knot's coming up on his head. I got it.

Bam! Now he's bleeding.

I took the bottle and baked it.

Put it in some cold water, let it crack a little bit, handed it to him, said,

now break it.

You've got a guy bleeding on television, screaming, I'm going to kill you.

I believed him.

At the time, other than wrestling, what did you know that he did for a living?

I don't know.

Johnny Canine grew up in a rough neighborhood where criminality was

option.

My name is Bill Dunphy. I'm a now -retired crime and justice journalist.

Hamilton was an industrial powerhouse, and in the 70s and 80s, that has really

declined. So the opportunities for someone of Johnny's age were very

than they were 10 years, 15 years earlier.

Johnny grew up borderline poor, barely making it. So the wrestling, you know,

made a bit of money, but not near as much as he wanted. So that's why he

for a family. I'm not going to say the name. The Gravel family, which was a big

family in Hamilton.

My name is Len Eisner. I was a detective staff sergeant with the Ontario

Provincial Police.

He had acquaintances among all the traditional organized crime families.

People who had debts would give a percentage of the debt to somebody like

Canine, and he would take a profit off them, and he would collect the money.

it was a lot easier for Johnny to do it because, basically, of his appearance.

A few times he'd come home with blood on his shoes, wash his hands, and that was

one of the ways he made his cash.

Despite his success as a low -level enforcer, Johnny has even bigger dreams

his life of crime.

He told me his oldest brother was with the Red Devils, and he would always

remember stories of when he was a kid and his brother and all his bros would

pull up on their Harleys and pull into the driveway.

And he always wanted to be with a bike gang.

And that's what happened. He started hanging out with the Satan's Choice.

Johnny rapidly integrates himself into the world of outlaw biker gangs when he

joins one of Canada's most notorious groups, the Satan's Choice Motorcycle

I guess they proposed the offer of him opening up a chapter in Hamilton, and he

jumped right on it.

Johnny was right away elected as the president, and he ran the show there.

Mark Carlos was my name.

I knew Johnny from Satan's Choice Motorcycle.

Nobody that I know ever came up that fast.

Even though I didn't like it personally, I understood.

Because if you want to look at the big picture, the big picture is money.

When people hear in that drug crime world, you got Johnny Canine backing

you make more money.

He was scared, right? So it was easy for him to make 20, 30 grand in a matter of

20 minutes, no joke.

Well, Johnny had heat written all over him. You know, extorting bars and

restaurants in your hometown.

The cops are called.

It was decided that some attention has to go on this new chapter.

So I was assigned to Hamilton and the Johnny Kenan investigation.

He was making a lot of money illegally at that point, but he loved wrestling.

He'd go and wrestle for 200 bucks.

Johnny's two -sided lifestyle was never more evident than when he left behind

his biker gang duties to wrestle down south for Smoky Mountain. It was there

that he would find himself crashing at a famous flophouse.

Yeah, the famed, or I guess infamous more, the Smoky Mountain Flophouse.

There'd be four or five of them living there at any one time. Chris Jericho was

flopping there for a while. Some of the other guys that were just starting out

in wrestling.

And then suddenly, whenever Bruiser was in town, he just decided to live at my

house. He always said, hey, buddy, I'm going to live here. I'm going to do my

share. Hey, buddy.

So in his mind, his share was washing the dishes.

I went to the cupboard to grab a plate, and I pulled the plate. There's all

these, like, pieces of food kind of crusted on.

I watched the next time Bruiser does the dishes, and Bruiser's idea of doing the

dishes was just holding the dish underneath the water and then going like

and putting it back.

The dish is clean.

So the next time he went, dude, it's fine, it's fine.

You're the guest in the house. You want to do your part, take the garbage out or

whatever.

He was a good roommate as far as someone to hang out with.

as far as contributing anything to the living situation, absolutely not. But as

a person, he was always a lot of fun.

The first month or so in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, we basically put Bruiser in

with all of the guys that understood what to do to get a monster over.

We were having a big event at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum. Jake Snake

was in one main event.

The other one was going to be Bruiser Bedlam versus Randy Macho Man Savage.

Bruiser Bedlam, you got to understand that these are glory days for Smokey

Mountain Wrestling. Randy sat down with me, said, this is your guy, right? He's

going to be here. I'm just coming in one time.

Let me put him over.

Randy Macho Man Savage, one of the biggest stars in wrestling, doing me a

to come down and appear on my show.

And now he wants to lose.

to my new top heel.

I tried to interfere.

Other people got involved.

But Bruiser Bedlam pinned Randy Savage one, two, three.

That was, in a lot of ways, Johnny, like, here I am. Like, I'm not that job

anymore.

That was his... Biggest match of his entire career.

And I think he did a very good job with what he was given to work with for that

period of time he was in Smoky Mountain.

By Thanksgiving, Christmas time, we had to change talent over again.

I couldn't find a spot for him. He took it well. He said, hey, Jimmy, no

worries. Hey, I've had a great time.

And he went back to Hamilton.

There was not one.

single issue that I can recall in nine months of having Bruiser Bedlam in my

locker room or at the Smoky Mountain Flophouse. That was him, you mother... I

would almost have to see videotape of him actually blowing

something up before I could believe it.

After Smoky Mountain Wrestling, He was doing smaller shows.

He just wasn't happy the shows were smaller.

His heart was truly broken.

All he wanted to do was make it, you know.

Maybe he was hoping that a bigger break in wrestling would completely remove him

from that other life.

Or again, that could be me trying to make him the person I want him to be.

He probably would have made a great wrestling guy like that Hulk Hogan fella

stuff like that, right?

He was a showman.

He loved the attention.

But he went down the wrong path.

This life isn't for...

Somebody looking to make it big.

As a biker, it's not good.

So we'll sit in front of the clubhouse, you know, monitoring who's coming, who's

going, who's associating with who, so on and so forth.

And Johnny will come out sometimes and he'll say, what are you guys up to

wasting the taxpayers' dollars?

You don't talk to the cops.

But what is the reason? No, other than thinking you're more intelligent.

thinking that you're untouchable.

I don't know.

But it's not good.

We'd get information from him without him really knowing, like his bike's in

shop, he has to go get his bike later. So, you know, little pieces of

intelligence that always was handy.

Along with constant visual surveillance... Detective Staff Sergeant

and his team utilized wiretaps to monitor the activities of Johnny and his

We noticed early in our investigation that there was a relationship between

Hamilton, Satan's Choice, and the Sudbury. They seemed to hang out more.

Johnny Canine formed a relationship with a member of the Sudbury chapter by the

name of Michael Duby.

Michael Dubé was probably the most dangerous biker that I've ever met.

On one particular night, they decided, let's go to the Solid Gold. And the

Gold was an adult entertainment place.

All of a sudden, members pulled up their colors and they put them in their

saddlebags.

And Johnny the canine says, what are you guys doing? He says, well, I can't wear

colors in the solid gold. It says no colors.

Johnny said, hell with that.

We're going to wear our colors in here.

He went from, I'm just a wrestler, to he's Al Capone.

And when you get the Al Capone syndrome, that means you can do whatever you

want. Well, in the solid gold, the staff.

He said, we can't serve you. There's a no -collar policy here, and we'd like

to leave.

The Safe Choice members dug their heels in and said, no, we're not leaving.

Sudbury police are called, and there's a face -off, basically, between the

Sudbury police and the Safe Choice.

The Safe Choice back down.

Johnny Canine and Mike Dubé talk about how upset they were with what happened

the Solid Gold.

So they decided that they would bomb the strip club.

K -9 and another member of the Hamilton group offered to arrange the explosives

and the bombs.

Johnny doesn't know there's been a change in the plan, and Michael Dubé

that this bomb is not going to go to the Solid Gold.

He decides that this bomb is going to go to the Sudbury police station.

So they went and they put the bomb.

in an alley beside police headquarters.

And it blew a hole in a brick wall.

A phone call is basically made to Johnny. Another member calls him and

yeah, the police station got bombed in Sudbury.

You could tell in this conversation that Johnny's confused.

He didn't know he was manipulated, I think, until the downfall.

Several months after the police station bombing, law enforcement prepares for an

elaborate takedown of Satan's choice.

This is getting into 1997, so we have a lot of members in Hamilton on narcotics

charges, on extortion charges, collecting money, plus we also have the

Now, when we go into the Hamilton clubhouse, They did everything they

prevent us from coming in, and that was all Johnny's doing.

He put barriers in front of doors so we can't ram doors and things like that, so

we had to blow a hole in the wall to enter the building.

So they're coming in with flashbangs,

laser sights.

So next thing you know, we're in bed, and I thought there was a hit.

I thought gangsters were coming into the house to kill us.

Then I realized, I looked, I could see all the boots.

Fifty SWAT team members came bursting into our home.

It was over at that moment.

Yeah.

The Hamilton -Wetworth Regional Police Emergency Response Unit moved in on the

Satan's Choice Clubhouse on Lotridge Street. Club president Johnny K -9 is

on bail in connection with charges he's facing thanks to the bombing of the

Sudbury Police Station in December of 1996.

It was just so perplexing having all of the personal stories of, hey, buddy, how

you doing? It's like, hey, bruiser, how you doing? Big hug.

And then you get your stepdad going, is this your friend? And I'm like, um,

yeah. My friend, the man that tried to blow up a police station in Ontario.

There was a great moment, and police arranged this moment, where they took

crane and they lifted the Satan's Choice logo off the side of the building.

I think it took a lot out of him.

It was something he built. That was his house.

It was his...

It was his life.

Johnny made a spontaneous utterance when he was arrested where he basically

turned to me and he said, Lenny, that wasn't for the police station. That was

for the solid gold.

In this case, Johnny Kanan was interrogated by a biker squad officer

knows how to lean on him enough to get him to point at someone.

With wiretap evidence and Johnny Canine's statement to authorities,

is implicated as the mastermind behind the police station bombing, and Johnny

released on bail.

One of their unwritten rules is you don't make any statement to the police.

don't assist them in their investigation.

So when he comes out of jail, they remove him from the club.

being accused of being a rat, I would see a friend of ours and, hey, how's it

going? And this one guy turned on me and said, your man's a rat.

And I just up and cracked the guy.

I mean, I stuck up for Johnny no matter what. I was so in love with him. I was

blinded by his love.

But I went from being proud and happy to be with him to being really nervous and

scared for my life.

The police would pull me over randomly.

An undercover officer would just get out and come to my window, and I'd get

really mad. What did you pull me over for? I'm not doing anything wrong.

Listen, I just want to tell you your life's in danger.

Telling me there's a hit on me and John.

Yeah, it was really scary.

It was really scary.

In January of 2000, He went off to prison for bombing the police station.

Our baby was about two years old, I believe.

And, yeah, I had to get far away from all the troubles that Johnny brought.

Then I was like, this is my escape route.

So I left with clothes on our backs, basically, and off to Vancouver I went.

While Johnny serves a prison sentence of 33 months for the bombing, Tracy flees

with her children to the west coast of Canada in a desperate attempt to start a

new life.

I divorced him.

I had moved on with my life until he followed me out there. 2002, he got

released.

He told me that he missed me and everything, but honestly, I think that

being run out of his own hometown, and he thought British Columbia was the best

thing for him.

He flew across.

Landed at the Vancouver airport.

And as soon as I saw him at the airport, I just, I was so in love

with him.

I wanted to believe what he was telling me.

I told him, I said, you know, let's turn something bad into something really

good.

He was at one time wanting to open a wrestling school.

Instead, he went to prison again.

After only a few months in British Columbia, Johnny's criminal path as an

enforcer comes back to haunt him. He's arrested for a double murder committed

Ontario back in 1998.

The Gilbanks were murdered in 1998.

A lawyer and her husband, Lynn and Fred Gilbank.

It looked like a stolen car was used to drive the killer.

to their house at 5 in the morning.

The killer went up the stairs with a shotgun.

Fred Gilbank came out, was shot twice, and died in the hallway.

The killer continued on to the bedroom where Lynn Gilbank was still in bed.

And she was shot four times.

In searching for motives for this, they went through all of Lynn's cases and

Gravel drug case.

was one that had troubled her, and she had mentioned it to someone else that

was concerned about the safety of her client.

So the police theory was that it was an attempt to intimidate the legal

community and other criminals from ratting on the Gravel family.

Johnny Canine and Andre Gravel were charged with murder about

nine years later.

I had a voicemail message from Scott D 'Amore, and it was just like, did you

hear about K -9? And I'm like, oh, no.

I thought he died, and I called Scott D 'Amore back, and he's like, yeah, he's

been charged with a double murder.

I'm just like, what?

It's hard for me to picture the guy who was willing to stand beside me through

thick and thin, no matter what, to see how he, you know, could do something

at that level.

And maybe I'm naive, but that's just not the John I knew.

So he spent 20 months in jail and got released.

The police didn't have a strong case. It was withdrawn, and Andre Gravel and

Johnny Canine are innocent of that crime.

In 2006, murder charges were withdrawn against Johnny and Andre Gravel.

When prosecutors determined there was no real prospect of conviction, Gravel

subsequently sues authorities in Ontario, alleging malicious prosecution

obtains an undisclosed amount in the settlement.

Johnny never killed the Gilbanks. That was a load of crap, okay?

So he came back to BC in 2007.

That's when I remarried him.

And, yeah.

Johnny was saying, What am I going to do for money?

I said, move the industry.

Was he a good actor?

Not a great actor.

He tried his best, and he had a lot of fun doing it, you know. But then he was

in a gym in North Vancouver and saw Hell's Angel.

Then he started talking to the United Nations, and he comes home bragging, and

I'm like, what?

Wait a minute, we're going backwards here.

You're supposed to be changing your life. What the fuck are you doing?

Out in the West Coast, he got involved with the UN gang, a multi -ethnic

organized crime gang.

He tried to hide it from me, but it didn't last long.

I mean, we'd have a hundred pounds of weed in my kitchen while my kids are in

daycare. And he'd go, wait a minute, I'm going to spray it with whiskey and Coca

-Cola. It'll weigh more and we'll make more money. I'm like, you're crazy.

So we'd be there spraying the weed all over my kitchen floor and I'd be begging

and weighing.

He was coming home with 20, 30 grand, just stacking bank.

And I'm like, John.

You're doing the same thing you were doing in Hamilton.

Police say these are the faces of the U .N. gang, and investigators want them

all in jail.

In 2008, a botched hit on behalf of the United Nations gang would result in the

death of an innocent young man.

In the vendettas that were going on between these two B .C. gangs, John was

picked up by the police in connection with murders there.

Then he was charged in 2009 for first -degree murder.

I was nine months pregnant when he was arrested.

And that day that he went into custody, I didn't know at the time, but that was

the last day he would ever be free.

Johnny Canine pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.

However, the first -degree murder charge has stayed.

After serving four years of his prison sentence, Johnny is released to a

house in Toronto.

And he was supposed to come back to Vancouver in six weeks.

But instead, the police came to my door, and they said, do you know Ion Cortoro?

And I said, yeah.

Now, in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, shit.

I said, what's going on?

He said to me, Ion passed away this morning.

I went completely numb.

And I was shocked.

It was so hard. So hard.

On February 21st, 2017,

Ion William Crotoro, a .k .a. Johnny Canine, dies at the age of 53.

The cause of his death is the subject of speculation.

He died of a heart attack and probably because of his lifestyle.

I know he was in trouble on the West Coast.

So either it was a hot shot because they wanted him gone, you know, and

somebody gave him some good stuff.

He went for the big ride.

Or...

He just couldn't do it anymore.

The reason he died is because he got maced by the guards in prison.

They had to scrape his lungs.

So, you know, there's a lot more to that.

Somebody sent me the headline, Natural causes succeed where mobsters and

gangsters fail.

Johnny K -9 is dead.

And it looked like the headline of a Chicago newspaper for something like

in the outfit.

And I started laughing and I just thought,

If Johnny Canine could write his own headline for his death, that's what he'd

write.

Well, he had that charisma that forms folk heroes.

Al Capone was a very dangerous person in the fact that he killed people and was

involved in crime his whole life. He made a living in crime in the fact that

they made him a folk hero.

And these types of descriptions sort of fit Johnny Canine.

We're still talking about him. I mean, yeah.

Johnny's death certainly doesn't bring closure.

Horrible double murder is still wide open.

We have lost one of our opportunities to find out what really happened when two

good people were murdered.

This was a guy that hurt a lot of people in his life.

If you owed him money, yeah, he'd smack you. But he never killed anybody.

He was hanging out with the wrong people, trying to make money, not

how deep he was in with guys that were killing people.

No, I totally disagree with what Tracy would say.

Johnny Canine is a very dangerous person, and I believe that...

How can I put this?

I don't doubt for a minute that he's involved in homicide.

If you ask the wrestlers he shared a locker room with, couldn't be a nicer

If you ask the families of the people that he's alleged to have been

for killing, you'd probably get a different answer.

I can't canonize him as a saint and just mourn his loss. There's this other

side. And having those emotions inside of who he really was, who I wanted him

be, who, in my experience, he was, and then hoping that he could get at least

closer to the side of the guy that I knew and wanted to to live out his days

with his wife would have been, you know, that happy ending that you want.

For guys, you know, And when it doesn't happen, it hits you pretty hard.

If I could go back and sit in the room with Johnny again for his first night, I

would tell him, go back and be a dad.

Go back and be a husband.

Go back to wrestling.

You know, you've followed this life three years.

You're going to be somewhere else.

His life is probably also a life of thwarted ambition.

He tried to move from enforcer to leader and failed miserably.

As a wrestler, he tried to make it into the bigs. And he got the edge of that,

but didn't stay. He didn't have what it takes to last there either.

There'll probably be a million fans that have no idea who he is. Johnny Canine!

And there's probably someone that was in the Knoxville Coliseum that saw him

beat Randy Savage that thought he was the scariest person they ever saw. And,

you know, to this day has nightmares about it.

Wrestling is subjective. It is to you what it is.

In my opinion, he was the baddest mother in the ring. And he had a good

time doing what he loved.