Cecil Kirby

Kirby was born in Weston, and was twice expelled from elementary school for unruly behavior.[1] He grew up in a working class neighborhood of Toronto and preferred to use violence from his childhood onward to solve problems.[2] He was refused admission to high school for being a discipline problem.[1] Kirby began his criminal career as a member of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club, which he joined in August 1969.[3] In the 1970s he specialized in auto insurance fraud and theft.[4] Kirby rose up to become the sergeant-at-arms of the Satan's Choice Richmond Hill chapter.[5] The Satan's Choice had opened a chapter in Montreal, where competition for control of the drug trade was intense. Kirby was present when another Satan's Choice member, Howard "Pigpen" Berry, opened fire on the clubhouse of the Popeyes Motorcycle Club, the most violent of Quebec's outlaw biker clubs, with a sawed off Lee–Enfield .303 rifle with a ten round clip, saying "It was like a cannon going off".[6]

Kirby learned that Satan's Choice members specialized in seducing the female clerks who operated the Ontario Provincial Police's computers and were willing to share information from the computers with their boyfriends.[7] Kirby wrote in his 1986 memoirs Mafia Enforcer that there was one clerk had access to the OPP's most classified information and:

"Club members carried her number in their wallets. If a member was worried about the cops, all he had to do was call her number, and she'd access the police computer to see if there were any warrants on him. When we spotted a rival gang member, we'd also use her to see if there were any outstanding fugitive warrants on him. If there, we'd have someone in the club call up the cops and tip them off where that rival was and who was with him. It was a good way of avoiding trouble and getting rid of rival gang members. We could also check out anybody's criminal record though that computer. This helped us spot people trying to infiltrate us from rival gangs or the cops".[7]

Kirby concluded that Satan's Choice "had the upper hand in Toronto because we had the best intelligence network around. We were able to move on the other gangs faster than they could move on us because we had such good sources and good information on the habits of the other gangs".[7]

In 1975 after Satan's Choice national president Bernie Guindon was arrested at the Oba Lake drug bust, Kirby visited him in jail in Sault St. Marie together with his close friend Frank Lenti.[8] Kirby was disappointed that Guindon failed to pay back a drug debt he felt was he owned by Guindon.[8] In 1976, Kirby left Satan's Choice and began to work for the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia-type criminal organization based in the Calabria region of Italy.[9] Lenti recommended Kirby as a hitman and bomber to the 'Ndranghetisti Cosimo Commisso, saying that Kirby was very good with bombs and guns, through he also warned that Kirby was not to be completely trusted as he was of non-Italian descent.[10]

Kirby wrote in Mafia Enforcer about his new employers, the Commisso brothers: "I quickly learned that their big thing for making money was the construction industry. They probably made more money from extortions in the construction industry than they did from trafficking in heroin - and it was a helluva lot safer".[11] About the leader of the three Commisso brothers, Cosimo, Kirby wrote: "Cosimo wasn't tough - he was homicidal. He'd kill you as soon as you were looking at him if he thought you were crossing him, if he thought it was good for business, or if he thought you insulted him or his family. The lives of other people meant nothing to him".[3]

Later in 1976, Kirby blew up the car of a Brampton salesman Antonio Burgas Pinheiro.[3] Pinherio was an effective salesman for his employer, Appia Beverages, who were competing against another beverage firm owned by the Siderno group.[3] On 11 November 1976, Kirby left a stick of dynamite in the mailbox of the owner of Pozzabona Construction to pressure him to pay a plastering bill to a client more promptly.[3] The unhappy client had hired Commisso who in turn subcontracted the job to Kirby.[3] In December 1976, Commisso paid Kirby $10,000 to kill Denis Mason, who due to testify against an ally of Commisso.[3] Kirby planted the bomb in the car of the wrong Denis Mason, but it failed to explode owing to faulty wiring.[3]

On 3 May 1977, Kirby bombed a Chinese restaurant in Toronto, the Wah Kew Chop Suey House.[12] The explosion killed a cook, Chong Yim Quan, and wounded three others.[12] Kirby had been hired via the Commisso brothers by the Kung Lok Triad who were unhappy that the owners of the Wah Kew Chop Suey House were running an illegal gambling house in the back of the restaurant without paying them extortion money.[3] In Mafia Enforcer, Kirby coldly wrote about Chong's death: "The murder could have been avoided if the Commisso's had done their homework better before handing out the bombing contract."[2]  In 1978, Kirby bombed the home of Ben Freedman, a Toronto construction contractor who had fallen into debt with his subcontractors, who in their turn had hired Commisso for help.[3] On 1 August 1978, Kirby blew up the car belonging to a Hamilton businessman named John Ryan, as part of a Commisso extortion bid.[3]  

Later in August 1978, Kirby went to Montreal to assassinate Irving Kott, the stockbroker to Vic Cotroni, the boss of the Cotroni family, at the time the most powerful organized crime group in Canada.[3] Kirby was told Cotroni had been hired to have Kott killed, but Kirby believed that Kott had cheated Cotroni, who did not want to admit that he had been fooled.[13] Kirby shot Kott, who managed to survive.[14] A second attempt to assassinate Kott by blowing up his car was no more successful and instead wounded two bystanders.[14] In 1979, Kirby was hired by the Israeli-Canadian businessman Harold Arviv to blow up his $1 million disco called Arviv's in Toronto.[15] The disco was unprofitable and Arviv decided to blow it up so he could collect the insurance money.[16] Kirby used 30 sticks of dynamite to destroy the disco at about 5 am on 9 January 1980.[15] Kirby supplied the gun used to kill Toronto police Constable Michael Sweet at the Bourbon Street Tavern on 14 March 1980.[12]

By the fall of 1980, Kirby had grown disenchanted with the Commisso brothers, complaining that they were stingy with paying him in full and kept supplying him with inaccurate information, causing him to bomb and shoot the wrong people, but then refused to pay him for his work under the grounds that he had targeted the wrong people.[14] In November 1980, Kirby contracted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and offered his services as an informant.[14] In exchange for complete immunity for his past crimes, some $1,950 dollars per month for his information and police protection for himself, Kirby became a RCMP informant.[14] By his own admission, Kirby's decision to turn Crown's evidence was not due to moral reasons, but instead due to his belief that the Commisso brothers were planning to kill him to avoid paying him.[12] A RCMP officer who worked with Kirby stated he had a "dual personality" that ranged "from a very kind person to a vicious, hot-tempered, violent individual who is quite capable of killing".[3]

In February 1981, Kirby was sent to Stamford, Connecticut to kill what was described to him as "some broad that was causing problems".[14] At the time there was what has been described as a "hitman exchange program" within North American organized crime groups under which Canadian assassins were sent to commit murders in the United States in exchange for which American assassins were sent to commit murders in Canada.[14] The woman targeted in question turned out be Helen Nafplotis, the girlfriend of the brother of the 'Ndranghetisti Vincenzo Melia, who suspected she was a police informer.[14] The RCMP informed the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the murder plot against Nafplotis, and after Kirby arrived in Stamford, the FBI took charge of handling him.[14] On 22 February 1981, Melia gave Kirby a handgun to kill Nafplotis and told him to show her no mercy.[14] The FBI faked Nafplotis's murder and upon Kirby's return to Canada, Commisso, unaware that Kirby was wearing a wire, spoke in frank detail about the murder plot, saying he was surprised that Kirby had killed her so soon.[14]

Commisso then gave Kirby the task of assassinating a rival Mafiosi Paul Volpe and his driver, Pietro Scarcella for him.[17] During a conversation on 31 March 1981, Commisso told Kirby that he needed the approval of a higher authority before he could give the orders to kill Volpe.[14] On 23 April 1981, Commisso told Kirby that Scarcella could not be killed until he received permission, but he had the approval to kill Volpe.[18] Wearing a wire, Kirby went to the house of Rocco Remo Commisso, on 16 May 1981 to tell him "Volpe, he's dead...I just killed him a hour ago".[17] After complaining that he should not have come to his house, Commisso paid Kirby $1,000, and said he would have more money for him soon.[17] Commisso repeatedly assured Kirby that he and his brothers "would take care" of him.[17] In organized crime, excessive displays of affection and loyalty are often a sign that those displaying the sympathy are in fact planning to kill the seeming object of their affection, and Kirby was disturbed by the number of times Commisso told him that he was almost family to them.[17] The next day, the Commisso brothers were arrested by the RCMP and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.[19]

As a result of Kirby's testimony, the Commisso brothers; Rocco Remo, Cosimo and Michale were all convicted of conspiracy to murder.[19] In 1982, the RCMP reported the Mafia had promised to pay $100,000 to anybody who could kill Kirby.[19] In 1986, Arviv was convicted on the basis of Kirby's testimony.[15] By 1986, 37 people had been convicted with Kirby serving as the main witness for the Crown.[2] 

In November 1986, Kirby published his autobiography, ghostwritten by an American journalist Thomas Renner, Mafia Enforcer, which provoked controversy with many charging that a criminal should not be allowed to profit from his crimes by writing a best-selling book.[2] The Conservative MP David Kilgour said: "I don’t think Mr. Kirby should profit from his book.".[2]  Kirby has expressed no remorse for his crimes, and was as of 2012 living in hiding under police protection.[19]

In 2015, Kirby contacted Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent for the Toronto Star, to say he was not longer under police protection after he had quarreled with his RCMP bodyguards.[1] Kirby has expressed much fear of social media, believing that the Mafia will find him one day via Facebook.[1]

• Edwards, Peter; Auger, Michel (2012), The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher, McClelland & Stewart, ISBN 0771030495CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• Edwards, Peter (2010), The Bandido Massacre; A True Story of Bikers, Brotherhood and Betrayal, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, ISBN 978-0307372765
• Edwards, Peter (2017), Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club, HarperCollins, ISBN 144342725X
• Schneider, Stephen (2009), Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0470835001