BEING UNCLE CHARLIEA LIFE UNDERCOVER

WITH KILLERS, KINGPINS, BIKERS AND DRUGLORDS

BOB DEASY WITH MARK EBNER

RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

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I NTRODUCT ION

We were sailing along an unpaved road in a rented Chevy

pickup, a cloud of dust visible on the horizon and an easy

target for anyone who could see us coming.

We were headed for an isolated farmhouse on the out-

skirts of Perth, about halfway between Ottawa and Kingston. It

was the private clubhouse of the Ottawa chapter of the Outlaws

Motorcycle Club, a legendary bikers’ redoubt that civilians rarely

got inside, a place where an undercover cop with his cover

blown almost certainly wouldn’t make it out alive.

It was 1989 and I was in the middle of working Project

Encore out of the Kingston unit of the Ontario Provincial

Police’s Drug Enforcement Section. Encore was a mid- to

high-level drug dealer target project that seeped into a lot of

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2 | B O B D E A S Y

dark corners, including the Outlaws. Billy Scarf, president of

the Ottawa chapter, was high on our list of people who were

long overdue for an encounter with law enforcement. So there

I was, trying to insinuate myself into Billy’s sordid world.

Beginning in the late ’70s the Hells Angels began rolling

over Satan’s Choice, Satan’s Angels, the Popeyes, the Para-

Dice Riders, the Rock Machine and lots of smaller puppet

clubs in their bid to dominate Canada’s one-percenter outlaw

motorcycle scene, destroying everything in their path and

assimilating the survivors into their barbarian horde. This

HA practice worked well in Quebec and Vancouver, but in

Ontario they ran up against an immovable object in the form

of the Outlaws, who had the backing of the Italian mafia

throughout the province. By the late ’80s things were at an

impasse, and the Outlaws believed themselves untouchable.

Billy Scarf had no idea who I was—he had guys he paid

just to ignore people like me—so first we had to get on his

radar. I had an agent who said he could guarantee me entry.

An agent is generally a low-level player in the criminal hierar-

chy whose presence serves to vouch for the undercover officer,

at least for purposes of introduction. Like a journalist’s sources

or a salesman’s leads, these characters invariably come with

their own sketchy agenda and veiled opportunism, which may

or may not be apparent until you read the court records. In

this case the agent knew Scarf from years gone by and had

agreed to broker an introduction.

I sent the agent in alone first with my cellphone, under

the guise of a social visit to Scarf. While the agent was in there

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B E I N G U N C L E C H A R L I E | 3

I called him from a pay phone in Perth and laid into him,

berating him about a deal gone wrong and screaming that I

needed my coke. I knew that at that volume, Scarf could hear

every word I said. This ploy accomplished two things: it clearly

put me in charge, letting Scarf know I was someone worthy

of respect, and it made him curious what kind of maniac would

try to force a deal when there were bikers involved. Scarf took

the bait. The agent drove back to the town and got me, and

the two of us returned to the clubhouse. If I got in it would

mark the first time a police officer had walked through that

door. And if I didn’t—well, best not to think about that.

I parked by the entrance to the sturdy lodge-like struc-

ture and took mental note of exactly how much exposure I

was carrying. I never carried a gun, and besides, they’d have

just taken it from me at the door anyway. Usually I travelled

with a cover team—a highly trained, heavily armed backup

squad that spots for me in any tight corner and that I would

trust my life to on a regular basis. But here we were prisoners

of the surrounding geography: there was nothing but open

fields and oppressive sky for miles in every direction, with a

single straight dirt road leading on and off the property. If

something unexpected went down, it would take them half

an hour to reach us—not good odds when you’re going up

against predators with poor impulse control. And so my

cover man, Basil Gavin, was waiting back in Perth by the

phone like an expectant father, and I was on my own.

A monster of a guy frisked us just inside the door. The

single long room featured a bar along one wall and a meeting

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4 | B O B D E A S Y

table in the centre, like something that Vikings would eat off.

Chained underneath it was a completely hairless Doberman,

like Cerberus guarding the Gates of Hell, missing nothing.

The walls had been fortified with oak beams and patched

with brick in places and were decorated with biker porn,

Harley swag, a paper target from a shooting range. A small

room in back was cordoned off with a curtain of glass beads,

and a staircase led to a second f loor, forming a cramped cubby-

hole beneath it with a coffee machine and two or three work-

ing police scanners. Above the scanners I saw something that

made my blood run cold: Scarf had a list of all six of the

members of the Kingston drug unit, and five of them showed

their name, make of car and licence plate number. All of

them were buddies of mine. It was only because I was new

to the region that number six was blank—just waiting for my

name to be filled in.

It was early yet, but Outlaws were trickling in, and Scarf

seemed to be in an expansive mood. Either that or he was

fucking with us. And when guys like that set out to have

some fun it almost never ends well. Sitting to my left was a

big guy named Skeeter, a hulking bruiser with a waist-length

beard. Scarf said to me—a little too casually for my taste,

“Before we get started, would you mind giving Skeeter here

your keys? The cops don’t know your car, and we don’t like

to draw attention to ourselves.” I could have said no, but this

would not have gone over well. I f lashed him a reassuring

smile and dumped my key ring in Skeeter’s giant hand. In a

heartbeat Skeeter unbolted the back door and was gone.

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B E I N G U N C L E C H A R L I E | 5

When he returned, he was carrying a large packet that

had obviously been buried outside. He set it on the table in

front of Scarf, who opened it and poured the contents through

a strainer into a green saucer, then started carving it up into

lines. Up to this point in my career I had never had to do

drugs in the line of duty. Scarf did a line and pushed the

saucer off to his right. When it got around to me there was

one line left. Trying to be as nonchalant as I could, I passed

it on to Scarf. He stared at it a second longer than he had to.

“Excellent—more for me!” he said, and snorted it right up.

The agent went over to the fridge and grabbed two

beers for us. As Billy resumed doling out lines, I noticed a big

surly biker—hell, they were all big and surly—across the

table staring at me.

“You sure about this, Billy?” he asked, not taking his

eyes off me.

“What?” asked Scarf, mercifully slow on the uptake.

“Hey, look, there’s no problem,” I said, starting in on

my patter.

“I’m not fucking talking to you, man—I’m talking to him!”

Everyone at the table drew a sharp breath and held it.

“We’ve never seen this guy before,” he said to Scarf. “We

don’t know him from Adam.”

For the first time that night Scarf took a long, careful

look at me. I watched as his pupils spun down into dots, each

second now the length of five. Roulette numbers seemed to

f licker behind his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”

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PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

Copyright © 2013 Double D Productions and Mark Ebner

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical

means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing

from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published in 2013 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada

Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

www.randomhouse.ca

Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Deasy, Bob

Being uncle Charlie : a life undercover with killers, kingpins, bikers and druglords /

Bob Deasy, with Mark Ebner.

Issued also in electronic format.

ISBN 978-0-345-81282-7

1. Deasy, Bob. 2. Police—Ontario—Biography. 3. Undercover operations—Canada.

4. Organized crime—Canada. 5. Organized crime investigation—Canada. 6. Ontario

Provincial Police—Biography. I. Ebner, Mark C II. Title.

HV7911.D43A3 2013 363.2092 C2013-901527-2

Cover and text design by Jennifer Lum

All images courtesy Bob Deasy

Printed and bound in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

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Being Uncle Charlie by Bob Deasy with Mark Ebner

Being Uncle Charlie is the intense, intimate and graphic story of one Canadian

undercover cop who spent two decades infiltrating organized crime. From

Russian and Italian mafias to notorious biker gangs, Bob Deasy gained access to

and the acceptance of criminals who most cops in any country would never

encounter or arrest, let alone befriend.

Bob Deasy had an illustrious twenty-three year career with the Ontario

Provincial Police. Using little more than his quick wits, natural confidence and a

deft mental equilibrium that allowed him to stay three chess moves ahead of his quarry, Deasy was the

secret weapon behind some of the signature crime busts in Canadian history. Infiltrating the Outlaws

Motorcycle Club and the Russian and Italian mobs, he also single-handedly set up international import-

export businesses, faked contract hit jobs and executed one of the largest drug buys in OPP history. He

also perfected the now controversial "Mr. Big" technique of posing as a crime kingpin to solicit unwitting

confessions from suspects in long-dormant cold murder cases--a tactic he defends as he practised it, and

with which he enjoyed a 100% success rate.

Being Uncle Charlie is a nail-biting ride--sometimes comic, always entertaining--that reads like a one-

man history of modern crime, told through the ground-level, insider's perspective of a cop who was able

to blend in with the unsavoury, the desperate and the diabolical.

Hardcover

Amazon.ca | Indigo

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