Grisly Canada Slays Tied To Bike Gang

Police: 8 Men Found Dead In Abandoned Cars Linked To 'Bandidos'

(AP)  Canadian police say eight men found dead inside vehicles on a farm over the weekend were affiliated with a biker gang and that five people have been arrested on murder charges.

Police called it "an internal cleansing" of the Bandidos motorcycle gang and said that the eight victims suffered gunshot wounds. The bodies were found Saturday on a farm in Shedden, Ontario, about 90 miles northeast of Detroit.

Police on Monday searched a farmhouse owned by a gang member near the site in one of Canada's biggest mass-murders in a decade.

Police were seen at the modest, white two-story farmhouse with an attached garage and a number of vehicles parked outside. Officers were walking three abreast as they scanned the ground for evidence. They refused to discuss what was happening beyond acknowledging the roadblock they had set up around the farmhouse, about six miles from where the bodies were found in four vehicles deserted in a farmer's field Saturday morning..

The gangland-style murders are the worst in the province of Ontario's history and the most grisly in Canada since 1996, when spurned husband Mark Chahal went on a shooting rampage in Vernon, British Columbia, killing nine people, including his estranged wife and himself.

Edward Winterhalder, a former member of the Bandidos motorcycle gang who lives in Oklahoma, said he had talked to current members in the area who recognized the vehicles from the media coverage.

"I can tell you that it's Bandidos that got killed," said Winterhalder, who left the gang in 2003 and wrote "Out in Bad Standings," a book on his time in the gang. The owner of the farmhouse where police were searching was affiliated with the Bandidos, Winterhalder said.

Toronto-based organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso told The Associated Press that he learned from a reliable source that three members of the Toronto Bandidos have been missing since Friday. He said there were 12 members in the group.

Nicaso said the Bandidos were not that big or influential in Canada, but they are the major competitor of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in the United States.

"If it is confirmed that the eight bodies were all members of the Bandidos you could say that someone decided to erase the Bandidos from the biker map," Nicaso said.

He said all messages of condolences had been taken off the Bandidos Web site, leading him to speculate that the murders may have been an inside job by club members.

The eight victims knew each other and were all from the Toronto area, said police, who characterized the deaths as homicides but declined to release further details.

"We're in the middle of an active investigation right now," said Ontario police Constable Dennis Harwood.

The rural area where the bodies were found has had problems with motorcycle gangs in the past, but is generally considered low-crime compared to other parts of Canada, in particular Quebec, where biker violence is more common.