Giovanni Muscedere

Giovanni "John" Muscedere (25 May 1957 – 7 April 2006), also known as "Boxer", was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who served as the national president of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Canada from 2002 until his murder in 2006.

His parents, Domenico and Ortensia Muscedere, were from Vicalvi-Pozzuoli, Frosinone near Lazio, and left Italy in 1957 to escape post-war poverty.

Muscedere grew up in an Italian-speaking household and he always spoke with an Italian accent, which he tried to hide by mumbling.

Those who knew him described him as sounding like Sylvester Stallone's character Rocky Balboa.

As a child, he was often bullied for being a "wop" and a "dogan" (derogatory Canadian slang for a Roman Catholic), and fought back, acquiring a great reputation as a fighter, which led him to take up boxing as his hobby.

Muscedere's friends and family believed the childhood bullying had scarred him, making him adopt a tough persona to hide any weaknesses, which explained his love of boxing and later motorcycles.

One who knew him stated: "He didn't really want to be somebody anybody could look down on. He wanted respect".

Muscedere enjoyed some success as an amateur boxer, but his early marriage and his first child's birth prevented him from becoming a professional boxer as he would have liked, forcing him to take a job in order to support his family.

Muscedere was born in Windsor, Ontario in 1959, the son of Italian immigrants, moving to Chatham at the age of 12.

Muscedere worked at a factory making automobile brakes in Chatham from 1979 until his murder, a job he hated as he found it very dull, but it gave him a good salary.

After his first and second wives divorced him and were awarded custody of their children, Muscedere took up riding motorcycles, finding in the world of outlaw biking a surrogate family for those he had lost with his divorces.

Muscedere had a strong sense of masculinity informed by traditional Italian values, for instance always paying the child support payments to both his ex-wives on time and in full on the grounds it was dishonourable for a father to let down his children.

In 1997, Muscedere joined the Annihilators Motorcycle Club led by Wayne "Weiner" Kellestine.

At the time, Muscedere was in a stressful second divorce and he came to find that Kellestine's farmhouse at 32196 Aberdeen Line outside of Iona Station to be a refuge from his troubles.

Muscedere deeply believed in biker "brotherhood", being known as a man who was utterly loyal to his friends.

One who knew him said: "He was all or nothing. If he liked you, he liked you, and if he didn't like you, you knew".

Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent with The Toronto Star stated about "Boxer" Muscedere: "Boxer's fatal flaw was that he didn't discriminate between false and real brotherhood. If someone played the brotherhood card, he was vulnerable. Pretty good way to manipulate him; some things were sacred, and brotherhood was. It's funny, some of these guys do have moral codes. Maybe not like ours. But to (Muscedere), brotherhood and family trumped everything."

Muscedere was very loyal to his biker "brother" Kellestine, often donating money to help Kellestine pay the mortgage on his farm from his own salary, despite the fact that his other friends had warned him that Kellestine was just using him.

Muscedere did not share Kellestine's views about non-whites, Jews or homosexuals, but Kellestine was the man who let him join the Annihilators, which made him his biker "brother".

Having been bullied for being his ethnic background as a child, Muscedere didn't understand why Kellestine always referred to black people as "niggers", First Nations people as "redskins", gays as "faggots", East Asians as "gooks" and Jews as "kikes".

When asked if he shared Kellestine's racial views, Muscedere often said that: "They all have a mother. People are who they are. They just have to be given respect. Look at how people look at us".

On 2 June 1999, Kellestine's Annihilators, based in St. Thomas, joined the Loners club in Woodbridge led by Gennaro "Jimmy" Raso.

In face of the challenge coming from the Hells Angels, Kellestine decided he needed allies, and with the Outlaws being unwilling to accept him, he had decided to merge with the Loners instead.

Kellestine, the Annihilators president, became the new president of the Chatham chapter of the Loners at the time of the merger in 1999.

Following Kellestine into the Loners was Muscedere.

For Kellestine and Muscedere, joining the Loners was a step up in the outlaw biker world, while the Loners – a disproportionate number of whom were Italian-Canadians from middle-class families – could barely hide their disdain for the Annihilators, whom they viewed as rustic bumpkins from Southwestern Ontario.

The Loners had accepted the Annihilators because of the need to increase their numbers in face of the challenge from the Hells Angels.

At the time that Muscedere joined the Loners, he became close to another Loner and fellow Italian-Canadian, Frank "Bammer" Salerno, who to a certain extent displaced Kellestine as his best friend as Muscedere and Salerno would chat in Italian.

In October 2001, Joe "Crazy Horse" Morin, president of the Edmonton chapter of the Rebels outlaw biker club, first contacted the Bandidos with the aim of "patching over".

At a party at Kellestine's farm, Morin and the other Rebels were not impressed with Kellestine's eccentric behavior, seeing the Bandido treasurer Luis "Chopper" Raposo get high on various drugs and a "coked out" Muscedere lose his temper and beat up one of his "brothers" over a trivial matter.

Amigo was initially facilitated under a different name and its initial purpose was to target the Rock Machine due to its participation in the Quebec Biker War; when the Rock Machine patched over to the Bandidos in January 2001, the operation was renamed and shifted focus to the Bandidos Canada.

Every single Bandido (all of which were former members of the Rock Machine) in Quebec was arrested as were most of the Ontario members.

The investigation was the end of the Bandidos in Quebec, finally ending the Quebec Biker War.

As Project Amigo was originally started as an investigation of the Rock Machine, the former Loners in the Bandidos largely escaped charges, but Project Amigo crippled the Bandidos in Canada.

The Bandidos' Canadian national president, Alain Brunette, was charged with conspiracy to import drugs, and Muscedere, as the only senior Bandido not in prison or facing charges, became his successor.

Following Project Amigo, the Canadian Bandidos consisted of fifteen members in Ontario spread over three chapters who were consolidated into a single chapter based in Toronto, although its members were actually scattered across Southern Ontario.

On 2 February 2002, Muscedere attended the London Auto Show and hugged Mario "Mike the Wop" Parente, the Outlaw national president.

Both Muscedere and Parente were nearly involved in a brawl with the Hells Angels who were led by the Ottawa chapter president Paul "Sasquatch" Porter, and which in turn led the police to expel Muscedere from the building as a trouble-maker after he took to insulting the Angels on the auto show floor.

In the spring of 2002, Muscedere became the Bandidos national vice president.

On 5 June 2002, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Sûreté du Québec targeted the Bandidos in Quebec and Ontario in a joint operation, Project Amigo.