You ain't true to no crew! This is my crew.
I'm true to the crew.
You're gonna go down, you punk!
Just like Macho Man, you punk scab, rah!
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 advantage of the wrestling.
He wouldn't listen.
He could be laughing so hard that you think he's gonna
pass out, and the next thing you know,
he might have somebody by the throat and
you're thinking, okay, I'm about to witness like
a pretty heinous crime here.
He fed an insatiable appetite 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 K-9 is out on bail in connection with charges
he's facing thanks to the bombing of the
Sudbury Police Station.
You're reading the newspaper article and it's like,
"Ah, 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,
like, really?
I just couldn't bring myself to think that he's a
bad person that deserves to be punished for anything.
That's what blows everybody's mind.
Both sides of his dual life would ultimately implode,
leaving a defeated and broken man in the wake.
He ...ed up.
He ...ed up big time.
♪
(crowd chatter)
On the offensive. Oh, turned around,
ducked underneath that one, look out.
- Ah! - Oh!
If you were a star in the WWF in the mid to late 80s,
chances are you probably beat Johnny K-9
somewhere along the way.
K-9 down! This one is over.
I remember seeing him as kind of a job guy on...
WWF TV, probably, in '85, '86, '87.
So long, Johnny.
Johnny K-9 was one of those, you know,
look, the term offends some people.
It doesn't offend me 'cause I used to do it,
is jobbers, right.
They're the guys that lose on television to the stars.
(match bell)
Hacksaw made quick work of Johnny K-9.
Television was the opportunity to get the stars over.
So, the big-name stars - the Hulk Hogan's,
the Randy Savage's - 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 The Twilight Zone or something.
If you were a wrestling fan watching WWF,
you knew who Johnny K-9 was.
You knew he was gonna drop to his knees and do that X.
What is that thing he does before each match?
- Crosses his arms? - You got me.
- Significant of something. - You got me.
He loved wrestling, and was known for that.
But locally, he was also known as this 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 K-9.
Is there a reason for that name?
It's a long story. I used to work at a bar.
One time I got arrested. I had a 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 K-9. I go, that's the name
I'm gonna use when I go in the ring 'cause I'm a dog.
I know he had been to jail and prison.
'Cause, when I met him, he had just been released.
♪
My name is Tracy Edwards and I was married to Johnny K-9.
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 establishment
stopped what they were doing.
And that blew me away. I was onstage and
I could just see the way the whole bar 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.
♪
Weighing 242 pounds...
After gigs dry up for Johnny at regional WWF TV tapings,
he pursues stardom on
the independent wrestling circuit.
K-9 follows it with an elbow.
I first met Johnny K-9, it was in Chatham, 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 was a long time
professional wrestler and friend of Johnny K-9's.
I saw it on the card that was posted outside in the
hallway that I was wrestling... At that point he was,
he was K-9 Dog of War.
But I knew he was Johnny K-9.
And I hadn't seen him since his,
his WWF days.
And then I walked into the locker room and,
I see, I'll call it the new, improved Johnny K-9, right.
This isn't the 220 pound Johnny K-9.
This guy is muscle on top of muscle.
He's not that lean bodybuilder muscle,
he's that big, thick, like I'm gonna
cave somebody's skull in muscle.
And he had the Fu Manchu. He had the tassel of hair.
And he's got, like, the gym shorts and
he's got the flip flops.
And he was just sitting back and he's like,
"Hey, kid, yeah, it's me and you tonight.
Yeah, me and you. But 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 US with him.
[Tracy] 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 scabs!
Really coming across like scary.
Johnny K-9 was one of the toughest guys out there.
(crowd chatter)
He told the guys all the time, "Hit me.
I don't care. I want blood."
(crowd shouts) Oh!
"If there's no ing blood,
then we're doing it again. You gotta get blood."
Come and fight a real man!
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 5 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 little body.
Johnny's traumatic upbringing would eventually
fuel his tough guy persona in and out of the ring.
You never quite knew when that switch was gonna 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 'cause
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, you just go, "Oh, thank you.
Thank you so much." Well, I get in the truck,
I look at my envelope and I'm like, ah...
And K-9's, "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 'cause I don't know
what he's gonna 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 gotta be 18 inches off the ground.
And it's gritted teeth, "You're gonna short this kid
after he got in the ring and wrestled me!
You want to get in the ing ring and
you wanna take ...ing shots from me, hah, punk?
You give that ing kid his money."
And I'm sitting there going, oh, my god,
like, we're gonna get arrested.
We're in another country.
He scared the hell out of that promoter.
When he let him go, he dropped to his knees,
gasping for air.
And this guy's just throwing money at me.
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 gonna
short you on money again."
And I'm like, "No, no, but Johnny,
I'm also pretty sure that guy's never gonna 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 to me, he was a gentle soul, you know.
He was like this standup 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,
"Um, yeah, that'll be $20, please, sir."
And I would laugh so hard.
(chuckles) He was so funny.
I think Johnny K-9 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 gonna 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,
he's not half bad.
And he's just loving it 'cause everybody's eating it up.
♪ (drumming) ♪
Then he gets on the microphone and
starts singing, and of all his skills,
singing is not one of them.
♪ I SPENT THE LAST YEAR ♪
♪ ON ROCKY MOUNTAIN WAY ♪
Wrestlers are falling off of chairs laughing so hard.
And the more we laugh and put it over,
the more he's gonna do it.
(microphone feedback)
I can sing some shit.
And, that's actually the, 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 territory
with southern wrestling feel.
And to do that, we not only needed established wrestlers
that the people knew, that were stars to them,
but we also needed to constantly find new names,
new wrestlers, new ways to make matches.
(cheering)
The team that I was managing,
the Heavenly Bodies and I,
were booked on an event 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 could make that face.
He had this giant tattoo across his stomach,
"True To The Crew".
I said, "There's gotta 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 you be interested in coming to
Tennessee and working for me,
3, 4 days a week if we can come to some agreement?"
He said, "Yeah, Jimmy! I'm all over it!"
We asked him one time in the locker room,
the tattoo, True To The Crew.
He said, "Oh, guys, I was in jail one time,
and all of the guys in jail, we decided we were gonna
get that tattoo when we got out."
And I said, "Well, once you got out of jail,
you know, is anybody gonna check?"
"No, Jimmy, you don't understand.
These guys, you say you're gonna do something,
you do it."
That was the first time that I got an inkling that
Bruiser had a checkered past.
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 K-9,
promoter Jim Cornette prepares for Johnny's
arrival at Smoky Mountain Wrestling,
in Tennessee.
I didn't think that Johnny K-9 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 office attractions in wrestling.
When his promotion was in its dying days,
had a television show called Bruiser Bedlam.
Jim rebranded a lot of guys.
It's like The Thrill Seekers,
Jericho and I had wrestled as 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.
Lance Storm and Chris Jericho,
The Thrill Seekers!
And 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, everybody's going, "Who's that?"
"Oh, he used to be Johnny K-9."
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 tank top on with no coat.
I go, "What are you doing?" He says, "Don't worry.
It's gonna be so hot so ...in' 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.
You're just like, oh, my god, who is this guy?
You know, is he gonna be a crazed maniac or what?
But, 10 seconds of meeting him,
he's just like, "Hey, buddy, how you doing?"
And it's like, "Hey!"
And, you know, his demeanour was,
you know, just big teddy bear.
To cement Bruiser Bedlam as his new monster heel,
Cornette books him in a main 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.
(cheering)
And Bruiser beat him.
The cover, 1, 2, 3!
And people were like, "He 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 can break a beer bottle over my head."
"Okay." So, we got the camera rolling,
he's got the bottle in his hand, and he's...
Bam!
It didn't break.
I'm like, "Bruiser, you know we can gimmick that."
"No, I, 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.
And handed it to him, said, "Now break it."
Yah, yah!
This is what I'm about!
You got a guy bleeding on television,
screaming, "I'm gonna kill you."
I believed him.
I don't know. (laughs)
Johnny K-9 grew up in a rough neighbourhood
where criminality was another option.
♪
My name is Bill Dunphy.
I am 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 different than they were 10 years,
15 years earlier.
Johnny grew up borderline poor,
barely making it.
So, the wrestling, you know, he made a bit of money,
but not near as much as he wanted.
So, that's why he worked for a family,
I'm not gonna say the name.
The Gravelle family,
which was a big family in Hamilton.
My name's Len Isnor. 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 Johnny K-9 and he would take
a profit off and he would collect the money.
And 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 for 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 Harley's 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 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 Club.
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 is my name.
I knew Johnny from Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club.
Nobody that I know of ever came up that fast.
Even though I didn't like it, personally, I understood.
Because if, if you wanted to look at the big picture,
the big picture's money.
When people hear, in that drug crime world,
you got Johnny K-9 backing you...
You make more money.
People are in' scared, right.
So, it was easy for him to make 20,
30 grand in a matter of 20 ...in' minutes, no joke.
Well, Johnny had heat written all over him.
You know, extorting bars and restaurants
in your home town. 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 K-9 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
we 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 4 or 5 of 'em 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 goes, "Hey, buddy, if I'm gonna live here,
I'm gonna do my share, hey, buddy."
So, in his mind, his share was washing the dishes.
I went into the cupboard to grab a plate and
I pulled a plate out, there's all these,
like, pieces of food kind of crusted on and...
I watch 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 this and putting it back.
The dish is clean. So, the next time he went,
"Hey, buddy, I'll do..." "Dude, it's fine.
It's fine, you know, you're the guest in the house.
You want to do your part, take the garage out,"
or whatever, you know. 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 "The Snake" Roberts was in one main event.
The other one was gonna be Bruiser Bedlam versus
Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
Bruiser Bedlam, you gotta understand that these are
glory days for Smoky Mountain Wrestling.
Randy sat down with me, said,
"This is your guy, right?
He's gonna 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 favour to come down and appear on my show,
and now, he wants to lose to my new top heel.
(cheering)
I tried to interfere...
Down goes Cornette!
Other people got involved.
(indistinct commentary)
But Bruiser Bedlam pinned Randy Savage.
1, 2, 3.
Bruiser Bedlam nails Macho Man!
That was, in a lot of ways to Johnny,
like here I am.
I'm not, I'm not that job guy anymore.
You're gonna go down, you punk.
Just like Macho Man! You punk scab, pah!
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 9 months, of having Bruiser Bedlam in my
locker rooms or at the Smoky Mountain flophouse.
Send you mother...
(laughing)
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.
I'm the man down in this area!
I beat them all! (indistinct speaking)
I'm gonna beat ya!
He just wasn't happy, the shows were smaller.
Tell the fans to take their seats...
All... (indistinct speaking)
please try to remain in your seats.
His heart was truly broken.
All he wanted to do was make it, you know.
(indistinct shouts & screams)
Maybe he was hoping that, you know,
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 and 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, 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, so forth.
And, Johnny will come out sometimes and,
and he'll say, "What are you guys up to?
Wasting the tax payers' dollars."
You don't talk to the cops.
What is the reason, you know, other than...
thinking you're more intelligent,
thinking that you're untouchable.
I don't know. But, it's...
it's not good.
We'd get information from him without him really knowing.
Like, his bike's in the 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 Len Isnor and his team
utilize wire taps to monitor the activities
of Johnny and his gang.
We noticed early in our investigation that there was
a relationship between the Hamilton Satan's Choice
and the Sudbury.
They seemed to hang out more.
Johnny K-9 formed a relationship with a member
of the Sudbury chapter by the name of Michael Dube.
Michael Dube 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 Solid Gold was a...
adult entertainment... place.
All the Sudbury members fold up their colours and
they put them in their saddlebags.
And, Johnny K-9 says, "What are you guys doing?"
He says, "Well, you can't wear colours in The Solid Gold.
It says no colours."
Johnny said, "Hell with that.
We're gonna wear our colours 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 said,
"We can't serve you.
There's a no colours policy here.
And we'd like you to leave."
The Satan's Choice members dug their heels in and say,
"No, we're not leaving."
Sudbury police are called and there's a face off,
basically, between the Sudbury police and
the Satan's Choice.
The Satan's Choice backed down.
Johnny K-9 and Mike Dube talk about how upset
they were with what happened at 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 plans and,
Michael Dube decides that this bomb is not
gonna go to The Solid Gold.
He decides that this bomb is gonna 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.
♪
(bang)
♪
(bang)
A phone call is basically made to Johnny,
another member calls him and says,
"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 the members in,
in Hamilton on narcotics charges,
on extortion charges, collecting money.
Plus, we also have the bombing.
Now, when we go into the Hamilton clubhouse,
they did everything they could to 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.
(bang)
So, they're coming in with flash bangs.
(bang)
♪
Laser sight.
♪
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.
(sirens)
Then I realized.
I looked, I could see all the boots.
♪
50 SWAT team members came bursting into our home.
♪
Yeah, it was over at that moment.
Yeah... yeah.
♪
The Hamilton Wentworth Regional Police Emergency
Response Unit moved in on the Satan's Choice clubhouse
on Lottridge Street.
Club president, Johnny K-9, is out 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."
(laughs) 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 the 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, The Solid Gold."
In this case, Johnny K-9 was interrogated by a
biker squad officer who just knows how to
lean on him enough to get him to...
point at someone.
With wiretap evidence and Johnny K-9's statement
to authorities, Michael Dube is implicated as the
mastermind behind the police station bombing,
and Johnny is released on bail.
One of their unwritten rules is,
you don't make any statement to the police.
You don't assist them in their investigation.
So, when he comes out of jail...
they remove him from the club.
♪
He was...
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 ...ing rat."
And I just up and ing 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, yeah.
♪
In January of 2000, he went off to prison
for bombing the police station.
Our baby was about 2 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.
'Til he followed me out there, 2002.
He got released.
He told me that he missed me and everything,
but honestly, I think that he was 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...
(sighs) 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 past as an enforcer
comes back to haunt him.
He's arrested for a double murder committed in 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, a Gravelle drug case was one that had troubled her
and she had mentioned it to someone else,
that she 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 Gravelle family.
Johnny K-9 and Andre Gravelle
were charged with murder about 9 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 Gravelle and Johnny K-9
are innocent of that crime.
In 2006, murder charges were withdrawn against Johnny and
Andre Gravelle when prosecutors determined there
was no real prospect of conviction.
Gravelle subsequently sues authorities in Ontario,
alleging malicious prosecution,
and 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 gonna ing do for money?"
I said, "Movie industry."
Sammy! (shouts)
Little help, little help!
Not a great actor. He tried his best and
he had a lot of fun doing it, you know.
But, then he, he was in a gym in
North Vancouver and saw a Hell's Angel.
Then he, 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... are you doing?"
Out on 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 100 pounds of weed in my kitchen
while my kids were at daycare.
And he'd go, "Wait a minute.
I'm gonna spray it with whiskey and Coca-Cola.
It'll weigh more and we'll make more money."
I'm like, "You're ...ing crazy."
So, we'd be there spraying the weed all over
my kitchen floor, and I'd be bagging 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 UN 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 BC 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 9 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 K-9 pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.
However, the first-degree murder charge is stayed.
After serving 4 years of his prison sentence,
Johnny is released to a halfway house in Toronto.
And he was supposed to come back to Vancouver
in 6 weeks.
But instead, the police came to my door.
And, they said, "Do you know Ion Croitoru?"
And I said, "Yeah."
Now, in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, shit.
I said, "What's going on?" And...
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 21, 2017,
Ion William Croitoru,
aka Johnny K-9, 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...
in trouble on the west coast.
So, either it was a hot shot
'cause they wanted him gone.
You know, and...
somebody gave him some, some good stuff.
And, 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, but...
Somebody sent me the headline,
"Natural causes succeed where mobsters and
gangsters failed - Johnny K-9 is dead."
And it looked like the headline of a Chicago
newspaper for something like Capone in The Outfit.
And I started laughing and I just thought...
If Johnny K-9 could write his own headline
for his death...
That's what he'd write.
Well, he, he had that charisma that forms...
folk heroes.
Al Capone was a very dangerous person,
and the fact that he killed people and,
and was involved in crime his whole life,
he made a living in crime and,
and the fact that they, they made him a folk hero.
And these types of descriptions
sort of fit Johnny K-9.
I mean, we're still talking about him.
I mean... yeah.
Johnny's death certainly doesn't bring closure.
A 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 realizing how deep
he was in with guys that were killing people.
Um, no.
I, I totally disagree with what Tracy would say.
Johnny K-9 is a very dangerous person.
And, I...
believe that...
how can I put this? (clears throat)
I don't doubt for a minute that he's involved in homicide.
If you asked the wrestlers he shared a locker room with,
couldn't be a nicer guy.
If you asked the families of the people that
he's alleged to have been responsible for killing,
you'd probably get a different answer.
Smash a beer bottle over his head.
(indistinct chatter & laughs)
We will try it today, Jimmy!
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 to 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 that 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 follow this life,
in three years...
you're gonna 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 K-9!
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 him.
(screams) What's going on?
Wrestling is, is subjective. It is to you what it is.
In my opinion, he was the baddest mother... er
in the ring, and he had a good time doing what he loved.
♪