Frank Ryan (gangster)

Ryan was born of Irish descent in a poor neighborhood of Montreal.[1] His father abandoned their family when Ryan was three years old, leaving his mother to raise him by herself.[2] Ryan dropped out of school at the age of 16 and led his own teenage gang who participated in "petty" crimes such as smash and grabs, garment thefts from trucks, and breaking and entering.[2] Ryan's specialty as a teenager was in stealing fur coats from delivery trucks and selling them on the black market.[1] By 1962, he already had dozens of convictions for robbery, possession of stolen goods, and possession of a false drivers' license.[1]

Ryan continued his crime spree throughout the 1960s, being convicted of robbery with violence and of burglary.[2] He served both sentences at the St. Vincent de Paul prison.[2] In 1965, Ryan killed a man while driving drunk.[2] His conviction was overturned on a technicity.[1] Ryan felt a much resentment about being charged for manslaughter, and he came to feel a grudge against the Quebec justice system, which he felt was biased against him.[1] Starting in 1966, Ryan started to frequent the Country Palace on rue Sherbrooke where his biographer, Daniel Burke, wrote: "Hoods from all over the country, but especially the Irish Catholic ghettos, gathered at the Country Palace. Primarily strong arms and bank robbers, the Irish Canadians were an important element of the Montreal underworld, and the nightclub was a mine of contacts for Ryan. There, through the Irish-Canadian links with the Boston underworld, he found the bridge to bigger opportunities and his first costly setback".[1]

In 1966, he was convicted of a bank robbery in Boston for which he served 6 years of a 15-year sentence in an American prison.[2] Ryan and four other men robbed the Essex County Bank and Trust on 24 August 1966, but were arrested by the Boston police shortly afterwards.[1] After his parole in December 1972, Ryan joined what was then called the Irish Gang to help him continue his criminal enterprises, which now included loansharking as well as robberies.[2] In 1973, he married Evelyn Lemieux from the Gaspé.[2] Ryan had an easy-going personality, which made him popular, and he soon became the leader of the West End Gang.[3] Starting in 1973, Ryan and the West End Gang went on a rampage of robbing jewelry stores and armoured cars for banks.[1]

The West End Gang did not the same rigid hierarchical structure of the Mafia, and Ryan's status was more as primus inter pares rather as a boss in the traditional sense of the term.[3] Besides for robbing jewelry stores and loansharking, Ryan had the West End Gang start selling hashish, and then heroin and cocaine.[2] Ryan assembled a crew that consisted of Patrick "Hughie" McGurnaghan, Paul April, Allan "The Weasel" Ross, the Matticks brothers, Peter White, and Kenny McPolland as his principle lieutenants.[1]

After his initial forays in the drug market, Ryan realized that this was a market that could be expanded.[2] He soon built a drug network that spread throughout Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. The West End Gang, as the Irish Gang had been renamed sometime in the late 1970s, took control of the Port of Montreal, which allowed them to smuggle in drugs on a scale that other gangs could not.[4] Ryan's point-man for the Port of Montreal was Gerald Matticks and his brothers.[5] Ryan was content to be a wholesaler, who sold drugs to the Mafia and the outlaw biker clubs who in turn sold drugs to the street gangs.[6] He also began to engage in fund-raising and gun-running for the Irish Republican Army (IRA), both sending and receiving guns from Northern Ireland.[5] Proud of his Irish heritage, Ryan wore a golden Claddagh ring on his third finger.[5] Ryan was rumored to be worth $20 million dollars, which was possibly an exaggeration, through he was clearly wealthy.[6]

By the late 1970s, Ryan developed relationships with other criminal organizations in Montreal, including the Hells Angels and Cotroni crime family.[7] Ryan made a deal with Frank Cotroni that the Controni family would buy drugs exclusively from the West End Gang.[7] As both of these criminal organizations depended on Ryan's steady supply of drugs, Ryan was on the top of the criminal foodchain in Quebec.[6] Ryan was known for his contempt for the other criminal organizations, once saying: "Mafia, pafia. It's there's a war, we've got the IRA".[6] Through his American cousin, Peter White, Ryan made an alliance with the Irish Mob of Boston.[7] Ryan also formed an alliance with Yves Buteau, the national president of the Hells Angels, whom become one of his largest customers.[8] Buteau also become Ryan's main subcontractor as Ryan often made use of the services of the Angels' ace assassin, the hitman Yves "Apache" Trudeau.

When another crime figure, Patrick "Hughie" McGurnaghan, cheated Ryan in a drug deal and carried a $100,000 debt, Ryan contacted the Hells Angels' North chapter for assistance. Hells Angels member Trudeau was dispatched to kill McGurnaghan.[6] On 27 October 1981, Trudeau planted a car bomb on McGurnaghan's Mercedes-Benz, killing him and seriously injuring a male passenger.[9] According to police documents, it was believed that Ryan was worth up to $50 million.[7] Ryan was said to have a briefcase full of $500,000 dollars that he kept on his person.[7]

Ryan refused advice to retire as he stated: "If your tap was flowing $100 bills, would you turn it off? I've got three hundred guys working for me. What are they gonna do?"[6] Ryan was known for his rambunctious and rowdy personality, often saying he wanted to "live fast, love hard and die young".[6] By 1982, Ryan was known within the Montreal underworld as the "King of Coke".[5] Ryan was a popular gang boss, who was well liked for his generosity towards his men with one of his followers, John Philips calling him a "honorable thief".[10] Philips recalled that Ryan would "help anybody that came out of the can [prison] anytime! He'd say, 'Well, I'd see what I can for you. Here's five hundred bucks; go get yourselves some clothes and whatever the fuck you need'. Dunnie was like that. He was generous to a fault".[10]

In January 1982, Ryan learned that two Hells Angels, Denis "Le Cure" Kennedy and Charles Hachey, were planning to kidnap Ryan's children to force him to forgive their drug debts.[11] Ryan gave an ultimatum to Buteau that either the two would-be kidnappers be killed or else he would cease selling drugs to the biker club.[11] Buteau dispatched Trudeau after the two, whom Trudeau executed after taking them out for drinks in a bar.[12] In 1983, Ryan had become wealthy enough to purchase to a large house at 541 Montrose Drive in the wealthy neighborhood of Beaconsfield, where he lived with his wife and two children.[13]