JOHNNY K-9 DID NOT DIE AS HE LIVED. HOW COULD HE? THE FORMER PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER WAS A BIKER, GANGSTER AND BIT-PART ACTOR WHO FOUND HIMSELF EMBROILED IN UNDERWORLD MAYHEM.
Johnny K-9 made name in wrestling, crime
As hugely colourful as he was just huge, Ion Kroitoru — better known by his nickname Johnny K-9 — was a biker, gangster, former professional wrestler and bit-part actor who constantly found himself embroiled in alarming and dangerous underworld mayhem, from bombing a police station to gangland murders.
Kroitoru, 53, died Tuesday night inside a Toronto halfway house, found unconscious by staff with his electronic monitoring bracelet still on his thick ankle, six months after his release from a B.C. prison.
After his raucous life alongside some of the most dangerous names in Canadian organized crime — from Hamilton to Vancouver — the biggest shock, perhaps, is his death is deemed to be from natural causes.
In the ring, Kroitoru, whose name is alternately spelled Croitoru, fought under the name The Terrible Turk and Bruiser Bedlam.
Six-feet tall and 300 pounds, he was barrel chested and thickly muscular. Recruited into wrestling after a fighter saw him working as a bouncer at a roughand-tumble Hamilton bar, he earned a reputation as a hugely entertaining and dirty fighter described by a commentator as being “like an animal or a dog” in the ring.
He made it into the World Wrestling Federation in the 1980s under the name Johnny K-9 as a “heel” or bad guy, and was dubbed the “most dangerous man in wrestling.”
He said he took the nickname when he was arrested and saw “K-9,” the designation for a police dog, painted on the side of the police vehicle he was placed in. That name stuck. Kroitoru was a man who could be genial and lighthearted but was also had an easy comfort with violence, inside and outside of the ring.
The youngest of six kids, Kroitoru grew up fast and tough. His long criminal history began early in his life.
He worked as an enforcer and debt collector for the mob, accumulating a rap sheet for assault, extortion and drugs before he got serious in the underworld.
He recently said he rarely had to hit anyone because everyone quickly paid his debt when he came to call just by looking at him.
Kroitoru revelled in the money, notoriety and fame he drew from working with serious gangsters.
He first made a name for himself in organized crime as the president of the Hamilton, Ont., chapter of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club. He pleaded guilty in the 1990s to conspiring to bomb a strip club in Sudbury after the club asked members of the gang to remove their jackets bearing their gang’s colours. It led to a standoff with Sudbury police.
Kroitoru secured the explosive but, in the end, the bikers moved their ambition up a notch and, in 1996, his bomb was instead used to blow up Sudbury’s police headquarters. It punched a hole in the wall and made an immense statement, but no one was injured.
After the 1997 murder of John “Johnny Pops” Papalia, a Mafia chieftain based in Hamilton who was one of the country’s leading mobsters, Kroitoru’s name again emerged.
In response to the murder, Papalia’s killer and the rival mobsters who he said ordered the hit braced for a response from the mob clan; they drafted a list of those who might strike back on Papalia’s behalf. Kroitoru was near the top.
Alongside others, Kroitoru was arrested in 2005 and charged in the 1998 shotgun slayings of Lynn Gilbank, a Hamilton criminal defence lawyer, and her husband Fred, a computer specialist. The prosecution in that case ended after one of the longest bail hearings in Canadian history when it was deemed there would be no reasonable prospect of a conviction.
He then moved to Vancouver and worked in security for the film industry and also had small parts in films.
Kroitoru, however, was unable to avoid the lure of gang life and the easy money he sought. In Vancouver he started working with the United Nations gang.
In 2008 and 2009, a drug war between the UN gang and rivals in the Red Scorpions, led by the Bacon brothers, gripped B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
In a case of mistaken identity, a man who was driving one of the Bacon brothers’ cars was shot dead and his girlfriend injured.
In 2013, Kroitoru pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and marijuana in lieu of the firstdegree murder charges he faced. His sentence was 13 years in prison minus time in pre-trial custody. It was his third federal prison term.
In applying for parole, he downplayed his role in the B.C. gang war, saying he was only guilty of being a braggart and having “false bravado,” he told parole officials. He merely wanted to impress his new friends.
“I am no angel,” he told parole officials, but because of his reputation he gets blamed for more than he really does, he said. If he is around trouble, everyone believes he is responsible, he complained. He would never kill anyone, he said.
Kroitoru was freed on statutory release in August 2016.
KROITORU REVELLED IN NOTORIETY AND FAME HE DREW FROM WORKING WITH GANGSTERS.