UN gang used team of assassins to take out rivals, witness testifies
The United Nations gang had a sub-group of assassins that was always prepared to carry out “surgical” killings, a former UN member testified Wednesday.
The witness, who can only be identified as D, told B.C. Supreme Court that members of the UN had different roles in the notorious gang.
In his second day on the stand at the murder trial of Cory Vallee, D continued to provide general insight into the gang founded by Clay Roueche, who is now serving a 30-year sentence in the U.S. for drug smuggling.
“At the time of Clay’s arrest there was a specific group — an assassin or shooter group — put together,” D said, adding that the killers were “always prepared.”
He told Justice Janice Dillon that there were smaller groups within the UN that had different roles, even when it came to violence.
“There are the blunt instruments you can count on going to a bar and beating someone up or going to their house and threatening them,” D testified. “However if it was going to be a more precision kind of strike where they were going to kill someone or do a shooting of some kind, there would be the surgeon’s tool or sharper instruments if you will.”
Among the gang’s “blunt instruments” were the “Iraqi group” which included the recently deported Barzan Tilli-Choli, Duane Meyer, who was shot to death in May 2008, Trevor (Fingers) Gilbert and the late Johnny (K-9) Croitoru, D said.
The “surgical tool people” would be called upon to commit “violent acts that required considerably more planning,” D said.
“Generally it was members of the FOB Killers or the FK group in Calgary.”
Just like Vallee, some members of the FK have been charged with conspiracy to murder the Bacon brothers over several months in 2008 and 2009.
Vallee is also charged with first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of Bacon pal Kevin LeClair outside a Langley strip mall in February 2009.
D, who was paid more than $300,000 to be a Crown witness, said he travelled to Mexico with Roueche to meet cartel representatives.
After Roueche’s May 2008 arrest, he continued to travel to Mexico for both pleasure and his drug business, D said.
Several photos of D with other UN gangsters in Mexico were shown in court as D provided names and nicknames of those pictures.
He described several UN gang rituals for the judge, including the ceremony at a Vancouver restaurant where UN rings would be presented to members.
He said a man nicknamed Versace, whom Roueche perceived as his uncle, would hand out the rings after a banquet of Chinese seafood and an open bar.
“He would be drunk. He would stand shirtless on a chair. He would give a kind of speech if you will about (being) willing to die for everyone in the group and that everyone is his brother,” D said. “He would call out the individual’s name or names one after the other and he would present them with a ring.”
D said the UN gang existed primarily because members were involved in the drug trade together and knew that if there were more of them, enemies would be less likely to rip them off.
“We are talking sometimes of over a million dollars, so knowing that there are other people with you, other people behind you, gives people pause and perhaps makes them think twice before doing something like that,” D said.
He said Roueche was “the glue that kept the group together.”
“He was very active in organizing dinners and bringing people out. If we were going to a nightclub or having a New Year’s Eve party, he would make sure everyone would come and spend time together and do business together.”
The trial continues.