Potter confessed to murder: informant
Ex-motorcycle club member says he had $150,000 contract with RCMP for information
He started as a prospect for the Vikings Motorcycle Club, recruited, he said, by its thenpresident to do whatever he was told.
He was given a leather vest with green and white patches at first (the colours of the Vikings before the club became “an offshoot of the Hells Angels,” he said). Months later, when he became a full-patch Viking, his colours were switched to red and white. As a prospect, the man said, his main job was selling drugs for members of the club; he sold marijuana, prescription pills like Percocet, and cocaine for members, including Vince Leonard Sr., Vince Leonard Jr., Shane Leonard and Wayne Johnson. Shane was technically the president of the biker club, the man explained, though it was Leonard Sr. who controlled it behind the scenes.
“They knew I would do whatever they asked me to do,” the man said. “As a prospect, you’re kind of like the servant of the club. If a member asks you to do something, you can’t refuse.”
Allan Potter was also a member, the man said, and he began selling drugs for Potter in July 2014.
That’s around the same time Potter and another man are alleged to have murdered 39-yearold fisherman Dale Porter in his North River driveway.
The man testified at Potter’s trial in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in St. John’s Wednesday under heavy security, since he is now in witness protection and lives outside the province.
He was escorted in and out of the courtroom by sheriffs and a number of armed Mounties, one of them carrying a large military-style duffel bag over his shoulder.
The 39-year-old told the court a number of the Vikings members, including Potter, lived in the downtown Cabot Street neighbourhood at the time of Porter’s murder. The man said he didn’t see Potter for about a week after Porter died.
During that week, the man said, he was awoken early one morning with instructions to pick up Leonard Sr.’s green Lincoln Town Car from a home on Cabot Street and help deliver it with Shane Leonard and Wayne Johnson to the Vikings clubhouse in Cupids.
The men then returned to the downtown home, and the exviking said Leonard Sr. passed a black-handled folding knife, wrapped in a dishcloth, to Shane. The man, Shane and Johnson then got into Johnson’s truck — where Shane laid the knife on the centre console — and drove toward Cape Spear.
The former biker said he had seen the knife before, on a number of occasions.
“I knew it was Al’s,” he told the court, saying Potter had carried the knife in a case on his belt and he had seen him use it to open boxes.
When shown a photo of a folding knife located in a roadside brook in Brigus in the days after Porter’s death, the man said he didn’t recognize it.
The men stopped at a lookout area before reaching Cape Spear and walked toward the shoreline, the ex-viking testified.
“Shane continued to walk as close as he could (to the shoreline) and threw the knife. It landed in the ocean and I guess it sunk,” he said.
The men got back in the truck and returned to Cabot Street, where they were given instructions to bring a black Cadillac to a home in Shea Heights. The man said he pulled into the driveway, and someone else drove the car inside a garage on the property.
The man said he was at Potter’s residence one day to give him some money he owed him, when Potter ordered a pizza and told him that he had stabbed Porter.
“He told me what happened the night he was around the bay. He told me he was at a club and a guy was making fun of the colours of the club and stuff like that, saying, ‘You think you’re big, tough guys,’ and was disrespectful, making fun of them,” the man said. “He told me (the co-accused) said, ‘We can’t let him get away with it,’ and they buddied up to (Porter) so he would trust them.
“They went to (Porter’s) place and when they got out of the car, they proceeded to attack Mr. Porter. Al had stabbed him while (the other man) kicked and punched him while he was down on the ground.”
The man said he left the Vikings after a row with Leonard Sr. He cut his vest in half and threw it in the garbage in front of Leonard Sr., he said, and told him he was done.
“Why did you leave?” asked Crown prosecutor Sheldon Steeves.
“I just got fed up with the kinds of things that were being done and I didn’t want to be a part of that anymore,” the man replied.
In March 2016, the man said, he was approached by the RCMP and asked to become an agent, gathering information for them about the Vikings and Potter, who had not yet been arrested. He signed a contract - which was presented in court - and was told he’d be paid $800 a week plus $150,000 in three equal instalments. A month later, the man’s contract was cancelled after he was charged with breaking a peace bond against his exgirlfriend.
As an agent, police had been monitoring his phone line and had intercepted calls between the two, the court heard, as well as calls that led them to believe the man was selling drugs. After a number of warnings, his contract was terminated.
The contract was later reinstated, but with a lower financial incentive: $75,000 instead of $150,000. The man said he was due to receive the final $25,000 payment after his testimony at Potter’s trial Wednesday.
“What led you to want to be an agent for the RCMP?” Steeves asked.
“I was seeing people who committed the murder getting away with it,” said the man, known among investigators as Agent 2. “(Porter) didn’t have any dealings with Vikings, so I didn’t understand why it had to happen.”
Potter sat in the dock, taking notes as the agent testified, at times shaking his head in disagreement.
On cross-examination, defence lawyer Jon Noonan questioned the former Viking on how he had planned to get information for police if he was no longer a member of the biker club. The man said he no longer considered himself a club member once he cut up his colours, although members of the Vikings still did.
The man acknowledged through Noonan’s questioning that he had been addicted to Percocet for most of his adult life, having been prescribed them after an accident when he was a teenager. For a number of years, drug trafficking was his only source of income, he said.
Noonan asked the agent why he told police the knife Shane had thrown into the ocean was non-folding, when he testified in court Wednesday it folded. The man said he had been mistaken when he talked to police.
“It was a very stressful time for me,” he told Noonan.
“Can’t be more stressful than this,” Noonan replied.
The defence lawyer asked the man why he hadn’t gone to police with the information he had about Porter’s murder.
“If the knife was involved in a murder, you’d be an accomplice,” Noonan pointed out. “You never went to police to get it off your chest, ease your conscience?” “No,” the agent replied. Noonan said the agent had previously testified Potter was doing LSD and suggested he was having hallucinations around the time they had the conversation about the murder, and pointed out the agent had only told police the information about the alleged murder when he was arrested for a court order breach and sitting in the back of a police cruiser. The lawyer suggested the agent was trying to make a deal for his release.
The man disagreed, saying he had lived his life trying to stay away from police until that point.
“You were in custody, you had lost your family, you owed money (to the Vikings). You had hit rock bottom. And then you hit the jackpot,” Noonan said. “You got signed up for $150,000. All you had to do was make up a story, right?”
“No,” the agent responded.