Six convicted for eight Bandidos' biker killings
Six bikers have been convicted in Canada for killing eight fellow Bandidos gang members in 2006 and stuffing their bodies into vehicles abandoned on a farm.
Three of the accused were shooters and convicted of premeditated murder; another three were found guilty of a mix of murder and manslaughter.
The gruesome crimes, in which the victims had been confined in a barn before being marched out one by one to waiting vehicles and executed with a head shot, shocked Canadians when police in April 2006 uncovered what has been described as "the worst mass murder in Ontario province history".
Wayne Kellestine, 60, Michael Sandham, 40, and Dwight Mushey, 41, are expected to receive automatic life sentences with no parole for 25 years for eight counts each of first-degree murder.
Two others, Frank Mather, 36, and Marcelo Aravena, 33, were found guilty of one count each of manslaughter and seven counts each of first-degree murder.
Brett Gardiner, 25, was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter and six counts of first-degree murder.
All eight victims, whose bodies were found in three abandoned cars and a tow truck in a farmer's field in southern Ontario, were members or associates of the Bandidos motorcycle club from the Toronto area.
The deaths were the result of "an internal cleansing" of the world's second most-powerful biker gang, police inspector Dan Bell said in 2006.
A farmer in Shedden, 200km south-west of Toronto and near Lake Erie on the US border, called the police after finding the bodies.
During the six-month trial, the jury heard that the murders resulted from growing tension between the victims - all from a Toronto Bandidos group - and members of a probationary group in Winnipeg.
Prosecutors said Bandidos leaders in the US, where the gang originated in the 1960's, had ordered the Toronto men to be stripped of their gang affiliation. Later the plan changed to murder.
A key prosecution witness in the case was a member of the Winnipeg clan and had been at the farmhouse the night of the killings. - AFP