Richard Wolfe

Youth

Wolfe was born on the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, the son of Richard Wolfe Senior and Susan Creely. Both of his parents were Cree. In 1979, his parents moved to the North End, Winnipeg, where he grew up. His father abandoned his family while his mother was an alcoholic. In sentencing Richard Wolfe Jr. in 2015 following his convictions for sexual assault and assault, the judge stated: "He was raised in an environment where substance abuse and domestic violence was prevalent. Richard was repeatedly exposed to violence which occurred during his parents' house parties. He was sexually abused at the age of seven, once by a stranger and twice by a neighbor. The episodes of sexual abuse left Richard confused, ashamed and full of hate".

Along with his younger brother Danny, Richard scavenged for food from a garbage bin of a local Kentucky Fried Chicken as their mother spent her welfare cheques on alcohol, and scavenging for food was the only way the Wolfe brothers fed themselves. The Wolfe brothers raided the gardens kept by Portuguese immigrants to steal their tomatoes and carrots in the summertime and soon moved on to breaking into cars to steal any valuables that might be inside to raise money for food. Starting at the age of 9, Richard took to wearing a red bandana, which later became the symbol of the Indian Posse. For a class assignment about his future ambitions, he wrote "Richard-Wealthy and Powerful". Richard was placed "in care" at foster homes a number of times, and to escape the abuse always ran away. The journalist Jon Friesen wrote about the Wolfe brothers: "By the time they were about ten or eleven years old, Danny and Richard were quite accustomed to raising themselves. They had no regard for conventional rules or morality. They saw themselves as survivors and were prepared to do whatever it took to make it".

Indian Posse

In the summer of 1988, Creely rented a house on Beverley Avenue in Winnipeg. Moving in with her were the two Wolfe brothers and their younger half-brother, Preston Buffalocalf. The Wolfe brothers lived in the basement of the house, and the Indian Posse still speaks of "the basement" to refer to the gang's origins. The Wolfe brothers belonged to a youth gang who called themselves Scammers Inc. In August 1988, the Wolfe brothers along with five other members of Scammers Inc decided to break away to found their own gang, which they named the Indian Posse. Richard said of the gang he founded: "We just wanted to make sure we stuck with each other and watched other's backs". One of the rules that Richard developed for his gang was that membership was for life, and that the penalty for leaving the Indian Posse would be death.

Richard's primary role in the Indian Posse at first was as a thief who specialized in stealing car stereos. Wolfe would brazenly break into garages, use a screwdriver to smash in one of the car windows, and then use the same screwdriver to remove the stereos. He sold the stolen stereos for $100 per system to the Triads in Winnipeg's Chinatown. Richard Wolfe started carrying a handgun to school at the age of 13, and after his gun was discovered by a teacher, resulted in his first criminal conviction on 2 February 1989.

By 1989, Richard moved on to breaking into houses. Richard would spend hours bicycling or walking around Winnipeg looking for a house that appeared unoccupied and then break in, looking for jewelry, electronics, CDs and cash to steal. Richard stated in an interview: "We didn't think about the people we were stealing from as being victimized or traumatized. There was none of that. I wanted what they had". By 1990, Wolfe was firmly committed to being a gangster. Under his leadership, the Indian Posse started to specialize in stealing cars and robbing gas stations in the North End at gunpoint. By 1992, the Wolfe brothers had rented a house for $866 per month and was selling drugs. The Wolfe brothers purchased drugs from native gangs in South Dakota or more commonly drove out to Vancouver to purchase cocaine from the Triads. The brothers Wolfe resented the position of the Indian Posse as street dealers who had to buy drugs from either Winnipeg's outlaw biker gangs, the Spartans or los Bravos or the Asian crime syndicates, usually the Triads, as street dealing was the least profitable and most dangerous position to be in the drug business. However, the lack of international connections left the Indian Posse no choice, but to purchase drugs from the gangs that did have the international connections.

Slawik murder attempt

In April 1995, the police raided the house on Stella Avenue that the Wolfe brothers rented, looking for a 13-year-old boy who had run away. Richard was arrested as he tried to walk out the front door with his girlfriend Colleen while Danny was arrested in the living room. Found in the living room were 11 bundles of marijuana on the coffee table, leading to a policeman to ask: "Well, Richard, whose drugs are they?" The drugs belonged to Danny who had been sorting the marijuana into bags when the police arrived, but Richard felt he owned his brother a debt as Danny had confessed to the possession of stolen goods that actually belonged to Richard to spare him a prison term in 1993. Richard recalled that his girlfriend Colleen wanted him to blame Danny to keep him out of prison while "I looked at Danny and he wasn't saying nothing". Richard decided to take the fall for his brother and confessed to the police that the marijuana was his as he raised out his hands to be handcuffed. As Richard was marched out, Colleen became hysterical and screamed at the officers "They're mine! I'll take the charge!" Richard was able to make bail and was released again. The possibility that Richard might go to prison for a number of years as he had several prior drug convictions weakened his hold on the Indian Posse, and led him to decide on a dramatic gesture meant to underscore his authority.

Spencer LaPorte, an Indian Posse member, died of a drug overdose in November 1994, and Richard had inherited the US$60,000 drug debt owed to LaPorte by the owner of Jumbo Pizza. Like all gangsters, Richard was obsessed with his underworld reputation—a failure to force a debtor to pay would lead to other debtors defaulting. Conseuently Richard was willing to engage in extreme violence against a defaulting debtor to uphold his reputation, and by May 1995 he was notably annoyed with the owner of Jumbo Pizza who kept promising to pay the $60,000 without doing so. At 11:48 pm on 14 May 1995, Richard had his girlfriend Collen make a phone call to Jumbo Pizza in the name of LePorte, which was his way of saying that he expected the $60,000 that was owing to him to be delivered with the pizza. The call was placed from the apartment of a couple known as Christa and Darryl; it was common in the North End for people to not pay their phone bills and lose their phone services, then making their phone calls from friends' homes.

The pizza was to be delivered to an address on Pritchard Avenue near the Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development that Wolfe had selected as a good place for an ambush as the streets were dimly lit. Wolfe had expected the owner of Jumbo Pizza to make the delivery, but it was delivered by Maciej Slawik, a Polish immigrant uninvolved with crime who had been working at Jumbo Pizza for only two weeks. However, Wolfe decided that killing the deliveryman would send a message to his debtor. As Slawik was getting out of his car with the two pizzas, Wolfe stormed out of the shadows, wearing a black balaclava and told Slawik "give us your fucking money!" Before Slawik could do anything, Richard opened fire with his shotgun. The first shot missed, but Slawik was determined not to lose his car, and threw a soft drink can at Richard. The second shot fired by Wolfe hit Slawik and tore open a huge hole in his chest. Slawik attempted to walk for help, but soon collapsed due to blood loss. A teenage Indian Posse member stole Slawik's car along with the two boxes of pizza. Richard threw away his shotgun, ran down a dark alley and walked over to his apartment in The Micheal building on Redwood Avenue. Richard had expected to find $60,000 in cash in one of the pizza boxes and was surprised to find nothing. Richard was joined by Colleen, Darryl, Christa, Danny and the teenage thief. Speaking in a menacing tone, Richard told Darryl and Christa "you guys both know what to do when they show up?" Richard told Danny: "I fucked up. I have to bounce". Richard admitted that he lost the butt of his shotgun and was uncertain if his fingerprints were on it. Danny told Richard: "You fucking guy! You should've got somebody else to do that. We don't have to do that stuff no more". Richard burned his clothing and took a bath to wash away the gunpower residue. Richard was highly stressed that night as he expected to be arrested at any moment and paced his apartment obsessively as he brooded over any mistakes that he might had made that would incriminate him. Richard told Danny: "If I don't see you again, keep your head up and be strong". Richard also told Danny that he distrusted Darryl and Christa, whom he called a "shady" couple whom he believed would turn Crown's evidence, leading to Danny to ask why he used their phone to order the pizza .

In prison

Wolfe was first sent to Stony Mountain Institution to serve his sentence, and then at the beginning of 1997 was sent to Edmonton Institution. He felt uncomfortable as he was placed in handcuffs in a bus seat surrounded by plastic walls to keep him from having contact with the other prisoners. During the long bus ride, he was held in this manner for the entire trip, which underscored to him that he now had less rights than the people who were not violent criminals like himself. Wolfe found Edmonton Institution to be far more harsher prison than Stony Mountain along with being a more violent prison where the prisoners constantly killing each other via the "shanks" (homemade knives) that they fashioned out of whatever metal they could find. Even the other Indian Posse prisoners made it clear to Wolfe that they disapproved of him for his 1994 interview with the Winnipeg Free Press which made the Indian Posse infamous throughout western Canada, and hence drew more police attention. In addition, some prisoners confused Richard Wolfe Jr. with Richard Wolfe Sr. who had two convictions for rape. In Canadian prisons, inmates who commit sexual assault are considered to be the lowest of the low, and are hated by the other prisoners. Wolfe had to assure the Indian Posse inmates that the newspaper stories about a Richard Wolfe who had been convicted of rape twice were about his father, not him.

Wolfe tried to hide his disenchantment with his gang, saying: "I had to try and hide it. Especially making decisions on things that were happening in prison. I couldn't show any weakness because then red flags would go up on me....I wanted out. That Beeper thing was laying heavy on my head". Wolfe met with three other members of the ruling "circle" (council) where he asked for permission to leave the Indian Posse, saying the gang was becoming too violent. The three members of the "circle" were unhappy with his decision as they noted that Wolfe's own rules stated that Indian Posse membership was for life and that any members who attempted to leave would be killed. As the trio discussed the fate of Wolfe outside of his cell, he read books on First Nations history and culture while anxiously keeping his eyes on the three men who held his life in balance. The three returned to tell Wolfe that he had to submit to a beating to punish him for leaving the gang, but that he would not be killed. Shortly afterwards, a friend of Wolfe told him that a jailhouse contract had been placed on his life by the ruling "circle" who were determined to uphold the rules that the Wolfe brothers had devised themselves. Wolfe told his friend: "I said, 'alright. Step aside brother. If it is going down, then it's going down. I ain't going anywhere'". Wolfe lived in fear, keeping two "shanks" (homemade knives) on his person at all time, refused to go into the exercise area and always ate his meals with his back to the wall. He said: "I wasn't going to make it easy for them".

Sexual assault

In January 2010, Wolfe learned that Danny had been killed in prison. He had last seen Danny in 1996, and his request to attend his funeral was denied. Richard Wolfe was released on parole in 2010. Wolfe vowed to "go straight", but in 2013 his girlfriend found out he abused her daughters and kicked him out which led to the abuse alcohol and drugs again. The catalyst for his downward spiral was being kicked out, broken up with and being called on his abuse, which led him back into substance abuse. In November 2013, to prevent him from returning to prison, a couple gave him a home in their basement and attempted to help him turn his life around. On the night of 6 April 2014, Wolfe sexually assaulted the woman and then attacked the man with a baseball bat after the man heard his girlfriend screaming. The woman was asleep and woke up to find that Wolfe was holding down while sexually assaulting her. As her boyfriend raced to protect her, Wolfe beat him with a baseball bat so viciously that he suffered brain damage and has difficulty walking. The woman he assaulted stated in court: "I'm scared to trust anyone and everyone." For this violation of his parole, Wolfe was sent back to prison where he died in 2016.

On 9 March 2015, he pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. Owing to the dangers of attacks from rival gang members and for committing sexual assault, Wolfe was held in solitary confinement, causing him to suffer from severe depression, which contributed to his death from a heart-attack at the age of 40 on 27 May 2016. Wolfe asked a number of times to be taken out of solitary confinement, saying that being alone in his cell nearly all the time for months on end was deeply depressing. The journalist Paul Wiecek whose interview with Wolfe in 1994 made him famous wrote in 2016 against the glorification of Wolfe as a hero. Wiecek wrote:

the Wolfe legend only continues to grow as authors, journalists, filmmakers and academics continue to try to attach some broader sociological — even anthropological — significance to the Wolfes and the Indian Posse. In that world, these young gentlemen weren't in a gang but rather in a "surrogate family." Their drug trafficking was simply the manifestation of generations of resentment towards a country that had marginalized their people. And the pimping? Residential schools, I guess. It is the worst kind of historical revisionism. It is an insult to aboriginal people everywhere. But it is also exactly the kind of stuff that sounds good over a chilled glass of Chardonnay in a café with your fellow intellectuals. Listen, I was there at the time — Richard Wolfe was no Malcolm X and the Indian Posse weren't the Black Panthers...Wolfe and his brother were smarter than those idiots, but the idea of the Wolfes as either a fulsome expression of the alienation of indigenous peoples and/or criminal masterminds is an intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. The Wolfes were just thugs, and not particularly sophisticated ones at that.

Books

Auger, Michel; Edwards, Peter (2012). The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 978-0771030499.

Friesen, Joe (2016). The Ballad of Danny Wolfe Life of a Modern Outlaw. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 9780771030314.