Original subtitles

My name is Paul Derry, or at least it used to be.

I was given a new name when I entered Witness Protection.

Truth is, I'm on a Hell's Angels hit list.

Many people want me dead.

I've never shown my face on camera before.

But I'm done running. I'm done hiding.

And now I'm going to tell my story.

I was a criminal.

A successful criminal.

I had aspired to be at the top of the criminal world my entire childhood and

adult life.

So most of the people I knew were high -level drug dealers or killers.

I was well known as a drug dealer, arms dealer.

Nine millimeter.

Standard police issue.

And known for my skills at making money.

Now I have a different view and a different moral compass than I had back

then.

I was always looking for new drug networks.

I realized that the biggest payday was going to come through working with the

Hells Angels.

People like to believe that they're just good old boys, they ride motorcycles.

They're not. They traffic in women, drugs, extortion.

Up at the top of the organized crime world, they are deadly.

I knew there was a clubhouse in Halifax that would be a great place to try to

get into.

They brought in all the drugs. They supplied the drug trade.

It was the best place for me personally to make money.

One of the connections I tried to hang out with was Wayne James.

Wayne was definitely my end to the Hells Angels.

We had already become very good friends.

He was in with the Hells Angels.

He was their enforcer, and he moved a lot of drugs for them, a lot of cocaine.

The whole territory was controlled from the private club. You had to be buzzed

to get in, and we referred to it as the office.

The first time I went there, Wayne coached me before we got there.

He said, listen, if you want to come out of here alive, Do as I tell you.

Wayne wanted me to meet his boss so that we could do business together.

His name was Nasty Neil Smith, a full -patch member of the Hells Angels.

Wayne had done a lot of dirty work for Neil.

Neil!

This is the guy I was telling you about.

This is Paul.

Wayne said, Neil, this is Paul. Paul, this is Neil.

Wayne had told him about me.

He's got the connection.

I had made many connections within the drug trade.

I was a moneymaker.

I had the perfect resume.

Neil looked like a snake.

It was known to be very dangerous.

At this point, nobody knew that I had a secret that I had to keep in.

It was a secret that would get me killed.

I was a rat, a confidential informant for the police.

I was a...

working as a police agent and as a criminal. So I was playing both sides of

fence.

My goal was to take these guys down and there was going to be a payout and I was

going to ride off into the sunset.

But it was dangerous.

If Wayne and Neil found out I was riding, if I was lucky, they would just

bullet in my head.

Maybe I'd have my tongue removed.

But then he said, OK, we'll be in touch.

We shook hands, and that was it. That was the beginning of our connection.

Wayne was vouching for me, so now I was in with Neil.

I took great pride in the fact that I was able to manipulate people.

That was the type of person I was.

It's a good dream.

I used everybody I met.

So, here's the deal.

This guy here, that's Wayne James, my partner.

Criminal informants are crucial to solving crime.

If all you ever used was altar boys, all you'd ever catch is priests.

Being an informant gave me the best of both worlds. I mean, picking up

information, I was able to sell it to the police, all while making money in

crime world as well.

I was not doing it for no civic duty, ever.

I did not become an informant to be a good, upstanding citizen.

I informed because of the reward.

The money was great. The police pay well.

The bigger the job, the more money you can make.

If I could take down a Hells Angel Club, I knew that they would be a multi

-million dollar takedown.

I wanted to get the Hells Angels chapter in Halifax and shut it down.

And then I could retire and get out of it forever.

Now Wayne and I were working together for Neil, basically as employees.

The main thrust for us was cocaine trafficking.

We had apartments and stash houses all over the city.

Business was booming.

We're distributing cocaine on an industrial scale, making hundreds of

every month.

If I wasn't great at being a criminal, I would be no good as an informant.

Throughout the entire time we were doing business, I was always gathering intel,

names and connections.

When we would cook up the crack, we would have Wayne's nephew, Dino, keeping

guard for it.

Dino was a loose cannon. He was young and wanting to stomp people's heads.

He loved to fight. He loved blood. He was excited by blood.

Taking these guys down was always at the forefront of my mind.

But I had no idea somebody was going to end up dead.

One day we went to the office to do business as usual.

When we got there, Wayne and Neil started talking.

There was a guy named Sean Simmons, and there was a rumor going around that he

had slept with the mistress of the current president of the Hells Angels.

You don't touch anything that belongs to the president of the Hells Angels, but

to sleep with his mistress, it is a cardinal sin.

Neil says, whack him, and motioned his finger across his throat as he says

And then the conversation was over.

Wayne turned to me and said, he wants him whacked.

It's an unwritten rule and very understood in the criminal world that if

want to join the Hells Angels,

and you were told to kill and you didn't, you would die.

I was kind of in shock.

I now know I'm going to be intimately involved in this murder.

It's too late to tell the police.

Wayne said, let's go. Away we went.

I was thinking, am I going to be the one that gets asked to shoot him? There's a

million thoughts going through my head.

I was nervous.

My heart was beating out of my chest.

I thought, wow, we're on our way to a murder. How can I stop this?

It's not just a drug operation now. Now it's a Hell's Angel murder.

It was intense in that car. You cut the tension with a knife. It was an insane,

insane feeling.

I couldn't believe we were going to just go kill someone.

But what could I do?

We pulled up to the apartment.

This guy comes out.

I didn't know what was happening.

Wayne turned around and handed the gun to Dino in the back seat.

He was getting a chance to prove himself.

The guy came up to the passenger door, and Wayne took out a man.

Dino was getting out of the back at the same time, and then the two of them

walked off.

I'm watching those guys walking towards the door.

I thought, they're going to check it out. They're not going to do it. Maybe

they'll do something, lay a beating on them.

I felt sick.

Next thing I know, we

heard...

Go. Go, go, go. Go!

Go! What are you doing? Go!

Dana had blood all over him.

Wayne kept saying, is he dead, is he dead, is he dead?

And Dino said, yes, his head split open like a watermelon.

I was getting a little nervous that he was still too pumped up.

I didn't know what was next. I didn't know what was planned.

We got to the stash house. Dino went in.

Then Wayne leaned in the car and said, take the gun.

Go to the Halifax Bridge and throw it in the harbor.

I said, you bet.

To say that I didn't feel fear would be stupid.

But I chose to get on with the job and get done what I had to so I could live.

Everything started hitting me.

I'd been focused the whole time on the goal.

playing this game of informant and criminal.

And then all of a sudden this wasn't a game anymore.

Now I need even a murder.

There was no way I could go to the cop.

I drove them to the murder.

I had no alibis.

How can I get out of this mess?

I felt completely lost and hopeless.

That was the first time I asked myself, am I a good guy or am I a bad guy? I

really didn't know.

I didn't know which side I actually belonged on.

Self -preservation kicked in.

I drove to a place out near the Atlantic Ocean.

I was starting to think a little more clearly.

I was thinking, how am I going to protect myself from the police?

I knew that the murder weapon is key, and if I'm the only one that knows where

the murder weapon is, then I'm the one in the best position.

I decided to disobey Wayne.

I thought, it's going to be much better if I go bury this gun.

Better in my hand than in the harbor.

I dug down a little bit with my hands, and I buried the gun as deep as I could

next to some sand dunes.

The phone rang as soon as I got in the car.

I was waiting.

He had been calling, and he said, what's taking you so long?

He was already suspicious.

You could sense it as he was talking.

I was in a lot of danger at that point. Not only was I taking too

long, but I had completely gone against what he had told me to do.

Maybe I'm going to get whacked. I'm a witness now.

I considered just leaving, taking off.

In the end, I ended up heading back to town.

I came home to find my house had been raided by the police.

There was a warrant out for my arrest for the murder.

I knew I was screwed. I just didn't know how badly I was screwed.

I decided that it was best to turn myself in.

I knew I had the evidence.

I'm here to turn myself in.

Just wasn't sure I was going to play out.

Was I looking at a life sentence?

I came to detectives.

I was going to go in, shut my mouth until I knew what they had.

As I was laying in the cell thinking about the murder, it was like a punch to

the head.

i had always treated my life as a game but it's starting to hit me that a man

was dead sean had a wife and two

kids somebody just lost their father

All of a sudden my eyes opened and seeing it from a different perspective.

It's like two lives came together in that cell.

So it's like this lie I was living on both sides came.

This just wasn't a game.

I realized the death of Sean meant something.

I even cried out at one point to God and said, you know, get me out of this

mess.

I'll quit this life for good.

That night in the cell was step one to me changing my life. It was the

of a journey that I was about to take that I did not believe I would ever be

The next morning, they took me to an interrogation room.

In the door comes this tall cop.

He said, I'm Shane Halliday. I'm with the Homicide Unit.

And he said, I know you know what happened.

Halliday told me there had been some witnesses that may have seen me in the

area, and I had a really bad feeling.

At that point, I'm...

convinced I'm looking at a life sentence.

He said very clearly if I gave him everything about the murder, then he

work on getting me immunity from prosecution.

So I told him, well, I have the murder weapon for sure. I know all the players.

All right. Help me fill in the blanks with these guys.

I gave him the full story and gave him statements, and that's when I gave him

everybody's names, everybody's part, and was completely truthful.

But Holliday said, Paul, look, you're going to have to do more than

just give us the information.

We need something to back up the evidence.

You got to get confessions out of each one of these guys.

He just said, look.

You're going to have to wear a wire?

I had been an informant for years, but I knew it was going to be dangerous.

It's scary wearing a wire.

I'd rather face getting a gun to my head than have to wear a wire.

You can be a little nervous. It's fine. I've never lost a confidential

informant. We're not going to start with you.

Have a seat. Let's go through this. I'll work it out with you. He reassured me

that I would get a new life and witness protection with a new name.

You help us get what we need.

You walk out of here.

So I had no choice.

I had to do it.

Okay.

I had to take all of them down.

Thanks for doing the right thing.

I'll walk you out.

It's not the Taj Mahal, but it's secure.

So after that, they took me up to the safe house.

Halliday told me whenever we had to meet, we would meet there.

This is Paul.

This is my team. They would wire me up, and I would leave for meets from there.

Halliday says, listen, all the information has to be corroborated by

wire.

And then he tells me the first confession we're going to try to get is

Dino.

Halliday explains to me, He's out at the correctional center.

He's been arrested, done a drug charge, nothing to do with the murder.

He says, you're going to have to meet him in there.

I want you to go in the prison, and I want you to get as much detail from him

you can, if you can get him talking and get him talking.

I said to Holiday, how the hell am I going to get

in?

Are you kidding me, man?

I never get past security with a tape recorder in my jacket.

Holiday said, it's okay, we've got a guy at the front desk.

We'll get you through.

I didn't think the odds were very good.

But I focused on what I was going to do.

When he pulled the car up into the parking lot of the correctional center,

even more nervous because people were coming in and out of their visits.

And I'm pulling up with a known homicide cop. So I was a bit of a wreck.

The entire time I was walking, I could feel this thing tapping my side.

All I could think of was somebody can see this bulky old tape recorder in this

jacket. I wonder if Dino's going to see it.

If Dino let somebody know that I was an informant, for sure it would have got me

killed.

My legs were actually shaken.

Going into a jail full of convicts, if anybody found out I was wearing a wire,

somebody will still walk up and stab you right in front of a guard's booth.

I got through into the visiting room.

Dino came down.

He said, hey, Uncle P, good to see you.

You know, what's going on?

Just came to see how you're doing.

To get the confession, my plan right from the beginning was to get him as

up and emotional as I could so that he was not using his rational mind.

He was already agitated because nobody had sent him any money since he had been

locked up on this drug charge.

I played Wayne against him.

I said, I'll take care of you the best I can, but Wayne doesn't really give a

**** about you.

He said, is he going to hang me out to dry?

He just went off on a rant about the murder.

When I heard the words come out of his mouth, I was like, well, that was easy.

It was obvious that he was involved in the murder.

Calm down.

We had some small talk.

Look, I'm here if you need anything, all right? You know that.

And then I wrapped that conversation up, knowing I was never coming back.

Stay strong, man.

I walked away and never looked back.

Holiday took the tape recorder from me and listened to it.

That's great.

He let me know that, you know, that was it for Dino.

We didn't need anything more from him.

The next target to take down and the next confession to get was from Wayne

James.

That night, Wayne was coming to my house for supper.

They had their technicians come in and wire my house.

They had all the main living areas, the kitchen, the living room, wired up.

They had the telephone wired.

There was a lot of strategy that had to go in with Wayne.

Holiday actually came up with this idea. He said, Paul, just tell him the truth,

that you didn't throw the gun over the bridge like you were supposed to, that

you actually buried the gun.

I clearly told Holiday that would get me killed right there in the apartment.

But he convinced me again.

He said, just trust me. Tell him this, we'll get a good confession out of him.

Of course I was weary.

Dangerous man.

How you doing?

I'm good.

Been drinking since lunchtime.

Got a nice whiskey buzz going on.

Wayne was in a great mood when he got there.

He went to the fridge, cracked a beer.

and sat down on the couch.

I knew that if he talked, this was going to be the last time I'd see him.

We sat down, we ate supper for, I don't know, probably half an hour.

You talked to Neil? He happy with everything?

I think so.

Cool.

I said, I have something to tell you.

I'm not going to be happy.

And he said,

He was referring to the murder.

And he said, well, let's take it outside.

He was scared that the cops might have bugged the apartment, because that's

commonplace for cops to sneak in and bug people's apartments.

Wayne did not know how right he was.

But he didn't know I had the wire on me, and we were going outside with the

wire.

So we're looking down at the parking lot, and I have to say I was a little

nervous. As soon as I told them, I didn't throw the gun into the water.

I'm sorry, man.

I didn't do what you told me. I buried the gun instead of throwing it over the

bridge. He said, what do you mean?

He said, Dad.

Would you take that gun and throw it off the top of the bridge?

What else didn't you get rid of?

With that admission, he linked himself to the murder.

At this point, I was thinking he was going to throw me over the balcony.

I didn't want to betray you.

I apologized profusely and said, look, Wayne, I thought it was a better thing

for us to know where the gun was.

And he seemed to calm down after that a little bit.

He reached over, hugged me, said, I'll see you tomorrow, bro.

Thanks for the evening, and away he went.

When Wayne got across the bridge and back to his house, they surrounded him

arrested him.

I heard it on their radios that it was happening.

I was not feeling in a mood to celebrate.

I would rather have not taken Wayne down if I didn't have to, but I just knew

that was the end of not only a friendship.

a partnership.

But he had to go.

I had to think of him as another target.

It's something I learned to do as an informant over the years.

We now had taken down Dino and Wayne James, and we had one target left, and

would be difficult to take down.

And that was Neil Smith, the guy who ordered the hit.

But I did not know that I was about to hit the fan.

The next morning, I get a phone call from a guy called Bobby Milton.

Hello? He was rumored to be a hitman.

I had a really bad feeling.

It did not sound like he had any good intentions.

He was an enforcer for Neil Smith.

He's just a cold -blooded killer.

They thought I was a rat, and they were coming to kill me.

If there wasn't no other thing, it could be.

I really started to freak out.

It's holiday.

He was listening to it on the wire, and he said, that didn't sound good.

He said, get me the hell out of here.

I went downstairs. They picked me up.

They're doing surveillance, watching the house.

First, I hear he's at the door.

And then they said, oh, he's going in.

And Bobby was going in through the window.

And we could hear it when he gets inside the house.

He calls Neil Smith at the clubhouse and says, I missed him. He's not here.

I'll have to get him next time.

That was a really close call. Now I thought for sure they knew that I was a

I thought we were done. The operation was over.

But Holiday said, we're still going to need you to meet with Neil Smith.

And I said, Neil Smith's the one that ordered me to be killed.

You want me to go meet with him?

He said, we need one more recording. We just need one more wire to nail this

coffin shut.

This is all it's going to take. No way, man.

Absolutely, I thought, no way.

Not in a million years.

Suspicion was really growing. People keep going to jail all around me.

But he said, I just want you to think about it.

Just think it over.

So I thought it over, and I thought, I just put Wayne James away.

I had put Dino away.

Neil Smith was the one who ordered it all. Am I going to let those guys go to

prison and let him walk free?

He's the one I really wanted to see in prison.

I just remember thinking over and over and over that a man was dead.

So I said I'd do him.

So Holiday says, we have a plan.

He showed me that they have a warrant made up. It's a realistic warrant.

It has Dino's name on it. It has Neil's name on it. It has your name on it. So I

just said, what am I supposed to do with this? And he said, well, you're going

to take it to him and you're going to say, look, everybody's on here except

Wayne. It's going to make them think that Wayne is the rat.

This is how it's going to get him to talk.

I couldn't figure out how it was going to go down without a bad ending. I just

couldn't see it.

I was sweating like crazy. I was nervous.

They kept trying to tape their probes on my chest, and I was sweating so bad

that the wires just kept falling off. The tape was not sticking.

I'm a nervous wreck.

Okay.

Holiday said to me, Paul, don't worry. All you have to do is hand him the

warrant.

There's patrol cars all along this road.

There's snipers on the roof.

A SWAT team there.

Walking down there was almost as if I had cement shoes on. Every step I took

heavy. Walking to death would have been easier.

This is walking into uncertainty.

It was a place that I could easily not come back out of if I wasn't careful.

As I got down there, I could see Neil's bike parked out front.

All the cops outside, all the snipers.

But once I was in the bar with Neil, I was there by myself, trapped in there

with all those bikers.

I just wanted to turn around.

But I knew it had to be done.

The Hells Angels live off the blood of the vulnerable.

They all had to go.

I just said, open the door, and I walked in.

One of my biggest fears was that Neil had already tried to kill me.

I didn't know if he had more people inside the bar waiting to finish the

Neil was at the bar with his back towards me, so I could see the Hell's

death head on the back of his vest.

How you doing?

It was like he heard from a ghost.

He obviously thought I should have been dead.

He said, I'm not doing so good.

You?

Can I get a beer, Jen?

I ordered a beer.

I went to take a drink and I was shaking so bad I had to put the beer back down

because I knew that Neil would see that I was shaking.

He just looked at me strangely and he said, Wayne's been picked up and Dino's

already in jail.

And we're the only two left out of the murder that's not in jail.

He had a real suspicious tone to him.

I took the warrant out of my pocket and I feel my fingers wetting the warrant

like it was...

I was sweating so bad that I could feel the sweat going into the paper.

I was still shaking, but I handed it to him.

What is it?

It's a warrant.

It's got everybody's name on it except for Wayne.

I'm just getting more nervous because I'm waiting for him to hurry up and read

it.

He said, what do you think?

I said, I think Wayne went into witness protection.

I think he's a rat.

I said, what are you going to do?

That's when he said, I'm getting the hell out of town.

He picked up his helmet and started to go.

That was not the reaction of a man that was not guilty of murder.

Go, go, all units move in.

Neil opened the door and...

There had to be 50 cops with their guns out saying, get on the ground, get on

the ground.

There was cops all around him.

I could see them taking him into custody.

And as soon as I got in the car with Holiday.

Come on, man, let's go.

Let's go.

I'm done. I was done. I ripped the wire off and said, I'm done. Let's go. I'm

done. This is over. Get me out of here.

It was all overwhelming.

When Neil was sentenced, I smiled.

I knew Wayne would be able to handle prison because he had spent much of his

life in prison.

And Dino, I was happy that society was going to be safe from him.

From there, I went into witness protection.

having to hide from the Hells Angels who had a contract on my life.

Entering Witness Protection, you say goodbye to everything.

It's like you died, but the difference is you're alive to watch everybody go on

with their lives.

It really is like becoming a ghost.

I haven't talked to my family in 15, 16 years.

My mother's died since then.

So, yeah, I used to say goodbye to everything.

I'm in a worse prison than taking the life sentence.

Do I deserve it?

Yeah, I was, and the person I used to be.

I spent years torturing myself over Sean Simmons' death.

I just got diagnosed with throat cancer.

I don't know if the Hells Angels will catch me before my own body kills me.

We'll see.

I, for one, don't want to walk in fear of them, and I don't want to be

intimidated. So I just want to be me, tell my story. I'm Marcus Baldieri.

That's who I'm going to be.