McKee Associate Convicted and Sentenced in Violent Attack

Leave to go camping a for five days and look at what we missed.

There are a few stories of particular interest to our readers, such as the anti-immigration flyers in Brampton and the "Free Matt Hale" posters being put up by Wes Smith and his friends in the Southern Ontario Skineheads. We'll address those stories at a latter date. However we want to focus on the recent conviction and sentencing of two individuals involved in an attack on the founder and leader of the SOS, Max Hynes. We'll include a little bit of commentary along the way:

Bloody ambush in local park was white power ‘discipline’

Brian Caldwell

KITCHENER — Bad blood within a white supremacy group fuelled the vicious ambush of a former organizer in a Kitchener park almost two years ago.

The masked attack in the summer of 2012 was orchestrated by Kyle McKee, a former Kitchener resident and leader of a Calgary-based neo-Nazi group called Blood and Honour.

For someone who has been in jail as often as he has been, we're surprised that McKee was so careless. He had to have known that his jailhouse conversations would have been recorded.

Then again, maybe he wasn't the one being careless?

Details of the incident in Victoria Park were outlined in Kitchener court Friday as a man and a woman admitted their roles in a conspiracy hatched while McKee was in custody for alleged hate crimes in Alberta.

Jessie Lajoie, 25, received a three-year prison term for driving from Alberta with accomplice Eric Marshall, 26, to carry out the ambush with a metal baton and a knife or machete.

M.K, 24, got a one-year conditional sentence after admitting she lured victim Max Hynes to the park with a promise of sex, then blamed an innocent man for the attack.

Hynes, 21, of London was described in court as a former Blood and Honour member who was in charge of expansion in Ontario, but had a falling out with McKee "due to a number of unauthorized activities."

Taped jail visits and telephone calls obtained by police showed group members Lajoie and Marshall, both from western Canada, planned the attack with McKee while he was in custody.

This part is of particular concern for us. If the police provided the Crown with evidence that McKee was involved in the planning of this attack, why then has the Crown not yet charged McKee in the conspiracy to harm, perhaps kill, Hynes?

M.K, a Kitchener woman who was then Lajoie's girlfriend, arranged on Facebook to get together with Hynes for sex.

Given what we know of Hynes, this scenario is entirely consistent with his character. 

After he arrived in Kitchener by bus, court was told, she suggested they go to the park. Lajoie and Marshall were waiting to pounce, although Kissack denied knowing they had weapons or would cause serious injuries.

Hit in the head and slashed twice in the stomach, Hynes was "bleeding profusely" when he ran from the park at about 10:30 p.m. and banged on doors of nearby houses for help.

"He could have (died)," said prosecutor Patricia Moore. "They were significant injuries."

M.K falsely identified one of the masked men as Kevin Goudreau, who was described as an acquaintance and "a well-documented white supremacist" from Oshawa.

After seizing his cellphone records, local police determined Goudreau wasn't even in Kitchener when the attack took place.

"If he didn't have an alibi, he could have found himself in a lot of hot water," Moore said.

Okay, while Goudreau might be a well documented white supremacist, he isn't exactly one who garners a great deal of respect from his fellow travelers. Still, it does seem that Goudreau does serve a purpose in the movement, though not the leadership role he has claimed. Punching bag? Yep. Patsy? You betcha.

While they were off on that wild goose chase, police received information that Lajoie and Marshall were actually responsible for the attack over jealousy and "previous Blood and Honour issues."

An officer with the hate crimes unit in Calgary confirmed the two suspects visited McKee in jail both before and after the ambush.

Text messages and cell tower records placed Lajoie and Marshall in Kitchener with M.K. 

Retrieved texts also showed Marshall admitting the attack to his girlfriend.

Soooo, T.H. (Marshall's girlfriend) knew of the attack as well? Interesting.

Arrests weren't made for six months, when Lajoie and Marshall were picked up out west. Arrested outside her Kitchener home, M.K admitted her involvement and lies.

Blood and Honour was described as a "global" white supremacy organization with roots going back to England in the early 1980s.

In addition to public rallies and marches, it is known for targeting immigrants and ethnic minorities with violence. 

McKee, who grew up in Waterloo Region and caused an uproar by flying a Nazi flag from the balcony of his rented Kitchener house in 2005, was identified as the group's leader in Canada.

Although the park attack wasn't a hate crime, Justice Elliott Allen noted it was carried out to "facilitate discipline within a criminal hate organization" that promotes "poisonous views."

Lawyers for Lajoie and M.K, neither of whom had prior records, said they both have abusive backgrounds.

Hal Mattson, who represented Lajoie, a father and apprentice plumber, said this includes a stepfather who "would tie the children up" while he was being raised in Manitoba.

Sean Safa said M.K, a mother of two who went to college for social work and wiped tears away in court, is in counselling for domestic abuse, anxiety and depression.

Lajoie and M.K both apologized, but stopped short of explicitly disavowing the group's racist views. 

Outside court, despite her admitted "ties to the white supremacist community," M.K claimed she didn't even know Lajoie was an active member of Blood and Honour at the time of the attack.

"I'm not a white supremacist," she said. "I'm a single mother with two children."

Again, more evidence that these people don't actually understand how the internet works. M.K was posting on the Blood & Honour forums while she was dating Lajoie who was then a moderator. Sort of suggests that M.K continues to find it difficult to tell the truth.

M.K's conditional sentence, which took into account more than a year spent on strict bail terms, includes six months of house arrest and six months with a nightly curfew. She was also placed on probation for a year.

Moore said Marshall is expected to plead guilty in Alberta next week and receive the same three-year prison term as Lajoie.

Regarding Marshall, here he is with Blood & Honour's former Edmonton rep Bernie Miller who is currently under house arrest for his involvement in an assault (for which McKee was also convicted) which took place after the "White Pride March" in Edmonton in 2013:

Posted April 27, 2014 on Facebook

Seems they are both very remorseful.

McKee, who moved to Calgary soon after the flag flap in Kitchener, remains in custody for an alleged hate-related beating.

We find this to be interesting as well. While we were not able to convince McKee to accept our friend request, we had been keeping tabs on his Facebook profile. About a month ago we found it was no longer available which suggested to us that it had been deleted by Facebook or McKee himself. We also knew that McKee had been arrested in October for assaulting a Native man but had been released pending a trial. So if he is currently in jail again, is this related to that October incident or something more recent?

And again, if the crown has evidence that McKee helped to orchestrate the "hit" on Hynes, then why has he not yet been charged?

Maybe those who choose to associate themselves with McKee might want to reconsider that affiliation?

In a post in February we alluded to the attack and the controversy (for lack of a better word) concerning Hynes' role in the arrest. The subsequent commentary was both interesting and enlightening.