Twenty-five years later, it is still an odd story. On Dec. 15, 1996, an explosion rocked downtown Sudbury. A bomb had blown a hole in the wall of the downtown Sudbury Police station, which was located on the corner of Larch and Paris streets at the time.
Strange and unusual as that incident was, the backstory turned out to be even stranger, involving outlaw motorcycle clubs, organized crime and professional wrestling. And a guy named Johnny K-9, also known as Bruiser Bedlam, also known as the Terrible Turk. Also known by his real name, Ion Croitoru (or Kroitoru).
Check out the trailer below.
The tale is featured in Season Three, Episode 10 of the ViceTV series Dark Side of the Ring “Bikers, Bombs and Bedlam: The Johnny K9 Story”, which is available to watch on Vice and on Crave.
Billed as standing 6-0 and weighing 300 pounds, which may or may not be true given the tendency to “enhance” wrestlers stats, Hamilton-native Croitoru was a big, burly guy covered in slabs of muscle. He became active in pro wrestling in the 1980s, with 1986 being his biggest year.
He began his wrestling career with the legendary Stampede Wrestling in Calgary, the home of the equally legendary wrestling family the Harts. He wrestled for promotions wrestling fans would recognize like Smokey Mountain Wrestling and Superstars of Wrestling out of Windsor, Ont. He beat Randy “Macho Man” Savage during his Smokey Mountain days.
Back when it was still the WWF, Croitoru wrestled on TV as a “jobber,” a wrestler whose job it is to lose and make the stars look good. He wrestled 36 matches for the WWF and got the chance to go toe-to-toe with Hulk Hogan.
But there was another side to Croitoru, a criminal side. He was a member of the notorious Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club, and was Hamilton chapter president for a time. He did time in prison for assault and cocaine trafficking.
Croitoru was not the kind of man afraid to get his hands dirty, as the saying goes.
Although he was from Hamilton, Croitoru was close friends with Michel Dubé, president of the Sudbury chapter of Satan’s Choice.
In the mid-1990s or so when his wrestling career dried up, Croitoru went back to doing crimes, it seems. That’s how he found himself in Sudbury in 1996.
According to news reports, Croitoru was in Sudbury visiting Dubé that December. A group of Satan’s Choice members, wearing their colours, attempted to visit the Solid Gold strip club on Falconbridge Road.
However, because the club had a policy that gang colours were not allowed, the group was refused service, but the bikers refused to leave. Police were eventually called and the bikers backed down, but they weren’t happy about it.
The group decided the best course of action was revenge. They planned to bomb the Solid Gold. Here’s where things take another turn. For whatever reason, the conspirators, without Croitoru’s knowledge, decided to bomb the Sudbury Police station instead.
The blast ripped a hole in the wall, did $133,000 in damage to the station, damaged some neighbouring businesses, and injured one officer.
Croitoru was eventually arrested along with several others, and sentenced to 33 months in prison.
In 2013, he pleaded guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and went back to prison, and moved to a halfway house (the only one in Canada to accept him allegedly) in Toronto in 2016. He died Feb. 21, 2017, leaving behind his wife, Tracy, and three children.
