Frank Peter "Dunie" Ryan Jr. (10 June 1942 – 13 November 1984) was a Canadian gangster and the leader of the West End Gang, a Montreal-based criminal organization.
[3] Ryan dropped out of school at the age of 16 and led his own teenage gang who participated in "petty" crimes such as smash and grabs, garment thefts from trucks, and breaking and entering.
Primarily strong arms and bank robbers, the Irish Canadians were an important element of the Montreal underworld, and the nightclub was a mine of contacts for Ryan.
[1] After his parole in December 1972, Ryan joined what was then called the Irish Gang to help him continue his criminal enterprises, which now included loansharking as well as robberies.
[1] Ryan's favorite place was Smitty's, a run-down bar on rue Sherbrooke, where he played pool, drank and planned robberies with his Irish-Canadian and French-Canadian associates.
[6] The West End Gang did have not the same rigid hierarchical structure of the Mafia, and Ryan's status was more as primus inter pares rather as a boss in the traditional sense of the term.
[6] Besides for robbing jewelry stores and loansharking, Ryan had the West End Gang start selling hashish, and then heroin and cocaine in the 1970s.
[2] Ryan assembled a crew that consisted of Patrick "Hughie" McGurnaghan, Paul April, Allan "The Weasel" Ross, the Matticks brothers, Peter White, and Kenny McPolland as his principle lieutenants.
[7] The most successful robbery committed by the West End Gang under Ryan's leadership was the theft of $2,275,884 in cash together with golden Olympic coins worth $5,000 from a Brinks armored car on 30 March 1976.
[12] Through his connections with the Irish Mob of Boston, Ryan started to import cocaine from Colombia and heroin from the "Golden Crescent" nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
[4] He also began to engage in fund-raising and gun-running for the Irish Republican Army (IRA), both sending and receiving guns from Northern Ireland.
[15] By the late 1970s, Ryan developed relationships with other criminal organizations in Montreal, including the Hells Angels and Cotroni crime family.
[16] Ryan made a deal with Frank Cotroni that the Controni family would buy drugs exclusively from the West End Gang.
In November 1979, Ryan was subpoenaed to testify at la Commission d'Enuête sur le Crime Organisé who wanted to know why Ryan-who was officially unemployed as he never had a legitimate job once in his life-could afford the mortgage on his house.
[6] Despite not having a job, Ryan was able to afford the services of Sidney Leithman who was regarded as one of Montreal's best lawyers and was the preferred defense counsel for gangsters.
[23] On the evening of his death, Ryan was at the Nittolo's Jardin Motel on St. Jacques Street West in Montreal when Paul April, a French-Canadian associate, told him there was an attractive young woman waiting to have sex with him in the adjoining room.
[4] April and his associate, Robert Lelièvre, who had a shotgun, planned to tie Ryan to a chair and force him to reveal where he had hidden his fortune before killing him.
[25] Four days later, Ryan's funeral was held at St. Augustine of Canterbury Church in Montreal, attended by his mother May, wife Evelyn, his two children, and another 200 mourners.
[23] Among those who attended the funeral were Allan "The Weasel" Ross and Laurent "L'anglais" Viau, Michel Blass and Yves Trudeau of the Hells Angels.
[26] The police observed that after the service had ended that Ross spent much time talking to Viau, the president of the Angels Laval chapter, to which both Blass and Trudeau belonged to.