Jeffery McLeod (born 1955) is a Canadian biker who was one of the Port Hope 8, members of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club accused of murder.
[3] McLeod's most notable character trait was his compulsive over-eating, which led him to become obese and which ended the possibility of him ever playing for the Maple Leafs.
[5] McLeod explained his reasons for joining Satan's Choice as due to the sex appeal he garnered as an outlaw biker as he asked rhetorically "where else could a 320-pound man go to get laid?
"[1] Many women are attracted to men who embody the "Bad boy archetype" and in this way the obese McLeod found himself becoming a major sex symbol in Toronto after he started to wear a biker's vest with the Satan's Choice patch on the back.
[6] McLeod denies that he worked as a drug dealer, using the fact that he lived at home with his mother as he could not afford to rent an apartment as evidence that his Satan's Choice career was not making him wealthy.
[1] The American journalist Mick Lowe described McLeod as "the very archetype of a big, dumb biker, truly frightening in demeanor and appearance" with his bushy beard and moustache along with his red hair tied into a long ponytail.
[7] McLeod was engaged in a conversation with a bar patron when Matiyek was killed, and he immediately fled in terror from the Queens Hotel via the exit to John Street.
[14] McLeod was first tagged as a suspect when one of the witnesses to the murder, the waitress Cathy Cotgrave, picked him his photograph out of the photo array presented to her by Constable Donald Denis of the Ontario Provincial Police.
[18] On 6 December 1978, McLeod was at the Scarborough Mid-Centre Youth Arena when Comeau informed him of the arrest of David George Hoffman in Kitchener, which caused both much mirth.
[23] McLeod was taken to the OPP's headquarters where he and another Satan's Choice biker Larry Hurren were left in a car with the key in the ignition.
[12] Affleck, a man with a genius level IQ had been a successful Crown Attorney lauded as the most able prosecutor in Canada had shocked many with his sudden decision in 1977 to work as a defense lawyer.
[27] McLeod hired Affleck as his lawyer under the grounds that a who had so successful in convicting Satan's Choice bikers was the best man to secure their acquittal.
[12] Affleck also knew and had a rivalry with the Crown Attorney who was to prosecute the Port Hope 8, Chris Meinhardt, which was a bonus from McLeod's viewpoint.
[33] On 4 February 1979 McLeod along with Comeau, van Haarlem, and Hurren were convicted of unlawful assembly with regard to the brawl on the Alderville First Nation reserve and sentenced to 2 years of probation.
[30] At the preliminary hearing (the Canadian equivalent of a grand jury), Affleck questioned the Crown witness, the waitress Cathy Cotgrave, who managed to confuse Comeau and McLeod in her recollections.
[38] The Crown Attorney at the trial, Chris Meinhardt, presented the case as a first-degree murder, calling it "a foul, horrible, planned execution.
[32] All that Affleck knew about what happened at the Queen's Hotel was based on what he read in the newspapers and in the Crown's disclosure of evidence, and for the most part he had to operate in the dark.
[41] Under questioning from Meinhardt, Foote pointed out David George Hoffman, Merv Blaker, Gary Comeau, Richard Sauvé, and Larry Hurren as the Satan's Choice bikers present at the time of the murder who were now in the courtroom.
[42] Affleck in his cross-examination noted that Foote in her testimony at the preliminary hearing had not mentioned seeing McLeod as one of the bikers who entered the Queen's Hotel via the back door, but was now claiming she did.
[46] McLeod favored accepting the Crown's deal, but objected when the demand was made that he sign a statement saying the murder of Matiyek was the premediated start of a biker war.
[49] In his final submission to the jury, Affleck noted that only two of the Crown's witnesses, namely Foote and Cotgrave, had identified McLeod as being present at the Queen's Hotel.
[50] Affleck noted the differences between Foote's testimony at the preliminary hearing when she testified that may had known who McLeod was vs. her present insistence had she instantly recognized on sight in October 1978.
[52] Speaking of his own experience as a Crown Attorney, Affleck stated that eyewitness identification was well known as the weakest of all evidence in a trial, and Cotgrave's testimony could not be trusted on the account of her errors in her memory.
[60] Along with Richard Sauvé, Larry Hurren, Gary Comeau and Bernie Guindon, McLeod played for the Millhaven Bulldogs, the Satan's Choice prison hockey team.
[64] McLeod was transferred to the Collins Bay Institution medium security prison where he enrolled as a student via correspondence with Queens's University.
[69] Campbell joined by Comeau, Sauvé, McLeod, Larry Vallentyne, and Paul Rogers of Satan's Choice confronted the black prisoners armed with baseball bats.
[70] The meeting ended with the black prisoners be warned that if another of their group to stab a Satan's Choice biker, a policy of collective vengeance would follow.
[74] McLeod and his supporters felt that the fact he was successful in rehabilitating himself was being used as a reason to deny him parole because it proved he was still a dangerous criminal to be highly unjust.
[75] McLeod felt out of place at Queen's University as he attended classes at day and every evening he returned to Collins Bay prison.
[76] In an interview taken shortly before he was awarded his BA, McLeod praised Sauvé and Comeau as he stated: "because of Ricky and Nutty, I could have never done the time they're doing, I could never had handled it the way they have.