The last thing Jamie Flanz said to one of his close friends was that he wanted to cut ties with his biker buddies and pick up the pieces of his former life with his wife and son.
"He just wanted to get his life back together and start again fresh," said the friend, who asked not to be named, but said Mr. Flanz was like a brother. "He was selling his bike, cleaning up his house, and really trying to figure out his life."
But two days after Mr. Flanz, 37, made his pledge, he was found dead with seven members or associates of the Bandidos biker gang last Saturday in a wooded area on a farmer's field outside the village of Shedden, near London.
Police suggest an internal dispute led to the worst mass killing in Ontario history.
It's not certain to what degree Mr. Flanz was involved with the Bandidos -- police listed him yesterday as a prospect, a lower-tier member -- but he was on his way to becoming a full-patch member, his friend said.
"He told me he was getting close to becoming one, but that was only in the last year, and by about January he was starting to talk about leaving town," the friend said.
According to Mr. Flanz's friend, the biker said someone was trying to set him up for the killing of Shawn Douse, whose body was found Dec. 8 in a woodlot in north Pickering.
The 35-year-old from Georgina, a few kilometres northeast of Keswick, had been beaten to death.
"He didn't say who he thought was setting him up, but he was really getting worried about it."
However, police dispute any links between the two cases.
The amount of time Mr. Flanz spent with the Bandidos is one reason his wife moved to the United States with their five-year-old son, the friend said.
In September of 2005, after losing his family, Mr. Flanz quit his job as a part-time bouncer for the Village Inn, a nightclub in Bradford, just west of Keswick. He resumed running his software-repair company out of a home office, the friend and Mr. Flanz's boss at the Village Inn said.
"He was a total genius with computers," said Bill Dykie, manager of the Village Inn. "I just don't see where any of this fits into him being a biker. He owned a Harley, but he never drove it to work and I never saw him with any bikers."
This was typical of Mr. Flanz's behaviour, the friend said: "He wanted to protect us."
Still, some neighbours were concerned after watching several burly bikers, with the Bandidos insignia sewn on the backs of their jackets, come and go from Mr. Flanz's townhouse.
Joe Rogers, who lives across the street, said he noticed an increase in the number of times bikers would stay at Mr. Flanz's home.
"They were never rude or anything," Mr. Rogers said. "But when you see three tough-looking biker guys on motorcycles pulling up across the street, you don't exactly run over and say hello."