To say Montreal has a shady previous can be a little bit of an understatement.
Town, as soon as residence to a booming red light district and bustling underground crime operation, was additionally thought of the “financial institution theft capital of North America” for a big chunk of the twentieth century.
That fame is well-documented at this level, largely due to Kings of Coke,, the acclaimed 2022 Crave documentary that traced the rise of the West Finish Gang from a free crew of financial institution robbers into one of many world’s most prolific cocaine trafficking networks.
Now, the franchise is again with two new chapters, and if something, the tales solely get wilder from right here.
Each new collection — Kings of Coke: New Blood and The Legend of Rory Shayne — have been produced by C3 Media and URBANIA, the identical Montreal-based group behind the unique, with administrators Guillaume Fortin and Nick Rose on the helm.
“What’s cool about this double launch is that we’re providing a macro and a micro view on crime,” Rose informed MTL Weblog. “In New Blood, we see the tectonic plates of crime shifting in real-time through the 90s Biker Battle. And in The Legend of Rory Shayne, we do a brilliant deep dive into the psyche of 1 eccentric financial institution robber. It is like taking a look at Montreal’s underworld by means of a telescope and a microscope on the identical time.”
Kings of Coke: New Blood premieres June 12 and follows Gerry “Beef” Matticks, a covert operator who quietly seized management of the Port of Montreal and turned it right into a billion-dollar drug gateway. Fairly than align himself with anyone faction, Matticks performed the Hells Angels and the Italian mafia in opposition to one another whereas gathering from either side.
As viewers will see, it labored, till it did not.
The 2-episode collection additionally covers the violent biker warfare that erupted as his empire started to fracture, and the cash path that finally uncovered the entire operation from inside.
Every week later, on June 19, Kings of Coke: The Legend of Rory Shayne arrives and takes issues in a distinct course completely.
Born in Germany and delivered to Canada as a toddler, Shayne had a troubled upbringing that ultimately gave strategy to one of the chaotic prison careers the nation has ever seen. He robbed banks utilizing a hijacked helicopter, broke out of jail greater than as soon as, and at one level held his personal courtroom hostage — pointing a transformed starter pistol at his lawyer earlier than guards tackled him to the bottom.
Ultimately convicted and deported to Germany within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, Shayne merely vanished. Some say he died abroad. Others aren’t so positive. The documentary options uncommon entry to former investigators, gang associates, and hostages who survived his most notorious standoff, all in pursuit of a solution to the query that has lingered for over 30 years: what truly occurred to him?
“Pulling this story out of obscurity and onto the display screen has been extremely rewarding,” Rose, who directed the Shayne doc, stated. “It took us in instructions that we by no means anticipated, and I believe it’ll blow lots of people’s minds after they discover out what occurred to Rory.”
Kings of Coke: New Blood premieres June 12 on Crave. Kings of Coke: The Legend of Rory Shayne follows on June 19.