The Deal that Killed Superman

(First of two parts)Carrying his recently deceased father's sky-blue retro suitcase as well as a Walkman and a dozen CDs, Joe Bralic cleared U.S. immigration and boarded his flight to Los Angeles. Bralic said the trip was for fun, to celebrate his 22nd birthday, which fell on June 21, five days before he left for Los Angeles. The popular kid from Vancouver planned to meet up with some American "friends." But it wasn't going to be all fun and games; there was also business to attend to on this trip - one that would take Bralic from Vancouver to Los Angeles, to Las Vegas, to Bismarck, North Dakota, all the way back to Los Angeles. Only a handful of Bralic's friends knew or suspected what the business entailed.Vancouver was typically cloudy when Bralic departed, but soon his mood reflected the sunny skies that greeted him in the Southland. He was having a good time - at least that is what he told his best friend, 22-year-old Dustin Riske, when he called him from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas a few days after getting off the plane in L.A. on June 26, 2001. He also told his childhood friend to keep his trip a secret. Nothing more needed to be said. Over the previous six months, Riske had gotten used to keeping Joe's secrets. That two-minute chat was the last time Dustin Riske, now 25, spoke to his best friend.When Bralic's body was discovered in the back parking lot of a Discount Tire store in Fullerton on July 5, 10 days after he left home, folks back in Bralic's hometown of Burnaby were shocked. An article that appeared in the Vancouver Province a few weeks after his death described Bralic as a "popular Burnaby bodybuilder" and a "hard-working, jovial man who was a hero to his friends." His family, reeling from the death of their patriarch a few months earlier, offered a reward for any information about Bralic's "mysterious shooting death" while vacationing in California.When Dustin Riske heard that Joe Bralic was dead, his heart sank. He knew that the news reports about his best friend being randomly killed while on vacation were false. Bralic wasn't in the States to visit the sights, as he led friends and family to believe. Instead, he had gottenhimself in over his head playing the cross-border game of smuggling B.C. bud, highly potent marijuana grown in so-called grow-ops all over British Columbia. It's a risky venture, but if successful, it can net drug smugglers at least three times more than if they sold the stuff inCanada. Bralic had told Riske he had a connection in Los Angeles. It was a simple exchange - pot for cocaine. Bralic assured him that this was a one-time deal. Riske didn't realize then how true Bralic's words would be."I was concerned about his safety, but he is going to do what he is going to do," says Riske, a souvenir wholesaler. "He is the type of person that you can't tell him anything. He is not going to listen to anyone but himself."Karate and steroidsIn 1979, Josip Ivan Bralic was born in Vancouver to Croatian parents who had immigrated to Canada in 1972. Friends who attended Burnaby North High School with Bralic say he was a good student who loved the theater (he played Kenickie in Grease) and sports, especially martial arts. He became a black belt in karate at 18. In his senior year, Bralic started to hang out with Riske and others who loved to bodybuild. "All of myfriends worked out and competed with each other," says Riske. "It is a status thing. Everyone tries to be bigger than the other guys."By 20, Bralic was the biggest and toughest. And like a lot of young male bodybuilders in Vancouver, he used steroids. His size started to get him recognized at the more popular bars around town, where Bralic and his friends would hang out at least four times a week."A lot of people knew of him. They knew he was a real tough guy, and would want to fight him to prove it," says Riske. "He never really instigated the fights. Nor was he ever beaten up."Bralic's local legend grew, and it wasn't long before the owner of the Wild Coyote and the Big Bamboo (now Daddy O's), two of Vancouver's more popular drinking establishments, asked him if he wanted work as a bouncer. He agreed."If you saw the guy, you would be instantly intimidated," says one of Bralic's friends who didn't want to be named. "He was a gentle guy, but you wouldn't want to cross paths with him the wrong way. Five normal guys couldn't have taken him on."Bralic was tough enough to enter the sometimes bloody, no-holds-barred world of Ultimate Fighting. He competed 16 times and lost only once. The bouncer gigs and Ultimate Fighting contests were big ego boosts for a kid who friends say was picked on for being small when he was growing up. "That was one of the reasons why he became so big," says Bralic's friend Joe Ciccone. "A lot of people seemed blinded by him. To me, he was veryeasy to read."Superman foils a robberyBy the time he reached his 20s, Bralic's identity was just the opposite of a bullied little kid. He had become something of a local hero, and no one loved that title more than he did. His outgoing and friendly personality ensured that he was the center of attention at family functions and with friends. He even had a nickname: Superman - his favorite action hero. The nickname stuck after he foiled a liquor-store robbery in Burnaby by chasing down the unsuspecting robber, tackling him and then holding him down until the police arrived a few minutes later.The Superman nickname also fit with his propensity for getting into accidents and making it out alive. At 5, he was hit by a car and survived. A few years later, he almost bled to death after he fell through a sliding glass window. To friends and family, he was the comic-book hero come to life."When I would be scared at night, it was Joe who I phoned," says Dustin Riske's sister, Simone. "He was such a good-hearted person. My mum travels, and sometimes I would be sleeping at home by myself. I would tell him I heard something, and he would run over and check the back of the house. I felt safe knowing he was there. He is the type of person you would call. He would do absolutely anything for anyone."Despite his displays of toughness and bravado, Bralic had an artistic side. He loved to draw. After high school, he enrolled in the prestigious Vancouver Film School, where he majored in animation. His favorite characters were Superman, Spider-Man and the X-Men. He aspired to work for Disney and draw his own cartoons. His friends pictured him as having a career in the movies as the next big action hero.Bralic was also very sensitive and easily manipulated, his friends say. "There are people who are strong, and there are people who can be persuaded or influenced, and he was that type of person," says Ciccone. "Anyone who does steroids and wants an image is clearly not comfortable with himself. Instead of being himself, he was trying to be the fighter. He was just trying to find his place."U.S. craving for B.C. budB.C. is home to a $4 billion marijuana industry that, via hydroponic cultivation (an indoor growing method using lights, high heat, humidity and heavily fertilized water), grows pot four times more potent than most of the stuff from Mexico and Humboldt County. Over the last decade, B.C. bud has become the region's largest export to the U.S., next to lumber.The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has reported that one pound of B.C. bud sells for as much as $6,000 in California. In nearby Seattle, B.C. bud sells for around $3,000. On the streets of Vancouver, the take would be closer to $1,500. If you're willing to take the risk, dealingB.C. bud can bring a nice profit.Since Prohibition, Canada and the U.S. have had a lucrative partnership in smuggling illicit contraband. During the Depression, Canadians made lots of money sneaking alcohol into the U.S. through tunnels and across the lax U.S.-Canadian border, a frontier of vast, remote areas interrupted by the occasional residence and farm. In some areas, the border is delineated only by a narrow trench, which is easily traversed.In December 2000, the DEA published an intelligence brief, "B.C. Bud: Growth of the Canadian Marijuana Trade," that said the province's pot business had become "a billion-dollar industry" and that "traffickers smuggle a significant portion of the Canadian harvest into the United States" in everything from sod trucks to hockey-equipment bags. In 2001, the DEA opened an office in Vancouver, citing British Columbia's marijuana trade to the U.S. as the key reason.Meanwhile, smuggling has continued to boom, as the Hells Angels and Asian and Indo-Canadian gangs have taken over the trafficking and now outnumber law-enforcement agencies on both sides of the border. To make matters worse, in recent years a new breed of smuggler, composed mostly of enterprising blue-collar folks and yuppies looking for a fast buck, has entered the market.By any measure, marijuana is big business in Canada - one with its own shady infrastructure. In B.C. alone, there are an estimated 12,000 grow-ops, with most of the product heading toward the border, according to law enforcement. To have a successful average-size greenhouse (100 plants), a grower needs a house, hydroponic supplies, lights, fans, seeds and labor. It can cost upwards of $100,000 to set it up. (More recently, sophisticated plant genetics have come into play that produce plants with THC levels of 30 percent.) Once that is in order, you need a "cross" or "mule" to smuggle the pot over the border. Once in the U.S., you need a connection.Last road tripWhile in Los Angeles, Bralic checked into the Radisson Hotel in Baldwin Hills. A few days later, he drove to Las Vegas for a brief respite before heading on to North Dakota to meet up with his girlfriend, Rachel Duck, and his two friends Derrick Madinski and Garry Favell. Theystayed overnight in Bismarck sometime around June 29 before driving back to L.A. Joe drove with Duck, and Favell and Madinski drove Madinski's girlfriend's Jeep.Friends say Bralic asked Duck to join him to celebrate their anniversary. The two had been fighting to the point where he had recently moved out of the Vancouver apartment they shared, and this trip was meant to signal a more positive turn for their relationship. Although it was last-minute, she agreed and flew to Regina, Saskatchewan - around 1,000 miles from Vancouver - to meet up with Madinski and Favell, who had driven there from Vancouver. Why they had rendezvoused in Saskatchewan before heading into the U.S. would later become a subject of scrutiny andspeculation for police. The Jeep they were driving was given a secondary search by U.S. customs officials at the North Dakota border before they were allowed to enter the U.S.Despite whatever romantic notions they had for their time in the States, Duck left Bralic and flew back to Vancouver the day after they all arrived back in Los Angeles. Friends say she had to return to work, but authorities believe otherwise. Fullerton Police Sergeant Kevin Hamilton, who has been working the case for the last three years, believes that Bralic may have realized that something was going sour with the "business"end of his Los Angeles trip and asked her to leave just in case it got dangerous. "We couldn't determine a valid reason why she would leave California without him," Hamilton says.On the evening of Wednesday, July 4, Bralic and his friends Madinski and Favell cruised the Sunset Strip. They had a couple of drinks at the Viper Room before they crossed the street and checked out one of L.A.'s late-night tattoo parlors. Bralic had a skull-and-crossbones of the comic-strip character the Punisher tattooed on his ankle. Fullerton's Sergeant Hamilton says that Bralic was reportedly acting tough that night.The artist who gave Bralic his tattoo told police that he warned the Canadian tourist about his cocky behavior, telling him that he would get himself into trouble if he kept it up. Bralic just shrugged it off, smiled and left.The next day, Bralic got five calls on his cell phone. The second was from his girlfriend, at 9:47 a.m. He told her about his new tattoo, according to Vlatka Bralic, Joe's oldest sister. The other four calls (9:30 a.m., 10:08 a.m., 10:40 a.m. and 11:57 a.m.) were all less than oneminute long. Any calls after that went straight to Bralic's voice mail. Madinski and Favell told Vlatka that they had asked her brother that morning to join them sightseeing, but he declined. They told her that brief conversation was the last time they spoke to Bralic.Later that very day, almost 30 miles away, two Fullerton water-maintenance workers were driving through the back alley of a Discount Tire store on West Orangethorpe Avenue when they made a gruesome discovery. Lying next to two parked cars was a body wrapped in plastic.Tomorrow (Saturday): How the border-crossing business of swapping pot for cocaine turned lethal for Joe Bralic.Christine Pelisek [email protected] is a writer and editor at the LA Weekly, where this article first appeared.