Police in Winnipeg arrested three men Friday morning in connection with the killings of eight motorcycle-gang members in southwestern Ontario this spring, bringing the total charged in the case to eight.

Dwight Mushey, 36, Marcello Aravena, 30, and Michael Sandham, 36, were arrested in a sweep that police dubbed Operation Octagon.  

Michael Sandham, 36, (left) is led away in shackles in Winnipeg to a waiting plane.
(Joe Bryksa/Winnipeg Free Press/CP)

Each Winnipeg suspect faces eight charges of first-degree murder after the bodies of eight men, all with links to the Bandidos biker gang, were found April 8 in a farmer's field near Shedden.

Ontario Provincial Police will return the three suspects to St. Thomas, Ont., on Friday afternoon for a court appearance. The men were picked up at three locations in Winnipeg's East Kildonan, River Heights and St. James areas. 

Police also seized a sport-utility vehicle, which will be sent to Ontario for forensic testing.

Marcello Aravena, 30, (left) was also arrested in Winnipeg in connection with a biker-gang 'cleansing' in Ontario.
(Joe Bryksa/Winnipeg Free Press/CP)

A woman was also arrested but has not been charged. Police would not reveal details about her identity.

Three Ontarians have also been charged with first-degree murder in a case described by Ontario police as an "internal cleansing" of the biker gang. Two other Ontario residents have been charged with being accessories after the fact.

Suspect a former police officer

Dwight Mushey, 36, (centre) is the third suspect arrested in Winnipeg following the discovery of eight bodies in an Ontario field this spring.
(Joe Bryksa/Winnipeg Free Press/CP)

 Sandham, 36, is a former police constable who held positions of authority in several Manitoba communities. Police said he is a full-patch member of the Bandidos, and believed to be the leader of the Winnipeg chapter.

Sandham was a police officer in the rural municipality of East St. Paul from June 2000 to October 2002, court records show. He trained for that job at the Winnipeg Police Training Academy.

He was suspended and then resigned from the East. St. Paul force after Winnipeg police provided his employer with pictures of him attending a Bandidos function when he was on leave from work, sources told CBC News.

Respected, well-liked: ex-employer

Sandham went on to work as an officer for Prairie Bylaw Enforcement Services, a company that enforced municipal bylaws and provincial statues — such as noise complaints and other municipal bylaw matters —in several municipalities.

Sandham was involved in training Prairie Bylaw Enforcement staff, and council meeting minutes from a number of communities show he also patrolled areas and enforced local bylaws. In some towns, he was assigned a badge number.

Dave Prud'homme, owner of Prairie By-Law Enforcement Services, told CBC News he had received an excellent letter of recommendation about Sandham from the chief of the East St. Paul police.  Prud'homme said the company also did a criminal background check on Sandham that came up clean.

Sandham has no previous criminal record.   Prud'homme said Sandham was well liked and respected by the other officers working for Prairie Bylaw Enforcement, although he said he knew very little about Sandham's personal life.

Police said Mushey was also a full-patch member of the Bandidos, while Aravena was a prospect member.  

David Ripley, who lives across the lane from one of the homes involved in the sweep, had a bird's-eye view as one suspect was arrested shortly before 7 a.m. Friday morning.

"My mum came downstairs and she says, 'Oh, come look out the back window.' And that's when we saw the SWAT team and everything, and a whole bunch of police officers, leading a man out, guns drawn, down the back lane," he said.

Ripley said he hadn't noticed any unusual activity at the house across the back lane.

Operation nearly compromised

Operation Octagon could have ended almost before it started if papers found outside a Winnipeg police station earlier this year had fallen into the wrong hands.

In April, confidential police documents were found in the mud outside the station. A passerby picked up a few pages and turned them over to CBC. The documents included information about people whom police had under surveillance, including names and addresses.

"It's disturbing. Any sensitive police information could cause us problems if it got into the wrong hands," said Sgt. Kelly Dennison in April. "It would be detrimental to a police investigation to have this kind of information out in the public at this time."

CBC reported on the found documents, but did not reveal details about their contents. Until Friday morning, police didn't know if that security breach might have compromised the investigation.

Bandidos in city since 2005

Police believe several people in Winnipeg are associated with the Bandidos, a Texas-based biker gang that claims to have 600 members in North America, Europe and Australia. A "probationary" chapter of the club started in Winnipeg in late 2004, they believe.

Their suspicions seemed to be confirmed in February 2005, when investigators found a jacket bearing a Bandidos logo while making arrests related to the alleged kidnapping of a 20-year-old man. In that case, police say a motorist was run off the road in central Winnipeg, abducted and tortured. He was later freed and treated in hospital.

Seven suspects were arrested in the case and face several criminal charges. They will go to trial later this year.

Other chapters of the club are said to operate in Ontario and Quebec, although police have said the slayings near Shedden virtually wiped out the Toronto chapter of the Bandidos.