This Ontario mom wants you to know her son was no ‘monster’

In reality, he was far from that, she says. “He was the most loving person in this world.” He was a victim, she insists.

The Star has been speaking with Clare on and off for a year since Fader’s murder was first connected — by the FBI — to a massive cartel-linked cocaine ring led by a Canadian ex-Olympian. Now, in an exclusive interview at her Niagara home, she is speaking publicly for the first time.

Former snowboarder Ryan Wedding, 44, is accused of leading a billion-dollar organization that authorities say worked with Mexican cartels to routinely bring large quantities of cocaine into Canada. He’s also accused of orchestrating multiple murders — including Fader’s, the mistaken identity killings of a couple just outside Toronto — and other linked shootings and death threats.

According to the FBI, Wedding and his second-in-command, Canadian Andrew Clark, 35, would hire hit men to murder individuals who owed them money. It was Clark, the FBI says, who ordered Fader’s killing, paying a Toronto man by the nickname “Mr. Perfect” $100,000 for the contract.

Why? No one knows for sure. And the question is keeping Clare up at night.

U.S. authorities have said that Fader was known to Canadian law enforcement as an international drug trafficker. That doesn’t make sense to Clare. There is no proof, she insists. If there was, they haven’t shared it. 

Her son had dealt pot, but the kind of person who’d cross a drug cartel?

In her sweeping interview with the Star, she described a litany of concerns about the investigation into his death and the Niagara Regional Police Service, blaming them for what Clare calls “unfounded” claims that have damaged both her son’s and their family’s reputation.

She also worries Fader’s death isn’t being taken seriously. One question she keeps coming back to is: Why was the gunman charged, but no one seems to care about the driver?

Whether Clare’s right about her son is something the Star can’t verify — not for now. The murder is heading to U.S. court as part of a much larger case, with no guarantee Clare ever sees evidence on why he was the target of a paid assassination.

In the violent world of international drug cartels, Clare Fader’s story is more normal than not.

Sometime between January and April 2024, a man in Mexico by the nickname “Mero Wero” texted a Toronto man — “Mr. Perfect” — a list of names of people to murder. 

“Give me the easiest one first,” Mr. Perfect said.

“Maybe the niagra falls ginger lol,” Mero Wero replied, adding that the “driveway job” would pay “100k” — “blow this guys head off.”

This was the contract on Fader, a red-headed dual U.S. and Canadian citizen who lived with his wife and their two young girls on a quiet crescent in Niagara Falls, not far from the city’s tourist attractions.

On March 31, 2024, Fader and his siblings organized an Easter egg hunt for their children at a local park. Clare remembers they had noticed a suspicious vehicle — a white Audi — parked beside them, but they all continued on with their day.

The next day, Easter Monday, Fader had his sister and her two children over for an early dinner.

He and his wife were excellent hosts — they loved cooking. And that afternoon, Fader called his dad to tell him they had made his favourite, beef stroganoff. His parents were grabbing a drink at a nearby pub, but said they’d pop by later.

Around 6 p.m., the kids were done eating and Fader began to wind down when a friend called him to go grab wings at their local sports bar — that night, Auston Matthews was on track to break the Maple Leafs’ single-season record for goals.

According to court documents detailing what he told police, the friend pulled into the driveway just before 6:20 p.m. Fader got into the car but said he forgot something and went back inside. As he did, a white Audi had pulled up out front.

Just as Fader returned to the car, a gunman dressed in black approached and shot him in the head from about three feet away. The shooter then got back in the Audi — at least one other person was inside — and it drove off.

Fader’s wife and daughter were watching from the window overlooking the front yard, Clare said, relaying the account of her daughter-in-law, who declined to be interviewed.

“She was pounding on the window, screaming at the top of her lungs and pointing to the guy walking up.”

The friend called 911, and Fader’s sister performed CPR until emergency crews arrived. Meanwhile, Clare and Randy Sr. were still at the pub when they learned their son had been shot. 

Clare was in shambles. Officers wouldn’t let her pass the yellow police tape, she said, and when Fader was taken into the ambulance, she watched his arm fall limp off the stretcher.

Fader was Clare’s youngest, with three older sisters and a brother. He was Randy Sr.’s only son.

Both were tradesmen; Randy Jr. was an HVAC installer, and his dad is a framer. They worked well together — and often.

“I miss him like hell,” Randy Sr. said. “But I’m going to see him again.”

A buzzed redhead with a trimmed, thick beard and tattooed arms, Randy Jr. wore nothing but Tommy Hilfiger clothing and Jordan shoes, his mom says. Every vacation, he’d give a pair away. (His collection now belongs to his two girls.)

He wasn’t the tallest, but he was a skilled boxer; his broad shoulders and brawny arms made him tough to mess with. “He was so wide that he didn’t even fit in the coffin,” his mother said.

When he was four, he jumped off a huge cliff into the water on a family trip. From his teens into early adulthood, all he wanted to do was ride motorcycles, snowboard, and play paintball. At 17, he was stabbed multiple times after kicking someone out of a New Year’s party. That landed him in the hospital for a week. 

Ask anyone in his circle, and they’ll tell you two things. One, Randy Jr. was the funniest person they knew. And two, he loved to barbecue.

“I miss that little s—-,” said Guy Pollard — “Uncle Guy” to Randy Jr., whom he’d known since he was a toddler.

Pollard has the words “ball hockey” tattooed on his right arm — he’s a world champion in the outdoor version of the sport. On the other arm, he has the initials “R.J.,” which he gave himself the night of the funeral.

Once, when Randy Jr. was around 12, Pollard remembered, he broke his arm a few weeks before a tournament. “He made his dad cut the goddamn cast off his arm so he could go and help his team win,” Pollard said with a chuckle.

For months, Fader’s death was a mystery. The Niagara Regional Police Service made no arrests and didn’t identify any suspects, only describing the getaway vehicle as a white 2020 to 2024 Audi Q7.

Behind the scenes, Niagara police were looking for answers, but they wouldn’t necessarily come from within their own force. As the Star previously has reported, the evidence linking the killer to the murder came to light by chance — after a traffic stop conducted by a different Ontario police force.

On April 14, 2024, York Regional Police pulled over a green Ford Explorer after a licence plate search revealed the vehicle was fraudulently registered. The driver, 24-year-old Malik Cunningham, was arrested for possessing property obtained by crime. 

During that stop, Cunningham asked the officer to retrieve a Dollarama bag from the car. Inside were large quantities of cash, wrapped in elastic bands.

Police seized more than $100,000 in cash, seven rounds of 9 mm ammunition and four cellphones — including a white iPhone. And that phone contained a series of encrypted messages linking Cunningham not only to the scene of the Fader’s murder, but to Clark — Ryan Wedding’s alleged right-hand man.

Cunningham, police allege, was “Mr. Perfect.”

And Fader was the “Niagara Falls ginger.”

In her conversations with the Star, Clare said she is frustrated that Niagara police waited months to tell her family about the arrest.

Cunningham was caught in April 2024, but Clare says she didn’t learn about it until October — and when she did, they made no mention of his alleged ties to Clark and Wedding.

Clare and her family — like the rest of the world — learned about Wedding’s alleged cross-border cocaine ring later that month, when the FBI held a press conference out of California. Fader was not named at the conference, but his death was referenced. The FBI alleges that Wedding and Clark arranged international murders to protect their drug operation; Fader’s was one of a series of hits ordered in Ontario. 

The Star has reported extensively about one of these killings: the murder of an Indian couple in Caledon, Ont., by a group of gunmen who were looking for an unrelated target. In that case, police on both sides of the border have emphasized that the victims were innocent, with no connection to the cartel.

Not so with Fader. The FBI has said, citing Canadian police, that he was targeted as someone with a connection to international drug trafficking. 

What exactly that means, Clare says she has no idea.

Back in 2017, Niagara police launched an investigation into allegations that Fader was trafficking drugs. Three years later, in March 2020, police raided both Fader’s and his parents’ homes, as well as an Airbnb they ran at another property. According to court records, police said they seized 4.3 kilos of cannabis, an undisclosed amount of fentanyl, 196.5 grams of cocaine, roughly $2,400 in cash, an electric pill press, a stun gun and a handful of Randy Sr.’s hunting shotguns — but, other than the pot, none of those claims turned into convictions for the Faders.

The court record shows police focused their search on a pantry in the basement of Clare and Randy Sr.’s home. This was where a man facing drug charges had been living on bail with Randy Sr. as his surety. Ultimately, the judge ruled there was no evidence linking any of the Faders to that pantry, nor the drugs found inside. 

The long guns belonged to Randy Sr., a licensed gun owner. And of the 536 pills that were seized, just one was sent for analysis.

Only Fader Jr. was found guilty of possessing cannabis for the purpose of trafficking. He was granted a conditional discharge. The rest of the family was cleared.

While the raid and the charges against the Faders made local headlines, the outcome of the 2023 court case has never been publicly reported. The case cost them several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees, Clare said. It’s also the reason that she and her husband have difficulty opening bank accounts or securing loans.

Which is to say: The family has a history with Niagara police.

Clare has repeatedly asked to meet with the Niagara Regional Police chief about her son’s killing, and, in the summer, she says she spoke with a U.S. prosecutor and an FBI investigator.

“I wanted to talk to the prosecutor to say, ‘What part of this was my son involved in?’” Clare explained.

If Fader was earning money from trafficking drugs internationally, Clare insists she’d know about it. “He had no money, he didn’t live a lavish lifestyle, and what he did have was all through credit cards.”

According to Clare, U.S. authorities told her they were limited in what they could share about her son because the investigation is still active. (A FBI spokesperson said the same when reached by the Star.) Clare says they did, however, tell her that her son’s involvement in international drug trafficking came from Niagara police and that it would be up to them to pursue charges against the driver or any other suspects in the shooting. She said they also reassured her that Fader “was not in a cartel.” (The Star has not been able to independently verify this conversation.)

During the Star’s interview, Randy Sr. periodically popped in and out of the kitchen while doing handiwork around the house.

He said the only person who can respond to the allegation that his son was involved in trafficking drugs is his son himself. He plans to ask his son about it when he dies, he said.

“I mean, he was 100 per cent good-hearted. He didn’t deserve what happened,” Randy Sr. continued. Randy Jr. had a cannabis growing license for a long time, “and that’s what he did,” he said.

“As far as anything else goes, he may have dabbled a little in cocaine. I don’t know.” 

In a statement to the Star, Niagara police spokesperson Stephanie Sabourin said it would be inappropriate for the service to comment on specific details of the case, citing the ongoing investigation and prosecution.

“We can confirm that our investigators continue to follow all available leads and pursue any information regarding the possible involvement of additional persons,” she said.

Regardless of what happens next, there’s no certainty that Clare will ever learn why her son was targeted. Even though the murder happened in Ontario, Cunningham and Clark are facing only U.S. charges because the FBI alleges the killing was done in the furtherance of a U.S. criminal organization.

Neither man is facing a Canadian murder charge, which means they are not set to stand trial in a Canadian court, before a Canadian jury and a Canadian mom.

For now, Clare’s hopes rest on Niagara police catching the driver. If they’re arrested, maybe she’ll get answers to her questions; maybe that will clear the name of Randy Fader Jr. 

Wedding and Clark are also accused of ordering the killing of a 39-year-old Brampton man, Mohammed Zafar, over a drug debt on May 18, 2024 — a month and a half after Fader was shot. 

The FBI case includes another allegation that Wedding threatened to murder the Montreal mother of a Florida man to recover a drug debt of a few kilos of cocaine.

All told, these accounts paint a picture of a criminal organization that treated murder as something casual — the kind of thing that can be ordered with an “lol” text with little regard for who dies.

Since the first meeting with the Star more than a year ago, Clare says she has reflected much. She thinks about her struggle with grief, her anger, and her desire for justice. And she worries how those things have affected her relationship with her other children. “They lost me the day (Randy Jr.) died,” she says. 

And she has complex feelings about the people who killed her son. On the one hand, she grimly laughed to the Star about Cunningham — Mr. Perfect “forgot to delete his messages off his phone,” she said. On the other hand, she thinks of the families on the other side of the murder. Cunningham is 24, she notes. “How do his parents feel? They lost their son. Ryan Wedding’s family lost him. Same with Andrew Clark,” she said.

“Mine, I just can never see again.”