by Paul Cherry
During the summer of 1993, Boucher was also overheard on wiretaps making a series of calls to Desjardins and the latter’s business partner Julio Cesari. It was around this time that Imbeault had told an RCMP informant that Desjardins was financing the Fortune Endeavor smuggling operation. The police also noticed that Desjardins and Rizzuto were talking to each other on a regular basis. A particularly interesting day in Project Jaggy was August 17, 1993. A surveillance team watched as Boucher walked out of Desjardins’ company, Amusements Deluxe, and into a car. The Hells Angel was obviously concerned about being monitored by the police because he had shown up for the meeting driving a car registered in the name of the mother of Luc (Bordel) Bordeleau, who was a member of the Rockers at the time.
Maurice (Mom) Boucher (left) and Luc (Bordel) Bordeleau
Just days prior to this meeting, the Fortune Endeavor had penetrated Canadian waters on its return from Jamaica but had run into trouble. It reported problems to the authorities at the Halifax port. Worried that they would go through an official inspection, those on board dumped 750 kilograms of cocaine packed into plastic pipes weighed down with lead and chains. While dumping the cocaine overboard appeared to be part of the Hells Angels’ ultimate plan, they had apparently planned to do it in shallower waters. On August 17, the same day Boucher held a meeting with Desjardins, Imbeault set off from Shippagan, New Brunswick, in a pleasure boat. He planned to locate the cocaine using sonar. On board with him was Bordeleau, who besides being a founding member of the Rockers and a close friend of Boucher, was also a professionally trained scuba diver. After eight days of diving attempts in the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence, the men were unable to find the cocaine and they quit. Whenever Bordeleau and the others would came back to shore without their sunken illicit treasure they were closely followed by the RCMP. Surveillance teams noticed that Bordeleau did little to hide the fact that he was always armed. To the police, it appeared Boucher had personally recruited Bordeleau for the cocaine recovery operation. The subject would come up later at Bordeleau’s parole board hearings while he was serving five years for his failed scuba diving expeditions. Despite having apparently little to do with the larger smuggling plan, Bordeleau was charged, shortly after giving up the search for the cocaine, along with the other major players, like Imbeault and Desjardins. The cocaine was located about a year later by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Boucher wasn’t even arrested. His telephone conversations with Desjardins provided little of actual interest to investigators. But by now, it was clear he had become a major player in Quebec’s lucrative illicit drug scene. It had been a long and messy road.
Maurice (Mom) Boucher — The Man Himself
Boucher was born on June 21, 1953, in Causapscal, a village in the Gaspé peninsula located where the Matapedia and Causapscal rivers meet. The village’s name is a Mi’kmaq word meaning “pebbly point.”
When he was two years old, his family moved from the peace of the remote village to one of Montreal’s rougher neighborhoods, where Boucher’s father worked in construction as an iron worker. His mother stayed home to look after Boucher and his seven siblings, three brothers and four sisters. The details of his early life are contained in a presentencing report filed when Boucher was 21 and, by then, a petty criminal with a serious drug problem, by his own admission. The report was filed to a judge in February 1975 by criminologist Guy Pellerin who interviewed Boucher, his mother, a friend and an investigator with the Montreal police.
At the time of Pellerin’s assessment, Boucher was charged with breaking and entering. He had been nabbed in connection with three different break-ins during the fall of 1974. The first arrest came on November 5, just after midnight. Boucher smashed the front door window of a neighborhood grocery store in Hochelaga Maisonneuve, the low-income Montreal district where he had grown up. He grabbed 23 cartons of cigarettes and headed out. But his actions had set off an alarm heard by two cops in a nearby patrol car. When they pulled up to the front of the store, the officers saw Boucher standing in front of it. A green plastic bag filled with cigarette cartons lay at his feet.
Boucher was charged with breaking and entering and was released on a promise he’d stop breaking the law long enough to have his case heard. But a little over three weeks later, he broke into a woman’s apartment on Hochelaga Street and stole her Fleetwood brand television, a luxury model worth nearly $400 at the time. Boucher had simply forced open the woman’s door, grabbed the color television and made off with it. In October, the police found it and a bunch of electronic goods stolen from a stereo store in Boucher’s apartment. Boucher claimed to have been high on drugs at the time of the break-ins and barely aware of what he was doing.
In his interview for Pellerin’s report, Boucher told the crimi-nologist he had quit hard drugs altogether. He said that while he enjoyed getting high he was also fully aware what damage the drugs could do to him. His girlfriend Diane Leblanc was eight months pregnant and Boucher said he realized that a huge responsibility was about to be placed on his shoulders.
At that point in his young life, Boucher had tried LSD, cocaine and heroin. He claimed to have quit hard drugs two months before his arrest, but admitted to still drinking alcohol and doing soft drugs like marijuana. He told Pellerin that he had created a habit and needed the softer drugs to compensate. He claimed he had stopped taking amphetamines because they were making him paranoid — he had become fearful of everything and often slept with a firearm.
Growing up, Boucher got along well with his mother but had developed a difficult relationship with his father, an abusive man with a drinking problem, according to Pellerin’s report. Boucher’s father was also a strict man who would not tolerate foolishness from his children. Boucher and his siblings distanced themselves from their father and Boucher, in particular, developed an attitude of indifference. If his father started yelling, he would simply leave the room, Pellerin was told. Boucher’s mother told the criminologist that her husband’s iron discipline with their children would often cause her to side with them.
Boucher dropped out of school while in grade 9 at the age of either 17 or 18. His performance in school was mediocre and he never developed an interest in his studies. He left home shortly thereafter. It was a time when he and his father were clashing constantly, but that didn’t prevent Boucher from keeping in close contact with his mother. He even arranged to find an apartment near his family’s home. Boucher took up a series of jobs, but for very short periods of time. He found them to be poor paying jobs that offered little in terms of a future. He also admitted that his drug use affected his focus.
Just before his arrest in 1974, Boucher had earned a competence card in construction. He told the criminologist he was eager to work in the same industry as his father because he had heard it paid well. But at the time, the construction industry in Montreal was dead. There were strikes and work stoppages. Boucher had found work on a construction site, but only for a week which discouraged him.
Pellerin, who went over Boucher’s case, acknowledged that the three months he spent in a detention center awaiting the outcome of his case had been difficult for him. He suffered from insomnia and was going through withdrawal. Boucher told the criminologist that the only drugs he could get in prison were from a doctor who was giving him something for the insomnia. Pellerin wrote that he believed the three months had been a lesson for Boucher, but he had doubts the lesson would stick. For example, he cautioned that Boucher’s claims that he wanted to keep away from drugs were possibly the words of a man desperate to get out of jail.
“He has come to the moment of choice,” Pellerin wrote in summarizing his report, adding he was concerned that if Boucher continued to take drugs, his life of crime would also continue. “Only time and experience will let us know if his motivation is real and if he has the energy to change his life,” he wrote. On April 11,1975, Boucher’s girlfriend gave birth to a son, Francis. But fatherhood would not be the turning point the criminologist had hoped it w
ould be. Five months after becoming a father, Boucher was incarcerated again. The judge who had received Pellerin’s report ignored his suggestion that the jail time Boucher had already served would work as a deterrent — he sentenced Boucher to two months and fifteen days. And when he got out, Boucher continued his life of crime. Years later, he also would welcome his son Francis into the Rockers, his underling gang of drug dealers, thugs and hit men. Time would reveal that at the “moment of choice” Pellerin referred to in his report, Boucher had opted for the life of a criminal.
On November 5, 1975, only months after Pellerin filed his report, Boucher graduated to the big time. At 5:40 p.m., he burst into a butcher’s shop on Ontario Street East with an accomplice named Laurent David and they threatened the 71-year-old owner with a rifle and a butcher’s knife. All they managed to steal was $138.39. There were three other witnesses to the robbery, and Boucher and David were quickly arrested. They each received a 40-month prison sentence, giving Boucher his first federal prison term. Up to that point, his criminal record showed only minor things like theft and mischief. David also had only served relatively light sentences, as well, for things like theft and being in possession of counterfeit money. Boucher ended up serving most of the 40 months of his sentence behind bars.
Like Boucher, Laurent David would continue a life of crime. But unlike Boucher, the rest of David’s career would be influenced by a drug and alcohol problem. In 1995, when Boucher was putting together the Nomads, assembling a group of Hells Angels who were millionaires willing to kill to obtain a monopoly on their market, David was serving a sentence for the same type of crime he and Boucher did 20 years earlier. At the age of 47, David was still committing hold-ups with a firearm, including one in 1993 where he used a 9-mm handgun. He had spent most of his time in the interim hanging out in bars and trying to hold down jobs as either a nurse or an insurance salesman, with little success. A psychologist who examined David in 1994 determined that he had an immature and narcissistic personality. Although he was intelligent, David’s career as a criminal was heavily influenced by alcohol.
The next time Boucher would be caught committing a crime was in 1978, soon after his 40-month sentence. This time around, his accomplice would be a lot closer to him. Boucher and his slightly younger brother Christian Boucher were charged with two break-ins committed at the same home in December 1978. According to the police reports, during the first break-in, the brothers stole a television, tools and library books from the victim. Less than two weeks later, and a few days after Christmas, they went back to the same home on Pie-ix Blvd. accompanied by a third man. According to the police report, this time, the Boucher brothers were looking for the victim’s .22-calibre rifle. They punched the victim in the face and forced him to sign a document saying he had sold them the rifle. They then used the rifle to rob $222 from the victim’s friend, who was visiting. As the Boucher brothers were leaving, Christian told them that if they called the police he would kill them. The police were called, but the charges against them were eventually dropped.
Like his brother Maurice, Christian had done time for a few minor offences before being arrested in the holdup. He had served sentences for stealing cars and breaking and entering. After the 1978 arrest, Christian followed a different path from his brother. He would continue to be picked up for relatively minor crimes while living at the address on Leclaire Street that he shared with Maurice Boucher during the early 1980s. In 1986, Christian pleaded guilty to conspiring with another of the Boucher brothers after they were arrested for a break-in. For his part in the conspiracy Patrick Boucher was sentenced to two years in prison. In 1990, Christian Boucher would serve four months for assaulting a woman. In 1992, while his brother Maurice was growing in influence within the Hells Angels and creating the Rockers, Christian was busy stealing cars, and did five months for stealing a Mazda 626.
Patrick Boucher, three years younger than Maurice, would also end up spending most of his adult life in and out of prison. During the early 1990s, he was turned down for day parole while serving a sentence for breaking and entering into a home on Saint-Catherine Street East. He was later released after serving two-thirds of his two-year sentence. But even his statutory release was revoked because the Montreal Urban Community Police picked him up for breaking into his own home after a night of heavy drinking. In 1988, Patrick Boucher was sentenced to two years for the armed robbery of a woman. Three years later he would get another 18 months for breaking and entering on Leclaire Street. He ended the 1990s serving a sentence of two years probation after being caught in another break-in where he assaulted the arresting officer.
During the early 1980s, Maurice Boucher appeared to be headed down the same petty criminal path as his brothers. He was arrested late in December 1981 for breaking into a home in Montreal’s east end, but in order to get bail, Boucher told the authorities that he was holding down a job at a manufacturing plant on Notre Dame Street East and living with Diane Leblanc. He had been hired at the appliance factory on July 9, 1979.He worked with plastics, earning a little over $10 an hour. According to letters filed in court, it was a job he would keep for at least four years. Boucher and an accomplice were accused of breaking into the home by smashing a window. They stole a radio, cassette player and some tools. But the charges against him were thrown out several months later after the victim somehow decided not to show up in court to testify against Boucher.
It was after a 1982 arrest that Boucher’s criminal record began to indicate he was more than just a thief capable of smash-and-grab jobs. He was arrested for trying to extort money from a man working in a café. The victim accused Boucher of trying to force him to commit a robbery so he could pay back a debt. The charge was eventually dismissed, but by now the police appeared to have taken serious notice of Boucher. There was a note in the police report indicating the police had an intelligence file on Boucher. It noted that he appeared to operate out of a brasserie in Montreal’s Hochelaga Maisonneuve district. The next time Boucher would be picked up was about a year later, in June 1983, for a stolen Visa credit card. He was fined $250. A few months later, he would be arrested again, this time for a minor theft, and fined $300 with a sentence of two years’ probation.
Boucher and the SS
It was around this time that Boucher joined the SS, a motorcycle gang based in Pointe aux Trembles, on the eastern tip of the Montreal Island. Normand (Biff) Hamel, a man Boucher would later choose to become a founding member of the Nomads, had been part of the SSsince 1981. Another member in the gang at the time was Salvatore Cazzetta, a man who would play a significant role in Boucher’s life in the years to come. Cazzetta and his brother Giovanni later formed the Rock Machine, a gang that would eventually stand in opposition to the monopolistic attitude the Hells Angels and in particular, Maurice (Mom) Boucher took toward eastern Montreal in the early 1990s.
The Cazzetta Brothers
Like Boucher, Salvatore Cazzetta started out as a petty criminal who put little thought into what he was doing. He was arrested in 1975 for stealing a Ford Mustang over the Thanksgiving weekend and then scrapping the car for parts. Cazzetta made solving the crime a snap by leaving the skeleton of the stripped vehicle behind his home. Two years later, Cazzetta earned himself his first federal sentence when he broke into a bar with his brother Giovanni to steal a measly $300 in coins from cigarette machines. One reason he got two years for the minor crime was that Cazzetta rushed a cop who found him hiding in the basement.
By 1980, he was apparently interested in becoming a biker. He was caught prowling around the back of a woman’s house at night, preparing to steal her Harley-Davidson. Years later, while recording information from another arrest, police would notice Cazzetta had the image of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle tattooed onto his arm along with the word “Brothers.”
In 1981, Cazzetta was involved in what appeared to be ganglike activity at the Bordeaux detention center. An inmate, Wayne Story, was playing cards when other inmates stormed into the
room and beat him with metal bars, killing him. But the case against Cazzetta and the four other inmates accused of killing Story was weak. A jury acquitted them all on December 17,1981.
By 1982, Cazzetta had developed a cavalier attitude toward the law. Just before dawn on November 26, he simply smashed in the window of a clothing store on Centre Street and grabbed whatever he could. A tenant in the building saw Cazzetta — who sported the same ponytail and beard he would keep for years — step out of the broken window with 26 leather coats draped on his shoulder. Cazzetta’s dog followed behind him, making him even more recognizable. Another witness, a woman who was coming home from work, would later tell the police she saw Cazzetta standing outside the clothing store just minutes before the break-in. She couldn’t help but notice him because he was urinating on a wall nearby while his dog faithfully waited beside him. She told the cops Cazzetta appeared to be drunk. Hours later, when the tenant told the store’s owner what had happened, he jumped into a car and drove around looking for the mysterious bandit with the telltale ponytail. Within minutes, he located Cazzetta just a few streets away, walking the same dog he had been seen with during the break-in. Cazzetta served two years less a day for stealing the leather jackets. Shortly after completing that sentence, Cazzetta was involved in moving drugs. He served two months for possession of 56 grams of PCP.
