Biker Trials, The

by Paul Cherry

  On November 7, 1994, Kane phoned Corporal Verdon and warned him that the Hells Angels were looking to kill a man because he might testify against Steinert in a drug trial. Verdon learned that the man was about to be transferred to the Longueuil courthouse and warned the Sûreté du Québec.

  Paul (Sasquatch) Porter, seen here when he was a member of the Rock Machine. (John Mahoney, The Montreal Gazette)

  In January 1995, Kane was approached by Steinert about joining the Rockers. Steinert told him it was Boucher himself who was interested in seeing Kane become part of his gang. During that same month, Kane told the RCMP that Steinert and Gaetan Comeau, a longtime member of the Hells Angels, had gone out looking for Paul (Sasquatch) Porter, a leader in the Rock Machine. A few days later, Kane said Boucher and Steinert chased André (Frisé, or “Curly”) Sauvageau, another member of the Rock Machine, along Highway 40 until they spotted two Sûreté du Québec vehicles. With these bravado acts, Steinert appeared to be gaining Boucher’s respect.

  Kane described Boucher as a shrewd criminal who went to bed early and woke up very early every morning. Kane said Boucher told him it was easier to do business this way because he felt it was tougher for the police to follow him during daytime hours. Kane said Boucher also appeared to be getting information from inside the Montreal Urban Community Police, which was not surprising since Kane had known for some time that the Hells Angels were willing to pay dearly for inside information from the police. In particular, Boucher was willing to pay double a cop’s salary for information on what the police knew about his organization. In March 1995, Boucher told Kane that he had a source inside the police who advised him to keep things cool for about a month because the police were now focusing closely on him. Kane’s handlers felt it was no coincidence that Boucher learned this at around the same time the Montreal Urban Community Police formed a special unit within its anti-gang squad. Its assignment was to focus specifically on the activities of Boucher and his henchman André (Toots) Tousignant.

  Kane described a strange incident that occurred after he, Boucher and other Hells Angels’ underlings had eaten at a greasy spoon in Montreal’s Hochelaga Maisonneuve district. As they were leaving the restaurant, a man driving a Mustang pulled up and spoke briefly to Boucher. It was obvious they were friends because the pair shook hands and Boucher stuck his head in the car to talk to the man. After the man drove away, Kane took note of the car’s licence plate. Boucher turned to Kane and the two other men they were with and said, “He’s my pig. He’s on surveillance today.”

  Kane’s RCMP handlers were concerned that Boucher had actually created an elaborate setup, hoping to use a possibly genuine police source to see if Montreal investigators verified the Mustang’s licence plate number through police databases. If this was the case, Boucher would know that one of the men who dined with him that day was an informant. A discreet check was done days later and the car was found to be registered to a former employee of a security company. The man’s girlfriend lived next door to one of Boucher’s residences. By all appearances, Boucher had indeed been trying to sniff out an informant among the trio he had eaten with that day.

  Kane’s detailed reports gave the RCMP unprecedented insight into the Hells Angels’ inner workings. For instance, Kane told his RCMP handlers that the botched truck bombing attempt wasn’t the first time Boucher had learned someone wanted him dead. Kane informed them that in November 1994, Boucher had put out a contract on a guy named Éric Morgan who had bragged that he was going to kill the Hells Angel. The police later deduced Kane was referring to Stéphane Éric Morgan. Kane had heard that Morgan once dealt drugs for Boucher but eventually decided to go to the other side and join the Rock Machine. Morgan would later be one of the victims among the 13 murder charges filed against Boucher and other members of the Nomads in connection with the Project Rush investigation.

  As the war was beginning to heat up in 1994, Kane told the RCMP that the Hells Angels were aware that the Alliance was a serious group of well-financed drug traffickers. He also revealed that Boucher’s plans to form the Nomads chapter were underway.

  Informant Harold Pelletier

  Months after the truck bombing attempt, Kane told the RCMP that some of the people involved in the conspiracy had turned against the Alliance and told Boucher who was behind the plot. Details on the conspiracy would only come to the police much later from someone else involved in it. A year after the plan failed miserably, Sylvain Pelletier’s brother Harold turned himself in to the police, and, out of the blue, admitted to the murder of a man named Michel Beaulieu, a homicide that dated back to 1983. Rather than face the prospect of being hunted down by the Hells Angels, Pelletier, who was then 37, decided he would be safer behind bars, and became an informant, a decision that meant he would have to detail all of his past crimes.

  He recounted how he used a .38-calibre Smith & Wesson revolver to kill Beaulieu, firing three shots in the man’s face and neck from close range. Two of the bullets bounced around inside Beaulieu’s skull causing fatal damage. Pelletier had caught Beaulieu off guard as he lay in bed just before 6 a.m. on August 7, 1983. Pelletier had cut through a screen door at the back of Beaulieu’s home using a knife. It was a hot day and the other door to the back entrance had been left open. Pelletier left the weapon behind as Beaulieu’s girlfriend pretended to sleep through the shooting, hoping to keep alive. She had been awoken by the shots but kept her eyes shut, immediately realizing what had happened when Beaulieu’s blood splattered on her. When Pelletier left, she hid in the living room and called the police.

  Within hours of the shooting, homicide detectives were building a case that pointed to the Pelletier Clan. Beaulieu’s mother told them he was involved in a mortgage with one of the Pelletier brothers. A friend of Beaulieu’s told the police that he had been dealing hashish for a gang, while trying to eke out a living by staging phony car accidents, and he had gotten into trouble paying his bills. But after tracing the murder to the Pelletier Clan, the cops were unable to gather enough evidence to file charges. The case remained cold until Pelletier, apparently looking to protect himself from what was developing in the biker war, decided to become an informant.

  After his arrest, Pelletier gave the police several statements between October 17,1995, and June 18,1996. In exchange for full disclosure, Pelletier could plead to second-degree murder in Beaulieu’s death, despite the extremely cold-blooded way it had been carried out. And cold-blooded it was. Pelletier had met Beaulieu at a bar hours before killing him. The two men had a drink, and Pelletier even clinked glasses with the man he was about to kill. The guilty plea would come with a sentencing recommendation of life with a chance at parole after ten years. The contract called for Pelletier to be paid $140 a month in exchange for information while behind bars. He would also be paid $450 a week for three years once he got out of prison.

  Harold Pelletier admitted that he killed Beaulieu for the Pelletier Clan because he had cheated the gang out of money. Pelletier admitted to taking part in 17 murders between 1983 and 1996. Despite the failed attempt on Boucher, he had developed a reputation as a reliable hit man for the Pelletier Clan. At the height of his tenure in the Clan, he was making $20,000 a week. What the Crown got in the deal was described as a “mine of information” on the Pelletier Clan and the biker gang world.

  But Pelletier ended up violating two parts of his informant contract, one stipulating that he not commit another crime while under contract and the other that he behave himself while in prison. He nullified the contract when prison officials learned Pelletier was suspected of conspiring to kill another inmate. Because of this, he was denied day parole in September 2002. Just a year earlier, while carrying out their raids in Operation Springtime 2001, the police found a copy of Pelletier’s informant contract at one of Luc (Bordel) Bordeleau’s residences. It was among other papers Bordeleau had gathered on rival gangsters.

  In interviews with police back in 1995 and 1996,Pelletier gave investigators several n
ames of people who had attended the meeting in which the plot to kill Boucher was discussed. A little over a year after Pelletier’s arrest, the police rounded up 14 people suspected of being in on the plot. At least four would end up convicted and serving federal prison sentences. But several were released for lack of evidence. Some would go on to play major roles in the biker war, including Yvon (Mon Mon) Roy, Serge (Merlin) Cyr and Gilles Lambert. All three were also quickly targeted for elimination by the Hells Angels.

  Another man charged in the conspiracy and released was Tony Jalbert. In the months leading up to the failed plot to kill Boucher, Jalbert had gone from the Hells Angels to the Alliance. He would stay loyal to the Alliance throughout the biker war and, apparently, after it ended. While he was still with the Hells Angels, he would unwittingly introduce Boucher to someone who would ultimately help convict the Hells Angel of murder. Shortly after it became public knowledge that Pelletier had become an informant, Jalbert asked to be placed in solitary confinement at the federal penitentiary where he was serving time for his part in a plot to steal a large quantity of dynamite. He told authorities he feared for his life and preferred doing hard time in a lonely cell to living among people who might be seeking revenge.

  Serge (Merlin) Cyr, a member of the Rock Machine who later joined the Bandidos.

  Jalbert was a member of the Rock Machine when the gang decided to join the Bandidos. In 2005, Correctional Service Canada hauled him back to a penitentiary after he violated the conditions of his statutory release. He was not supposed to associate with other criminals for the duration of his sentence for drug and weapons offences. But he was spotted working out at a gym run by the Hells Angels. He told the parole board he’d thought it would be therapeutic. His release was revoked primarily because there was evidence he had threatened to kill a woman he was seeing.

  Serge Boutin and Jean-Richard Larivière were also let off for a lack of evidence in the 1994 plot to kill Boucher. Both were independent drug dealers who would eventually choose sides in the biker war. By the time they were charged in the plot to kill Boucher, they were already members of the Rockers, and he was their boss. It is very possible that one of the two were Boucher’s mole at the meeting where the Alliance plotted to kill him.

  The attempted truck bombing was not the first botched attempt to kill Boucher. Months earlier, the police caught Jean (Le Français) Duquaire and Michel Boyer driving in a stolen car, crossing the Jacques Cartier Bridge. Inside the car was a .357 Magnum and two Cobray semiautomatic weapons, the weapon of choice during the biker war. It later became widely known in the underworld that Duquaire and Boyer were on their way to kill Boucher on that day in the summer of 1994.

  Retribution from the Hells Angels was apparently swift. Boyer, a drug dealer for the Pelletier Clan, was shot to death as he arrived at his home in Repentigny on October 17, 1995. For years, Duquaire would remain a high priority on the Hells Angels’ hit list. Another man high on that list was Normand Baker, a member of the Rock Machine. He was shot to death in Mexico on January 4, 1995. Kane told the RCMP the Hells Angels targeted Baker because they had information that he had killed Pierre Daoust, one of the first murders in the biker war. The Hells Angels also suspected Baker was behind a failed attempt to kill Normand Robitaille. On July 14, 1994, an unknown shooter opened fire on Robitaille at a garage on Rouen Street in Montreal. Robitaille survived the attempt, suffering only minor wounds. François Hinse, who would go on to become a member of the Hells Angels’ Trois Rivières chapter, was arrested in Mexico shortly after Baker’s murder, and the gun used in the murder was seized.

  It appeared to be a clear-cut case. Witnesses had helped apprehend Hinse at the scene, and the police had the murder weapon. But Kane told the RCMP the Hells Angels were very confident Hinse would not only get off on the charges but that he would spend very little time behind bars awaiting trial. The police in Mexico, well known for their corruption, were believed to have been bought off by the Hells Angels. Kane told the RCMP that Boucher in particular appeared to have many connections in Mexico. The informant would also later tell the police of rumors he had heard that members of the Trois Rivières chapter complained that buying off the Mexican authorities to free Hinse had cost too much.

  By early 1995, Boucher was rarely seen traveling without someone from the Rockers working as his bodyguard. He was also being followed frequently by the police. On March 24, 1995, he was riding in a car with André (Toots) Tousignant, a member of the Rockers, when they were pulled over by the Sûreté du Québec. Boucher was charged with carrying a loaded 9-mm Walther pistol with the serial number filed off. Kane would later tell the RCMP that Marc Sigman, a man who was then tied to the Rockers, told him that while the Sûreté du Québec were interrogating Boucher about the pistol, they let him know there was an informant in his organization.

  Kane heard that Boucher reflected on this information and started putting together a list of suspects. Sigman was worried because he’d heard he was on the list and because he was the least well known to Boucher. Sigman told Kane that Boucher also considered him, Tousignant, Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine, Steinert and a sixth person not closely tied to the gang, as possible informants.

  A few days later, Steinert would tell Kane to relax and that talk of an informant wasn’t serious. But it was. The RCMP did some digging and learned that while Boucher’s case was before the courts, an investigator had been forced to admit that certain information the police had on Boucher had come from a coded source. Tousignant was in the courtroom following Boucher’s case when this was said. Kane noticed that the Hells Angels began clamming up and were not saying much to each other. By now, according to Kane, tensions were beginning to develop within the Hells Angels’ Montreal and Nomads chapters. Although he had become close to Boucher, who by then was the president of the Nomads chapter, Steinert was still a prospect of the Montreal chapter from which Boucher had separated himself at that point. Kane told the RCMP that Steinert was looking to take over control of the drug trade in Manitoba for the Hells Angels. But Walter (Nurget) Stadnick, a longtime Montreal chapter member who had jumped ship to the Nomads along with Boucher, did not appreciate this because expansion westward was part of the chapter’s ultimate plan. Internally, trouble was brewing, Kane told the RCMP.

  This time around, Boucher wasn’t given the choice of paying a fine on the weapons conviction. He was sentenced to six months in prison and three years probation. The sentence would set off an interesting chain of events Boucher would later regret.

  Maurice Boucher and Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné

  Boucher didn’t know it yet but he was about to reestablish a contact during this prison sentence. On March 27, 1995, Boucher was transferred from a Montreal detention center to one in Sorel. As a now eight-year veteran of the Hells Angels, a gang that maintained a bunker in Sorel, Boucher had considerable influence over the other Sorel inmates. As a demonstration of that power, Boucher began ordering other inmates to do his bidding. One of those inmates would turn out to be Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné, a drug dealer Boucher already knew and a man he would regret ever meeting. Tony Jalbert had set up the previous introduction. Years later, Gagné would testify against the Hells Angels and more significantly, against Boucher.

  Gagné would testify that he first met Boucher during the summer of 1993, shortly after being robbed by the Rockers of 15 or 20 quarter-grams of cocaine. He had been running a drug den in Montreal’s east end. Boucher was impressed with Gagné and agreed to let him buy cocaine from him. Part of the deal involved cash up front. Another part was transacted “sur la bras,” an expression used in Quebec’s underworld meaning the dealer could purchase on credit.

  Shortly afterward, Gagné was caught trying to sell drugs to a double agent and was sent to the Bordeaux detention center where Jean (Le Français) Duquaire, Michel Boyer and Stéphane Morgan tried to determine which side of the war he was on. Duquaire placed a photo of Boucher on the floor and told Gagné to urinate on it. Gagné refused and
was beaten for it. Shortly after the incident, Gagné was transferred to the detention center in Sorel where he got to know Boucher a little better. They would talk during Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Gagné requested a transfer to the same wing as Boucher but was refused. But they often ate together. At one meal, Boucher complained about the fact they were being served shepherd’s pie two or three times a week. Boucher said he and other inmates were fed up with it and that something had to be done. Gagné took this to mean he had to take care of the problem, so he tried to organize a protest in which other inmates would refuse to eat shepherd’s pie. One inmate scoffed at the plan so Gagné arranged to have him beaten in his sleep.

  Jean Dubé, a man who eventually turned informant on members of the Rockers, told the police that in July 1995, Boucher’s wing of the Sorel prison was denied access to leisure activities. Dubé said Boucher asked him to vandalize the pool in retaliation. Instead of doing the job himself, Dubé contracted it out, but he was still rewarded with a carton of cigarettes for arranging to have someone damage the pool’s tiles with a razor blade.

  But the most chilling tale to come out of Boucher’s eventful stay at Sorel came from Nicole Quesnel, the detention center’s warden. Her house was set on fire on June 9, 1995. She would later tell the police she was certain it was set ablaze on orders from Mom Boucher. In the weeks leading up to the arson, Boucher had made seven requests for temporary leaves. She turned him down every time because he was a Hells Angel and because he refused to change his ways while behind bars. Four days before the fire was set, Quesnel had turned Boucher down again. Days after the fire, when Boucher was refused leave yet again, he made a remark that suggested he wanted her to know he was behind the torching of her home.