by Paul Cherry
Despite the fact some Hells Angels did not trust Magnussen and Steinert, the latter received his full-patch as a member of the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter in March 1996. Kane told the RCMP that Steinert had also received a “Filthy Few” patch, a symbol believed to be awarded only to members who have killed for the benefit of the gang. He was also given a gold memento worn by a Hells Angel who had died months earlier of a heart attack.
While Steinert was apparently in the good books of the Montreal chapter, Donald Magnussen was still the subject of speculation that he was an undercover cop. Within weeks of Kane telling police this, Magnussen became the focus of speculation by other members of the Hells Angels that he had been behind the murder of David Boyko, a member of a Winnipeg-based gang called Los Bravos. Boyko had been shot to death while in Halifax to attend a Hells Angels’ party there. The Los Bravos were part of the Hells Angels’ plans for expansion, but now the gang believed Magnussen’s temper had blown it. Members of the Winnipeg gang simply stopped talking to the Quebec Hells Angels. Kane told the police that the Hells Angels were ready to kill Magnussen and alleged that David (Wolf) Carroll was willing to do it himself.
In October 1996, Kane told the RCMP that Steinert had grown impatient with the Nomads chapter’s criticisms that the Montreal chapter, the one Boucher had split off from, was doing nothing about winning the war. Steinert decided to form a splinter cell within the Montreal chapter that would become more involved. According to Kane, it was to include Michel Lajoie Smith and Normand Labelle, both members of the Hells Angels, as well as Magnussen and Marc Sigman. Kane said he was offered a chance to join the group but balked at their demand for $100,000 up front. Membership was costly because Steinert was preparing to buy the infamous Lavigueur mansion, a 17-room house on Laval’s toney island Ile aux Pruches. It was previously owned by a family of ill-fated lottery winners who had become somewhat famous in Quebec. In order to purchase the mansion and make it look like it was owned by a numbered company, Kane said Steinert and Magnussen had paid a visit to an accountant the Hells Angels used often.
At around the same time, André (Toots) Tousignant, Boucher’s former chauffeur and a close associate, was assigned to kill Magnussen and had begun monitoring his movements. Kane was later offered $10,000 himself to get rid of Magnussen because Tousignant was having trouble doing the job. As the headaches continued for the Hells Angels in November 1996, Kane said Boucher determined that it would have to be a full-patch Hells Angel to kill Magnussen. Boucher felt Steinert and Richard (Dick) Mayrand, an influential member of the Montreal chapter, would never accept seeing an underling kill someone so close to the Montreal chapter. Kane alleged that Stadnick was selected as a possible candidate to carry out the murder because he had the most to gain from it with his plans for westward expansion.
To make matters worse, as the Nomads chapter was planning to kill Magnussen, they were approached by the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter to see if it was okay for Magnussen to become a “hangaround,” the first step in becoming a member of their gang. Kane said the Nomads members told their Montreal brothers they had no problem with it. But immediately after the meeting, the Nomads members held their own meeting and discussed how it definitely must be a full-patch member who would eliminate Magnussen.
By February 1997, Kane said there were rumors that Magnussen had beaten up a relative of Vito Rizzuto, the alleged godfather of the Montreal Mafia, in a bar on St-Laurent Blvd., and that now, even the Mob was looking for Magnussen. Kane said that Magnussen would not leave home alone.
Steinert was also in serious trouble. He had received a deportation order in November 1996 and was trying to appeal the decision. Sometime later in 1997, both Steinert and Magnussen disappeared. Their bodies would turn up floating in the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City. They had been severely beaten before they were killed.
The year 1997 was a busy one in the biker war. Twenty-eight murders in Quebec were attributed to the biker war that year, more than during the three years previous. There were another 30 attempted murders in 1997 that the police also suspected were tied to the conflict. But what drew the most public attention was the murders of two prison guards, killed on Boucher’s orders in an effort to destabilize the justice system. Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné, whom Boucher had met during his 1995 detention in Sorel, turned informant against him and provided evidence that would help convict Boucher for the murders.
Gagné was the key witness during the first trial and, as Justice Jean Guy Boilard gave his final instructions to the jury, he said that the case essentially boiled down to Gagné’s testimony. If the jury believed a former killer turned informant, then they should weigh the evidence that supported what he said. If they didn’t believe him, they should all go home. The jury chose not to believe Gagné. After three days of deliberation, they acquitted Boucher on November 27, 1998. He mouthed a “Merci” toward the jury and walked out of the courthouse a free man, surrounded by several members of the Rockers. Normand Robitaille, who had been made a member of the Nomads just weeks before, threw his arm around Boucher and they both smiled as they walked away.
That night, Boucher took in a Friday night boxing card in Verdun and some people in the audience cheered as he was greeted by his fellow Hells Angels — Boucher had become a public figure in Montreal. His wire-rimmed glasses and broad smile made him easily recognizable, especially with all of the media coverage of his trial. Police investigators who monitored the Hells Angels after the trial were stunned to see he had gained a kind of folk-hero status in the Hochelaga Maisonneuve district. People on the street would cheer him on as he drove along Hochelaga Street, the location of the gym where he worked out on a regular basis, or Bennett Street, where the Nomads had a building.
TOP: Dany Kane (second from left) outside the funeral home where the Hells Angels held a wake for slain Nomads chapter member Normand (Biff) Hamel. (John Mahoney, The Montreal Gazette)
BOTTOM: Jean Richard Larivière (right) works security at the April 2000 funeral for Normand (Biff) Hamel along with fellow Rockers Vincent Lamer (middle) and David Lefebvre (left).
Meanwhile, the biker war continued, and the rival gang, the Rock Machine, scored their biggest hit when they killed Normand Hamel, a founding member of the Nomads and Boucher’s friend for many years. He was gunned down in a Laval parking lot on April 17, 2OOO, after he and his wife and child had visited a doctor’s office. Boucher drove up to the scene of the shooting in a Volkswagen as homicide investigators searched the parking lot for evidence. Within an hour of Hamel’s shooting, the police listened in through a wiretap as two members of the Rockers discussed the death of a man they had been expected to protect at all times. Dany St-Pierre, of the Rockers told his fellow gangmate, Ronald (Popo) Paulin to put all of the Rockers on standby.
Later that night, a man who would later become a member of the Nomads chapter, Normand Bélanger, talked with a friend as the police listened in. Bélanger called Hamel’s murder “part of the game we play,” but he also considered it “pretty disgusting” because it had happened while Hamel was with his wife and child.
On May 12, 2000, the Hells Angels responded to Hamel’s slaying with an attack on two members of the Rock Machine. Shots were fired at Tony Duguay and Denis Boucher as they drove through Saint Laurent, a suburb of Montreal. Both survived the attempt on their lives, though Duguay suffered bullet wounds to his arms, right hand and thigh. He was wearing a ring with the inscription “death before dishonor” on it. Three years later, the Hells Angels’ suspicions would be confirmed when Duguay would be charged with killing Hamel.
Boucher’s newfound celebrity appeared to stir something in him; he seemed to want to toy with his notoriety. On April 14, 2000, René Charlebois, one of Boucher’s best drug dealers with the Rockers, graduated to the status of full-patch member in the Nomads chapter. About four months later, Charlebois got married at a church near the Hells Angels’ bunker in Sorel. It was the reception on Boucher’s estate in Contrecouer
that would grab headlines. The Hells Angels had managed to hire popular singers Ginette Reno and Jean-Pierre Ferland to sing at the reception. Reno, a beloved singer with a matronly image to most Quebecers, belted out “My May” for the bikers, and later posed for photos with Boucher as a photographer he had invited from the crime tabloid Allô Police clicked away. The published photos caused a small scandal, prompting an embarrassed Reno to issue a public apology.
On October 8,2000, Boucher would again put on a public display, staging a dinner at a restaurant in downtown Montreal called Bleu Marin, where members of the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels actually dined together. The two gangs had been discussing a truce, and the dinner apparently finalized it. Again, Allô Police was invited to photograph the gathering. Boucher put on a show, hugging longtime enemies like Paul Porter and shaking hands with other Rock Machine leaders like Frederic Faucher, the driving force behind the gang’s merging with the Bandidos.
Representing the Hells Angels were Nomads Michel Rose, Richard (Dick) Mayrand and Normand Robitaille. When he walked out of the restaurant, Robitaille approached two police officers who were outside watching making notes of who was present at the dinner, and joked that with the war over the police would be seeing their budgets cut. After dining, the group of gangsters then moved on to the Super Sexe, a strip bar in downtown Montreal on Sainte-Catherine Street where they kept the party going.
The “truce” was used as a chance for the Nomads to make a new ultimatum. Later in 2000, the Nomads offered Rock Machine members the opportunity to defect to their side, keeping the same status they had in their old gang. But it was a limited-time offer.
Boucher had managed to grab national headlines this time with his public stunt. But he would have to watch the fallout from the truce from behind bars. Two days after the dinner at Bleu Marin, the Quebec Court of Appeal quashed Boucher’s acquittal on the prison guard murders, taking issue in particular with Justice Boilard’s instructions to the jury. A new trial was ordered.
While awaiting trial, Boucher filed a $30 million lawsuit against the Quebec government through lawyer Robert Lemieux. Lemieux had defended members of the Front de Libération du Québec, a terrorist organization responsible for kidnapping and murder, during the October Crisis in 1970. The lawsuit alleged Boucher was being held illegally while he awaited his second trial and that the province was persecuting an innocent man. But the lawsuit also claimed Boucher worked as a cook, and included several factual and spelling errors. The suit was eventually dropped.
The second time around, the jury was convinced Boucher had enough power to effect the murder of the prison guards and convicted him on May 5, 2002. The first-degree murder convictions came with an automatic life sentence with no chance at parole for 25 years. Nonetheless, even while behind bars, Boucher would still have people trying to kill him.
Maurice (Mom) Boucher Behind Bars
On August 13, 2002, around 8:30 p.m. at the Special Handling Unit in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, a group of inmates were being moved into a common area. Gary Brent Huska, a Saskatchewan man serving a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend with a steak knife, was in the common area. He approached and attacked Boucher as the Hells Angel was going through a revolving door. According to procedures at the unit, inmates entered the common area one by one. The weapon was a shiv, hidden in Huska’s pants, made out of plastic, measuring about 10 inches long and one inch wide and very sharp. Huska had entered the common area just before Boucher, and he placed himself next to a table near the door.
Boucher no longer had his underlings around to protect him, but when he was attacked, several other inmates jumped in to protect him. Boucher took a few steps back and watched as the others piled in and started attacking Huska. A prison guard called his colleagues and as they arrived, they could see six or seven inmates piled on top of Huska. The guards ordered them to stop and eventually most did. One guard used a gas spray to clear the area. But inmate Jean Roch Lefrançois continued the attack, pushing Huska to a shower stall while someone shouted “Kill him!” A guard entered the shower area and put an end to the assault on Huska. By now Huska was lying on the shower floor. He had been stabbed several times. Lefrançois was ordered to strip down and was searched. Prison guards put on special equipment to prevent them from coming in contact with Huska’s blood, and they approached him in the shower. By now, the unit’s nurse had arrived. Almost ten minutes after the attack, Huska was taken to the infirmary, where it was determined that his injuries were serious enough for him to be transferred to a hospital.
The common area was shut down and treated as a crime scene. Some inmates resisted the order to return to their cells and a special intervention team was called in to restore order. The inmates weren’t cleared out of the common area until 10:30 p.m., approximately two hours after the attack. They had played cards and watched television while waiting for the prison officials to sort things out. In the interim, the Sûreté du Québec was called in to investigate. All the main players in the attack were placed in isolation, including Boucher.
Huska was released from the hospital weeks later and was never charged with attempting to kill Boucher even though Huska had a history of such attacks. While at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary, he had used a knife on another inmate, and he had openly admitted that his intention was to kill the man because he had committed sexual assault. One theory to emerge from the attack on Boucher was that Huska wanted to kill him because of his conviction for the 1984 sexual assault. Lefrançois was also not charged for his attack on Huska.
Less than a month after the incident with Huska, someone else tried to get rid of Boucher. As in the first attempt, Boucher was attacked as he exited the revolving door that lead to the common area. This time, at around 11 a.m., Boucher was heading in for lunch. The weapon was a homemade firearm concocted of materials that were accessible, even to an inmate at the Special Handling Unit: a rolled up newspaper, straps from curtains and electrical wire with a standard switch. Boucher was knocked off his feet by the blast. A guard asked if he was all right and Boucher said he was.
The RCMP were called in to investigate this time but could find no clear motive for the attempt on Boucher’s life. The inmate alleged to be behind the second attack was Ryan Starr, a Manitoba aboriginal who was serving a life sentence for killing someone while robbing a grocery store. Like Huska, Starr was not charged with attempting to kill Boucher. These unpunished attempts were a sign that it was open season on Boucher, and, without many Hells Angels at the Special Handling Unit, he was an easy target.
But signs emerged that the Hells Angels no longer cared about their once-feared leader. The clearest indication came in the form of an article published in the crime tabloid Allô Police. The article contained an interview with Normand Bélanger, a man who was brought into the fold of Hells Angels because he was familiar with the drug ecstasy before many people in Quebec had even heard of it. He was also described as a close friend of Boucher. He had entered the gang’s hierarchy as a member of the Rockers, and in little over a year he had graduated to being a prospect in the Nomads chapter. Bélanger was eventually made a full-patch member in the Nomads chapter but for some reason he was stripped of his patch while behind bars and awaiting trial in the Project Rush investigation.
Normand Belanger (left) walks with Dany St. Pierre, a member of the Rockers. (John Mahoney, The Montreal Gazette)
Bélanger would become gravely ill with several diseases during one of the megatrials, and doctors gave him only months to live.
Before his death he talked to an Allô Police reporter who happened to meet him at a doctor’s office. When asked what he thought of his old friend, Bélanger said Boucher had been a greedy man, adding that if it hadn’t been for him, everybody arrested in Operation Springtime 2001 would then be quietly going about their business as free men.
3
Arrest en Masse
It was dubbed Operation Springtime, but the weather on March 28,2001,felt like anythin
g but. Spread out across Quebec and Ontario, police officers prepared to give many Hells Angels and their underlings a rude awakening, while in and around Montreal Island the temperature hovered at a few degrees below zero. A light snow fell steadily.
It was a police operation like no other before in Canada. It involved nearly 2,000 police officers and civilians, and its influence ranged from the RCMP, to the Sûreté du Québec, the Montreal Urban Community Police and 23 other municipal police forces. At least 20 buildings, including luxury houses, were seized, along with 28 vehicles, 70 firearms and more than $8 million Canadian in cash. The fact that the police also seized 120 kilograms of hashish and 10 kilograms of cocaine was practically an afterthought, once the goal of the operation was made clear. This wasn’t about a one-time bust. It was about an investigation that had begun in 1998, and most of the principal targets had already been selected at that point.
Of the 42 Hells Angels or Rockers named in the warrants connected to Project Rush, 14 were already behind bars when it was carried out. About another half dozen could not be immediately located, but most were found eventually. The charges in the warrants included 13 of the more than 160 murders that had been committed during the biker war. All of the gang members were charged with drug trafficking and with doing it for the benefit of an organized crime gang, which was relatively new legislation intended specifically for the Hells Angels in Quebec. There were also two charges that the Hells Angels had conspired in two failed attempts to kill many of their rivals at once with massive bombs.
