by Paul Cherry
Gagné said that when he got out, he and Jalbert had a meeting at a submarine restaurant. Jalbert lay down the law, saying Gagné was responsible for $40,000 worth of cocaine they had lost in a seizure connected to Gagné’s arrest. Jalbert also informed Gagné that they were no longer partners. The meeting grew increasingly tense as Gagné reminded his partner that he had swallowed losses that were Jalbert’s fault. Gagné testified that Jalbert had once dumped 200 grams of cocaine because he mistakenly thought the cops were following him. Gagné also reminded Jalbert that he had helped him out while he was in prison by faithfully delivering the profits of their business to the elderly woman believed to be his aunt. The lines were already being drawn, so Gagné bluntly told Jalbert that he was going to buy his drugs from the Hells Angels.
Shortly after the messy meeting, a buddy of Gagné was released from the Bordeaux detention center. He informed Gagné that if he ended up convicted for selling the cocaine to the undercover cop, he should avoid the Bordeaux detention center because Alliance members like Jean Duquaire and Michel Boyer had his photo and were waiting for him.
“What did you do when you got that information?” prosecutor Briere asked.
“Well, then I called Tony Jalbert and I said, ’Hey, your buddies are waiting for me at Bordeaux?’ and he said ’No, no, no, no.’ I said, ’Hostie, it’s the photo of you and me and a Harley, so it’s you who supplied it to them. They didn’t get that from a box of Cracker Jacks.’ He finally admitted that it was him,” Gagné said. At that point, Jalbert asked Gagné again if they were partners. Gagné replied that they were still partners until he paid Jalbert what he owed for the seized cocaine, but after that he was going to buy from the Hells Angels.
It would later become evident that Jalbert had completely switched over to the Alliance. In the years that followed, he became a member of the Rock Machine and was part of the gang when it was patched over by the Bandidos, an international gang with chapters all over the world. Jalbert would end up being arrested again, late in the biker war, serving a five-year term for growing marijuana, drug trafficking and weapons possession. He was released from prison in late 2004 and corrections officials still believed him to be a Bandido.
But as their partnership was falling apart in 1994, Gagné pleaded guilty to selling the quarter-gram to the undercover cop and, as if determined by fate, was sent to the Bordeaux detention center where Jalbert had set him up. He was placed in the C wing, reserved for repeat offenders, and was quickly welcomed as he had been warned. Three members of the Alliance, Stéphane Morgan, Michel Boyer and Jean Duquaire, served as the welcome wagon. Gagné said the trio insisted on knowing which side of the war he was on. He lied and told them he wanted nothing to do with the war, that he just wanted to sell drugs.
“Duquaire [Le Français] took out a photo of Maurice Boucher, threw it to the ground and told me to piss on it. I didn’t piss on it, so they beat me up,” Gagné said. Gagné said he responded, a little later, by storming into Duquaire’s cell with a homemade pick and stabbing him several times, intent on killing him. Duquaire was sent to the hospital, while Gagné was bounced around detention centers all over Quebec, including one in Sorel, where he met up with Boucher again.
A Fateful Decision
Boucher appeared to be very interested in having Gagné as part of his network. Whether it was Gagné’s ability to move cocaine or the loyalty he had so violently demonstrated at Bordeaux, Boucher took a liking to Gagné and told him he’d look after him while he was in prison and that Gagné should look him up once he got out. Boucher put Gagné in contact with his son, Françis, who would make sure Gagné’s prison cantine was well stocked with his favorite foods. Inmates are allowed to have a certain amount of food kept at their detention center if they can afford it. Having a well-stocked cantine gives an inmate certain bargaining chips behind bars. It also breaks up the monotony of only eating prison food.
While they did time together, Gagné carried out the little tasks Boucher asked of him. One such task was mounting an inmates’ protest when Boucher declared they were being fed shepherd’s pie far too often. He requested a transfer to Boucher’s wing but was refused. The pair would meet only when they were placed in the detention center’s general population for exercise.
Andre Chouinard, a member of the Hells Angels’ Nomads chapter.
After being bounced around to various detention centers, Gagné was released after serving more than two-thirds of his sentence. He testified that he was able to set up a meeting with Boucher almost immediately after his release. He paged Boucher’s son and set up a face-to-face. The next day, Françis Boucher merely asked Gagné for his pager number and told him to wait. Mom Boucher contacted Gagné soon after and said they should meet at the building on Bennett Street that the Nomads chapter had turned into their hangout. Gagné recalled there was a used car dealership inside as well as a jewelry store. He said André Chouinard, who was one of Boucher’s drug couriers at the time, Gilles Mathieu and Richard (Sugar) Lock used the building for their offices. Gagné also recalled that Chouinard would answer the phone with “Gestion Wow,” a company that Maurice Boucher owned.
Stéphane Gagné said that after hanging around the Bennett Street building for a while, he, Chouinard and Boucher went to a restaurant in the Plateau.
“It was there that Maurice Boucher said that he had big things for me. And he didn’t say much more than that,” Gagné said. It was the “big things” that the prosecution wanted Gagné to tell the jury. What Gagné brought to the Beliveau trial was evidence of how the gang functioned, particularly when members of the Nomads chapter, and especially Boucher, plotted to eliminate their rivals.
After eating at the restaurant, Boucher and Gagné headed back to the Nomad hangout on Bennett Street. It was there that Gagné was first introduced to André (Toots) Tousignant. Gagné had known him as an independent drug dealer before the biker war started. Now, Tousignant was a Rocker and one of Boucher’s most trusted lieutenants. They spent most of the day at the Bennett Street hangout, and then Tousignant, Gagné and Boucher drove to a location in the South Shore region across from Montreal Island. They left their pagers in their car, and Boucher and Tousignant went for a short walk while Gagné waited behind.
When the pair returned, Boucher used a hand gesture to ask Gagné if he had a gun. Gagné said he didn’t. Boucher replied that there were some stored in the Bennett Street building, and told Gagné to stay close by because they might need him soon.
Gagné stayed with his parents and waited a few days until Boucher and Tousignant showed up. The trio packed into a car and headed for Verdun where Gagné finally learned of one of the “big things” Boucher had planned. Their first stop was at a garage in Verdun that Gagné would later learn was close to a Rock Machine hangout on Lesage Street. Boucher had kept mostly quiet during the car ride, but now, as they passed the garage he turned to Tousignant and said, “You are going to be there.” Boucher then asked Gagné and Tousignant to hide so they wouldn’t be seen by the men outside the red-brick building who were doing guard duty for the Rock Machine that day as he drove past.
The trio then drove on to Lachine, a municipality next to Verdun, where Gagné was told his part of the plan was simply to place a bomb underneath an empty car and blow it up. Boucher figured that the police would arrive after the bomb detonated and that the commotion would draw the attention of the Rock Machine members and cause them to all head inside their hangout. Then another team would detonate a much more powerful bomb with the goal of destroying the Rock Machine hangout and killing everyone inside. This second team was supposed to be paged after the first bomb had gone off.
Gagné said the diversionary bomb was supposed to be set off in a parking lot next to a condominium. He was going to do this with Stephan (Sandman) Falls. The plan was for the pair to wait for a page showing a series of is. They would then detonate the bomb using a remote-control device. After agreeing to the plan, Tousignant led Gagné and Falls to a
bar on the South Shore to pick up the bomb they were going to use.
“We went inside the office and he showed it to us. It had a remote control,” Gagné said.
“This is in the office of the bar?” prosecutor Briere asked.
“Yes. There was a waitress there who kept saying, ’What are you doing there? What are you doing?’ Toots said, ’Mind your own business,’ and slammed the door.” Boucher appeared to have thought of everything. Gagné was coached on how to detonate the explosives. Boucher also had Gagné and Tousignant repeatedly go over the routes they were supposed to use, insisting that they drive the speed limit and make all of the proper stops.
The day they were supposed to blow up the Rock Machine hangout, Gagné said he was waiting in an apartment for the message to give him the go-ahead on the diversionary explosion. But Tousignant showed up and said he couldn’t start the car the second team was supposed to use. Tousignant asked Gagné if he had booster cables and they headed to the garage Boucher had pointed out earlier.
“When we got to the garage, Mr. Tousignant asked me to close my eyes. So I closed my eyes. The door opened and when it closed I could hear voices. The voices were familiar. One was Jean Damien Perron, a Hells Angel from Trois Rivières. At the time, he was a hangaround and I had done two months in prison with him, so I recognized his voice,” Gagné said. Tousignant insisted that Gagné keep his eyes closed and ordered the two other men from the second team to hide in a bathroom. It was obvious the Hells Angels didn’t want one team to know who was involved in the other. It was apparently an effort to reduce the number of arrests if anyone later turned informant. Only Tousignant was trusted enough to know who was on both teams.
Gagné said there was a Ford car parked in the garage and he couldn’t help but notice the huge bomb inside it that the Hells Angels planned to use to level the Rock Machine hangout. The dashboard of the Ford was open and it was immediately apparent to Gagné that the vehicle had been stolen. The experienced car thief said he realized what the problem was right away. He explained to Tousignant that GM vehicles that are stolen by jamming a screwdriver into the ignition start differently from Fords. He said he used a special trick on the Ford and it started right away. Tousignant then drove Gagné back to the apartment where Steven (Sandman) Falls was still waiting. They hid out in the apartment and waited for the signal.
“We were waiting for the ones [to appear on his pager],” Gagné said, adding they waited for about two hours and that they were under a lot of stress. One hour could feel like three in that situation, he said. But Tousignant arrived after a while and informed Gagné and Falls that the plan was scrubbed because, somehow, the police had shown up at the same building where the second team was lying in wait. The police seemed interested in another section of the building, one other than the garage, Tousignant told Gagné and Falls with no further explanation. Prosecutor Briere then asked Gagné if the Hells Angels had made other attempts on the Rock Machine hangout.
“Yes, after that we tried another way. This time, we held a meeting, Paul Fontaine, André Tousignant, Sandman and René Charlebois. The plan consisted of placing a vehicle in front of the place,” he said. The second part of the plan involved having guys drive by the hangout on motorcycles and fire shots at anyone standing guard for the Rock Machine that day. Charlebois was supposed to drive the truck to the clubhouse and dump it there. The others were supposed to pick up Charlebois and drive to a nearby apartment and detonate the bomb from a distance.
Gagné said that the first time they had talked about it was in the park in front of the Montreal Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens. The second time was in a Chinese restaurant near Place Versailles, a shopping center in eastern Montreal and the location of the Montreal Urban Community Police major investigation squads. Someone showed up at the restaurant and delivered two Japanese brand motorcycles that were supposed to be used by the shooters. Charlebois left on one of them.
Gagné said he and Paul Fontaine, who rode the other Japanese motorcycle, left afterward. They headed to a second restaurant and met up with Tousignant, Falls and Charlebois. The small group held another meeting, but not inside the restaurant. Gagné said a waitress agreed to take care of their pagers and cell phones while they all went for a walk outside. “We were scared that our things were bugged. That they were wiretapped,” he explained. The five bikers left the restaurant and went to a nearby park. There they discussed who was going to do what for the second attempt on the Rock Machine clubhouse.
“It was supposed to happen because the vehicles were all ready, including one with the bomb inside it,” he said. But the gang members hit another roadblock because, when they returned to the restaurant, they noticed an unmarked car parked near the Japanese motorcycles. Inside the car were men who appeared to be trying to hide from view. The bikers figured right away that these were undercover cops doing surveillance on the Rockers. The bikers figured they had been followed to the restaurant and the police now could tie them to the Japanese motorcycles. A decision was made to ditch the plan.
“Did you make a third attempt?” Briere said.
“Yes,” Gagné replied.
“Can you tell us how?”
“Yes, in the third attempt, I had to steal trucks that were mouse-grey, like Hydro Quebec’s. The color of Hydro Quebec at the time was mouse-grey. A Dodge Caravan, or a Suburban or else a Cherokee.”
“So you had to steal that?”
“Yes, it was Paul Fontaine who asked me. Toots said, ’Make sure it is the same grey as Hydro Quebec because one of my buddies will give me their stickers and we will decorate it like a Hydro Quebec truck.” Gagné said he found the truck they needed the following day. He had actually considered stealing one from a Hydro Quebec parking lot, but there were surveillance cameras everywhere.
He said that Kenny Bedard, René Charlebois and Steven (Sandman) Falls were at least aware of the third attempt on the clubhouse. He went on to explain that he was with Kenny Bedard when they spotted the grey Dodge Caravan they wanted. It was parked at the Place Versailles shopping center, and they followed the owner as he drove it to a hardware store and then to a building in an industrial park. Gagné said he stole the truck using a screwdriver. He later parked it near the St-Hubert Airport where the Hells Angels kept a garage for their stolen vehicles.
What was key to Gagné’s testimony was that he could recall that there were two boxes inside the Caravan; one contained a shirt while the other had two flashlights inside. The items were later found inside the van used in the actual attempt on the Lesage Street building. It was an important detail to remember because Gagné did not take part in the actual bombing attempt. He was somewhere else at the time, namely a provincial detention center.
Gagné’s trouble began after he set off to find a second van that would match Hydro Quebec’s colors. Fontaine had grown impatient and told Gagné to find anything that was mouse-grey. Gagné said he and Kenny Bedard settled on a Jeep Cherokee in Montreal’s north end. It was a high-end vehicle Hydro Quebec employees never used. Gagné stole it anyway and drove off, but soon after that he spotted a cop right next to him at a red light.
“But do you know why you where looking for those trucks?”
“Yes, it was for the project in Verdun.”
“And what were you supposed to do with those trucks?”
“What we wanted to do was to put dynamite in the mouse-grey Dodge Caravan.” Gagné said that Falls, Fontaine, Tousignant and René Charlebois were in on the plan. He said Charlebois was supposed to drive the Caravan to the front of the clubhouse. Gagné also said he, Falls and Fontaine were going to open fire on anyone in front of the building to draw everyone inside. Tousignant was supposed to drive the second vehicle. But while Gagné was driving the stolen Cherokee, the police officer who had pulled up beside him noticed the broken dashboard. Soon after, another police vehicle was following him as well. Gagné sped away, ditched the Cherokee and ran. But a police officer caught up to him
and he was placed under arrest. He spent the night at a police station and was taken to the Montreal courthouse to be arraigned. He did not make bail and was sent to the Parthenais detention center. He was charged with theft of the vehicle, quickly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months.
In the meantime, the Hells Angels tried to carry out their risky plot to level the Lesage Street building. On August 23,1996, Verdun residents who lived near the intersection of Lesage Street and de L’Eglise Ave. were treated to an odd sight. A mouse-grey van with Hydro Quebec logos slowed at the intersection and its driver leapt out. He jumped into another vehicle that had been following behind his. The abandoned truck had been placed in neutral and kept moving forward until it rolled to a stop against a street sign. There it rested until one resident decided to take a peek inside the van. He immediately noticed the 91 kilograms of explosives inside. They were connected to six detonators. Something had happened that caused the Hells Angels to abandon their plan to blow up the Lesage Street hangout. The police would later learn that at the same moment the gang members driving the trucks approached the two-storey building on Lesage Street, several members of the Rock Machine including Renaud Jomphe and the Plescio brothers were standing outside it.
The Hells Angels’ underlings abandoned the truck within metres of two gas stations in a mostly residential neighborhood of aging triplexes. RCMP explosives expert Jean-Yves Vermette would later run tests and find that the bomb could have leveled several buildings at the intersection. To conduct his test, Vermette blew up a similar van with a similar bomb at the Valcartier military base; it generated a fireball eight metres in diameter. Shrapnel from the blast was carried as far as 500 metres.
One witness would provide a description of the driver of the van which somewhat resembled Charlebois. The getaway vehicle was found abandoned in eastern Montreal. It had been set on fire to destroy any evidence including any fingerprints or DNA on the six handguns that had been ditched. But the police managed to recover something that proved interesting. Someone had left a pager behind, but not close enough to the flaming van for it to be destroyed. The police were later able to trace it to Steve Boies, a man they already knew to have ties to the Rockers. The police had a solid lead connecting the Hells Angels to the bogus Hydro Quebec truck packed with explosives.
