Biker Trials, The

by Paul Cherry

  Rondeau was declared dead almost two hours later at the Maisonneuve Rosemont Hospital. Despite the hail of bullets, he had been struck by only two shots. One came from a .357 and that one delivered the fatal wound; the other came from Gagné’s 9-mm. Corriveau managed to survive.

  After emptying his weapon on the unsuspecting guards, Gagné followed Fontaine to the stolen Caravan, which was parked about 100 to 150 feet from where the shooting occurred. Gagné did the driving.

  “When I got into the truck I closed the door and started to count: 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street and I turned right because between 1st and 2nd Street there is a light on Notre-Dame, so if I took those two streets I might end up at a light. I wanted to avoid that.”

  Gagné said the pair headed for their legitimate car, the Mazda 323, on a quiet street near tall evergreens with the hope they wouldn’t be noticed making the transfer from the Caravan. Fontaine bolted for the Mazda 323. It was Gagné’s duty to torch the Caravan and destroy any remnants of evidence. He emptied a five-gallon container of gasoline and set to igniting it.

  “I placed the matches in the truck but there were fumes everywhere because I had sprayed it with gas. When I lit the match the flames leaped out. I burned a bit of my face. When I walked away there was a girl at a bus shelter. I had a baseball cap and a mask. I walked in a way so she could not see me. I got in the 323 and we got to Montreal.”

  The teenaged girl who was waiting for a bus at the intersection of Demontigny Street and 47th Ave. turned out to be an important witness. She testified during Boucher’s first murder trial that she saw the Caravan parked on 47th Ave. She was able to give the police enough information about Gagné that they were able to produce a composite sketch. Once he had walked past her, Gagné panicked when he realized the girl might have seen his face and realized he couldn’t be seen driving around in the Mazda. He had to switch to another vehicle and burn all the other evidence like their clothes.

  Boucher apparently thought the young woman was an important witness as well. After he was acquitted in the first trial, Boucher paid a visit to a furniture store where she worked and walked toward her. Without saying a word he circled around her, staring in her eyes the whole time. Then he left. When Boucher’s second trial rolled around, she was too terrified to testify a second time.

  “Erase and Start Over Again”

  Gagné said Fontaine headed immediately for a hospital to do “the watch,” or guard duty, on Louis (Melou) Roy, who had been shot in the parking lot of his father’s motel in Jonquière and was recovering. Gagné headed straight for the garage in St-Hubert, bringing all of the clothes that were used in the shooting. He tossed them in a bag and put it and a five-gallon container of gas into the Mazda B2000 and drove it to Mont St-Bruno. He then torched everything “to get rid of the evidence.”

  The day after the murder, Normand Robitaille paid a visit to Stéphane Gagné, handed him $5,000 and advised him to take a vacation in western Canada. But later that same day, Fontaine advised him to take his family to the Dominican Republic to create a cover story about his burned face. If anyone asked, Gagné could claim it was from a sunburn. When he returned from the vacation, Gagné and Fontaine headed for the Pro Gym to see Boucher who was busy with his regular training routine. They left their pagers and cell phones with Normand Robitaille who followed them in his car from a distance. At that time Robitaille was just months shy of getting his prospect patch in the Nomads chapter.

  At first, they all made small talk. Gagné recalled that Boucher joked about the fact he had brought his wife along for the vacation. But then things got serious. Boucher said, “You know, my man, we erase and we start over again.” He was likely referring to Gagné’s screw-up of getting burnt. Boucher then said they had to be subtle when they talked because the ears of the police were everywhere. Gagné said it was then that Boucher explained that he was having prison guards killed by particular people in part to assure that his closest associates would never become informants. Boucher figured that no one in law enforcement would want to deal with men who had killed prison guards. Boucher repeated that if the death penalty existed in Canada, Gagné would be executed for what he had done. To emphasize his point, Boucher mimicked a person hanging from a gallows pole.

  By now, Boucher had learned how far Quebec’s criminal justice system was willing to go to get at the members of the Nomads chapter. A career criminal named Serge Quesnel had turned informant, and there was a wave of followers who had been nabbed for serious crimes like murder and were looking to get lenient sentences. Gagné noted that Quesnel had been given only 12 years for the five murders he had admitted to carrying out for Louis (Melou) Roy and other Hells Angels. Boucher figured cops and prosecutors cared little if an informant had racked up a body count of drug dealers, but they would never accept dealing with someone cold-blooded enough to pull the trigger on one of their own.

  At this point in Gagné’s testimony, Crown prosecutor François Briere asked if there were other targets discussed. Gagné said that Boucher once told him that they were “going to do other screws.” Gagné said he pointed out to Boucher that prison guards were now being escorted home by members of the Sûreté du Québec. Boucher scoffed at it and said that, if need be, they’d start killing police officers, judges and prosecutors.

  By now, paranoia had set in within the highest levels of the Hells Angels. Normand Robitaille ordered that all the people working under him supply personal information like social insurance numbers and lists of relatives on the assumption that this would ensure their loyalty if they were ever arrested. Gagné complied with the order.

  “In the days that followed [the Rondeau murder] I was paged by André Tousignant. He asked me if I was occupied. He asked me to join him at the Imprevu Bar on Sainte-Catherine and Pie-IX,” Gagné said. (In previous testimony, Gagné had said Tousignant asked this of him on the same day as the Rondeau murder, despite the fact his face was burned.) Tousignant asked him to buy a large quantity of bolts and gave him $100. Gagné said he went shopping at a big-box home renovation store and brought along his wife and three-year-old son. He brought the bolts to Tousignant who took a look at the package and quickly said there weren’t enough. Gagné said Tousignant gave him another $100 and sent him to do the same chore. Gagné went to a different renovation store the second time, he said, to avoid arousing attention. Again he brought his wife and kid.

  While testifying at the Beliveau trial, Stéphane Gagné was shown security tape images of him, his wife and kids, in one of the hardware stores and he agreed that it was indeed him. He said he paid cash, both times using the “browns,” $100 bills, that Tousignant had supplied him with. The hardware was to be used as shrapnel in a powerful bomb the Hells Angels hoped to use on several members of the Rock Machine.

  The Hells Angels had somehow learned that lawyer Gilles Thibault had been renting a conference room in his office building to members of the Rock Machine. On October 30, 1997, Thibault asked his secretary to move some boxes out of the conference room because he was going to use it for an interview with a French-language television network. While she was moving the boxes, the secretary got the surprise of her life. She had stumbled upon a bomb with 130 sticks of dynamite that weighed about 20 kilograms. It contained a battery-operated detonator that could be activated by a pager. The police also found the nine kilos of hardware Gagné had purchased, along with the receipt that someone had left among the bolts.

  The left-behind receipt was an expensive error because it eventually led the police to Gagné as they investigated the origins ofthe unexploded bomb. They tracked down the store from which it had originated. Another convenient detail from the receipt was the date and time when Gagné had purchased the hardware. When they went to the store, the police discovered it still had the security tapes from the day Gagné had made the purchase.

  The Crown asked Gagné if he was ever asked about the receipt he had been given when he purchased some of the nails. “After a while,” G
agné responded, “about two or three weeks later, André Tousignant told me it was possible that I would be arrested by the police because they had found the receipt. It was inside the office of a lawyer with dynamite and the bolts.”

  Despite the heat that was now on Gagné, the Lavigne murder had put him square on a path toward membership in the Rockers.

  Early on in his testimony, Gagné was asked if he knew what the Rockers were. The question prompted one of the many time-wasting objections from the defense that marred the trial throughout. It was François Taddeo who made the objection, saying Gagné was not considered an expert on the Rockers. Judge Beliveau quickly dismissed the objection saying that even if he was not an expert on Place Ville Marie he had been inside the building and could talk about it. Beliveau, who had been remarkably patient with the defense throughout the trial, asked Gagné to continue.

  “I was part of the organization. I was a striker in the Rockers, and before that I was a hangaround in the Rockers. It is a biker gang that is affiliated with the Hells Angels’ Nomads [chapter],” Gagné said, adding later that he was made a hangaround in May 1997. On August 21,1997, he got his patch making him a striker in the Rockers. He was handed a leather jacket that had a patch with the word Montreal written on it. But the Rockers’ menacing logo was absent. Only full-fledged members get those.

  Ronald (Popo) Paulin (seated, far left) with other members of the Rockers.

  “It happened at the Shogun [restaurant] in the South Shore. It was Jean-Guy Bourgoin’s birthday. Jean-Guy Bourgoin is the vice-president of the Rockers. In general, we receive our patches during a party for one of our members. So that was it. We were partying that night. It was Boteau — that is Daniel Lanthier, the president of the club, the Rockers — it was him who asked if I was willing to do something special for them. I said I was ready to do anything to become a member. They said, ’You will have something special, you have become a striker.’ That night I could have a drink because generally when you go out, you’re not a member and you can’t drink. Members can drink and you are there to do surveillance.” Gagné rattled off a list of who was also there that night. Kenny Bedard was present and was a striker at that point. Richard (Sugar) Lock was the gang’s secretary treasurer, and René Charlebois was sergeant at arms. Guillaume Serra and Ronald Paulin (one of the Rockers on trial in the Beliveau case) were at the restaurant as well, and Paul Fontaine joined them later on.

  Briere asked questions about specific people in the Hells Angels’ organization whom Gagné had dealt with. In particular, Gagné was asked about Normand Robitaille. The question opened a door that made the trial almost surreal. Gagné began to talk about how the Hells Angels allegedly plotted to kill lawyer Pierre Panaccio who was at that very moment representing Richard (Dick) Mayrand, the highest ranking member of the gang in the Beliveau trial. Gagné said that shortly before he himself was arrested, he was at Robitaille’s home when someone in the gang talked of “doing Pinocchio,” the nickname the gang used for Panaccio.

  Gagné testified that the following morning he and Robitaille went to Panaccio’s office. Robitaille explained to Gagné that the issue was money. Panaccio had defended Pierre Provencher and Stephen Falls in a case, but they didn’t want his services anymore and had asked Leo René Maranda to represent them instead. Panaccio wanted to keep the $15,000 he had been paid up front, but the Rockers felt he should get only part of it. Gagné said Robitaille had already gone to the office with Boucher, but they did not hear the answer they wanted. After that, they decided to kill him.

  Gagné started to talk about the visit he and Robitaille paid to Panaccio’s office. At this point, Panaccio objected, and Beliveau asked the Crown what the pertinence of the event was to the trial. Briere argued it had the same weight as the prison guards. Although the defendants in the Beliveau case weren’t charged with killing the guards, Gagné could testify about the murders because it was pertinent to proving gangsterism charges.

  “That they could kill me or not, what pertinence does it have here?” said Panaccio, uttering a question no defense lawyer would ever dream of having to ask in court. Judge Beliveau agreed and cautioned prosecutor Briere that it seemed “very far” from the testimony given earlier that day — and he said it was disagreeable for everyone involved.

  Gagné was only able to tell the jury that he didn’t know what happened with the plans to kill Panaccio because he was arrested early on in the conspiracy. To wrap up Gagné’s testimony, Briere asked him why he had decided to become an informant. His arrest, Gagné replied, had come at the end of a very busy day.

  The Big Party

  Considering that December 5, 1997, was the 20th anniversary of the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter, the one Boucher began his career as a biker in, it is ironic to look back and see that Gagné’s arrest on that day would begin Mom’s downfall.

  The Hells Angels had a huge party planned in Sorel where dozens of members were expected to attend. Gagné began the morning preparing things for the party at the Rockers’ hangout on Gilford Street in Montreal. He had fallen asleep and was awoken by a phone call from Boucher at around 6 a.m. Boucher told him, “Yeah, come meet me at our place in Sorel.”

  Gagné told Boucher he had already been ordered by someone else to go to the airport to pick up Hells Angels from outside Quebec as they arrived for the party by plane. Boucher responded by ordering Gagné to find a replacement for his airport duties and then come to his house on the South Shore with Tousignant. After the conversation, Gagné and Tousignant headed to Boucher’s home in Contrécoeur. At Boucher’s home, Gagné and Tousignant were told they would be handling security at the Sorel bunker. They were supposed to ride in a helicopter looking out for any signs that the Rock Machine intended to attack the building packed with Hells Angels. There was a snowstorm that day and the helicopter was grounded, so Gagné’s assignment was canceled again. While they were in Sorel, Gagné was riding with Boucher in a Dodge Ram. The police presence was heavy around the bunker and many vehicles carrying Hells Angels were being pulled over so the police could identify them.

  Gagné would testify in Boucher’s first trial that Boucher had made reference to the authorities being on to Gagné for the prison guard murders. But Boucher added that it wasn’t serious because he had something “dirty” prepared for the cops. He also advised Gagné to be careful, saying, “Pay attention if those guys ... they are following you because they could try to kill you, you know.”

  What Boucher apparently did not know is that the police already had a plan in the works. After leaving the party in Sorel, Gagné headed to his mother-in-law’s to pick up his kid. He was with his wife when the police arrested them both at around 10 p.m. that day.

  “I was arrested on December 5. They accused me of attempted murder. But before that, when I was arrested, they said, ’Don’t move’; they put my hands behind my back and said I was arrested for the attempted murder of Christian Bellemare. They brought me to a police station in Joliette. At the police station in Joliette, when they were transferring me to Parthenais, the SQ[headquarters] in Montreal, one of the two guys in the vehicle said, ’There are two other things coming and you know what we’re talking about.’”

  “And that guy was?” Briere asked.

  “I imagine he was an investigator because he was a police officer. He was in plain clothes. So I knew he was talking about the murder of the two prison guards. I said nothing. I got into the car. We got to Parthenais and there was an investigator who showed up. He said ’We know each other, you and I. We already did business together.’ I said I never did business with the police. I didn’t know it then, but it was the double agent I had sold powder to in 1994. It was Robert Pigeon [a Sûreté Du Québec investigator]. He accused me of attempted murder on Christian Bellemare. He asked me questions and I said I had nothing to say, things like that. Sometimes he would change the subject and I would say silly things as answers. It lasted a while until at one point he said that Steve Boies had becom
e an informant. He went out and then came back in and told me I was accused of the murder of the two prison guards. So I asked to speak to my lawyers. I had already spoken to them, but now I wanted to tell them I was accused of murder.”

  “You’re talking about the murder of who now?”

  “The murders of the two prison guards. I tried to reach the lawyers. I called and told the secretary to have Benoît Cliche call me. He didn’t call me because he had come in late. After that I tried to call Gilbert Frigon. Those were the lawyers working for the Hells Angels, for us. He didn’t call me. He didn’t call me. I knew that Steve Boies had become an informant and there were other things that had happened before.”

  Gagné said that at that point in his interrogation he remembered several things that made him feel cornered. His wife was being detained in the same building. This was yet another bargaining chip the police had. She had been arrested with Gagné, and one of the officers who had put them in cuffs had said that she was an accomplice in the attempt to murder Bellemare. Gagné said he worried about her security and that of his son. Gagné said that, as far as he was concerned, his wife was not an accomplice — but then he recalled that she had rented him a motel room while he was on the run after he tried to kill Bellemare.