by Paul Cherry
The police had listened in when Boutin was informed that he was expected to handle the transfer of people who had chosen to defect. They had wiretapped Stéphane Faucher’s home in Longueuil. It sounded like any ordinary conversation at first. A baby could be heard crying in the background. Boutin was calling from his detention center and Faucher asked him if he had some paper to write the names down. Boutin asked if that was really necessary and Faucher insisted.
The gang members who had defected were still on trial in a Rock Machine-related case at that point and Faucher and Boutin saw little hope of their being acquitted. Faucher said the transfer had to be done before they were convicted because after that then things might get very confusing. Boutin’s huge ego was evident during the conversation. He said had he already spoken to a prison official and was initially told there was a “1 in 10,000” chance of the transfers taking place. “Me, here, I have the power to talk to the assistant-director of the prison,” Boutin said in the recorded conversation.
“Okay,” Faucher replied.
“When trouble happens here, it’s me that they come see.”
The police also learned that Boutin in particular did not think much of the guys he was being asked to help transfer. He described Jimmy Larivée as being a “tête folle” meaning crazy, and that some of the defectors were “not the cream” of the Rock Machine. “The Rock Machine [guys] were a lot more weak than us in prison,” Boutin said during his testimony.
Business Continues
Before Operation Springtime 2001 was carried out, Boutin’s business was being maintained by Stéphane Faucher and Paul Cossette, a former member of the Scorpions and by then a striker in the Rockers. Boutin said he was receiving money from Faucher and Cossette. Part of that money, he said, was being paid back to the Rockers, whose members were all paying money into a fund for a new bunker. This was on top of their usual ten percent.
During the trial, Giauque asked that excerpts from a videotape the police secretly made of a meeting the Rockers held on December 16,1999, be played for the jury. The video captured the Rockers discussing a problem in very vague terms. After watching the tape Boutin explained it was in reference to a meeting he had been summoned to in the South Shore. They were discussing a hit ordered on Michel Bertrand, a founding member of the Palmers, one of the gangs that was part of the Alliance. Bertrand had a big axe to grind, considering the Hells Angels had murdered his twin brother Daniel early on in the biker war. Stéphane Faucher had ordered the hit on Michel Bertrand, Boutin said, but it didn’t go very well.
Michel Bertrand, a founding member of the Palmers.
Turning her sights on Alain Dubois, one of the accused in her trial, Giauque asked Boutin if he knew why Dubois and other Rockers members Pierre Laurin, Gaetan Matte and Stéphane Jarry were brought into the gang automatically, with no probationary period. Dubois and the others were not required to be hangarounds or strikers. During a party at a pizzeria, the Rockers were informed of the rare development.
“They were guys who were respected. They were involved in drugs for years. They were well respected. It was a good strategic move for the southwest [of Montreal],” Boutin said.
This was the last key point Giauque wanted to make to the jury before leaving Boutin to be cross-examined by the defense. Because he had only been with the Rockers a short time, evidence against Dubois was scarce compared to what the prosecution had against the others.
Guy Quirion, Éric (Pif) Fournier’s lawyer, started off on the offensive, and suggesting Boutin had only turned informant so he’d only serve the equivalent of about a dozen years of his life sentence.
“All of my problems were turning on me. My wife was very depressed. Inside, some guys were getting paranoid on me,” Boutin said explaining that his intentions had more to do with survival. Quirion then asked Boutin if he had mentioned to his controller committee that a lenient sentence should be part of his deal.
“Listen, a contract, it’s like in hockey or baseball or whatever else. You make comparisons with whatever,” Boutin explained. Quirion then made reference to a letter Boutin had sent to Robitaille before he became an informant. In the letter Boutin wrote, “They want me to implicate you. But I know you had nothing to do with it.” The letter was in reference to the Claude De Serres murder and it contrasted significantly with what Boutin had just told the jury. “When I was arrested, I went through an interrogation that lasted many hours. I was in a room with a camera. Then I was taken to another room. . . .When we found ourselves in prison, me and Mr. Barriault, we were isolated, in a corner. We asked why we were being isolated and they said: ’There is a contract on your head. You will be shot by your own gun.’ So they isolated us. Even Mr. Barriault, my co-accused, said they were going to kill us. We knew too much,” Boutin said in explaining that the letter was an attempt to save his own life.
If any lawyer actually damaged Boutin’s credibility in the jurors’ eyes, it might have been Pierre Panaccio. During his cross-examination, he made it clear Boutin was ultimately a cold, calculating businessman who prized money above all else. In the lead-up to a question, Panaccio revealed that while De Serres was being driven to the chalet, all Boutin could think about was how much money he owed him. Boutin had said as much in a statement to the police.
“What you’re telling me is that, while knowing that you are bringing an individual to the slaughterhouse, your interest was to protect your money? To get as much information out of him to protect your money?”
“It’s in my statement,” Boutin said in a cold tone.
“No, not in your statement, now.” The two continued to verbally joust until Panaccio collected himself and asked again about the statement. “I had problems when I saw that. You’re bringing him. You know he is going to be killed. And you coldly ask him about your interests . . .”
“I was not certain that he was going to be killed.”
“Oh, so you weren’t certain?” Panaccio said sounding very sarcastic.
“I knew he was going to be interrogated because the guys knew, after reading the laptop, that he was an informant. They had a good idea that he was an informant,” Boutin said while continuing to insist he was never certain that De Serres was going to be killed. After René Charlebois pleaded guilty to several of the charges filed against him in Operation Springtime 2001,he was also charged with De Serres’ murder. Before the case ever went to trial he pleaded guilty to the homicide.
Like Boutin, Barriault was able to plead guilty to a lesser charge than first-degree murder. He was sentenced to two years for complicity after the fact. By the time of his first parole board hearing in June 2002, he was classified by the police as being a hangaround in the Rockers. He was released in September 2002, after having served two-thirds of his sentence.
11
The Colombian Connection
Petite and dressed in a power suit, Sandra Antelo fit the image of a calculating person who had successfully managed to smuggle large quantities of cocaine undetected for more than a decade. But dealing with the Hells Angels made her a target in more ways than one.
It would attract the attention of the police who were constantly monitoring the gang during Project Rush, and it would show her just how greedy the Nomads chapter was. Antelo was 52 when she took the witness stand on November 24,2003, in the Beliveau trial. And as she would tell the jury, she was lucky to be there.
Antelo and her husband Raymond Craig, who was about ten years her senior, had been cocaine traffickers for years. Her husband was well known to the police and had been charged with attempted murder in the early 1990s. But Antelo managed to keep out of jail and out of trouble until she began dealing with the Hells Angels. She had never done business with any of the nine bikers on trial in the Beliveau case. But her story supported the Crown theory that the gang was all about using violence to gain a monopoly, especially when their leader Mom Boucher got involved.
To begin her testimony, prosecutor Madeleine Giauque showed Antelo a su
rveillance video of herself and André Chouinard, a member of the Rockers from 1994 until he was made a hang-around in the Hells Angels’ Nomads chapter on June 24, 1996. Antelo’s children were visible in the video as well. Through a Spanish interpreter, Antelo, who was born in Colombia, explained that she recognized the video as having been shot after having a business lunch meeting with Chouinard at Place Ville Marie. Giauque asked what she and Chouinard had discussed.
“Everything that we talked about, all of our business was about drugs,” she said.
“What kind of drugs?”
“Cocaine.”
Antelo had been introduced to Chouinard by Michel Rose. Antelo met Rose in 1997, after telling a lawyer friend that she was interested in meeting someone who could help her move lots of cocaine through the U.S. and into Canada. She and Craig had recently separated and Antelo needed someone willing to move the cocaine, she had become so adept at sneaking across the Canadian border. “I had a meeting with [Rose] in the lawyer’s office,” Antelo said, careful not to identify the lawyer by name. She described the attorney only as “a friend.”
At that point, Rose was not yet a member of the Nomads chapter. In fact, he wasn’t even a Rocker. He is believed to have suddenly been made a prospect of the Nomads chapter on October 5,1998. His connections to the gang were somewhat mysterious as he was the first person able to crack the chapter’s ranks, after it was chartered in 1995, without having to go through the training of being a Rocker. Antelo said her first meeting with Rose was inside the lawyer’s office and that they kept things very simple, agreeing only to meet at another location where they could speak more openly. They met again four months later.
By late 1997, the pair agreed to try to smuggle in 200 kilos of cocaine. Antelo arranged for the cocaine to be bought in Colombia and have it shipped by her intermediary there. The first shipment went well. Antelo said she and Rose agreed to do more business, and they continued to meet frequently. Then at some point, André Chouinard stepped into the picture. On the surface, Chouinard appeared to be clean-cut and athletic but he had been a member of the Rockers since 1994 and had impressed Boucher enough that he was considered a close associate at one time. Antelo didn’t like the idea of a stranger entering into her dealings with Rose. It was then that Rose revealed a bit about himself.
“We had the idea of transporting drugs directly from Colombia by maritime transport. That was after the first meeting with Michel Rose. After we had more confidence in each other he told me that he did not work for the Italians or as an independent. At that moment he said he was entering a group that was bigger, more organized and that it would be more interesting for us to work with. A group that was well organized,” Antelo said. “It was at that point that he mentioned the Hells Angels or some other groups. For me it was a surprise. I didn’t know he was part of this group.” Rose began insisting that Antelo meet with more of his associates, including Chouinard.
“For my own security I didn’t want to deal with anyone else but [Rose]. But he said it was important because André Chouinard handled everything that had to do with the importation of cocaine and that his [own] role was hashish,” she said. Antelo eventually relented and agreed to deal with Chouinard, but on one condition.
“I told them that even if he wasn’t the one who took care of cocaine, the one I had trust in was Michel. That is the reason that Michel was always at the meetings.”
With Chouinard now in the picture, more plans to smuggle in cocaine were drawn up. Antelo said there were five batches of cocaine of a few hundred kilos each brought in before they ventured into risking bigger shipments. Giauque asked her about how things went as they continued doing business in 1998. To help Antelo along, Giauque deposited a six-page document the Colombian woman had turned over to the authorities before turning informant. Antelo recognized the documents right away as being six pages of detailed accounting on the quantities of cocaine being shipped from Colombia and how much the Colombians were being paid for them through contacts in Miami.
Antelo said she got the documents from a Colombian man named Victor Mejia Múnera, one of two brothers tied to powerful Colombian drug cartels. She described Mejia Múnera as the owner of the organization in charge of her shipments from Colombia. He was in charge of her account. The document listed things like quantities, price and expenses. For example, one showed that on December 4, 1997, 100 kilos of cocaine was shipped at a value of $1.7 million. A later shipment of 100 kilos was smuggled into the U.S. at $1.8 million. The difference in price, Antelo explained, had to do with who was assuming the greater risk, the Colombians, or herself and the Hells Angels in Canada.
On March 10, 1998, another 300 kilos was sent to Miami. A month later, another 372 kilos of the white powder was sent. These were test shipments that the partners used to see if their routes were secure. Antelo’s goal was to bring in much larger loads.
Contract Six
Her first large shipment with the Hells Angels did not go as smoothly as the others. “Contract six,” as Antelo described it, covered an agreement to bring in 2,400 kilos of cocaine.
The cocaine was held up in Colombia, requiring Antelo to hold several meetings with Rose and Chouinard. The plan was for the cocaine to be brought into Montreal via Miami and New York. Antelo said she was never physically in either city. She described herself as an organizer. The same shipment ran into another problem as it arrived by ship in Canada. A man brought in to courier part of the shipment was spotted by police in the Gaspé region hauling 400 kilos in the back of his luxury sport-utility vehicle.
The drug mule was a man named Anthony Tomasino. He ended up getting a ten-year sentence for transporting the cocaine. Despite two previous drug-related convictions, the judge who sentenced him did not see any reason to place restrictions on his sentence and he was out on full parole by February 2002.
The rest of the cocaine made it through to the Hells Angels. Giauque asked Antelo if she had negotiated the 2,400 kilo deal on her own with Rose and Chouinard.
“No, all of it was negotiated between Mr. Rose, Mr. Chouinard, my husband and myself,” she said.
“When did your husband join in the, if I might use the expression, affaire?” Antelo said Raymond Craig got involved with her drug trafficking while she was working on bringing in the 2,400 kilo shipment. Craig was already quite experienced in smuggling via large containers brought in by ship. Antelo had earlier described him as a legitimate businessman, but that was a lie. Craig had been dealing in drugs with organized crime groups like the Mafia for about 30 years.
Antelo had met Craig in 1984. During their relationship, she imported legitimate items like furniture and leather jackets. But her principal source of revenue while she and Craig were married came from drug trafficking. An import company they operated during the mid-1980s did business through countries like Korea and China. After they married, she passed on all of her Colombian contacts to her husband and the couple quietly smuggled cocaine into Canada from 1985 to 1993. By her own account they only smuggled about once a year in quantities that varied between 5 and 50 kilos.
Like his wife, Craig had managed to keep a low profile as a drug dealer in Canada. However his criminal record was highlighted by some strange arrests. In 1977, he was sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty to extortion. He had forced a woman to give him $500. To get her address, Craig beat the information out of another man using a miniature baseball bat. During the late 1970s, he was also arrested for beating up a man while stealing a bag of Chinese food, but the charges were eventually dropped. He was arrested for drug trafficking in 1980 but he managed to have the charges withdrawn. Also in 1980, Craig got into trouble after his girlfriend, a stripper, brought home a co-worker who turned out to be 14 years old. Craig and his girlfriend used the runaway in threesomes for two weeks until the police picked up the teenager who turned out to be a runaway from a youth protection center. Craig was charged with gross indecency but got off in that case as well.
; Even after his marriage to Antelo, Craig was no stranger to trouble. In 1993, he was sought in connection with an attempted murder and fled the country. He came back in 1996 and pleaded the case down to a lesser charge, agreeing to pay $25,000 restitution to the victim. He and Antelo separated, but Craig was still interested in knowing with whom she was dealing. Initially, he had no idea her new partners were Hells Angels. When he found out, he was not happy.
According to Antelo, Rose and Chouinard were not happy Craig was in the picture either.
“But there was no option. Either they accept to do it with us or not. There was a moment when they accepted my husband as being part of this transaction,” she said. “My husband did not want to work with the Hells Angels. He had never worked with them before and he never wanted to. He was very much against the idea of working with this group. But I had no other alternative because I had already started with them. From the start my husband thought it was a bad idea, for both him and I to work with them. He knew. I was not a francophone or a Quebecer. But my husband knew how these people worked. He said from the beginning that it was not the kind of group he wanted to work with. At the same time he knew that if he didn’t join in, if I didn’t do the deal, I’d have a problem with this group. On several occasions he told me this and was very clear.”
Antelo began to cry at this point, recalling the moment when she made a choice in her life that would end up costing her dearly.
A Dangerous Stalemate
Antelo’s next deal with the Hells Angels was plagued with problems.
“We couldn’t come to an agreement because my husband was part of the discussions,” Antelo said. She then paused for a while as emotion overcame her. When she pulled herself together, she said that she had an agreement with Rose and Chouinard to split 50/50 the costs involved in bring their next shipment of cocaine into Canada. But the two sides began squabbling over things like the costs involved for the smuggling operation. She recalled one meeting at a golf course in Boucherville where Rose and Chouinard could not agree with Craig on the price the Hells Angels were going to end up paying for the cocaine they brought in. Giauque asked Antelo how risk affected price.
