In the antechamber of a war without thank you

Éric Thibault

Saturday, December 9, 2017 01:00

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Saturday, December 9, 2017 01:00

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The period of the most significant moment in the history of the Hells Angels in Québec is, without a doubt, the war of the bikers, in which more than 160 people dead and 180 injured – thirty of them innocent victims in total, between 1994 and 2002. Using unpublished accounts of motorcyclists who were part of the enemy camps and reports of police investigations, The Journal recounts the origins of this escalation of violence without precedent.

• READ ALSO: The SQ would not lessen the Hells

“It’s brewed in Quebec. The war is in the process of grabbing…”

This is what Louis “Melou” Roy said in his hotel room on July 13, 1994, in San Francisco, in front of a half-dozen other bikers from Quebec who were there for a global gathering of Hells Angels.

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Louis Roy

Hells Angel

Roy, regarded by police as one of the most influential Hells of the province, had just received a phone call from his colleague in the chapter of Three-Rivers, Richard “Rick” Valley, warning that the Rock Machine were of the ” attack “.

Sylvain Boulanger, a recently promoted member of the chapter of Sherbrooke, knew that her vacation in California would be less long than expected.

The “D-Day”

On this day, Pierre Daoust, a trafficker tied to their club-school Death-Riders, had been riddled with bullets by three gunmen hidden in his workshop for repair of motorcycles, in Rivière-des-Prairies.

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Normand Hamel

Hells Angel

Norman “Norm” Robitaille, then a member of the club-school of Rockers, has survived another shooting in which two bullets have reached, in Montreal.

The Hells could thank the police have thwarted two other attacks planned at their expense during the same day.

Three Rock Machine, including Norman Baker, went to blow up the bunker the Evil Ones – an affiliate club of the Hells on the South Shore – where they were intercepted in possession of guns, sticks of dynamite and detonators.

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Michel Langlois

Hells Angel

A sympathizer of the Rock Machine, Michel Boyer, and an accomplice have also been arrested, both armed to the teeth. Their mission was to go down none other than Maurice ” Mom ” Boucher, the chief of the Hells.

The rivals of the Hells Angels, grouped together in what they called ” the Alliance “, likened the offensive to the allied landing in Normandy during the Second world War. They have nicknamed ” D-Day “.

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Marc Pelletier

Hells Angel

The hit “plumb”

“We decided to go to war,” explained to police, Marcel Gauthier, a member of the bikers and the Devils Disciples became a suicide bomber for the Alliance.

“We had merged a number of groups, such as the Dark Circle, the clan Pelletier, the Rock Machine, the Palmers, the Devils Disciples. The goal was to be the strongest to hit the Hells plumb “, he said.

Why, therefore, have asked the investigators of the SQ in November 1995 ?

Because the Hells have wanted to dislodge them from the drug market, has responded to the new informer.

In the early 1990s, these gangs are independent controlled more territories for the sale of narcotics in Montreal. Especially in the areas east and north of the city, as well as on the rue Saint-Denis, according to Gauthier.

“We also controlled the north of Laval, Mascouche, Terrebonne, Saint-Sauveur and Sainte-Adèle, he added. Everyone was making money. We had agreements for the territories. Nothing written, nothing formal. “

The expansion of the Hells intensified in the spring of 1994, upon the arrest of the leader of the Rock Machine Salvatore Cazzetta, who was extradited to the United States, and imprisoned until 2004 for importing more than 200 kilograms of cocaine.

Cazzetta and Boucher had worked in the SS of Pointe-aux-Trembles, but after the dissolution of the gang, the first decided to found the Rock Machine, in 1989, while the second is joined to the Hells.

“You have 24 hours…”

“Mom Boucher did not meet the verbal agreements that we had always had with them, argued Gauthier. He started to chip away at our territories and the sellers of “dope” Hells settled into our bars. “

In the region, taking control of the drug market by the Hells was facilitated by the absence of competing groups be well-organized.

“But Quebec and Montreal, it brewed more,” admitted Sylvain Boulanger.

At Verdun, the trafficker Peter Paradise received the visit of the men of the hand of the Butcher who ordered to sell to the Hells.

“They told me that there would be more independent and that I had 24 hours to decide me “, testified the one that is rather attached to the Rock Machine before becoming an informer.

Before the ” D-Day “, the tenors of The Alliance went to see Robert “Tiny” Richard, who was then the president of the Hells Angels in Canada, to make it listen to reason, his band. These talks have come to nothing.

“We tanned,” quipped Marcel Gauthier, in speaking of the assaults on the 13 July.

A “mass” in case of emergency

As soon as income of San Francisco, Sylvain Boulanger went to the bunker of his chapter in Lennoxville, where the other members have recounted what he had missed during his trip.

“It was about it,” said this retired Hells of Sherbrooke who has decided to collaborate with the police 14 years later.

It was said that, on July 15, 1994, the montreal chapter of the Hells has convened “an emergency meeting” with members of other sections in quebec of the band.

A ” mass “, in the jargon of motorcyclists.

“The purpose of the meeting was to take an account of the situation and to ask for a vote of the members reply to the Rock Machine “, according to a report by the SQ.

“The chapters in Montreal, Trois-Rivières and Quebec wanted the vote passed” in favor of a response of the Hells, according to Baker.

Maurice ” Mom “Boucher, Michel” Sky “Langlois – one of the founding members of the chapter of Montreal in 1977 – and Marc” Tom “Pelletier – vice-president of the Quebec chapter –” very much involved at this meeting and argued for a replica against the Rock Machine “, according to what was reported at the SQ.

Incidentally, these are the colleagues sherbrooke to Baker, who were the only ones to refuse to dig up the war axe.

“Before it explodes”

“The chapter of Sherbrooke did not agree to vote right away, because he did not want to antagonize the criminal organizations,” the Alliance with which he was a partner for the import of cocaine, says a report of the SQ product in the margin of the operation SharQc.

The assembly was finally concluded without that the Hells do not go to a vote hoped for by ” Mom ” Boucher.

Instead, they have left a chance in the chapter of Sherbrooke of “trying to find a common ground to avoid war” with the Alliance, while declaring the status quo on the expansion of the territories of selling drugs.

“Sherbrooke has tried to arrange the business before it loses it “, remembered the Baker, the old “sergeant of arms” of this section of the Hells.

But every week the influential members of all the chapters made their way to Montreal to meet a Butcher, his right arm Normand “Biff” Hamel and the biker bodybuilder Richard “Dick” Mayrand, in order to” go to news “.

These “meetings” were often in restaurants in the city centre, a training centre or the cabaret dancers In Adorned, that the Alliance will try later to make flame because the Hells met with him, according to police reports.

The fragile truce has finally burst in the month of October next.

It was supposed to last three weeks…

According to Baker, the Hells knew that the camp rival had still a contract on the head of ” Mom “and on that of her estimated right arm, “Biff” Hamel, that would have put fire to the powder.

“For from the war, it took all of Quebec is in agreement. We all voted unanimously, ” said Baker, who has added $ 3 million by becoming informer in anticipation of the operation SharQc in 2009.

On October 17, 1994, Michel Boyer, who had been arrested on “D-Day” while he was preparing to shoot ” Mom ” Boucher, was riddled with bullets by returning to his home in Lanoraie, in the company of his wife and their baby.

Twelve days later, Sylvain Pelletier, someone important to the Alliance, died in the explosion of a bomb placed under the driver’s seat of his Jeep Cherokee, Repentigny.

But the Hells Angels have under-estimated their opponents.

To such a point that their leaders believed that the Alliance brandirait the white flag in less than a month.

“They said it was going to last three weeks,” said police informer Dayle Fredette, citing that ” Mom ” Boucher and his lieutenants would have advanced so arrogant to convince the troops to give battle to the Rock Machine and their allies.

A growing list

Three months later, the list of victims continued to grow. On January 4, 1995, it is in Mexico that the Hells have found the Rock Machine Norman Baker, who had participated in the “D-Day” of the Alliance.

They were riddled with bullets while he was sitting at a table at the Hard Rock Café in Acapulco.

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Salvatore Cazzetta, head and founder of the Rock Machine, on a photo taken by the police after his arrest in 1994.

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“Mom” Boucher looks at the police officers who were caught on camera shortly after the first assaults of the Alliance against the Hells.

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Dayle Fredette thought he would be a Hells Angel forever. It is now informer.

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The Rock Machine had been founded by Salvatore Cazzetta in 1989.

Photo Jacques Bourdon

The Hells fought back so shattering to the enemy with the murder of Sylvain Pelletier, a pillar of the Alliance, who died in the explosion of his Jeep.

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David Carroll, on the run since 2001, was among the Hells Angels, who felt that their leader had gone too far by attacking the judicial system and the media.

The Hells Angels had their “fund-of-war”

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The warrior leader of the Hells Angels, Maurice Boucher collects next to the coffin of his companion of the Nomads, Normand Hamel, who was murdered in Laval in the spring of 2000.

Business warrior

The Hells Angels “embarked on a vast military enterprise,” that each of them had to be financed by paying 10 % of the profits of their criminal activities, according to a court document endorsed by a hundred Hells that are found to be guilty of conspiracy to murder after the operation SharQc.

These hundreds of thousands of dollars have paid for the firearms, ammunition and vehicles that were systematically burned after being used to eliminate the competition.

Baker and other Hells have also bribed moles with access to the banks of the confidential data from the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec to extract numbers and addresses from license plates of their targets.

“By mistake”

As Ginette Martineau, who, after his arrest, claimed to have pitonné “by mistake”, the plaque of the journalist Michel Auger a few weeks before it is referred to by an attempt of murder.

The “fund-of-war” was also used to reward the murders of rivals with generous bonuses of 25 000 $ to 100 000 $ to the killers.

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Norman Baker

Rock Machine

“No common sense”

Although they have unanimously voted in favour of the war, some members of the Hells Angels have finally become disillusioned.

“[Richard] “Bob” Hudon [a founding member of the Hells in Quebec city] had said to me : “It’s not good sense to make war with our buddies, esti. These guys were in business with the rest of us”. For him, it was not normal, ” said Fredette.

The military enterprise, directed by ” Mom “Boucher has often exceeded the bounds in the eyes of “several” Hells, but they seemed not to express it openly.

According to Baker, many of the Hells were that “it was going too far” when Boucher ordered the murders of two prison guards in 1997.

“I would have never done such a thing. This is not the whole world that was aware and okay with it, “she said of the Hells Nomads David “Wolf” Carroll to two investigators from the SQ who have tried to convince him to return his jacket before the operation Spring of 2001.

The fugitive Carroll — one of the 10 criminals most wanted in Quebec, he added that “the guys” of the Hells who have attempted to kill the journalist Michel Auger in the parking lot of the Journal de Montréal, September 13, 2000, ” know surely that they have made a serious mistake “.

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Members of the Hells Angels of Quebec on vacation at Lake Louise in Alberta.

The price to pay

When will this senseless war has finally come to an end, 160 people dead and 180 wounded later, several key characters of the outbreak of hostilities were already dead.

Normand “Biff” Hamel was killed under the eyes of his wife and of their son, April 17, 2000, coming out of a pediatric clinic in Laval.

Louis “Melou” Roy has been the victim of an internal purge in June of the following because he wanted to operate his lucrative “business” of cocaine alone and ” it has not been the case of other [Hells] Nomads “, according to the informer Baker. His body has never been found.

Several Hells have had to give up their “patches” and take their “retirement” Hells to be able to get parole after long prison sentences to the penitentiary.

Several ex-Rock Machine were invited to change sides at the end of hostilities. Salvatore Cazzetta was one of those who have accepted it.

The warrior leader of the Hells Angels, Maurice ” Mom ” Boucher, is serving since 2002 a sentence of penitentiary imprisonment for having ordered the murders of the correctional officers Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau.

He has lost his status of member in good standing of the gang in 2014, in addition to having had to sell his house to pay a debt to the tax office in 2016.

– With the collaboration of Félix Séguin

The black book of the Hells Angels in 10 extracts

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The black Book of the Hells Angels appeared in the Editions of the Journal.

“I look at the world who get up at 7 o’clock in the morning, which still get stuck in traffic for 10 bucks worth of time, and returning in the evening… It was them other fools…” – Sébastien Beauchamp, a member of the Rockers, during a conversation with another member of the former club-Hells which was recorded by the police, on December 23, 1999.

• According to a document prepared by the sergeant-investigator of the Sûreté du Québec Alain Belleau and laid before the Charbonneau commission in September 2013, of the 118 members of the organization, the Hells Angels, 97 % have criminal records, of which 87 % related to narcotic drugs.
• During the Spring of 2001, the police seize 5 674 620 $, mainly in apartments which were used as a cache of money to the Nomads. Bikers should be creative in order to disguise the money obtained in an illegal manner. Nearly a million of dollars were made at 7415 rue Beaubien est, Anjou, each week.
• According to their computerized accounting [input in operation spring of 2001], over a period of 18 months […] the Nomads have sold 2188 kilograms of cocaine with a total value of 111 503 361 $.
• During a search for the Hells François Vachon during operation SharQc, the police discovered a white bucket, buried near the 122, rue du Griffon, Sherbrooke. The money had been wrapped in plastic bags before being put in a garbage bag green, buried in the boiler. This last was under eight inches of sand, near the foundation of the house. In total, there were 102 640 $ […].
• Because of the pressure on police increased, ” those who are going to want to do the club are going to have to force himself and have a business legal “, wore a Hells in the mid-2000s. And, in fact, at this time, the police had established that no less than 1000 companies that are duly registered in Quebec were linked to the Hells Angels. The purpose of these companies was not so much to make profits that launder the money from the sale of drugs or other illegal activities.
• In may 2002, the judge Dumais cited [the Hells Angel Claude] the Shepherd to trial at the end of its preliminary inquiry in a case of assault and extortion in Quebec city. A week later, the magistrate and the biker crossed in a store Réno-Dépôt. Berger then threw : “My ostia, to me as you have ! “
• The deceased Hells Scott] Steinert has returned from his honeymoon when he was summoned by the riders to a “fake meeting” at the bunker in Sorel […], has related the story of the informer Sylvain Boulanger. “They killed Scott with hammer blows. They have smashed the skull. After that, they have crissé in the river. “
• On the way back, Godasse receives the congratulations of Mom Boucher : “It’s beautiful, my Godasse, it does not matter if she had jul “, lance-t-il, speaking of Diane Lavigne. And then he adds : “When we have not been able to jailers to be done, we will of judges and prosecutors of the Crown. “

“The Hells Angels, it is a business. Everything that relates to it, the Hells Angels are there. […] Fact that it kills the competition and the others will understand that they are better to do business with you. “– Sylvain Boulanger, a former Hells Angel become informer

The 40 years of the Hells in Quebec in 13 dates

The history of the Hells Angels, who are celebrating the end of the week their 40th anniversary in the country, is plagued by crimes and violence. Here are a few highlights of their presence in Quebec.

December 5, 1977

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The motorcycle gang, the Popeyes Sorel becomes an official chapter of the Hells Angels in Montreal, the first section of the gang in Canada.

September 8, 1983

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Yves “Boss” Buteau, president and founder of the chapter mother of the Hells in the country, is assassinated as he was leaving a bar in Longueuil, quebec, by an apprentice of their rivals of the time, the Outlaws.

December 5, 1984

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Foundation of the chapter of the Hells of Sherbrooke, followed by those in Quebec, may 26, 1988, of Three Rivers, on June 24, 1991, and the section South on the South Shore of Montréal, march 1, 1997.

March 24, 1985

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Victims of an internal purge after having been summoned to the bunker in Lennoxville, the bullet riddled bodies of five members of the defunct chapter North, which had been founded in Laval in 1979, are put in sleeping bags filled with concrete and dumped in the river.

July 13, 1994

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The war of the bikers aimed to control the sale of drugs in Quebec, which will last eight years and will be more than 160 people dead, opens in Rivière-des-Prairies with the assassination of Pierre Daoust, linked to the Death Riders, then a club-Hells.

August 9, 1995

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While he was playing outside, in the district of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Daniel Desrochers, 11 years old, suffered serious injuries to which he succumb four days later, during the explosion of the Jeep of a drug dealer.

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June 26, 1997

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The correctional officer Diane Lavigne was gunned down after his departure from the prison of Bordeaux, and, on the 8th of September following, his colleague Pierre Rondeau was murdered near the prison in Rivière-des-Prairies.

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Diane Lavigne

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Pierre Rondeau

December 5, 1997

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Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné, a member of the Rockers, is arrested and becomes informer, admitting that he participated in the murders of two prison guards under the orders of the chief of the Hells, Maurice ” Mom ” Boucher.

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September 13, 2000

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The journalist Michel Auger survived a murder attempt ordered by the Hells, and during which he has five bullets in the parking lot of the Journal de Montréal.

March 26, 2001

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The Hells Angels are referred to by more than 130 arrests during the police operation in Spring 2001, which will then lead to the closure of their section of the elite Nomads was formed in 1995 by ” Mom ” Boucher because of the imprisonment of its dozen members.

May 5, 2002

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At the end of a second trial, Maurice ” Mom ” Boucher was convicted of having ordered the murders of officers Lavigne and Rondeau, scooping of a sentence of imprisonment for life.

April 15, 2009

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Operation SharQc, the most important raid antimotards ever conducted in Canada, seeks the arrest of 156 members and associates of the Hells Angels, robbing the band of much of its workforce for several years.

October 9, 2015

Photo Agence QMI, Joel Lemay

The five defendants in the only mega-trials for murders of operation SharQc are freed of all charges when the judge James Brunton decreed that the Crown has committed a “serious abuse of procedures” by the disclosure of evidence, late to the defence. Fifty of the 156 Hells charged in operation SharQc were eventually granted a stay of proceedings.