Biker Trials, The (33 page)

“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.

Meanwhile, Gagné kept his mouth shut about the purpose of the stolen Jeep and faithfully did his time for the Hells Angels. He was out by February 1997, eager to resume working with the Rockers. He said that the same night he got out, he headed to the Rockers bunker. There he met Falls and Pierre Provencher. They asked if he wanted to join the Rockers football team.

“What does a football team do for the Rockers?” Briere asked.

“The football team is a team of killers.”

“They kill who?”

“They kill members of the Rock Machine.” “Did you agree to be part of this football team?”

“Yes.”

Gagné said his first task on the football team was to head out to Verdun with Gregory Wooley to locate a particular Pontiac Bonneville. They were given an address in Verdun and found the truck easily. Gagné wasn't told who the target was, only that the vehicle's owner was tied to the Rock Machine. They were to do surveillance work on the Hells Angels' next target in the biker war.

But Gagné became concerned when he realized how brazen the Rockers had become, especially in their attitude toward conquering Verdun. He said he heard Pierre Provencher tell a Verdun drug dealer that for every 500 grams of cocaine he sold he was to pay ten percent to Gagné. The drug dealer asked why and Provencher informed him that “Godasse is going to open some doors” for the Rockers in Verdun. The drug dealer was still puzzled, so Provencher laid it out in plain French. He said that Gagné was going to kill anyone not selling for the Hells Angels in the dealer's territory.

Gagné said he was completely caught off guard by the statement. He said he didn't know the drug dealer and didn't like the situation Provencher was placing him in. The way he saw it, his name was being mentioned to every drug dealer the Hells Angels were friendly with in Verdun. “Who are these people?” he thought
to himself, and what was to stop them from informing on him if they ever got into serious trouble with the police? Gagné said he headed straight to Bennett Street to talk to Boucher, but instead ran into Fontaine and Tousignant. He told them he wanted off the football team. Fontaine said he was glad to hear it because he wanted Gagné to join his newly formed team of drug dealers who were assigned to continue their dominance in Montreal's Gay Village. Serge Boutin, a drug dealer with remarkable business acumen, had already been sent to prison, and the Hells Angels were restructuring their network in the Gay Village, a section of Montreal packed with bars and after-hours clubs.

By his own admission, Gagné said he worked on the Gay Village project from February to March 1997. He said his partners were Fontaine, Danny Decelles and two men who would later play a major role in his decision to turn informant: Steve Boies, the man whose pager had been recovered after the botched bomb attempt in Verdun, and Christian Bellemare.

He said that Fontaine had told him to set up apartments, or
piqueries
, in the Gay Village where they could sell drugs 24 hours a day. He said the majority of the clients were prostitutes. “A
piquerie
is a place where someone goes to by a quarter (gram), consumes it there and then goes out to do more prostitution or petty thieves, people like that,” Gagné said.

When Boutin got out, Fontaine made the decision to keep the team together. Boutin was assigned to do the accounting. Decelles and Boies were in charge of the
piqueries
and two municipal parks. Jean Roch Lussier was going to be in charge of
PCP
. Gagné said Decelles was supplying pot and cocaine to dealers in the parks.