Biker Trials, The (51 page)

“I don't know one kid who doesn't like him,” said one witness. Another witness said she'd known the Dubois family for years. “They have family values,” she said as Dubois' father Jean-Guy, a convicted killer, looked on from the audience section of the courtroom.

By April 8, 2004, Beliveau was ready to deliver his sentences. His 69-page judgement was the first real glimpse into what the Superior Court judge truly thought of the Crown's case. He agreed with the Crown arguments that, at least in the cases of Bordeleau, Couture, Fournier, Lefebvre, Mayrand and Moreau, exemplary sentences were appropriate. He noted that it hadn't been proven that Bordeleau and Fournier sold drugs for the network. But it had been proven that all members of the Rockers paid into the ten percent fund, so the pair had to have been doing something to earn their salaries. It had also been proven that
Fournier had done “the watch” on several occasions, and that Bordeleau was an organizer of the guard duty. In doing so they played necessary roles in maintaining the gang's turf.

In Dubois' case, Beliveau took into consideration that he had apparently been a drug dealer for a long time. But he also felt that Dubois' departure from the Rockers after only a few months reflected that he didn't believe “in the values of the organization” It was a value system where Rockers knew that if they became Hells Angels they were joining a lifestyle. In his judgement, Beliveau quoted Sylvain Laplante acknowledging, during one of the Masses the police recorded, that life as a Hells Angel was “24 hours out of 24 hours.”

Beliveau rated Paulin's involvement as “medium,” because while it was obvious he adhered to the gang's values, there was little proof he participated in their more serious activities. Beliveau didn't see any hope of rehabilitation except in the cases of Dubois and Paulin. He accepted the argument from Paulin's defense lawyer that he was like the kid who didn't have enough talent to make the local hockey team so he was willing to do any minor tasks to fit in and be accepted. But he noted that such an attitude in the context of the Hells Angels presented a real danger for society. He couldn't look the other way on the fact that Paulin had held down regular jobs in his life and chose, well into his adult years, to become a member of the Rockers and remain there for six years, knowing full well what the gang did.

Beliveau also let his opinion be known about how some of the defense lawyers behaved during the trial. When it came to factoring in the time eight of the nine accused had already spent behind bars awaiting the outcome of their case, Beliveau could not look past the irritating delays caused by some of the defense lawyers, calling their refusal to admit certain evidence nothing but a stall tactic. He estimated that without the useless delays, the trial would have lasted about six months, half as long as it actually did.
He also pointed out that during the English-language trial of Donald Stockford and Walter Stadnick, which had just begun at that point, the lawyers involved had agreed to submit 213 admissions which took prosecutor Randall Richmond just four days, and several sips of water, to read before Justice Jerry Zigman.

In Sebastien Beauchamp's case, Beliveau sentenced the Rocker to eight years for his conviction on the drug trafficking charge, and another five to be served consecutively for participating in the activities of a gang.

In Luc Bordeleau's case, Beliveau noted his lengthy criminal record and association with the Hells Angels, right up to the point where he became a prospect in the Nomads chapter. The judge sentenced him to 10 years for conspiracy to murder, 10 years to be served concurrently for drug trafficking and another 10 to be served consecutively for participating in the activities of a gang.

Alain Dubois received only a two-year sentence for conspiring to murder rival gang members but also an eight-year sentence to be served concurrently for drug trafficking. He was also sentenced to two years to be served consecutively for participating in gang activities. Beliveau did not require that Dubois serve at least half of his sentence.

In Richard Mayrand's case, Beliveau took note of the fact he had been a member of the Hells Angels for years. He was sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy to murder, another 10 to be served concurrently for drug trafficking and 12 years to be served consecutively for participating in gang activities. With time served factored in, he would be required to serve 16 years and 9 months, and do at least half of it behind bars.

Beliveau felt that if anyone in the bunch had a chance at rehabilitation it was Paulin. He was sentenced to seven years for conspiracy to commit murder, seven to be served concurrently for drug trafficking and five years to be served consecutively for
participating in the activities of a gang. With time served factored in, he had to serve six years and nine months, with the obligation of having to serve two and a half years before being eligible for parole.

While Beliveau's tough stance towards the defense was applauded by some, the Quebec Court of Appeal did not agree with him. In June 2005, more than a year after the sentences were rendered, the appeal court reduced Beauchamp's and Dubois' sentences by nine months each.

In the summary of the judgement Justice Francois Doyon wrote that Beliveau “went too far” in lumping together the eight lawyers as a whole. Beauchamp's lawyer Lucie Joncas in particular had not taken part in the aggressive tactics the others employed. Joncas has fought a clean fight and therefore her client did not deserve to be punished.

The appeal court also determined there was no proof that the bikers knew their lawyers were going to act in an unacceptable manner.

Patrick Turcotte was by no means an important player in the biker gang war. He was a street-level drug dealer trying to do business for the Rock Machine in Verdun, a part of the Montreal Island the gang had for the most part given up on by the time Turcotte was gunned down by Pierre (Peanut) Laurin and Paul Brisebois, two members of the Rockers eager to prove themselves to the Nomads chapter. Turcotte did not have the criminal influence of a Renaud Jomphe or even Peter Paradis, two men who paid dearly for trying to prevent the Hells Angels from taking over Verdun. But details of Turcotte's death will remain with me for a long while for a few reasons.

On May 1, 2000, I went out to cover the murder for
The Gazette
late in the afternoon, grumbling to myself about how inconveniently the assignment came late in my shift, coupled with the dark clouds in the sky threatening rain. By then, things had become so predictable in the biker war that I had suggested to the assigned photographer that he drive around the blocks of Verdun that surrounded the murder scene to look out for any flaming vehicles.

Within minutes, the photographer found the smoldering minivan used in the slaying. It had been doused with an accelerant and torched. A flaming minivan had essentially become a signature for the Hells Angels' hits, like marking a Z for Zorro.

Claiming to know the motive behind a murder before even knowing the identity of the victim might sound like a boast, but it isn't. I refer to Turcotte's murder sometimes when attempting
to describe the overall mood in Quebec towards the biker war on the day he was killed. The war had been dragging on for six years at that point. Drug dealers were being murdered in broad daylight on residential streets.

Within an hour of arriving at the scene, a police source was able to confirm that Turcotte was dealing drugs for the Rock Machine and tell me who he was friendly with in the gang. The police who were investigating the biker clearly had good intelligence information.

But what struck me most was how the residents of that Verdun neighborhood reacted to the brutally violent slaying that had just played itself out on their streets. As I stayed on the scene and the afternoon turned to early evening, I walked into a nearby restaurant just outside the investigation's yellow police-tape perimeter. I tried to chat up some people as they munched away on poutine and hot dogs, but they had little to say. Despite the fact a murder had just taken place a few hours earlier on their street, the greasy spoon was packed with diners, some of whom made jokes, saying things like, “No one is going to miss him.”

Those closest to the restaurant's window could, for their dining pleasure, watch Turcotte's blood trickle into a nearby sewer as the rain began to fall and wash it away. Lying next to the red puddle was Turcotte's pager, the standard tool of the drug trafficking trade. The blood and the pager sitting next to each other on the Verdun pavement while blocks away a minivan smoldered told the story of what had just happened. The average Montrealer could have seen the images on television that night with the sound off and correctly concluded the news item was about a Hells Angels' hit.

As I rode away from the murder scene in a taxi, the blasé mood in that restaurant disturbed me the more I thought about it. Parts of Verdun have always been rough, but people bringing their children into a restaurant to munch on fries within view of
homicide detectives looking for things like discarded firearms was unsettling. Montrealers had become so used to the biker war they were numb to it.

Perhaps that is because Montreal's underworld history is so steeped in violence. To some, the biker gang war likely seemed to be a mere continuation of decades worth of murderous violence in the city.

When Alain Dubois decided to join the Rockers, his father Jean-Guy must have thought back to the
1970
s when his gang was engaged in a war that featured remarkable similarities to the current biker war. In that conflict, the leaders, who were fighting over southwest parts of Montreal, had also known each other for years before greed took over and hell broke loose. And just like in the biker war, the conflict between the Dubois brothers and a rival gang was, according to some who were involved, touched off when the Dubois brothers killed a drug dealer who refused to buy from them. Also, at least three of the Hells Angels who were founding members of the Nomads chapter joined the gang during the early
1980
s, during or just after the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter had forced the Outlaws, a rival gang that arrived in Quebec in
1977,
out of the province entirely in a war that featured the same extreme violence, bombings and murders as the Nomads chapter's war with the Alliance did.

One of the clearest signs the war was over came when inmates from both the Bandidos and the Hells Angels requested in
2003
that they no longer be segregated from each other at the Donnacona penitentiary near Quebec City. In the years since Operation Springtime
2OO1,
only a handful of homicides in Montreal appeared to be tied to biker gang activity. With all of the convictions produced by the Project Rush investigation, the Nomads chapter was “frozen,” a term used when a chapter cannot meet the minimum requirements of having six full-patch members who are not behind bars. Most of the members of the Quebec-based Nomads chapter are
now part of what the Hells Angels call the Big House Crew, a reference to incarcerated members. All Hells Angels who are behind bars receive a newsletter, informing them of where they can correspond with other jailed gang members.

But the Hells Angels, in Canada especially, have a history of not tolerating competition for long. It is something worth considering as the chapters set up in Ontario by the Quebec-based Hells Angels continue to grow.

After refusing to open a chapter in Ontario for decades, the Hells Angels in Quebec suddenly opened the floodgates in 2000 and set up shop all over the province. According to a 2002 estimate, there were 178 members of the Hells Angels in Ontario, with another 66 waiting in the wings at either the prospect or hang-around level. The members are required to communicate with each other through encrypted email. The Angels' influence is apparently spreading, as the gang set up a new chapter in Hamilton in 2005 and were rumored to be creating more. Evidence has also been presented in court indicating that Hells Angels' members based in Ontario were considering setting up a chapter in New Brunswick.

Quebec's influence over the Ontario chapters is very evident. Several of the members of the Nomads chapter in Ontario were participants on either side of Quebec's biker war. Brett Simmons, the same person who was injured as a getaway driver when the Rock Machine tried to blow up the bunker of a Hells Angels' affiliate club in 1995, was arrested ten years later, in June 2005,on charges that, as a member of Hells Angels in Ontario, he was part of a large-scale drug trafficking ring.

An accidental shooting in North York in April 2004 that left a mother of three paralyzed is a further sign the Hells Angels in Ontario are following the model of the men who brought them into the fold, a collection of some of the worst criminals Canada has ever seen. The charges laid in the shooting indicate two
things that bear a striking resemblance to how the Nomads chapter operated in Quebec. One is that they have close ties to other powerful organized crime groups, like the Mafia, and the other is that they are just as reckless as they were in Quebec.

But there is also evidence the Ontario chapters have developed a policy of pursuing other means before settling their problems with violence. The presidents of the Ontario chapters are believed to have gone over this policy at a meeting held in 2002.

Cracks are even beginning to show in the quiet-on-the-surface Sherbrooke chapter, considered one of the biggest (in terms of membership) and richest chapters in all of Canada. The mega-trials in Quebec provided evidence that the Sherbrooke chapter tried its best to stay autonomous from Maurice (Mom) Boucher and his monopolistic plans. For the most part, the Sherbrooke chapter kept a low profile during Quebec's biker war. But at least two of its members are under investigation for allegedly laundering millions of dollars and cheating provinces of even more money through the sale of cars.

During the spring of 2005,
RCMP
investigators spread out in various parts of the Eastern Townships and elsewhere in Quebec searching businesses the chapter's members had acquired over the years. The
RCMP
investigation started in London, Ontario, where one of the two Sherbrooke members who were being investigated set up a prospect chapter in 2001.