Biker Trials, The (28 page)

“A young dealer who decides to take part in illegal activities today, who places himself at the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Laurent to say 'it should be worth it to sell drugs. I'll start selling drugs.' How long could he stay on the corner? The answer, according to the witnesses who have turned [informant], 'if you do ten minutes it will be great,'” Vincent said.

“The Rockers were formed in 1992. Mr. Maurice Boucher, who was a member of the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter, located in Sorel, started the Rockers club in Montreal. In 1995, certain
members from Montreal and Trois Rivières, formed the Nomads chapter, Hells Angels' Nomads. After that you have an explosion, in the literal sense of the term and figurative sense, in the number of people who will gravitate to the organization.”

Being part of the organization required loyalty, and Crown Prosecutor André Vincent had no better proof than René Charlebois' wedding video. During his wedding reception, Charlebois told his guests that his “heart and his blood” were pledged to the Hells Angels.

“The organization went before everything and anything,” Vincent reiterated, “and if the organization needed or sensed the need to physically eliminate an individual, the person who participated in that physical elimination received benefits.”

The prosecutor said this was made clear during a
messe
meeting the Rockers held in April 2000, where Vincent Lamer announced there were new rules concerning what it took to advance beyond being a hangaround in the Rockers. What Lamer said indicated that if someone eliminated an enemy, they would not have to go through the eight-month probation to move up in the network's hierarchy. Vincent also noted that Daniel Lanthier, another Rocker who was being sentenced that day and the owner of a small pager company, was able to find out the pager numbers of the Hells Angels' enemies. It was believed that the Hells Angels used that know-how to lure unsuspecting dealers to their deaths.

As the trials took their course, one name other than besides Maurice (Mom) Boucher's that seemed to come up in every major conspiracy discussed was that of René Charlebois. He appeared to have been involved in everything, including Boucher's plot to kill prison guards, the conspiracy to blow up a Rock Machine hangout in Verdun and several murders.

According to one informant, Charlebois got his start as a drug dealer while delivering pizzas, submarines and cocaine out of a restaurant in the Hochelaga Maisonneuve district just before the biker war started. By April 1997, Charlebois was a Rocker, but he had already been around the gang for a long time. Other underlings in the gang took note of the fact that Charlebois was willing to pay into the ten percent fund even though, as a striker, he wasn't expected to. Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné, who became an informant late in 1997, claimed that Charlebois had asked him to take photos of Martin Dupont and later had offered Gagné $10,000 to kill him. Early on in the war, Dupont and a few other men had been arrested in connection with some stolen dynamite that was tied to the Rock Machine. Dupont was eventually killed in Montreal.

From left to right: Gregory Wooley, Pierre Provencher, Sylvain Laplante, René Charlebois, Guillaume (Mimo) Serra, Jean-Guy Bourgoin, Ronald (Popo) Paulin and Daniel Lanthier.

In January 1999, about five months before Charlebois was
made a prospect in the Nomads chapter, Charlebois was himself the target of an attempted hit. It happened while he was in his car, parked behind a bar where the Rockers had been known to hang out. He was not seriously hurt but told one of the Hells Angels' lawyers that he had no plans to make a statement to the police.

By the time of his wedding on August 5,2000, Charlebois was a full-patch member of the Nomads chapter. His wedding caused a major stir in Quebec as the Hells Angels had managed to hire popular singers Ginette Reno and Jean-Pierre Ferland to perform at the reception. By then, Charlebois had come a long way from his days delivering pizzas and cocaine. Informants would say that he was an important drug dealer for the Hells Angels in the Hochelaga Maisonneuve district, the area where Boucher began his dreams of a monopoly.

They also said Charlebois was partners with Robitaille, Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine and Robert Johnson, a member of the Rockers who avoided being investigated in Project Rush only because he was behind bars for its duration. Early on in the biker war, Johnson and Stéphane Blaquiere, another man tied to the Rockers, had been caught making a deal for 350 kilograms of cocaine. When the police searched Johnson's home, they found more than a kilogram of an explosive called Syntex and 15 detonators.

The trial heard before Réjean Paul was bogged down by several delays, including one caused by Charlebois' teeth. During the trial, he had to ask for a recess because his dental implants were causing him severe pain. Visibly frustrated by the delays, Paul asked Charlebois to be patient while they tried to find a dentist who was willing to travel to the Bordeaux detention center to treat him. Paul even tried to offer the Hells Angel some advice saying: “There is nothing like 600 milligrams of Motrin”

One of the Rockers to accept a plea bargain before Justice Réjean Paul was Sylvain Laplante. Before joining the Rockers, Laplante had been vice-president of a gang called the Pirates based in Valleyfield, a small city west of Montreal, near the Ontario border. The Pirates were run by Gilles (Trooper) Mathieu who jumped from the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter to the Nomads chapter in 1995. Laplante followed Mathieu and became a Rocker on August 25,1995. Before joining the Rockers, Laplante already had several arrests under his belt for selling drugs out of bars in Valleyfield.

From left to right: Andre Couture, Normand Robitaille, Pierre Provencher and Bruno Lefebvre.

Pierre Provencher, was in his late forties by the time he joined the Rockers in 1994. His age seemed to give him a fatherly influence among the twenty-somethings in the Rockers. He was once recorded telling someone aspiring to graduate to the Hells Angels that doing so required a 24-hour commitment for three years. He was the one they called from prison when they wanted
updates on what was going on with the gang. During those conversations, Provencher seemed friendly and supportive, a contrast to the smoking skull he had tattooed on his left arm.

Before joining the Rockers, Provencher had already been involved in drug trafficking. In 1982, he had been sentenced to six years in prison for drug possession. Provencher's family was well aware of the life he was living. Through wiretaps, the police listened as Provencher's wife discussed biker gang hits with the wives or girlfriends of other Rockers. On one wiretap, recorded on March 29, 2000, Provencher's wife could be heard discussing the preparations being made for their son for his first communion. She said the priest asked their 11-year-old boy if he believed in the word of God and he responded by saying that he believed in the word of the Rockers. Provencher's wife also mentioned that her son planned to set up a Rockers chapter in his school. When the man on the other end of the line jokingly asked if the boy had a Rockers jacket, Provencher's wife said her plan was to not raise him to be a criminal.

Based on information from one informant in the Project Rush investigation, Provencher was making about $60,000 a year selling drugs for the Hells Angels in Verdun. He remained a Rocker throughout the biker war as several other younger men passed him by on the hierarchy. In wiretap conversations, the police could hear other members of the Rockers wonder why Provencher never moved higher than a Rocker. But Provencher seemed content with his lot in life. He purchased a maple syrup farm near Montreal and used it to host parties for the gang. He also seemed to have Boucher's respect.

Another person who had Boucher's respect was Guillaume (Mimo) Serra. Informants said his membership was imposed on the Rockers in July 1995. Two months earlier, Serra had beaten the rap on a cocaine trafficking charge despite being caught red-handed dealing on Saint-Laurent Blvd. A patrol officer was
looking into why Serra was double-parked on the busy street and saw Serra and the man to whom he was selling freeze up. When the police searched the car they found 42 grams of cocaine. Serra was described as a key cocaine supplier to the Hells Angels and was suspected of establishing international drug routes for them. Shortly after Serra was imposed on the Rockers, Dany Kane told the
RCMP
that Serra appeared to have close ties to the Mafia and had purchased, in the Laurentians, the luxury house of a very influential member of the Rizzuto family.

According to Dany Kane, Serra once asked Maurice (Mom) Boucher about the possibility of selling heroin for the Rockers. Kane told his police handlers that Boucher pointed out that the Hells Angels have a strict rule that states, “All contact with or use of heroin is forbidden.” But Boucher also advised Serra that he didn't have to know everything he did.

Even though Serra had been a prospect in the Nomads chapter for only a few months before his 2001 arrest, Crown Prosecutor Vincent wanted him to serve 18 years.

“The principal motive of the [Minister of Justice's] position is not at all the time Mr. Serra was part of the Hells Angels under the title of prospect but how he came to acquire that title. It is not a vocation, to become a member of this organization. You are chosen for the qualities a person possesses to be part of the organization.” Vincent noted that one informant claimed that Serra could move 80 kilos of cocaine per month for the Hells Angels. He was considered a model for other Rockers to follow.

Serra's lawyer, Gerald Souliere, felt his client was getting a raw deal, in particular because he had only been a prospect for a few months and during that time the Hells Angels had agreed to a truce with the Bandidos.

“He is an individual who was born in 1965. He is today 38 years old. He was 30 years old when he joined the Rockers. He is not the youngest person being sentenced but he is among the
youngest,” the defense lawyer said. Serra's lawyer said that if his client received a sentence of more than ten years, he would likely have to serve it in Donnacona, a maximum-security penitentiary near Quebec City, which would cut him off from his family. Paul agreed with some of Souliere's arguments and sentenced Serra to 15 years, the same sentence members of the Rockers received. Meanwhile Paul agreed that full-patch members of the Nomads chapter should be punished more harshly. He sentenced Hells Angels like Robitaille, Charlebois, Houle and Mathieu to 20 years.

But the authorities weren't done with some of the bikers who pleaded guilty that day. For a few there was still the question of the assets seized after their arrest.

In Normand Robitaille's case, the province was especially interested in his plans to become a real estate mogul with his drug money. Evidence of his plans fell into police hands on June 27, 1998, when they recovered a suitcase belonging to Robitaille at a brasserie in Greenfield Park. Inside the suitcase, police found three documents titled Real Estate Action Plan. The documents contained details on the potential construction of buildings and the purchase of buildings through Cogesma, a company Robitaille was using to launder his money. Through the documents, the police learned Robitaille planned to buy $1.5 million worth of real estate with equity totaling between $200,000 and $300,000.

Before he was murdered by the Hells Angels, informant Claude De Serres told his police handlers that Robitaille was gathering real estate using other people as fronts for the purchases. De Serres said he himself was used to buy an apartment building in Longueuil and a commercial building on Sainte-Catherine Street East in Montreal. Robitaille was also suspected of using the mother of Patrick Pepin, a hangaround in the
Rockers, as a front to buy property worth nearly $200,000. Pepin had been a member of the Scorpions before Maurice (Mom) Boucher's son, Francis, personally vouched for him to become a Rocker. The police also had evidence Pepin worked as a runner for Robitaille. But unlike most of the other Hells Angels and Rockers who had assets seized in Project Rush, Robitaille wasn't about to give up his mini-empire without a fight. Most of the gangsters agreed to out-of-court settlements, but Robitaille challenged the government's claims in a court battle that dragged on for months.