Biker Trials, The (40 page)

He said that if they had a surplus they would sometimes use the money to buy dinner. Often it was used to cover hotels when they went on a ride, as the Hells Angels are required to do as a motorcycle club. Boutin also said it was used to buy weapons, a touchy issue for the defense lawyers because that aspect of the fund solidly supported the prosecution's gangsterism case. References to the ten percent fund being used to purchase weapons were rare and the defense would contend that informants had been coached to bring the subject up.

Boutin said Mass was not optional. You had to show up and sometimes a member of the Nomads chapter would sit in. Boutin said he knew the Hells Angels in the Nomads held Mass, too, but he never was allowed to attend one. When Robitaille went to one, Boutin was not allowed to call him for two or three hours. He also was never told what happened during Nomads' Masses. But he knew from some of the other Rockers that stuff did leak out of the meetings, like news about who had become a member.

Boutin eventually decided to rejoin the Rockers and was made a full-patch member on October 12,1999. After that, Boutin said, he had no free time. He was ordered to do menial tasks like buy tickets to a boxing match or go to Trois Rivières to pick up something that needed to be brought back to Montreal. He found the situation occasionally ridiculous. He once had to cancel a $10,000 drug transaction so he could attend a Rockers' Mass where they talked about nothing.

One thing that was made clear to him, Boutin said, was that the Hells Angels in the Nomads chapter were his bosses and his job in the gang was to expand their drug dealing territory.

“If there were dealers who were not with us, we would go to
see them. We would ask them if they wanted to be supplied by us. If they were on our territory, they would have to get off. We always tried to get an amicable agreement from our side. We tried to cover as much territory as possible.”

He said that if he considered a rival drug dealer to be smalltime, the Rockers would simply send in someone to beat him up. If Boutin felt the dealer was backed by the Mafia or the Rock Machine, they would call in Paul Fontaine. After Fontaine disappeared, Robitaille made the decisions about how to handle the muscle end of the business partnership. Sometimes Stéphane Faucher would be sent in to settle things. Boutin said he had to ask Robitaille for permission if he wanted to buy drugs from someone other than the Nomads. But the benefit to him as a dealer was that he could tell Fontaine or Robitaille whenever there was a Rock Machine drug dealer on his turf. He said the problem was always taken care of.

Giauque asked if the Rockers had a specific territory.

“I could say that Hochelaga Maisonneuve and the Gay Village had been conquered,” he said. “When I say conquered I mean all of the streets, from A to Z, every little dealer was selling for a Rocker in Montreal. That's what I mean by conquered. For us, the Rockers of Montreal, it is on our backs. On our patches there was a Montreal. So, we worked on the island of Montreal.”

Boutin said he worked Saint-Laurent Blvd. as well and rattled off a list of Rockers who participated in selling on the street for the Hells Angels, including Pierre Provencher, Gregory Wooley, Paul Brisebois and Bruno Lefebvre. He said he knew of several Rockers who were involved in the gang's expansion in Montreal's southwest, including Provencher, Alain Dubois, Stéphane Jarry, Pierre Laurin and Gaetan Matte.

Maurice (Mom) Boucher's old chapter, the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter, were dealing drugs in Montreal's Plateau district as well as Rockers like Jean-Guy Bourgoin, Boutin said. Rosemont
was also being handled by the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter and Jean-Guy Bourgoin controlled part of it. In Montreal North, Boutin said, there were only a few drug dealers working for them, and as far as he knew, the West Island, traditionally an anglophone area of the Montreal island, was not monopolized by the Hells Angels. Boutin said the Ruff Ryders, a gang that emerged out of a low-income neighborhood in the West Island, had just started selling drugs for the Rockers through Gregory Wooley in 1999.

Giauque asked what membership in the Rockers had meant to Boutin's way of life. He said it made him feel obligated to the gang. Meanwhile, the territory he had worked so hard to establish in Hochelaga Maisonneuve took a hard financial hit while he had to focus his attentions elsewhere. He said several Rockers took it over. Charlebois was one. Robert Johnson, Dany St-Pierre and Pierre Toupin were also called in to help.

Boutin then began to think back to how his nickname in the gang had changed. He had been called Pacha, a name he didn't seem to mind. But he had a serious weight problem and the Rockers took to referring to him as “Le Gros.” While awaiting what he assumed was going to be his first-degree murder trial in the De Serres case, Boutin dropped a lot of the weight. Months after his arrest, he appeared at a bail hearing in Montreal and could actually be described as thin. It was obvious the anxiety of the pending murder trial had gotten to him. It was the mention of his time behind bars that brought Giauque back to questioning Boutin about the De Serres murder.

Boutin said that months before double agent De Serres was killed René Charlebois had told him that he would soon be asked to bring the man to a specific location. Boutin then elaborated on how the Hells Angels had discovered De Serres was working for the police.

Hells Angels from across Canada had gathered in Sherbrooke on Saturday, December 4,1999, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the chapter there. More than 120 bikers from places like Vancouver and Winnipeg were packed into a reception hall located on a hillside in Sherbrooke.

While staying in Sherbrooke, some of the Hells Angels from Montreal had noticed that Sgt. Guy Ouellette, from the Sûreté du Québec, was staying at the same hotel. Seeing him there was not unusual, Boutin said. Ouellette would often end up taking the same flights and staying at the same hotels as the Hells Angels. He was often assigned to monitor their parties and funerals and did so openly and with a level of professionalism that many of the Hells Angels respected.

Boutin said gang members noticed that Ouellette and an Ontario Provincial Police officer named Rick Perrault were carrying briefcases. Some among the gang members staying at the hotel said they'd always wondered what information Ouellette had on them. When the two police officers left their rooms to have breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, two Scorpions were ordered to break in and steal a briefcase. “The Nomads were happy about [the laptop being stolen]. So were the Rockers. Everybody was happy.”

Well, not everybody.

Ouellette testified in the Beliveau trial on December 15, 2003, and he made it clear the police weren't happy. He recalled that after working all night identifying the gang members who had attended the party he headed back to the hotel and noticed that members of the Rockers and the Nomads chapter were staying there. He spotted Boutin first, along with Patrick Pepin, who was a hangaround at the time and was not wearing his colors. Ouellette said he put his bags in his hotel room and then he and Officer Perrault left to park their cars at the Sûreté du Québec's Sherbrooke headquarters, just a short distance across the street
from the hotel. “After parking the cars, we returned to the hotel and when we returned to the hotel there were more bikers there than when we made our first visit,” Ouellette said, adding that he had then noticed René Charlebois, who was a prospect in the Nomads at that point, near the hotel's reception desk.

The hotel seemed to be crawling with gangsters. In the lobby was Stéphane Faucher wearing his colors. Boutin was there as well and so was Paul Brisebois, Daniel Jarry, Pierre Laurin and Normand Bélanger. Ouellette said he and Perrault went to their rooms. But they decided to check out the bar to see if they could spot more bikers. By then it had closed. The two cops called it a night.

The next morning, Ouellette said, he was standing in front of the door to Perrault's room waiting for his Ontario colleague to join him for breakfast. As he knocked on Perrault's door, Ouellette noticed Pierre Laurin, a Rocker, coming out of the elevator. He said Laurin headed straight for his own room, 209, but took a good look at rooms 202 and 204, where the two cops were staying.

Ouellette got into the elevator with Perrault and inside were Normand Bélanger and Maurice (Mom) Boucher. Ouellette said he made small talk with Boucher, asking him how he had enjoyed a production of the popular musical
Notre Dame de Paris
. Ouellette said he and Perrault went to the hotel restaurant where they spotted Gilles (Trooper) Mathieu, a longtime Hells Angel and a founding member of the Nomads chapter. He was seated at a table alone. Ouellette said he knew Mathieu had gone to South Africa a week earlier for an international Hells Angels' event, so he discussed that with him.

“We ate breakfast. We were there for a total of 20 minutes in the dining room. The service was very fast. What was unusual was that there were a lot of individuals showing up while we ate. The first was Pierre Provencher who showed up for a glass of water to take his pills. The second to enter the room was André Chouinard. At
the time, Mr. Chouinard was a member of the Nomads chapter and had his colors on. He greeted us, said,
'Salut, salut, bonjour, bonjour'
and then he went and whispered into the ear of Mr. Mathieu and left again,” Ouellette told the jury.

With his incredible ability to remember detail, Ouellette described the breakfast as if it were going on right before his eyes. He also tried to make it clear that it became evident to him afterwards that the gang members were checking to make sure Ouellette and Perrault were still in the restaurant while someone was stealing the computer. Ouellette said Laurin showed up as well and started reading a newspaper. “And then I was a little surprised because Mr. Laurin [a unilingual francophone] took the comics page from
The Gazette
. There was the
Journal de Montréal, La Presse
and all sorts of other newspapers but he took the comics page in English of
The Gazette
. I did not find that normal,” he said suggesting Laurin wasn't reading the newspaper at all but making sure the cops didn't head back to their rooms before the job could be done. Sylvain Demers, a member of the Scorpions, walked in and asked for a pitcher of water and left. Mathieu got up from his table and made small talk with Ouellette and Perrault again, joking that the cops would make good overtime that weekend.

When Ouellette and Perrault left they noticed Boucher and Faucher in the lobby. Ouellette said what he found curious was that Boucher changed his position to watch the cops walk by. Ouellette said Perrault had forgotten the key to his room and went down to the reception to get a copy. Minutes later, Perrault came knocking on Ouellete's door. He seemed disturbed. He told Ouellette that several personal items had been stolen from his room, including his personal computer and diskettes. Ouellette said he and Perrault asked a cleaning lady if she had seen anything. He said the cleaning lady was very nervous and said she did not know anything.

Ouellette went back down to the lobby and spotted Maurice Boucher who was now conversing with Gilles Mathieu. “I mentioned to Mr. Boucher that one of his guys, from 209,had entered Mr. Perrault's room and had taken something from Mr. Perrault and that he should bring it back. Mr. Boucher turned towards me and said it was not one of his guys, and he looked me in the eyes and said, 'I'm not the police.'” Ouellette said he and Perrault headed to the Sûreté du Québec station and called their bosses to report what had been stolen and the circumstances behind it. The computer was long gone and the Sûreté had to sort out what might come of it.

In his testimony, Boutin said that even though the two Scorpions who stole the laptop worked for him they had done it at the request of André Chouinard. (One of the Scorpions suspected of taking part in stealing the laptop was shot to death in Montreal on November 26, 2004. He was still dealing drugs for an organized street gang that had originally been created through the Nomads chapter.) Boutin was curious to find out what was on the laptop computer but the Scorpions had orders from higher up in the network, namely a member of the Nomads chapter, to turn it over to the Hells Angels. Boutin said that several days later Charlebois paged him and asked that they meet at a Dunkin' Donuts. The plot to kill De Serres was about to unfold.

When the pair met at the doughnut shop, Charlebois suggested that they go for a walk, without their pagers or cell phones. They headed for a métro station where Charlebois whispered into Boutin's ear what his assignment would be.

Days after the theft of the laptop, the Hells Angels managed to open the documents contained on it. The police believe that Richard Gemme, the computer whiz who helped the Hells Angels with their accounting software, helped the gang sort through Perrault's computer and software. When Gemme was arrested, they found police documents on his computer. They found
Perrault's laptop at one of the Beaubien Street apartments used for the Nomads' bank system. De Serres' full name was not mentioned in the documents. He was identified by his first name and as a numbered source. But the documents contained summaries of the information he was feeding to the police. The documents also contained information that identified him as someone who handled marijuana for Boutin, which made it very easy to identify De Serres through a process of elimination. Boutin said that when Charlebois asked him about this, he realized right away who the snitch in his network was.

While the Hells Angels set up the hit on De Serres, Boutin was instructed on how to lure him up north. Boutin told De Serres that he wanted to introduce him to someone who was growing pot and asked him to check out the quality. Boutin testified that he was only told part of the plan, but that Mario Barriault, a Hells Angels' underling who had already done time for things like loan-sharking, assault and drug trafficking, was brought in to help out. Earlier on, Boutin had asked Charlebois about what might happen if things got heavy. He said he told Charlebois he considered himself a businessman and was unprepared to deal with what might happen. Charlebois told him it was fine if he didn't want to get his hands dirty, he could use Guillaume Serra if necessary.