Biker Trials, The (4 page)

Dany Kane had been invited to the wedding as well. Just two years earlier, Kane had managed to walk out of a Nova Scotia court after a judge declared a mistrial in the murder case against him. While he was still awaiting that trial, the
RCMP
had to drop him as their informant, though he had worked for them from 1994 to 1997, collecting a total of $250,000. The Hells Angels had begun to suspect that he was a police snitch. But somehow, Kane managed to regain the trust of both the police and the bikers.

René Charlebois (standing to the right of the man wearing the Hells Angels' patch) admires his wedding gift from his fellow bikers, a Harley-Davidson.

On August 23,1999, Kane was approached by Benôit Roberge, a detective with the Montreal Urban Community police and a member of the Regional Integrated Squad. Roberge had worked intelligence since 1990, specifically focusing on biker gangs. Within a matter of months, Kane would sign on as an
agent source
, a French term that meant Kane was more than just a paid tipster — he was now under contract with the Sûreté du Québec, expected to detail everything he did with the Hells Angels and testify about it in court. He and Roberge would communicate a few times a week and meet in person once a week.

The Rockers, for their part, had also welcomed him back into their fold, giving Kane access to people like Boucher. It also gave the police an opportunity they had never had before. Up until then, deciphering where the Rockers might hold their secret monthly meetings had been impossible. The gang had developed clever tricks to avoid being monitored. One was to carry the business cards of restaurants or hotels on them. Each business card was marked with a number. The day before a meeting,
referred to as “church” or “Mass”
(messe
in French), someone in the gang would page each member with a coded message that gave the time and date of the meeting. The location would only appear as a number, so even if the police could intercept the page, they could not decipher the location. But with Kane working undercover for them, the police were given several hours advance notice of where and when meetings would be held. Armed with the information the anti-biker gang squad were able to videotape Rockers' meetings held in hotel conference rooms in and around Montreal.

To help protect his “cover,” the police agreed to supply Kane with money. That included giving him $1,000 so he could bring a gift to Charlebois' wedding. Days after the wedding, Kane's body was found in his home in St-Luc along with a confusing suicide note, full of questions concerning morality, his sexual identity and the conflict inherent in being both a biker and an informant.

Months prior to his death, Kane had been taken on by Normand Robitaille to work as his chauffeur. He would drive Robitaille all over Montreal and the surrounding area, taking him to meetings with other members of the Hells Angels and occasionally, members of Montreal's Mafia. He also took Robitaille to his squash games with other members of the Hells Angels. One day while he chauffeured Robitaille around, Kane was told of plans to apply the Hells Angels' corporate strategy to a different type of business. The plan was to start linking all of Quebec's pawn shops through a Web site where their products could be sold over the internet. Robitaille was going to be partners with Maurice (Mom) Boucher and Robert Savard, a notorious loan shark at the time. It sounded like a good idea as other online stores were attempting E-business around the same time. But the Hells Angels did not see themselves as the next Amazon.com. Instead, their plans, as Robitaille explained them to Kane, were to burn down the pawn shops of any owner who
did not want to get on board with them. A few weeks later, Robitaille told Kane the Hells Angels were serious about their plan and intended to send Kane and another man into Quebec's pawn shops to test the waters. If anyone disagreed, others would be sent in to intimidate the owners.

Robitaille had joined the Hells Angels organization as a Rocker in 1994. Four years later, at the age of 30, he became the youngest member of the Nomads chapter, joining members of the Hells Angels who were showing a lot of grey hair. He was about 20 years younger than members like Boucher and Stadnick and represented the future of the gang in Quebec. In the latter years of the biker war, Robitaille was often seen at Boucher's side. He was also a constant presence at any important meeting the Hells Angels held with other criminal organizations during 2000. The new generation of Hells Angels was, for the most part, clean-cut men who took good care of themselves and worked out constantly. Gone was the beer gut associated with the image of a debauched biker who rides his Harley-Davidson for hours on end. In fact, some of the younger Hells Angels looked pretty awkward on the massive motorcycles which they were occasionally required to ride to abide by the gang's international rules.

Normand Robitaille appeared to be a quick learner. In 1995, during his time as a Rocker, he had taken part in an ill-planned extortion attempt that landed him in a federal penitentiary for a couple of years. A few years later, he joined a team of Rockers, along with Charlebois, who controlled drug traffic in the Hells Angels' most profitable areas in Montreal. While Robitaille was under investigation in Project Rush, the police found documents in his suitcase that outlined a business plan to gather significant chunks of real estate. For this reason, the pawn shop idea likely made perfect sense to Robitaille. The Hells Angels had used the same strategy to take over significant areas of Quebec's drug turf. Why couldn't it be applied to another line of business, one
already filled with shady characters who were unlikely to call the police for help?

It was the way the Hells Angels did things. And by the end of 2000, it all seemed to be working well.

They probably never saw it coming.

The Hells Angels in Quebec had reached the peak of criminal arrogance by the freezing cold afternoon of December 29, 2000. As police watched, more than 300 men sporting leather jackets with gang patches were converging at a relaxed pace on an imposing, white, three-storey building on Prince Street in Sorel, a city less than a hour's drive from Montreal. The building had served for years as a hangout and secure bunker for the first chapter of the already notorious gang, chartered in Canada on December 5, 1977.

Inside the building, members of the Hells Angels from all over Quebec were enjoying one of the biggest parties they had ever thrown. The gang that had developed a remarkable ability to dodge the police while it conducted million-dollar drug deals was doing nothing to camouflage this gathering. Anyone looking at the building from the street could tell it was no ordinary clubhouse. A flag bearing the gang's menacing insignia of a bare skull with wings flapped in the frigid air. Surveillance cameras were visible on several parts of the building and on the land surrounding it. The one thing about the party that resembled any other that might have been going during that holiday week in Canada was that someone had taken advantage of the cold weather and stacked several cases of beer outdoors on a balcony to keep them cool.

But this was no ordinary party. It was the beginning of an
unprecedented initiation that months earlier could not have been foreseen, if only because its purpose broke entirely with the Hells Angels' longstanding traditions. The gang was using their fortified bunker in Sorel for a mass, overnight conversion of new members. Dozens of members of biker gangs from Ontario with names like Satan's Choice and ParaDice Riders, were ready to participate in a ceremony that would see them pledge allegiance to the most powerful outlaw motorcycle gang in the world.

For years, the Hells Angels had toyed with the idea of setting up a chapter in Ontario but had held back for various reasons, including an inability to find members they felt stacked up to the level of criminal organization and discipline the Hells Angels had achieved in Quebec. It was apparent to police that influential Hells Angels from Quebec had long been calling the shots on possible expansion into Ontario. Minutes from a Hells Angels' meeting seized in 1994 indicated the gang had already begun courting the ParaDice Riders. But minutes from another meeting held in 1997 instructed Hells Angels' members to maintain a calm approach toward eventually setting up a chapter in Ontario. The Montreal chapter was the gang's beachhead in Canada. As it grew in influence and notoriety, its members spearheaded expansion in parts of British Colombia, Nova Scotia and Manitoba.

The members of the Nomads chapter in particular appeared keen on expansion. It was put together in the mid-1990s, near the start of the biker war, by Maurice (Mom) Boucher, who by then, at the age of 41, had been a Hells Angel for seven years. Through informants, the police learned that Boucher had grown frustrated with the passive attitude many of his fellow members in the Montreal chapter were taking during his violent conflict with other drug dealers in the east end of Montreal. Dispatches from informant Dany Kane made it clear to police that Boucher only wanted gang members for his Nomads chapter who were willing to participate in the war. He later planned to use a gang of underlings
called the Rockers, which he had created years earlier, as a proving ground, like a sort of minor league “farm team,” for anyone else who wanted into the Nomads chapter.

In an extremely rare move, the Hells Angels allowed members of the long-established Ontario outlaw gangs to join them without having to go through the traditional initiation process. Normally, those eager to join would go through distinct and often lengthy stages before earning the coveted status of the full-patch member. This “prospect” system set up by the gang in the United States was a decades-old tradition that determined a potential member's loyalty and dependability. In some cases, it could take years to earn the right to wear a Death Head patch. But now, in a move showcasing their arrogance and criminal influence, the Hells Angels in Quebec obtained the blessing from other chapters around the world to allow more than 160 people to join the gang in one day. Before the sun set that day, a truck carrying two industrial-sized sewing machines pulled up to the Sorel bunker. Some of the gang's underlings hoisted them up a stairway into the bunker, away from prying eyes.

Outside, members of the Sûreté du Québec and the Ontario Provincial Police (
OPP
) watched, many cursing the cold and the fact they had had to cut their holidays short to monitor the party. Confirmation that the massive “patchover” was going to take place had come days earlier in a box searched at the Canadian border. It contained dozens of patches ordered from Austria, where they are made exclusively for the gang. The police had also listened in on wiretaps as longtime Hells Angels like Donald (Pup) Stockford and Richard (Dick) Mayrand prepared for the expansion throughout most of December. Now, police videotaped as gang members drove up to the bunker's gates in flashy sport-utility vehicles and minivans. The police took careful note
of every biker member who showed up for the party, but they were also keen to record who among the Hells Angels' underlings were working guard duty. The young men who stood at the gate that afternoon were likely unaware that what they were doing could be used against them later in court. Because of changes to Canada's anti-gang legislation, prosecutors could now argue that by doing guard duty the underlings were facilitating the loftier objectives of a criminal gang.

To those police investigators who had probed the Hells Angels in Quebec for years, the “patchover” of Ontario gangs was not a surprise, although the scale and the rapidity of the event was. Only weeks earlier, the gang's main rival in the bloody biker war, the Rock Machine, had been informed that it had been accepted into the fold of the Bandidos, the only outlaw motorcycle gang with an international membership comparable to that of the Hells Angels. Six years of war had taken a huge toll on the members of the Rock Machine, and on the Alliance, a collection of gangs and influential drug dealers who battled with the Hells Angels. But now they had the Bandidos as allies in Quebec and the new chapters they had created over the previous summer in Ontario. The Hells Angels in Quebec were forced to react, especially to the fact the Bandidos would be in Ontario, and react in a way that would reflect their
modus operandi
— unambiguous intimidation backed by huge numbers.

In a typical show of the gang's force, dozens of men who were part of the Hells Angels' now vast underling network worked security outside the Sorel bunker. Boxes of brand-new walkie-talkies were distributed to those working guard duty, or “the watch,” while one prospect lectured his colleagues on how to operate them. At a small Sorel hotel a few kilometres from the bunker, full-fledged (or full-patch) members of the Hells Angels from chapters all over Canada were being escorted to the party in minivans under heavy guard. Despite the party atmosphere,
the war with the Rock Machine and the Alliance was still on, a drug-turf war that had, to that point, seen 150 people killed over claims to lucrative areas in cities like Montreal and Quebec City, where street-level drug dealers peddled drugs like cocaine and hashish. The Quebec Hells Angels knew their rivals might be looking for targets.