Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (60 page)

Hinse attended an initial hearing on January 14 and prosecutor José Vélez Zapata asked for a 40-year sentence. Despite detailed descriptions by dozens of eyewitnesses, many of whom extended their Mexican vacations just to testify, and gunpowder burns on Hinse's hands, judge Edmundo Román Pinzón decided there was insufficient evidence to charge him and released him to immigration officials, who sent him back to Canada. The RCMP were convinced it was “a flagrant case of corruption,” with the equivalent of $270,000 being paid by the Hells Angels. Kane later told the RCMP that a Mexican police officer told Boucher that he'd have taken care of Baker for $5,000 and saved him all the trouble with the courts.

In fact, Boucher had also formed alliances with police at home. Through corrupt officers in suburban police forces, the Hells Angels had managed to obtain photographs and home addresses of a number of Rock Machine members and associates. Kane also recalled how Boucher once met with a man in a black Mustang and returned saying “that's my pig.”

Back home, the war raged on. The day Hinse was released, Rock Machine member Daniel “Dada” Senesac carefully put a home-made bomb into the trunk of his Corsica and surrounded it with towels and blankets to cushion the bumpy ride. On his way to a Sorel bar known to be a Hells Angels hangout, Senesac hit a fatal pothole. Although he had been smart enough to invest in body armor, his head and arms were never found and his body was identified by tattoos on his back.

With bombs going off regularly in the streets of Montreal, the public was anxious for government intervention. It was one thing for a biker to shoot another biker in a biker bar, but the war had become entirely different.

The use of bombs, especially poorly made ones that exploded haphazardly, put everyone in danger. Serge Ménard, Quebec's minister of public security, denied on January 19 that the bombs were part of a biker war. Through a spokesman, he said that they were “isolated incidents” and that he didn't think it was necessary to set up a task force, choosing instead to let the Sûreté du Quebec (SQ) and local police forces handle the problem.

Less than two weeks later, three “isolated incidents” involving bombs and bikers occurred on the same day. On the snowy morning of January 31, members of Montreal police anti-gang squad found 200 sticks of dynamite (the same kind used in Steinert's unsuccessful bombs two months earlier) in a car and 50 remote-controlled detonators in a nearby house. That night, Simon Bedard, a member of the Hells Angels Quebec City puppet club, the Mercenaires, hopped into his Chevy S-10 pickup and lost a leg when it exploded. Three days later, Claude “Le Pic” Rivard, a member of the Pelletier gang and a noted drug salesman for the Alliance, was stopped at a red light when another S-10 pulled up beside him. The man in the passenger seat, Serge Quesnel, rolled down his window and shot Rivard in the face. A uniformed officer on routine patrol happened to witness the murder and gave chase. After six blocks, the stolen S-10 wound up in a ditch and its two occupants took off on foot in different directions. Quesnel left the gun behind. Both men got away.

As the level of violence escalated on the streets of Montreal, more and more bikers found themselves behind bars, where they continued the war. One such soldier was Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné, a constantly stoned thug with a seventh-grade education, who had somehow managed to mastermind a drug-trafficking network in the East End that netted him about $250,000 a year. At least it did until he got a phone call in the summer of 1994 from Paul “Fonfon” Fontaine, a full-patch Hells Angel. Fontaine told Gagné to shut down his operation and Gagné complied without argument. He did, however, set up a meeting with Boucher through a common friend who owned a Hells Angels- associated cell phone store. Impressed by Gagné's ambition and the fact that he'd named his son Harley-David, Boucher told him that he could go back to selling drugs in the East End, but he would have to get them from Fontaine and give him a portion of the proceeds. That arrangement worked out well until Gagné sold 1.5 kg of cocaine to an undercover member of the SQ. Knowing better than to rat out the Hells Angels, Gagné took his punishment in hopes it would gain him prospect status when he got out.

Like many Montrealers convicted of drug offenses, he was sent to Bordeaux prison in the city's north end. By early 1995, the notorious prison had become the most intensely fought-over chunk of real estate in Quebec. With an interior drug trade that police estimated as worth more than $7 million a year and supplied in part by paper bags and even tennis balls full of narcotics thrown over the prison walls during recreation time, Bordeaux was deteriorating into an uncontrollable war zone. Inside, members of the Hells Angels and Rock Machine recruited other prisoners with drugs, cash or threats of violence. By February, all but 20 inmates had chosen up sides. When, by mutual consent, the two sides severely beat the 20 nonaligned prisoners, the guards finally stepped in. From that point forward, half the prison would be reserved for the Hells Angels and their associates and the other half would house the Rock Machine and their allies. The two groups would never meet without intense supervision and nonaligned inmates would be forced to fend for themselves against whichever group controlled their wing.

On his way into Bordeaux, Gagné told the guards that he had some friends in the Hells Angels. They pulled his arrest record and, finding no connection to either gang, tossed him into C Block, the heart of Rock Machine territory. On his first day in his new cell, he was surrounded by six inmates. They didn't know who he was, so they put him through the standard test. One of the men, Jean Duquaire, pulled out a photo of Mom Boucher and told Gagné to spit on it. When he refused, the other men pummeled him, breaking three of his ribs and knocking out two of his teeth. While recovering in the prison hospital, he met up with some Hells Angels associates who provided him with a metal rod (which he smuggled out in his pant leg) and a sharpened spoon that could be used as a knife. On his first day back in CBlock, he found Duquaire alone and bludgeoned him with the metal rod. After two whacks, Gagné noticed someone behind him. The witness, a nonaligned inmate about half Gagné's size, was then forced to stab Duquaire's unconscious body. That involuntary involvement would, Gagné hoped, prevent him from ratting. His job done, Gagné retreated to his cell and pretended to sleep. Less than an hour later, he was taken into protective custody without explanation and eventually transferred to a Hells Angels-dominated prison in Sorel.

When he arrived, he was surprised and delighted to see Boucher. Just a few days earlier, March 24, 1995, Boucher and his right-hand man André “Toots” Tousignant had been on their way to a Sherbrooke motorcycle show when they were stopped by police for failing to signal a lane change. Aware of who they'd stopped, the officers asked both men to get out of the car. A quick frisk revealed an unlicensed, unregistered 9-mm handgun tucked into Boucher's belt. The serial numbers had been filed off. Boucher pleaded guilty to possession of a restricted weapon and was sentenced to six months in prison. But things were very different in Sorel than they were in Bordeaux. The Hells Angels ran the facility and lived in a relaxed atmosphere rich in drugs and free from the threat of the Rock Machine, or even the guards. They were so bold in Sorel prison that when the warden refused to grant day passes to Boucher and two friends, her house was fire bombed the same night. Boucher had heard about what happened in Bordeaux and assured Gagné that his loyalty and courage would be rewarded.

Outside the prison walls, the war had been growing more dangerous. On February 12, Rock Machine associates stole 2,500 sticks of dynamite that were mysteriously left unguarded from a construction site in Joliette. A week later, police acting on an anonymous tip found something even more chilling. In an East End garage frequently used by Hells Angels and their associates, they discovered two vans full of explosives and detonators. One of them contained a bomb in which four sticks of dynamite were surrounded by hundreds of nails. This was the first time police had found evidence of a shrapnel bomb. While dynamite may cause absolute devastation in a contained area, a nail bomb sends a shower of sharp, white-hot metal over a much larger, less defined area. Anyone in the vicinity of the explosion is likely to be killed or severely wounded by the shrapnel. Its discovery led the police to the frightening conclusion that the bikers were now using public terror as a weapon in their war. “Many people would have been killed or maimed if this bomb had exploded in a public area,” said Detective Michel Gagné of Montreal's anti-gang squad. “It is no longer a war just between gangs.”

The next day, February 21, Montreal police transfered 15 more officers to its anti-gang squad. They had been on duty just a few hours when the next bomb went off. Bar L'Energie was a nightclub frequently visited by Hells Angels and their associates, and it had already survived one small explosion in 1993. This time, though, a bomb containing 5 kg of high explosive and surrounded by 9-mm bullets, which ignited simultaneously and shot off in wild directions, took the club's facade off. Since it was a Tuesday night, L'Energie was empty. The explosion didn't kill anyone, but it served its purpose. The Rock Machine had shown that they had large-scale, anti-personnel weapons too, and they were not afraid to use them. The Hells Angels responded by firing three bullets into the head of Claude Cossette, one of the oldest and most influential Alliance drug dealers, as he left his house in Chateauguay. A week later, two Rockers found a cardboard box on the doorstep of their clubhouse and opened it gently. Not surprisingly, there was a bomb inside. Frightened and confused, they called Boucher. He sent over Tousignant, who calmly ripped the detonator off the dynamite and threw it down an alley. It exploded with a loud pop. That night, police found another bomb in a bar owned by a man alleged to be a member of the Dark Circle.

While Boucher was on vacation in Ixtapa, the violence diminished and the Hells Angels went back to business. Although he was still just a prospect, the ever-ambitious Steinert started flexing his muscles. In open defiance of club rules, Steinert started a puppet club called the Group of Five, which approached bars in trendy, more wealthy parts of Montreal and Ottawa—places that had previously received little attention from either the Hells Angels or the Rock Machine—to supply cocaine and ecstasy. Steinert was already getting rich with his stripper/ escort agency Sensations, when he made a separate deal with a New York City mafia lieutenant to supply strippers to a resort in the Dominican Republic. After that, he openly bragged about how he intended to control every other agency in the province—by force if necessary. It was an astute plan; the sex industry may not be as lucrative as the drug industry, but the money is easier to make and harder to trace. And Montreal, which a recent study by the Quebec Conseil du Statut de la Femme declared the “Bangkok of the West,” is the place to make it. But it was a direct threat to Carroll, who had taken over Aventure, Lambert's company that supplied girls from the East Coast and Quebec for jobs in Ontario.

Even worse, the boastful Steinert told anyone who would listen about his plan to start a new and better gang in the Kingston/ Belleville region. Making an enemy of the alcoholic, often penniless Carroll was one thing, but stepping on Stadnick's toes was quite another. It was bad enough that Steinert was openly planning to start a gang in Ontario, an area the club had reserved for Stadnick alone, but to constantly point out how and why Stadnick's Demon Keepers had failed was particularly annoying. For the moment, Stadnick would let Steinert mouth off.

On March 14, Rock Machine associate Denis Marcoux was driving to his job at a Quebec City bar when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in his pickup. Unlike previous bombs, which had been placed in the vehicle's dashboard or console in an effort to kill the driver or passenger, this one was embedded in the driver's side door. When it exploded, Marcoux's left leg was severed, while the truck's running board detached and flew threw the window of an apartment across the street. It came to rest on the floor of a room beside an 18-month-old baby. Although he and his ten-year-old brother were covered in their own blood and shattered glass, neither was seriously hurt.

Innocent bystanders had been caught in the crossfire before, but this was the first time children had been harmed. Public fear turned to outrage. The following day, Quebec public security minister Serge Ménard met with the cabinet in an effort to form a plan. When he eventually emerged from the meeting and was mobbed by the press, Ménard finally admitted what the people of Quebec had known for a long time: “It's a war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine for the control of drug sales.”

Sensing an opportunity, the Hells Angels began an aggressive PR campaign. Some sources say the orders came down from Stadnick himself. The Hells Angels were allegedly behind a campaign that distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets throughout Quebec disclaiming any responsibility for the violence and placing the blame on the SQ. The most popular of them stirred up old hatreds by telling readers that the SQ had blown up bars during the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) crisis and they were not above doing it now to discredit the bikers. In response, the SQ issued an unsigned press release claiming to have negotiated a peace treaty between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine.