Biker Trials, The (15 page)

Of the 42 Hells Angels or Rockers named in the warrants connected to Project Rush, 14 were already behind bars when it was carried out. About another half dozen could not be immediately located, but most were found eventually. The charges in the warrants included 13 of the more than 160 murders that had been committed during the biker war. All of the gang members were
charged with drug trafficking and with doing it for the benefit of an organized crime gang, which was relatively new legislation intended specifically for the Hells Angels in Quebec. There were also two charges that the Hells Angels had conspired in two failed attempts to kill many of their rivals at once with massive bombs.

The officers armed with search warrants had specific instructions to look for anything that suggested the occupant of the home belonged to the Hells Angels or the Rockers. In some cases, that would involve judgement calls on the part of the officers involved. For example, were photos of gang members grouped together or simply sporting their gang colors enough? In other homes, like that of Luc (Bordel) Bordeleau in Contrecoeur near Boucher's estate, many of the items to be seized were obvious proof of his membership.

Bordeleau was one of the 14 already behind bars when the operation was carried out. He was serving a sentence for a weapons offence. Inside his home on Marie Victorin Street, the police found proof that he was involved in collecting information on informants and on the leaders of the Alliance. That included copies of written statements to the police from informant Normand Tremblay, a man police believed was the possible intended target of the 1995 explosion that killed 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers. Bordeleau also had a copy of the contract of a police informant and a former associate of the Alliance named Denis Bouthillette, who had become an informant around the same time as Tremblay. Another document seized at Bordeleau's home concerned Harold Pelletier, the brother of Sylvain Pelletier, whose 1994 death was widely considered to be the starting point of the biker war.

The fact that the Hells Angels had the contracts was not that alarming — if any of the informants had testified in a trial, the
contracts would have been turned over to the lawyers of the accused. What was more disturbing was the small arsenal Bordeleau kept in his garage.

Maurice (Mom) Boucher (left) and Luc (Bordel) Bordeleau.

The police seized a handgun, three shotguns, three semiautomatic Cobray machine guns along with various types of ammunition. They also found a grenade launcher which left police wondering what the Hells Angels had planned for the near future. At another residence in Montreal, where Bordeleau lived with a woman, the police found more than $9,000 cash plus more evidence that the man nicknamed Bordel was seriously involved in hunting down rival gang members. They found a piece of paper with Bandidos leader Jean (Le Français) Duquaire's name, social insurance number and home address on it. They also found a remote-control device that a police expert later determined was a twin of one the police had recovered years earlier when the Rock Machine's clubhouse on Huron Street had been damaged by an explosion. Bordeleau was behind bars at the
time of the explosion, but the devices were obviously made by the same person.

Bordeleau had been made a prospect in the Nomads chapter in June 2000, around the same time that Louis (Melou) Roy, a founding member of the chapter went missing. The police noticed Bordeleau had made the jump from longtime Rocker to his new status rather quickly, considering he had spent a large chunk ofthe war serving his sentence at the Leclerc Institute in Laval.

Also named in the warrants was Éric (Pif) Fournier, a Hells Angels' underling who had served as Melou Roy's bodyguard. Fournier's introduction into the gang apparently began while he was serving a sentence for severely beating a man in his home near Quebec City with two accomplices in 1990. The man suffered several broken bones and the trio also caused $3,000 damage to his house. Fournier pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated assault and was sentenced to four years. While he was out on parole in 1993, he beat up another man and had to serve another three years.

By March 1996, Fournier was identified as part of the Hells Angels' vast underling network. He was by that time charged with carrying out two murders at the request of two Hells Angels. But the case against Fournier was dismissed because the Sûreté du Québec mistakenly destroyed the murder weapons Fournier was alleged to have used. The judge found that Fournier could not possibly have a fair trial unless such important evidence could be presented. Fournier eventually moved to Montreal and was welcomed into the fold of the Rockers in 1998. Eight years previously, a prison psychologist had done an evaluation of Fournier: “...experience shows us that an individual integrated in the delinquent world will comfortably place his aggression in the service of his delinquent schemes. He will use
force to solve his problems with others or to eliminate the obstacles before him that prevent him from getting what he wants.

“We also have to say that the subject is an individual who does not demonstrate any large sensibility towards others and is very centred on himself. His degree of empathy towards the victims of his offences is practically non-existent.”

Searching Richard (Dick) Mayrand's house on Lafrance Street in Longueuil provided the police with clear evidence of how close the Nomads chapter came to achieving its monopoly on Montreal's illicit drug trade. They found a map of Montreal that someone had divided up with a pen. Each section included a designation in handwriting, labeling parts of the city as “Nomad” and “Montreal” and “Trois Rivières,” proof that Boucher's chapter was willing to let other Hells Angels' chapters deal drugs in the city. The map also indicated that the only other group the Hells Angels would tolerate were the “Italians,” who appeared to have kept a small area in northern Montreal as their own.

Inside Mayrand's house the police also found a pair of night vision goggles, a piece of military equipment believed to be used in nighttime drug smuggling operations. Among the Hells Angels' paraphernalia, they found a belt buckle with the inscription “Mtl Filthy Few
AFFA”(AFFA
stands for Angels Forever, Forever Angels) and another that read “Dick, Filthy Few Montreal.” In a bedroom closet, they found a hockey bag neatly packed and full with more than $300,000 in $20 bills.

Mayrand's weight-training equipment would have been sufficient to run a small private gym. Mayrand's bodybuilding was a source of pride for the Hells Angels. The police had recorded some members on wiretaps talking proudly about Mayrand placing third in the Senior Men's Light-Heavyweight class of the Canadian National Bodybuilding championship held in Edmonton in 1999.

As in Bordeleau's case, Mayrand wasn't home when the search warrants were carried out. He was still serving his sentence from an offence, on February 15, 2001, in which he and other Nomads were caught looking over photos of rival Bandidos in a hotel suite, apparently planning who would be their next targets. Mayrand and Bordeleau had been arrested after leaving the hotel.

Unlike Bordeleau and Mayrand, Sebastien Beauchamp was at his home in Mascouche when the police came knocking armed with his search warrant. They didn't find anything resembling the firepower they had seen over at Bordeleau's house. Nor did they find any drugs. Beauchamp had only been a Rocker since October 16, 2000, and his time spent with the gang before then had been rough. While investigating the Rockers, by videotaping their meetings, the police learned that Beauchamp owed money to several members of the Hells Angels. At one point, his debt was estimated at $80,000. Some of the Rockers called for his suspension from the gang, arguing that he wasn't responsible enough to wear their patch.

Six years earlier the National Parole Board had a similarly low opinion of Beauchamp, but for different reasons. “You are an impulsive and immature individual who easily uses violence to solve conflicts imposed by others,” a parole commissioner wrote in summarizing a 1993 hearing. At the age of 19, Beauchamp was already serving a federal sentence for drug trafficking and assault. Even at that young age, he was already involved in smuggling. While out on bail in a drug case, Beauchamp beat up a man, emptied his pockets of his keys and credit cards and then proceeded to rob the victim's apartment, where he was caught by police and taken into custody.

While out on bail for his second case Beauchamp had been arrested for assaulting an American tourist inside a Burger King
restaurant. Beauchamp had been drunk at the time. He later told the parole board that he was an only child, and that when he was one year old, his mother had moved in with a man Beauchamp eventually considered his father. He had only seen his real father once, when he was 14, but by then he had learned that the man was a heavy drinker who beat his wife. He described his mother as having a “hippie philosophy” and letting him do whatever he wanted. By the age of 11, Beauchamp was already doing drugs. All the while his family kept moving. He once went to five or six high schools within one year and eventually decided to drop out because he found switching too tough.

By the time he was serving his federal sentence, a psychologist determined that he had a severe drug problem. Prison guards learned that he had become a regular supplier of
PCP
to other inmates and was consuming the drug himself. In 1995, Beauchamp was let out on statutory release but was soon hauled back to a penitentiary after a guard noticed that some of Beauchamp's former fellow inmates who were heavily involved in drugs were receiving repeated phone calls from him. A prison surveillance team eventually learned that he was sneaking drugs into the penitentiary. Beauchamp spent most of the 1990s either behind bars or on probation for assault and weapons offences.

In 1999, he was arrested with other members of the Rockers who were doing guard duty at a hospital in Saint-Jérôme. The armed gang members were assigned to protect Denis Houle's wife, Sandra Gloutney, who had been injured while backing out their driveway in a Corvette that he normally drove. Gloutney lost control of the sports car when someone fired shots at her from a wooded area near their home. The police suspected that the men standing guard at the hospital were
armed. Their suspicions were correct; besides Beauchamp, Boucher's son Francis and Stéphane Jarry were also caught carrying firearms. Normand Bélanger and Stéphane Faucher were also arrested but were not armed. Among the firearms seized was a .38-calibre gun that belonged to Beauchamp. He pleaded guilty to carrying the unlicensed weapon and was sentenced to one year in prison with two years probation.

About a month later, the police listened in on a call Beauchamp made from prison to Pierre Provencher, a Rockers' leader and a member since 1994. At the beginning of the conversation they joked about how Bruno Lefebvre, a fellow Rocker, had been paroled after serving only one-sixth of his sentence in a provincial detention centre.
“Ciboire”
Beauchamp said laughing at how easy it was to get parole in Quebec if an inmate was serving a provincial sentence of under two years. “They don't want us inside. Not at all, those guys.”

He also complained about being behind bars for what he assumed was going to be only two months for carrying
“un hostie
[fucking]
gun”
He seemed oblivious to the fact he was under three different probation orders prohibiting him from carrying a firearm when he was arrested. He griped about his time behind bars, and before they said goodbye, Provencher felt it necessary to check if he was still loyal to the Rockers and if he was in the gang to stay.

“Ah,
bien oui, c'est sur et certain
[it's sure and certain],” Beauchamp said.

“In our heads and in our hearts you are a real brother,” Provencher replied. Beauchamp called Provencher again the day before Christmas 1999. He was apparently feeling philosophical and told Provencher: “I look at the people who get up at seven in the morning and get stuck in traffic for ten dollars per hour and then go home again at night. They are the ones who are crazy. It is us who are a little bit more normal.”

What definitely wasn't normal were the binders full of photos the police found at the homes of several members of the Nomads chapter's network when the search warrants were carried out on
March 28, 2001. The binders contained pages of photos of members of the Alliance that came from Sûreté du Québec intelligence files. The Hells Angels had somehow obtained the photos and made color copies of the pages containing mug shots, surveillance photos and intelligence notes on each person's gang status. One of the many Rockers who had one of the binders was Sylvain Moreau who was arrested at his home in Sainte Therese.