Biker Trials, The (36 page)

“That they could kill me or not, what pertinence does it have
here?” said Panaccio, uttering a question no defense lawyer would ever dream of having to ask in court. Judge Beliveau agreed and cautioned prosecutor Briere that it seemed “very far” from the testimony given earlier that day — and he said it was disagreeable for everyone involved.

Gagné was only able to tell the jury that he didn't know what happened with the plans to kill Panaccio because he was arrested early on in the conspiracy. To wrap up Gagné's testimony, Briere asked him why he had decided to become an informant. His arrest, Gagné replied, had come at the end of a very busy day.

Considering that December 5, 1997, was the 20th anniversary of the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter, the one Boucher began his career as a biker in, it is ironic to look back and see that Gagné's arrest on that day would begin Mom's downfall.

The Hells Angels had a huge party planned in Sorel where dozens of members were expected to attend. Gagné began the morning preparing things for the party at the Rockers' hangout on Gilford Street in Montreal. He had fallen asleep and was awoken by a phone call from Boucher at around 6 a.m. Boucher told him, “Yeah, come meet me at our place in Sorel.”

Gagné told Boucher he had already been ordered by someone else to go to the airport to pick up Hells Angels from outside Quebec as they arrived for the party by plane. Boucher responded by ordering Gagné to find a replacement for his airport duties and then come to his house on the South Shore with Tousignant. After the conversation, Gagné and Tousignant headed to Boucher's home in Contrécoeur. At Boucher's home, Gagné and Tousignant were told they would be handling security at the Sorel bunker. They were supposed to ride in a helicopter looking out for any signs that the Rock Machine intended to attack the building packed with Hells Angels. There was a snowstorm that
day and the helicopter was grounded, so Gagné's assignment was canceled again. While they were in Sorel, Gagné was riding with Boucher in a Dodge Ram. The police presence was heavy around the bunker and many vehicles carrying Hells Angels were being pulled over so the police could identify them.

Gagné would testify in Boucher's first trial that Boucher had made reference to the authorities being on to Gagné for the prison guard murders. But Boucher added that it wasn't serious because he had something “dirty” prepared for the cops. He also advised Gagné to be careful, saying, “Pay attention if those guys ... they are following you because they could try to kill you, you know.”

What Boucher apparently did not know is that the police already had a plan in the works. After leaving the party in Sorel, Gagné headed to his mother-in-law's to pick up his kid. He was with his wife when the police arrested them both at around 10 p.m. that day.

“I was arrested on December 5. They accused me of attempted murder. But before that, when I was arrested, they said, 'Don't move'; they put my hands behind my back and said I was arrested for the attempted murder of Christian Bellemare. They brought me to a police station in Joliette. At the police station in Joliette, when they were transferring me to Parthenais, the
SQ
[headquarters] in Montreal, one of the two guys in the vehicle said, 'There are two other things coming and you know what we're talking about.'”

“And that guy was?” Briere asked.

“I imagine he was an investigator because he was a police officer. He was in plain clothes. So I knew he was talking about the murder of the two prison guards. I said nothing. I got into the car. We got to Parthenais and there was an investigator who showed up. He said 'We know each other, you and I. We already did business together.' I said I never did business with the police. I didn't know it then, but it was the double agent I had sold powder
to in 1994. It was Robert Pigeon [a Sûreté Du Québec investigator]. He accused me of attempted murder on Christian Bellemare. He asked me questions and I said I had nothing to say, things like that. Sometimes he would change the subject and I would say silly things as answers. It lasted a while until at one point he said that Steve Boies had become an informant. He went out and then came back in and told me I was accused of the murder of the two prison guards. So I asked to speak to my lawyers. I had already spoken to them, but now I wanted to tell them I was accused of murder.”

“You're talking about the murder of who now?”

“The murders of the two prison guards. I tried to reach the lawyers. I called and told the secretary to have Benoît Cliche call me. He didn't call me because he had come in late. After that I tried to call Gilbert Frigon. Those were the lawyers working for the Hells Angels, for us. He didn't call me. He didn't call me. I knew that Steve Boies had become an informant and there were other things that had happened before.”

Gagné said that at that point in his interrogation he remembered several things that made him feel cornered. His wife was being detained in the same building. This was yet another bargaining chip the police had. She had been arrested with Gagné, and one of the officers who had put them in cuffs had said that she was an accomplice in the attempt to murder Bellemare. Gagné said he worried about her security and that of his son. Gagné said that, as far as he was concerned, his wife was not an accomplice — but then he recalled that she had rented him a motel room while he was on the run after he tried to kill Bellemare.

Gagné went on to explain that Fontaine was supposed to do the murder of Lavigne with Tousignant, but Fontaine had refused, apparently bringing him down several notches in Boucher's opinion. Fontaine was frustrated afterward and he let Gagné know it, saying he hadn't got his patch with the Hells
Angels because he hadn't participated in the Lavigne murder.

“After my arrest, when the investigator told me that Steve Boies was an informant, I asked to see the cassette. In effect, Steve Boies was talking about me,” Gagné said.

“When I did [Diane] Lavigne, it was Paul Fontaine who was supposed to do it. After that, I was in a motorcycle accident. But just before the bike accident, we went to Saint-Marguerite, me and Paul Fontaine because it was the anniversary of the Trois Rivières chapter, on July 1.” Gagné said he and Fontaine were doing guard duty for members of the Hells Angels. They had stopped in Saint-Sauveur to fuel up their motorcycles when Fontaine told Gagné he wanted to go for a walk.

From top left to right: Michel Rose, Donald (Pup) Stockford, Gilles (Trooper) Mathieu, Richard (Dick) Mayrand, Denis Houle, David (Wolf) Carroll. From bottom left to right: Walter (Nurget) Stadnick René Charlebois, Normand Robitaille, Maurice (Mom) Boucher

“Paul Fontaine took off his pager and I took off my pager and we went for a walk. He told me he had met Mom Boucher earlier that day and that he was not going to get this [Gagné said, motioning to the lower part of his back]. He was talking about his bottom [patch] as prospect because he didn't [kill Lavigne].” Gagné said that when he got out of the hospital he discussed the situation with André Tousignant. A meeting was called. In attendance were Maurice (Mom) Boucher, Denis Houle, Gilles (Trooper) Mathieu, Normand (Biff) Hamel, Normand Robitaille
and Paul Fontaine. At the meeting, Fontaine admitted to his comments to Gagné. Since he had exposed Fontaine in this way, Gagné figured, Fontaine already had a grudge against him and would likely give him little financial support in fighting two first-degree murder charges.

Gagné said he also started to think that if he didn't turn informant, Fontaine was going to kill him. He said that Boucher had at one point specifically asked who else knew of the murder that Gagné and Fontaine had committed together. “So it was there, when the police were asking me all these questions and I wasn't answering I thought of those events in my head. It was there that I changed sides, that I became an informant.”

Gagné would be cross-examined by some of the defense lawyers in the Beliveau trial. They attacked his credibility but appeared to have little success. In fact, some of the cross-examination only opened new doors for Gagné to provide more incriminating information. Defense lawyer Guy Quirion, who represented Rocker Éric (Pif) Fournier, started the cross-examination by bringing up the history of Gagné's testimony in Boucher's two murder trials as well as his testimony in the trial overseen by Justice Jean-Guy Boilard which was scrapped.

“Does it happen that you make up some details while recalling events?” Quirion asked.

“No.”

Quirion brought up a previous statement Gagné had given concerning a truck that was going to be used in one of the aborted attempts to bomb the Rock Machine hangout in Verdun. Gagné had told the police that he had dumped the truck at the Place Versailles shopping center but that Tousignant had forgotten to remove the large quantity of dynamite inside it. Tousignant asked Gagné to go back and get the vehicle but Gagné had refused.

“Well, yeah I refused. It was obvious. I had parked it at Place Versailles and I explained it to Toots. I said, 'Look, I dumped the truck at Place Versailles shopping center around 10 or 11 in the parking lot. The truck was left there and there is dynamite inside. So I'm sure someone has called the police to see why the truck was still parked there.' That is what happens in shopping centers. Leave your car there, and see what happens. You're going to get a call. And there was dynamite. If the police saw that it was a stolen truck they might leave it there and then spot me when I get into it, with that dynamite, and they would arrest me,” Gagné said.

Quirion brought this up to make the point that underlings could refuse orders from the higher-ups in the gang. He suggested that Gagné conveniently forgot to mention this during a trial where it would challenge the theory of how the gang works. But the question did not faze Gagné in the least. In fact, he appeared to turn it to his favor. He countered that it was only logical to turn down such a ridiculous assignment.

“I'd be better off calling the police and saying, 'Hey I left a truck there. Come arrest me,'” Gagné said, which caused many people in the courtroom to laugh.

But still, Quirion appeared to score small points. He got Gagné to admit he had trouble recalling little details, just like anyone else might. He also got Gagné to admit that when Boucher was plotting to level the Rock Machine hangout he gave strict instructions that no civilians should be hurt, something Gagné had left out of his earlier testimony.

But Quirion's questions also opened a few doors that had not been pursued by the Crown. In responding to one question, Gagné revealed that during the time the Hells Angels were trying to kill prison guards, he was at the Imprevu Bar with René Charlebois and Normand Robitaille. He said someone was asked to turn up the volume on a television to hear a news story about a man who had been shot just as he left a prison in Laval.
Robitaille and Charlebois appeared happy because it appeared that a prison guard had been killed, Gagné said. “But when it turned out that the guy was still alive and was not a prison guard, they were no longer in a good mood.” This was in reference to an incident on June 28, 1997. The group leader of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was shot as he came out of the Montée St-François Institution in Laval. The police would later learn that the man drove a car very similar to one driven by a prison guard at the federal penitentiary. Charlebois and Robitaille were never charged with the attempted murder.

Richard Vallée, a founding member of the Nomads chapter.

Quirion asked Gagné about the moment he decided to become an informant. Gagné admitted that he didn't tell the police everything right away. He said that during this first 45 minutes of spilling his guts, he told the police about Lavigne, Rondeau, Christian Bellemare and the escape of Richard Vallée, a member of the Nomads chapter. Vallée had been sprung from a Montreal hospital room on June 5, 1997, while he was under tight guard, awaiting a possible extradition to the U.S. He had been charged in a northern New York court with murdering a man named Lee Carter. On July 29, 1993, Carter was killed after a bomb placed under the driver's seat of his car went off as he started the engine. Carter's death and the possible extradition meant the Sûreté du Québec had to drop drug trafficking charges against Vallée.