Biker Trials, The (8 page)

In 2001, in an unsuccessful bid to get out on parole, he claimed to have left the organized crime world, saying, “At the level I am at I don't need authorization (to leave).” But while out on a day pass on September 25, 2002, Desjardins was spotted meeting with Francesco Cotroni, the son of Frank Cotroni, an influential underboss in the same Mafia organization that bore his family name. (Frank Cotroni died of brain cancer during the summer of 2004.) Both Desjardins and Cotroni's son claimed the meeting was of little significance, an unplanned crossing of paths, between an inmate out on a day pass and another out on parole. But it landed both men in hot water with the parole board.

Back in 1993, Desjardins had risen to such prominence in the underworld that some police began referring to a Rizzuto-Desjardins organization. Desjardins drove around in an expensive Mercedes-Benz, spent his leisure time on a 40-foot pleasure boat and had amassed an impressive collection of rare and antique cars. Besides accompanying Desjardins for the meeting in May 1993 with Imbeault — his fellow Hells Angel from Quebec City — Boucher was seen meeting with Rizzuto's right-hand man a second time, weeks later in Longueuil.

During the summer of 1993, Boucher was also overheard on wiretaps making a series of calls to Desjardins and the latter's business partner Julio Cesari. It was around this time that Imbeault had told an
RCMP
informant that Desjardins was financing the
Fortune Endeavor
smuggling operation. The police also noticed that Desjardins and Rizzuto were talking to each other on a regular basis. A particularly interesting day in Project
Jaggy was August 17, 1993. A surveillance team watched as Boucher walked out of Desjardins' company, Amusements Deluxe, and into a car. The Hells Angel was obviously concerned about being monitored by the police because he had shown up for the meeting driving a car registered in the name of the mother of Luc (Bordel) Bordeleau, who was a member of the Rockers at the time.

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

Just days prior to this meeting, the
Fortune Endeavor
had penetrated Canadian waters on its return from Jamaica but had run into trouble. It reported problems to the authorities at the Halifax port. Worried that they would go through an official inspection, those on board dumped 750 kilograms of cocaine packed into plastic pipes weighed down with lead and chains. While dumping the cocaine overboard appeared to be part of the Hells Angels' ultimate plan, they had apparently planned to do it in shallower waters. On August 17, the same day Boucher held a meeting with Desjardins, Imbeault set off from Shippagan, New Brunswick, in a pleasure boat. He planned to locate the cocaine using sonar. On board with him was Bordeleau, who besides being a founding member of the Rockers and a close friend of Boucher, was also a professionally trained scuba diver. After eight
days of diving attempts in the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence, the men were unable to find the cocaine and they quit. Whenever Bordeleau and the others would came back to shore without their sunken illicit treasure they were closely followed by the
RCMP.
Surveillance teams noticed that Bordeleau did little to hide the fact that he was always armed. To the police, it appeared Boucher had personally recruited Bordeleau for the cocaine recovery operation. The subject would come up later at Bordeleau's parole board hearings while he was serving five years for his failed scuba diving expeditions. Despite having apparently little to do with the larger smuggling plan, Bordeleau was charged, shortly after giving up the search for the cocaine, along with the other major players, like Imbeault and Desjardins. The cocaine was located about a year later by the Canadian Armed Forces.

Boucher wasn't even arrested. His telephone conversations with Desjardins provided little of actual interest to investigators. But by now, it was clear he had become a major player in Quebec's lucrative illicit drug scene. It had been a long and messy road.

Boucher was born on June 21, 1953, in Causapscal, a village in the Gaspé peninsula located where the Matapedia and Causapscal rivers meet. The village's name is a Mi'kmaq word meaning “pebbly point.”

When he was two years old, his family moved from the peace of the remote village to one of Montreal's rougher neighborhoods, where Boucher's father worked in construction as an iron worker. His mother stayed home to look after Boucher and his seven siblings, three brothers and four sisters. The details of his early life are contained in a presentencing report filed when Boucher was 21 and, by then, a petty criminal with a serious drug problem, by his own admission. The report was filed to a judge in February 1975 by criminologist Guy Pellerin who interviewed
Boucher, his mother, a friend and an investigator with the Montreal police.

At the time of Pellerin's assessment, Boucher was charged with breaking and entering. He had been nabbed in connection with three different break-ins during the fall of 1974. The first arrest came on November 5, just after midnight. Boucher smashed the front door window of a neighborhood grocery store in Hochelaga Maisonneuve, the low-income Montreal district where he had grown up. He grabbed 23 cartons of cigarettes and headed out. But his actions had set off an alarm heard by two cops in a nearby patrol car. When they pulled up to the front of the store, the officers saw Boucher standing in front of it. A green plastic bag filled with cigarette cartons lay at his feet.

Boucher was charged with breaking and entering and was released on a promise he'd stop breaking the law long enough to have his case heard. But a little over three weeks later, he broke into a woman's apartment on Hochelaga Street and stole her Fleetwood brand television, a luxury model worth nearly $400 at the time. Boucher had simply forced open the woman's door, grabbed the color television and made off with it. In October, the police found it and a bunch of electronic goods stolen from a stereo store in Boucher's apartment. Boucher claimed to have been high on drugs at the time of the break-ins and barely aware of what he was doing.

In his interview for Pellerin's report, Boucher told the crimi-nologist he had quit hard drugs altogether. He said that while he enjoyed getting high he was also fully aware what damage the drugs could do to him. His girlfriend Diane Leblanc was eight months pregnant and Boucher said he realized that a huge responsibility was about to be placed on his shoulders.

At that point in his young life, Boucher had tried
LSD
, cocaine and heroin. He claimed to have quit hard drugs two months before his arrest, but admitted to still drinking alcohol and doing
soft drugs like marijuana. He told Pellerin that he had created a habit and needed the softer drugs to compensate. He claimed he had stopped taking amphetamines because they were making him paranoid — he had become fearful of everything and often slept with a firearm.

Growing up, Boucher got along well with his mother but had developed a difficult relationship with his father, an abusive man with a drinking problem, according to Pellerin's report. Boucher's father was also a strict man who would not tolerate foolishness from his children. Boucher and his siblings distanced themselves from their father and Boucher, in particular, developed an attitude of indifference. If his father started yelling, he would simply leave the room, Pellerin was told. Boucher's mother told the criminologist that her husband's iron discipline with their children would often cause her to side with them.

Boucher dropped out of school while in grade 9 at the age of either 17 or 18. His performance in school was mediocre and he never developed an interest in his studies. He left home shortly thereafter. It was a time when he and his father were clashing constantly, but that didn't prevent Boucher from keeping in close contact with his mother. He even arranged to find an apartment near his family's home. Boucher took up a series of jobs, but for very short periods of time. He found them to be poor paying jobs that offered little in terms of a future. He also admitted that his drug use affected his focus.

Just before his arrest in 1974, Boucher had earned a competence card in construction. He told the criminologist he was eager to work in the same industry as his father because he had heard it paid well. But at the time, the construction industry in Montreal was dead. There were strikes and work stoppages. Boucher had found work on a construction site, but only for a week which discouraged him.

Pellerin, who went over Boucher's case, acknowledged that
the three months he spent in a detention center awaiting the outcome of his case had been difficult for him. He suffered from insomnia and was going through withdrawal. Boucher told the criminologist that the only drugs he could get in prison were from a doctor who was giving him something for the insomnia. Pellerin wrote that he believed the three months had been a lesson for Boucher, but he had doubts the lesson would stick. For example, he cautioned that Boucher's claims that he wanted to keep away from drugs were possibly the words of a man desperate to get out of jail.

“He has come to the moment of choice,” Pellerin wrote in summarizing his report, adding he was concerned that if Boucher continued to take drugs, his life of crime would also continue. “Only time and experience will let us know if his motivation is real and if he has the energy to change his life,” he wrote. On April 11,1975, Boucher's girlfriend gave birth to a son, Francis. But fatherhood would not be the turning point the criminologist had hoped it would be. Five months after becoming a father, Boucher was incarcerated again. The judge who had received Pellerin's report ignored his suggestion that the jail time Boucher had already served would work as a deterrent — he sentenced Boucher to two months and fifteen days. And when he got out, Boucher continued his life of crime. Years later, he also would welcome his son Francis into the Rockers, his underling gang of drug dealers, thugs and hit men. Time would reveal that at the “moment of choice” Pellerin referred to in his report, Boucher had opted for the life of a criminal.

On November 5, 1975, only months after Pellerin filed his report, Boucher graduated to the big time. At 5:40 p.m., he burst into a butcher's shop on Ontario Street East with an accomplice named Laurent David and they threatened the 71-year-old owner with a rifle and a butcher's knife. All they managed to steal was $138.39. There were three other witnesses to the robbery, and
Boucher and David were quickly arrested. They each received a 40-month prison sentence, giving Boucher his first federal prison term. Up to that point, his criminal record showed only minor things like theft and mischief. David also had only served relatively light sentences, as well, for things like theft and being in possession of counterfeit money. Boucher ended up serving most of the 40 months of his sentence behind bars.

Like Boucher, Laurent David would continue a life of crime. But unlike Boucher, the rest of David's career would be influenced by a drug and alcohol problem. In 1995, when Boucher was putting together the Nomads, assembling a group of Hells Angels who were millionaires willing to kill to obtain a monopoly on their market, David was serving a sentence for the same type of crime he and Boucher did 20 years earlier. At the age of 47, David was still committing hold-ups with a firearm, including one in 1993 where he used a 9-mm handgun. He had spent most of his time in the interim hanging out in bars and trying to hold down jobs as either a nurse or an insurance salesman, with little success. A psychologist who examined David in 1994 determined that he had an immature and narcissistic personality. Although he was intelligent, David's career as a criminal was heavily influenced by alcohol.

The next time Boucher would be caught committing a crime was in 1978, soon after his 40-month sentence. This time around, his accomplice would be a lot closer to him. Boucher and his slightly younger brother Christian Boucher were charged with two break-ins committed at the same home in December 1978. According to the police reports, during the first break-in, the brothers stole a television, tools and library books from the victim. Less than two weeks later, and a few days after Christmas, they went back to the same home on Pie-ix Blvd. accompanied by a third man. According to the police report, this time, the Boucher brothers were looking for the victim's .22-calibre rifle.
They punched the victim in the face and forced him to sign a document saying he had sold them the rifle. They then used the rifle to rob $222 from the victim's friend, who was visiting. As the Boucher brothers were leaving, Christian told them that if they called the police he would kill them. The police were called, but the charges against them were eventually dropped.

Like his brother Maurice, Christian had done time for a few minor offences before being arrested in the holdup. He had served sentences for stealing cars and breaking and entering. After the 1978 arrest, Christian followed a different path from his brother. He would continue to be picked up for relatively minor crimes while living at the address on Leclaire Street that he shared with Maurice Boucher during the early 1980s. In 1986, Christian pleaded guilty to conspiring with another of the Boucher brothers after they were arrested for a break-in. For his part in the conspiracy Patrick Boucher was sentenced to two years in prison. In 1990, Christian Boucher would serve four months for assaulting a woman. In 1992, while his brother Maurice was growing in influence within the Hells Angels and creating the Rockers, Christian was busy stealing cars, and did five months for stealing a Mazda 626.