Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (67 page)

Things began looking up for the rest of the Hells Angels in Quebec. While they were being transported to trial on April 4, Hells Angels Louis “Mèlou” Roy and Sylvain “Baptiste” Thiffault were surprised to see Rock Machine associate Robert Hardy shoved into the same armored truck. When the doors opened again at the courthouse, Hardy was carted away in an ambulance, fighting for his life. With only Quesnel's easily discredited testimony against them, both bikers were sure they would be acquitted; they were, in fact, released on bail. Shortly after they returned to Trois-Rivières, six members of area puppet gangs disappeared. Without any explanation to wives or girlfriends, the homes of each of the men were visited by other bikers who cleaned them out of anything that could be traced back to their clubs.

The Hells Angels' lucky streak continued in the spring when Carcajou, weakened but not out of the picture, came down hard on the Alliance. On May 20, they arrested Giovanni Cazzetta (who had rejoined the gang after his release from prison) and Richard Matticks, second in command of the East End Gang, on drug charges. Later that day, they caught Serge “Merlin” Cyr and charged him with attempted murder; his intended victim had been Boucher. The next day, 23 people were arrested on a variety of charges after a raid on 24 locations associated with the Rock Machine. Carcajou also confiscated $4 million in assets, including 350 sticks of dynamite that had been stolen from a construction site in Rimouski. Two days later, a pair of Rock Machine associates carrying handguns and cocaine were arrested just off the 401 in Tilbury, Ontario, less than 30 miles from the U.S. border.

The gang was struck by another set of arrests after Carcajou officers discovered how Rock Machine members and associates were supplying their dealers in Donnacona prison. A priest who ministered to the prisoners was caught by a member of the Rock Machine while having sex with an inmate. The biker threatened to tell the authorities unless the priest, who was never searched by the guards, agreed to act as a drug mule. Reluctantly, he agreed. When they were finally caught, the priest and his supplier, a former policeman whose stepson (another Rock Machine associate) was the inside contact for the scheme, went to different prisons.

Things were going so badly for the Rock Machine that Fred Faucher, who had been vaulted to third in command of the club after arrests and murders had thinned out the top ranks, secretly wrote a letter to the Bandidos in Sweden. The Bandidos were a Texas-based gang with a patch that featured a pudgy, stereotypical Mexican bandit in an oversized sombrero, armed with a pistol and what appears to be a pirate sword. They were rapidly growing in power and numbers throughout the world. The Bandidos in Sweden were fighting a war with the Hells Angels and managing to keep them at bay. Although the Scandinavian war didn't have nearly as much bloodshed as the one in Quebec, both sides frequently used automatic weapons and military-issue grenades and rocket launchers. Looking for friends, advice and weapons, Faucher asked the Swedish Bandidos if they would be interested in a merger.

Things were tough all over. After Operation Dismantle, Satan's Choice struggled to rebuild. Most of the members had gotten out of jail, but the club was in financial disarray after the cops took and then auctioned off most of their possessions. Hamilton was no different. Back in the role of president, Johnny K-9 leaned heavily on his members to make more money. Besides pushing them to sell more pot, cocaine, steroids and counterfeit cash, he also expected members to take more jobs as enforcers and debt collectors for the mafia.

When he announced that the club was demanding a bigger share of its members' profits, Jimmy Rich complained. On the morning of July 27, 1997, Rich answered a knock on the front door of his home. It was K-9. Without a word, he beat the living shit out of Rich. Two days later, K-9 visited Rich at Hamilton General Hospital. After admiring the job he'd done, K-9 produced the ownership for Rich's Harley (he'd grabbed it when he rummaged through Rich's house after the beating and before the ambulance arrived) and demanded Rich sign it over. Since K-9 had already beaten him severely in front of his house in broad daylight, Rich realized he'd have little problem killing him in a hospital room. He signed over the bike and, when he got out, went back to work for K-9, who rode his new bike every day.

At Kane's next meeting with the RCMP, they asked him if he knew Simard. Kane assured him he did and described him as “unpredictable” and violent. He also described him as about 150 pounds, although (stomach-stapling and all), Simard was actually closer to double that figure. The rest of the sketch was accurate, though; after the MacFarlane killing, Simard considered himself something of a badass. Just days after he returned to Quebec City, he murdered a man who mentioned a crime Simard had committed back in Montréal.

After a Jamaican holiday with Kane and his two sons, Simard returned to Montreal. He started hanging around with some of Kane's friends who called themselves the Commandos. They were a bunch of biker wannabes who did dirty work for the Rockers. When a job came up, Simard was told it was his turn. As chance would have it, a team made up of small-time street-level dealers who worked for the Rockers were slated to play a similar team of Rock Machine associates in an East Montreal ball hockey league. Convinced the visitors needed to realize they were on Rockers' turf, Commandos boss Pierre Provencher told Simard to take care of Jean-Marc Caissy, the team's best player and a rising star who many thought would eventually become a full-patch member of the Rock Machine.

To make sure Simard knew what he meant, Provencher told him to “make it ugly.” Simard did his job. He hung around the parking lot until the game finished and walked up to a man who fit Caissy's description. After a jovial “hey, Caissy” determined his identity and got him to turn around, Simard shot Caissy in the face five times. After the murder, he headed to Pro-Gym, a Rockers and Hells Angels hangout, to lift weights and brag about the killing. Sloppily, he left the .357 Magnum in his locker. Further emboldened, Simard took another job the following night. A small-time dealer, like the ones Simard defended at the hockey arena, had stiffed a Rocker on a debt; he had been spotted at a video game arcade in the East End. Simard and seven other toughs affiliated with the Rockers waited for the boy to emerge. When he did, Simard smacked him on the back of his head with a baseball bat and kept swinging until his victim was twitching involuntarily on the sidewalk.

Although Simard was proving his worth as a weapon, he was angering many of his peers by constantly talking about his exploits, often in public places. In the middle of a war, with Carcajou agents and informants everywhere, that kind of thing was dangerous. The other Commandos steered clear of him. Kane, who was no longer interested in being his lover, decided it was time to turn him in. He told the RCMP it was Simard who had killed Caissy.

The official RCMP story was that a janitor at the Pro-Gym cut the lock off Simard's locker after the gym closed, discovered the gun and called the police. After matching the other items in the locker to video from the security camera in the gym's entrance, police matched Simard to the weapon. But many Hells Angels and Rockers left their stuff in their lockers overnight and the cleaning staff knew better than to disturb them. When the police tracked him down, Simard broke down almost immediately. In exchange for his confession to the Caissy murder and information on the Commandos and Rockers, he would receive a 20-year sentence with a chance of parole after serving 12, as well as liposuction and financial help after he left prison. Immediately, he ratted on fellow Commandos Provencher, Steven Falls, Patrick Ménard-Pascone and Gregory “Picasso” Wooley. Part of Simard's deal was that he also enumerate all of the crimes he'd ever committed that had not been discovered. The police promised that they wouldn't prosecute him for them; they just wanted to close the books on old unsolved cases. Simard quickly agreed and rattled off the names of the people he'd shot or beaten. One name surprised the police: Robert MacFarlane.

It was a busy time for Kane. He'd just bought a house near Steinert's mansion and Gilles “Trooper” Matthieu had sponsored him for prospective Nomads membership. On April 30, at what he thought was a routine meeting with his Montreal RCMP contacts in the Longueuil Ramada, Kane was arrested by Halifax RCMP for the murder of Robert MacFarlane. After a two-hour flight to the RCMP's Nova Scotia headquarters in Bible Hill, the interrogators started in on him. No matter what the question was, Kane's answer was always the same “I don't know fuck-all.” The Halifax officers didn't give up as easily as Simard. Although working with Carroll, Stockford, Stadnick and Steinert had improved his English to the point where he understood every word the officers were saying, they brought in a French-speaking interrogator. He was even less successful.

When they told him they had him trapped, that they had enough evidence to put him away for a long, long time, Kane looked his interrogators up and down, and said: “Okay, take me to court.” But the Halifax RCMP wasn't entirely out of ammunition. After the video cameras were turned off, two detectives looked him in the eye and told him that they knew he was an informant for the RCMP in Montreal and, if that information just happened to get out, Kane would be killed the moment the bars closed behind him. He called their bluff. After the spectacular and repeated failure of informants like Serge Quesnel, Kane realized he didn't have too much to fear from Simard, whose credibility was even easier to pick apart. Kane wasn't going to make a deal with the Halifax RCMP; he wouldn't even accept their offer of protective custody. He'd take his chances in jail—it was Simard's word against his.

The recent spate of arrests had weakened the Alliance and convinced the Hells Angels they were on the ropes. With the war winding down, the Hells Angels became increasingly focused on their enemies in the authorities and within their own organization. An edict even came down from the Nomads that Hells Angels and their associates stop wearing their colors in public and reduce the size and number of parties. After the police found the bomb in the Hydro van on August 23, Boucher became convinced there was a snitch in the Hells Angels.

The cops knew exactly where the van was and what to look for; it didn't seem possible for them to know what was going on without a tip. Worse yet, an SQ officer flippantly let it slip that they had a mole in the Hells Angels' inner circle. Cops try to intimidate suspects with claims like that all the time, but this time Boucher thought there was more to it, especially after other officers got angry at the one who told him. Although he'd been loyal to him in prison, Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné was Boucher's prime suspect. It was his bomb the police mysteriously found and Boucher figured that Gagné could have chickened out of his first job, especially with the Desrosiers incident fresh in everyone's memory.