Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (9 page)

But there was a problem. There was a growing resentment among the majority francophones in Montreal towards the anglophone minority who — unfairly, they felt — dominated business in the city. And things were no different among the bikers. While all the gangsters spoke English (when they weren't communicating in Italian), the only English-speaking biker gang of any consequence was Satan's Choice (which became the Outlaws in 1977). That meant most of the time, the powerful English-speaking gangsters were hiring the French-speaking bikers to do their dirty work and paying them a fraction of what they made off them. It was no different, they contended, from the way all business was conducted in Montreal.

But an alternative emerged. In the working-class neighborhood of Saint-Henri, nine of a French-speaking bartender's ten sons began to throw their considerable weight around (the other lived his life as a government employee, and was never accused of any crime). The Dubois brothers — Raymond, Jean-Guy, Normand, Claude, René, Roland, Jean-Paul and the twins Maurice and Adrien — formed a cohesive group of toughs who eventually expanded their individual efforts into organized crime, rivaling the most powerful Mafia families in reach and scope.

It started in the 1950s, when the four oldest brothers — Raymond, Jean-Guy, Normand and Claude — began leaning on local bar owners for protection money and other forms of extortion. They were very good at it, each individually acquiring a few bars by the end of the decade. But they were so good at it that they developed swelled heads. The Quebec Police Commission described them as “ruling like feudal lords.” All four were charged with the murder of a waiter who had the nerve to argue with them about their dinner bill, but a lack of evidence and suddenly reluctant witnesses led to their subsequent acquittals.

After that, the Dubois brothers expanded their empire. They had a simple — actually, a crude — business plan, but it was truly effective. A Dubois brother and his cronies would start frequenting a bar. They'd show up every night. At first they'd be friendly. Then they'd start picking fights with other patrons, harassing the staff, vandalizing the establishment and assaulting the owner. It got progressively worse until the owner invariably gave in. Most of the time, they settled for $100 a week. That may not sound like much, but $100 in the early '70s is more like $1,000 today, and each Dubois brother was collecting from literally dozens of bars.

And they did more than that. After the Dubois brothers got their claws into a business, they forced the owner to hire gang members and associates. Of course, they would steal the establishment blind and work for the bar intermittently at best. And they would also operate loan-sharking, gambling, fencing and drug-trafficking businesses from the establishment while they were on the payroll.

Their expansion wasn't always easy. Early in their careers, the Dubois brothers recruited three old friends — Pierre, Jacques and André McSween — to work for them. The francophone Irish-Canadian brothers proved very effective, performing a number of burglaries, truck hijackings and stickups for the Dubois brothers.

But the McSweens were nothing if not ambitious. By the early 1970s, they no longer worked for the Dubois. Instead, they had recruited their own gang and controlled an area bordering their old bosses' territory. They took what they had learned from the Dubois brothers about extortion and loan-sharking and set up those businesses in their own territory. They even had a deal with the official scorekeeper for the Montreal Canadiens under which he would alter game statistics to ensure the McSweens would always collect on bets.

As they got rich, both the McSweens and the Dubois brothers saw that the highest profits came from drug trafficking. And the best drug to traffic, they soon found out, was methamphetamine. It was cheap and easy to make and highly addictive. Once a user was hooked, he or she would give anything to get more.

By 1973, the competition was too much for the Dubois brothers to tolerate. After a McSween dealer named Real Lepine insulted Adrien Dubois by refusing to sell his drugs, the Dubois brothers declared war on the McSweens. The resulting “West End War” left nine members of the McSween gang — including Jacques McSween — and five Dubois associates dead. With their brother dead, the surviving McSweens surrendered and quickly went back to work for the Dubois brothers.

With the McSweens out of the way and back in the fold, the Dubois brothers began a plan to control all of downtown. Claude, who had worked as bouncer at clubs owned by both the Cotronis and Violis and had learned much from them, was firmly in charge.

His next target was a very profitable trade in marijuana, LSD and particularly meth that operated in Saint-Henri Square. Like Yorkville in Toronto, the area is now quite wealthy and quiet, but in the early and mid '70s, it was a hippie hangout and an open-air drug market.

It was run by a particularly tough biker gang called the Devil's Disciples. Don't be fooled by the name. Of the more than 350 motorcycle gangs identified in Quebec history, a handful — maybe a couple dozen or so — had French names. Even fewer had anglophone membership. The Devil's Disciples were
pur laine
(the Quebec expression for “purely French”) through and through. They were, at the time, Montreal's most powerful biker gang.

But because they were operating in what Claude Dubois considered his territory, it just wasn't going to last. The Dubois brothers hired some local tough guys in an effort to get rid of the Devil's Disciples. They succeeded. By January 1976, 15 Devil's Disciples had been murdered and plenty more had been roughed up. In a phone conversation recorded by police, Claude “Johnny Hallyday” Ellefson, leader of the Devil's Disciples, described how he panicked and fled Saint-Henri Square when he found out that Claude Dubois (who he called “the big one”) wanted his business. They were gone for good. Ellefson later re-emerged selling drugs from a wheelchair in Quebec City.

What was interesting about that particular battle was that, instead of the usual hired muscle of basically independent tough guys they knew from their neighborhood, the Dubois brothers hired a different biker gang for much of the rough stuff.

They were called the Popeyes. Based in Laval — a large suburb located on a pair of islands just north of Montreal — the Popeyes were a brutal bunch of beer-drinkers who frequently made the short ride into the city on business. They liked working for the francophone Dubois brothers. The Popeyes specialized in muscle for hire, but — inspired by the Dubois brothers — were expanding into other activities, including drug trafficking.

A lot of their success was due to their charismatic and strategically minded president, Yves “Le Boss” Buteau. Tall, strong and blonde, Buteau strove to have a disciplined crew. He forbade the use of stimulant and injected drugs and he encouraged his men to shave, cut their hair occasionally and wear their colors only when necessary. But he was not above using violence when he deemed it necessary. With his statesmanship, though, he rarely needed to. He started a small network of biker gangs, some as far away as Trois-Rivieres, 80 miles down the St. Lawrence. And he had the enviable ability to deal on positive terms with other biker gangs, particularly the Missiles of Saguenay and the ridiculously named Sex Fox of Chibougamau, often inviting them to parties or hiring them for tough or distant jobs.

After they had chased out the Devil's Disciples, the Popeyes began selling Dubois drugs in Saint-Henri Square and the surrounding area. But a large and well-organized police task force had been formed to combat the Dubois brothers, who — after exterminating the McSween gang and the Devil's Disciples — were regarded as the primary threat to the safety and security of the people of Montreal. They were constantly tailed, stopped and searched for minor violations and arrested by police. They all went down pretty quickly.

Almost as soon as they arrived, the Popeyes found themselves in charge of a very large area of downtown Montreal, but — as the Dubois connection dwindled and later disappeared altogether — they had nothing to sell.

That didn't last long. Just like the Outlaws in Ontario, Hells Angels were looking to expand northward. The Outlaws — founded in Chicagoland and later headquartered in Detroit — took the natural step eastward into Southern Ontario. The eastern branch of Hells Angels, however, was based in Manhattan (the former Aliens were the regional bosses), so it was logical for them to look north to Montreal. It was not only much closer than Toronto (a four-hour drive north as opposed to a ten-hour drive west), but at the time, it was also bigger, more cosmopolitan and had a far larger drug market. And, back then, language wasn't a big problem as there was always an English-speaker around to translate.

Hells Angels had been scouting Montreal for a gang to align with for a few years, and one source told me that it was the well-connected Devil's Disciples who were at the top of their list until the Popeyes effectively got rid of them. So, when Hells Angels came to Montreal, they came to Laval.

It was an immediate success for the Popeyes. No less than Hells Angels U.S. national president and celebrity Sonny Barger came to visit. He was so taken with Buteau in fact, that he personally gave him his patch and anointed him as the only Canadian to be allowed to wear the “Hells Angels International” patch.

On December 5, 1977, a wild party in Laval ushered in a whole new era of organized crime in Canada. That night, 35 members of the Popeyes patched over to Hells Angels (the others were chased off). With the founding of the Hells Angels Montreal Chapter, the second of two American supergangs had been established in the country. The era of biker wars had begun.

The situation became even more tense in February of 1978, when the Montreal Satan's Choice made the decision to patch over and become the Outlaws Montreal Chapter. They had seen other former Satan's Choice chapters in Ontario flourish as Outlaws, and realized that what was left of the Choice would be no match against Hells Angels, should they decide they wanted to run the town by themselves.

The patch-over put both American gangs in La Belle Province, both operating in, and vying for, dominance in the city of Montreal.

Maybe they knew it, and maybe they didn't, but on the chilly afternoon of February 15, 1978, Robert Côté and a close friend whose name was never released walked into the wrong bar. At the corner of Saint-Hubert and Castelnau in Montreal's Villeray neighborhood, not far from Jarry Park, sat Brasserie Joey. The locals knew it was a place where the Popeyes — now known as Hells Angels — had hung out for years.

But Côté and his associate weren't from the neighborhood. They were from Saint-Henri, not far away, but very different. And they were Outlaws. They sat near the window, drinking beer and chatting. Nobody else in the bar talked to them, or even looked at them.

Before long, a group of Hells Angels and their supporters walked in and confronted the two men. To their credit, the pair of Outlaws didn't back down. They argued with the locals until they were physically ejected from the building.

Once outside, they stood in the street flinging threats, insults and rude gestures at the people inside. They probably should have left. Minutes after their forcible ejection, a large, light-green car covered in grime and frost drove up. The front passenger-side window opened and someone fired a volley of shots at the Outlaws. Côté was hit in the head. His friend was lightly grazed. Wisely, he fled the scene. The green car sped away, skidding in the gray snow.

Côté died five days later. The shooter was later identified as Popeye-turned-Hells Angel Yves “Apache” Trudeau, who finally found his calling in life after failing at so many things before. He didn't look like the other Hells Angels in Montreal, and nobody would have guessed he was the club's enforcer and primary weapon. While most of the rest of the chapter were big brutes — including some 350- and even 400-pound behemoths — Trudeau measured just five-foot-six and, by his own admission, tipped the scales at some 135 pounds. And while all the other Hells Angels had long hair and huge beards, as was the biker style at the time, Trudeau was generally clean shaven except for modest sideburns and only traded his Elvis-style pompadour for a sedate parted-at-the-side look well into the '80s.

Côté's death would be just one of the 43 murders the tiny biker later admitted to committing. Ironically, later in life, after he was admitted into the witness protection program, he would go by the name Denis Côté.

Desperate for a show of strength, the Outlaws threw a lavish funeral for Côté. More than 300 Outlaws — many from Ontario and Outlaw strongholds in the U.S. such as South Florida and Detroit — attended, including three convicted felons the Montreal police would later arrest and hand over to immigration.

As is biker tradition, the riders in the procession were helmetless. The cops didn't ticket them. In fact, one told me they appreciate the gesture as it allows them to photograph the bikers' faces and get an approximation of their individual status by what spot in line they have.

Less than a month later, Hells Angels struck again. And the Outlaws clearly hadn't learned to stay on their side of Mont-Royal Park. Gilles Cadorette, president of the Montreal Outlaws, decided to show his friend Donald McLean his newly customized Camaro. It was a heck of a car — assembled in nearby Saint Therese, Quebec, perfected in his driveway in Montreal — and Cadorette wanted to show off it and his newfound wealth to a younger and very impressionable new member.

The problem was that he did it while visiting his girlfriend on rue Bordeaux. The two men hopped into the customized sports coupe, which he'd left parked in the street, allowing it to be tampered with. Cadorette turned the key. That completed a circuit that sent electricity to a blasting cap that ignited a couple of sticks of dynamite duct-taped to the floor of the Camaro right under the driver's seat.