Biker Trials, The (48 page)

A courthouse clerk was assigned the duty of removing all the potentially influential articles. Her scissors were very busy on
one day in particular when Operation South was carried out. A police operation much smaller in scale and of less significance than Operation Springtime 2001, it still resulted in the roundup of several members of the Hells Angels' South chapter and many more underlings.

Eric Bouffard, a member of the Hells Angels arrested in Project Ocean.

Among those arrested on February 26, 2004, was Éric Bouffard, one of the Hells Angels who had been caught delivering money to the Nomads chapter's bank. He had quickly pleaded guilty to the charges brought against him in Project Ocean, and was already out on parole when he was arrested again. The investigation centered on the South chapter, based in Saint-Basile-le-Grand. At the time, the police said the South chapter Ocean. appeared to have been filling the drug trafficking void created by the roundup of the Nomads chapter. But the investigation was also heavily focused on loan-sharking. When it was carried out, it made the front pages of all the Montreal newspapers and several pages inside. Some lawyers joked that the jury members were going to be intrigued by the amount of vetting done to their papers that morning.

While waiting for the verdict, Giauque managed to keep her sense of humor as well. While talking to reporters after one of the morning meetings in front of Beliveau, Giauque said that she and other members of the prosecution team killed time waiting for a verdict by watching
DVDS.
“But there is no way I'm going to watch
Runaway Jury”
Giauque said in reference to a film that had just been released on
DVD
starring Gene Hackman and John Cusack, portraying two sides engaged in a heated and very illegal battle to sway a jury.

It seemed to have taken forever to get to the point where a jury could actually deliberate on the charges filed in Project Rush. The question on many minds was whether the average person could accept that doing things like contributing to a fund, or performing guard duty, or acting as a personal bodyguard facilitated a criminal act and therefore was also a crime. It had taken a long time to get to that point. Jury selection had begun on January 13, 2003. The jury sat for 118 days over a period of a little more than one year. Much more court time was spent without the jury present, as lawyers argued various motions.

The evidence was broken down into 10 stages. The first involved informing the jury of what had been seized at the bikers' homes during Operation Springtime 2001. Rather than allow much of that evidence in without challenge, the defense decided that it had to be scrutinized before the jury. That meant police officers who had seized the items had to be called in to testify. The process created delays that Beliveau would later criticize as being very unnecessary.

The second stage involved showing the jury hours of videotape police surveillance teams had taken of gang members doing things like attending meetings or doing guard duty — “the watch” as the gang called it. Things did not get interesting for the jury until stage three, when they were shown the videotapes police had secretly made of meetings the Rockers held in hotel conference rooms. It was Dany Kane who had tipped off the police as to where the meetings were going to be held. Stage five involved the informant testimony, and stage seven involved much of the evidence gathered on the Nomads Bank.

Giauque was able to begin her final arguments on February 3, 2004. The task before her was to attempt to make sense of all the evidence the jury had heard and seen. In a very thorough multimedia presentation which took four days to complete, Giauque
explained the reasons why the jury had watched hours of videotape and listened to countless wiretapped conversations. She went over the highlights of the Masses, bringing out the importance of some of the comments recorded as they applied to a gangsterism case. For example, in one of the Masses, the gang had discussed where Éric (Pif) Fournier was going to go when the Rockers divided the gang into two chapters, one to remain in the east end of Montreal and the other to give them a presence in the west end.

What became apparent during this Mass was that Fournier was a heavily prized bodyguard to Louis (Melou) Roy. Michel Rose and Roy had discussed the issue, and the possibility of Fournier losing his patch was mentioned. The gang also discussed how difficult it was to protect Roy and that there simply weren't enough guys to act as his bodyguards. Fournier was believed to have committed several murders for the Hells Angels since his introduction to the Hells Angels in 1996.

The police found it interesting that a couple of years after joining the Rockers, Fournier disappeared for several weeks, around the same time as his boss Louis (Melou) Roy. The longtime Hells Angel disappeared off the face of the earth, and was last seen alive some time in June 2000. The police believe Roy was purged from the gang. His name stopped showing up on the gang's membership lists, whereas others like Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine and Richard Vallée, who turned out to have been in hiding, continued to be noted on lists seized by the police.

Fontaine was found in May 2004, after spending more than six years in hiding. He had been made a full-patch member of the Nomads chapter on June 24, 1998, while on the lam. When the police found him, he had changed his appearance slightly by growing a beard and had gained weight. He was brought back to Montreal to learn he still faced charges for murdering a prison guard as well as the new charges brought against him in Project
Rush. Fontaine's arrest made David (Wolf) Caroll the only member of the Nomads chapter still being sought after Operation Springtime 2001.

Another sign that Roy had been purged was that when police did an analysis of the Nomads' accounting ledgers, investigators noticed Roy's account with the gang was closed and his drug profits split up among the members of his former chapter in Trois Rivières. After Roy and Fournier disappeared, the police originally assumed they had both met the same fate.

But Pif popped up again. He was arrested in Jonquiere, Quebec, much later in 2000, carrying a .357 Magnum and some cash. The cops suspected the cash came from drug sales he had made in a Jonquiere bar. It appeared that Fournier had been ordered to lay low in the aftermath of Roy's disappearance.

During the same Mass, Fournier's membership was debated, the jury got a hint of just how successful the Rockers were as drug traffickers. In the videotape, Normand (Pluche) Bélanger openly complained about always having to collect the ten percent fund during Mass, and that it caused him to carry around a suitcase with a lot of money.

Another meeting Giauque highlighted for the jury was one in which Dany Kane had worn a body pack and given the police a goldmine of evidence. The meeting was held on July 4, 2ooo,in a restaurant where Robitaille announced the new going price for a kilo of cocaine would be $50,000.

Couture, one of the accused in the Beliveau trial, was at the meeting where the police were able to confirm their suspicions of the high level at which the Nomads chapter was operating in terms of drug trafficking. Robitaille provided an update to his underlings about the state of the Nomads empire. The Rockers present at the meeting informed Robitaille that they were collecting
$30,OOO
a month in the ten percent fund, a clear sign they were making at least $300,000 in profits per month in drug sales.

Paul Brisebois was recorded asking Robitaille about Montreal North, a suburb of Montreal where drug trafficking is normally controlled by street gangs like the Bo-Gars. Robitaille responded by saying the Hells Angels did not want to leave any territory vacant.

Pierre Laurin was also interested in Montreal North, saying the gang could do some “cleaning up” of the potential business in neighborhoods near those controlled by the Mafia. But Robitaille then mentioned that he would have to talk to Mom about Montreal North, saying the Rockers would have to respect the “Italians'” territory. They had right to what was theirs, but they should not be allowed to expand, Robitaille said, adding the Mafia controlled Little Italy and some other parts of the city, but that Montreal North was “wide open” for anyone who wanted to take it. Robitaille also lectured the Rockers on controlling the quality of their cocaine, because the Nomads chapter didn't want it to be too cut by the time it was retailed.

Giauque told the jury that this meeting in particular was clear evidence of a Hells Angel giving orders to the Rockers. But it also reflected a constant theme in Rockers meetings — everyone had a say but the Nomads chapter's authority was undeniable. A key part of the gangsterism charge was whether the Rockers used the ten percent fund to buy weapons. If that had been the case, it would be easier to convince a jury that the gang was paying into a system that murdered people. Giauque pointed out one mass in particular where Rocker Pierre Provencher explained to another gang member that the ten percent fund was used to pay for the clubhouse and “for this,” while he made the sign of a gun while the videotape recorder rolled.

Giauque also told the jury the informants who testified were not there to incriminate anyone in particular, but to facilitate a general understanding of the evidence. They were there to explain the hierarchy of the gang, Giauque said, adding that the
case could have been prosecuted without the informants. They were there to support evidence, for example that “business” was the gang's euphemism and code word for drug trafficking. The informants were able to explain why gang members were often seen talking into each other's ears when they were captured on video.

“Only certain people, of confidence probably, knew who really committed [a serious] crime. It is an important measure of security, because if someone became an informant they couldn't say this person did this and that other person did that,” Giauque explained while describing the whispering as symptomatic. “They were doing it all the time.”

The prosecutor acknowledged that informants were criminals who'd only turned when they were put into a corner. “The defense will tell you that they are witnesses who are degenerates and you should not believe them. They have good reason, on one point, they are degenerate witnesses. But here you should believe them. And why? Because they are corroborated by the evidence presented before you. It's certain these are not people you would invite to have supper at your house. None of them. But everything they said here was uncontestable.”

She explained her reasons for using Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné while acknowledging that the murder of two prison guards were
“crapeleux”
a French term for villainous that has a better emphasis than the English equivalent. She noted that Gagné was only made a striker in the Rockers for the first murder and was going to be a full-patch member of the gang after the second. It gave the jury something to consider when deciding what it took to eventually graduate to the Nomads chapter.

Gagné was a valuable witness, Giauque told the jury, because he was able to explain the terms the gang often used. For example, when a Rocker said he was “occupied,” it was enough to explain to the other Rockers that he had an important job to do
for the Nomads chapter and shouldn't be asked questions. Giauque also felt it necessary to explain why witnesses like Peter Paradis had been called.

“His situation was a bit different. He was the enemy, a duck, a bird, a quack-quack, call him what you want,” Giauque said drawing a few giggles from the jury. The reference was to the logo featured in the Rock Machine's patches. It was apparently supposed to depict an eagle's head, but it appeared cartoonish and ducklike. According to Giauque, “you probably understood, when you saw his patches, why the Hells Angels call them ducks or quack-quacks. It is very clear when we see the patches.”

Giauque also told the jury that despite being a high-profile drug dealer in Verdun, Paradis was left so down and out in his final days as a member of the Rock Machine, he had stooped to stealing food from grocery stores. This was around the same time that Pierre Provencher had declared, during a Rockers Mass, that the east was theirs but that places in western Montreal like Verdun were still to be conquered.

Giauque described Paradis as a regular witness and not an informant. He had already fulfilled his first contract by testifying against his former gangmates. He was out of prison when he agreed to sign the second contract, and placed his life on the line to come out of hiding and testify. Giauque also fully acknowledged that Stéphane Sirois might have been looking for revenge over his failed marriage when he decided to become an informant. The prospect of making
$1OO,OOO
when he was broke also didn't hurt. “The Sirois aspect is important because it involves real evidence that directly implicates members of the organization,” she said.

That “real evidence” included a conversation with André Chouinard in which Sirois asked what it would take to get back into the good graces of the Nomads chapter. Chouinard told Sirois to call Jean-Guy Bourgoin. Chouinard also told Sirois to
just keep working, make his own path and get as much information on their rivals as he could.