The defence in the trial of a Nova Scotia man accused of being the getaway driver in a double-murder in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce appears willing to concede Leslie Greenwood was there when it happened but contends he didn’t know two men were about to be killed.

Greenwood, 46, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi. The pair were fatally shot, on Jan. 24, 2010, by Robert Simpson 53, under orders from Jeffrey Albert Lynds, a Hells Angel from Nova Scotia. Timothy Simpson, 49, watched his older brother’s back, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, while his sibling carried out the slayings. The younger Simpson also scouted out the location where the men were to be killed, the parking lot of a McDonald’s. According to Timothy Simpson, the location provided an opportunity for a quick getaway.

Both brothers have pleaded guilty to the murders and are serving life sentences. Both have also signed contracts as collaborating witnesses and testified during the trial. As Timothy Simpson’s cross-examination neared its end on Thursday, defence lawyer Marc Nerenberg asked him a series of questions with preambles that conceded Greenwood drove the Simpson brothers to Montreal from Nova Scotia, but did not know, or did not want to know, what they were about to do. Parts of two questions from Nerenberg suggested Greenwood did not plan to drive the brothers back to Nova Scotia and was surprised when they jumped into his car after Murray and Onesi were killed. The scenario is plausible because the hastily improvised hit was carried out a short distance from the hotel the three men had checked into before Robert Simpson shot both men.

Both Simpson brothers have testified Greenwood was parked close to where they had told him to — in the parking lot of a home-renovation store near the McDonalds. Both brothers said the spot for the getaway car was chosen because they planned to run between two large piles of snow, on the border of the parking lot, so any eyewitnesses to the shooting would lose track of them before they entered the car.

Nerenberg and Paul Skolnik, another defence lawyer in the case, have suggested a few times that Greenwood was actually parked several metres away in the parking lot of a bar called Goldie’s, located closer to the hotel than the McDonalds. Last week, Robert Simpson dismissed this suggestion as nonsense. But on Thursday, Nerenberg added the suggestion that Greenwood was in Goldie’s parking lot and was taken by surprise when the Simpson brothers jumped in his car after the shooting.

“I would tell you that you are wrong,” Timothy Simpson said to that suggestion as well as several others made by Nerenberg on Thursday.

Nerenberg also suggested that Lynds — a biker gang member who, according to the Simpsons, was constantly high on marijuana and crack cocaine — was possibly hoping the brothers would either end up arrested for the murders shortly after they were carried out (and he wouldn’t have to pay them) or that Murray would end up killing them.

“That’s a possibility,” Simpson conceded. It supported testimony from both brothers who said that, after having hung out with Lynds for months in Nova Scotia, they no longer trusted him and were concerned about his heavy use of drugs.

Timothy Simpson also conceded that shortly before the murders were carried out he told Brian (Cato) McGuire, 54, of LaSalle, that he and his brother were going to kill Murray for him.

“I’m going to do you a solid,” Timothy Simpson recalled telling McGuire, his best friend. McGuire, a drug dealer, had grown tired of how Murray, a convicted killer, was constantly at his house looking for information on drug dealers he could steal from. Nerenberg apparently wanted to highlight to the jury that the Simpsons had another motive for killing Murray (their loyalty to McGuire), which didn’t involve Lynds and therefore cuts the connection with Greenwood. Both brothers have testified Greenwood was imposed on them by Lynds. They also testified that the Hells Angel wanted Murray dead because he had failed in an attempt to murder Louis (Le Gros) Vigeant (a drug dealer Lynds owed $40,000 to) on Jan. 20, 2010.

On Thursday, Timothy Simpson said both motives had blended together by the time the men were killed.

Nerenberg also suggested that Greenwood was worried the Simpson brothers were going to kill him on the way back to Nova Scotia and offered to buy them an “eight-ball of crack cocaine” when they reached their destination in order to stay alive.

“He didn’t seem too worried. He picked us up and took us back (to Nova Scotia),” Timothy Simpson said. Both brothers have also testified Greenwood gave Robert Simpson instructions as they drove away from the murder scene and urged him to not use a cellular phone he purchased just for the hit. Robert Simpson said he ignored the advice and texted a series of smiley face emojis to Lynds. Robert Simpson said Lynds had requested he do that to signal Murray was dead.

The trial resumes with a new witness on Friday.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

A man who was the target of a failed organized crime hit that became part of the motive behind a double slaying in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce was actually an undercover agent for the RCMP.

The revelation was made to the jury on Friday in the trial of Leslie Greenwood, 46. Greenwood is alleged to have been the getaway driver in the Jan. 24, 2010, deaths of Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi.

A drug dealer named Louis (Le Gros) Vigeant was shot in Verdun four days before the killings, but survived. The prosecution has alleged Murray was ordered by Hells Angel Jeffrey Albert Lynds to kill Vigeant. Also as part of the prosecution’s case, it has been alleged when the hit on Vigeant failed Lynds grew worried and wanted Murray silenced. The jury hearing the trial at the Montreal courthouse has been told Lynds promised to make Murray a member of the Hells Angels if he killed Vigeant. They have also been told Lynds shouldn’t have made that promise because, at the time, he was suspended from the gang.

On Friday, Joe Tomeo, an investigator with the RCMP who began working with Vigeant just before he was shot, said the drug dealer had signed his RCMP contract one week before the attempt on his life. Vigeant was working on an investigation called Project Cynique, a probe into three conspiracies to smuggle cocaine into Canada.

Tomeo was Vigeant’s cover agent, a role that involved instructing Vigeant while he interacted with the drug smugglers targeted in Project Cynique. Tomeo made it clear to the jury Project Cynique had nothing to do with Lynds or Robert Simpson, 53, and Timothy Simpson, 49, the two brothers who carried out the killings of Murray and Onesi.

Tomeo said he first heard of the attempt on Vigeant’s life “on the radio” while heading to work on Jan. 20, 2010. He said he assumed immediately it was Vigeant who was the victim referred to in the news item because the report mentioned the shooting occurred on Stephens St. in Verdun — which is where Vigeant lived. To make sure, Tomeo said, he drove past Vigeant’s home and noticed police were still outside.

He located Vigeant at the Montreal General Hospital and learned he was in an induced coma and saw a tube had been placed down his throat. Tomeo also learned Vigeant was under 24-hour police guard at the hospital.

The next step, Tomeo said, was to determine if Vigeant’s newly signed contract to work undercover was the cause of the attempt on his life.

“We had to find out if there was a breach of security within the RCMP,” Tomeo said, adding it took two weeks to rule that out. He said the Mounties ultimately concluded the attempt on Vigeant’s life involved “his past” and not his work in Project Cynique.

Tomeo said after Vigeant was released from the Montreal General, 10 days after having been shot, the plan was to bring him to “a safe house” for his protection. On the way to the house for the first time, Vigeant received a telephone call while he, Tomeo and Tomeo’s partner were stopped at a gas station to fuel the car they were in and buy snacks. Tomeo said Vigeant told him the person at the other end of the call, a woman, merely said he’d receive another call in 30 minutes.

Shortly after they arrived at the house, Vigeant received a second call Tomeo was able to listen in on. He said the two men who spoke to Vigeant during the call were Lynds and Robert Simpson (Tomeo was able to identify their voices later). He said during the telephone conversation, Vigeant was told by Lynds: “Your problem is solved. I’ve got your back.”

This corresponds with testimony from Robert Simpson, who testified earlier that after he killed Murray and Onesi, Lynds wasn’t able to pay him the $40,000 he had been promised for the hit. He said Lynds came up with a plan where the Hells Angel would claim he arranged to have Murray slain because Murray had tried to kill Vigeant. Simpson said Lynds was hoping Vigeant would pay him in cash or drugs for having gotten rid of Murray.

According to Robert Simpson’s testimony, Lynds asked Murray to kill Vigeant because the Hells Angel owed Vigeant at least $40,000 from a drug deal. Simpson also believed Lynds had been suspended from the Hells Angels because Vigeant complained to the gang about Lynds’ debt.

What Lynds did not want Vigeant to know, according to Robert Simpson, was Lynds had given Murray the order to kill him and the plan was for Murray to also rob a “stash house” where Vigeant had stored several boxes of speed and ecstasy pills.

Onesi’s son, Christopher, 30, was the only other witness called to testify on Friday. He told the jury shortly before Murray and his father were killed, Murray visited his family’s home in Châteauguay and noticed a televised report about the attempt made on Vigeant’s life.

“(Murray) bragged that he had (hired) two guys who had tried to kill someone,” Onesi said, adding he didn’t think much of Murray’s claim at the time.

The trial resumes on Monday.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Former Hells Angels boss Maurice “Mom” Boucher was involved in a stabbing at the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines prison earlier this week, according to published reports.

Boucher and another inmate attacked a third prisoner Tuesday night in a common area of the prison, La Presse reports. The victim suffered serious injuries and was taken to hospital, but his life is not in danger.

The newspaper reports that the Sûreté du Québec has taken over the investigation, but the SQ would not confirm an investigation or that any incident had taken place when contacted by the Montreal Gazette on Thursday.

Correctional Services Canada has yet to respond to a Montreal Gazette inquiry into the incident.

The 62-year-old Boucher is serving a life sentence he received in 2002 after being convicted of ordering the murders of two Quebec prison guards.

A man who took part in the murders of two prison guards 18 years ago on orders from then Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher, in an attempt to intimidate Quebec’s justice system, will ask a jury to give him a chance at early parole this week.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday at the Montreal courthouse in a case where Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné, 45, will attempt to prove he is no longer the desperate drug dealer from Hochelaga Maisonneuve who, in the late 1990s, was willing to do anything to become a member of Boucher’s elite Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels. As part of his argument, the jury will undoubtedly be told of how Gagné later became a collaborating witness against Boucher and helped convict the once powerful biker who is now serving a life sentence for the murders of Diane Lavigne, Pierre Rondeau and the attempted murder of Robert Corriveau.

All three were guards at provincial detention centres and, as was later proven in court, Boucher had no personal grudge against either victim. He ordered the deaths of guards in general to send a message to Quebec’s provincial justice system after it had focused much of its resources on him and his gang. The guards were shot in 1997, a time when it was clear Boucher and the other members of the chapter he created were the decision-makers in the Hells Angels’ war with rival gangs across the province. The conflict stretched between 1994 and 2002 and resulted in the deaths of more than 160 people, including several innocent victims.

Prisoner guard Diane Lavigne, age 42, murdered on Highway 15 in 1997.

Gagné killed Lavigne, on June 26, 1997, by shooting her, from the back of a motorcycle, as she drove home from her job at the Montreal Detention Centre. The driver of the motorcycle, André (Toots) Tousignant, was murdered months after Lavigne was killed.

Slain prison guard Pierre Rondeau.

On Sept. 8, 1997, Gagné and a different partner, Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine, killed Rondeau and wounded Corriveau by firing several shots into the bus the guards were riding in as they headed to the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre. The guards were about to pick up detainees who had court dates that day.

Gagné was arrested on Dec. 5, 1997, and, after deciding to become a witness for the prosecution, he pleaded guilty, on March 25, 1998, to murdering Lavigne and the attempted murder of Corriveau. He is serving a life sentence and is eligible for full parole in 2023. The hearing scheduled for this week is to determine whether Gagné’s parole eligibility date can be reduced. The hearing will be presided over by Superior Court Justice Jerry Zigman.

Boucher is reportedly no longer a member of the Hells Angels. Also, the Nomads chapter he created was dissolved after almost every member was arrested and convicted in Operation Springtime 2001. Gagné’s work as a collaborating witness helped convict people arrested in that investigation as well. In 2009, his testimony helped convict Fontaine of first-degree murder after the biker had managed to live on the lam for seven years while he tried to avoid arrest.

When Gagné originally filed his request for early parole in 2012, he asked that he be eligible for parole after having served 15 years of his sentence. He reached that date in 2013, but the jury likely will also have the option of determining on their own which year, between the present and 2023, would be more appropriate.

As part of his original request, Gagné wrote: “Correctional Service Canada has allowed me to change considerably and to understand my delinquent ways, the way to improve my behaviour through awareness.”

“I can assert that I am no longer a violent person and I no longer represent a danger to society.”

The jury’s decision will determine only when Gagné would be eligible for parole. The decision on whether he qualifies for a release would be left to the Parole Board of Canada.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Leslie Greenwood, the man accused of being the getaway driver in a double murder in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, told a jury Wednesday that a man he considers an uncle is a Hells Angel who has been sought by police for more than a decade.

Greenwood, 46, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 24, 2010 deaths of Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi. He is also charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The men were shot in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant on St-Jacques St. The Crown’s theory is that Jeffrey Albert Lynds, a Hells Angel based in Nova Scotia, ordered the death of Murray and that Onesi was killed because he happened to be Murray’s frequent driver. The victims were shot by Robert Simpson, 53, while his brother Timothy, 49, watched his back armed with a shotgun. The Simpson brothers have testified at the trial as collaborating witnesses and said Greenwood knew why he drove them from Nova Scotia to Montreal and then brought them back east immediately after Murray and Onesi were killed. Greenwood denies this and testified that Lynds simply asked him to bring the men to Montreal and never explained why.

Greenwood has told the jury, at least a few times, that he and Lynds were “best friends” before his arrest and grew up together near Truro, N.S. But while being cross-examined on Wednesday, by prosecutor Richard Audet, Greenwood revealed for the first time that he has close ties to David (Wolf) Carroll, 63, a Hells Angel who has been wanted in Quebec since 2001. As Greenwood himself pointed out to the jury “he’s one of the most wanted (suspects) in Quebec.”

“He is my uncle,” Greenwood said. But he later clarified that Carroll “dated my father’s sister” for a long period. He acknowledged that the information “might come as a shock” to the jury” even though the connection has nothing to do with the murder trial. Greenwood told the jury that Carroll was a member of the 13th Tribe, an outlaw motorcycle gang based in Halifax that was turned into a Hells Angels chapter decades ago.

Greenwood also correctly mentioned that Carroll later became a founding member of the Hells Angels’ Nomads chapter in Quebec (which no longer exists). He also said he is aware that Carroll is “on the lam.” But when asked by Audet if he might know where Carroll is now, Greenwood said he had no idea.

Greenwood also revealed he knows a lot about Lynds’ history with the Hells Angels. He said that after the Halifax chapter fell apart, sometime after 2001, Lynds became a member of the Sherbrooke chapter (here in Quebec) and later joined a Hells Angels’ Nomads chapter based in Ontario. He also mentioned that Lynds was kicked out of the gang before Murray and Onesi were murdered. But Greenwood also testified that Lynds’ membership in the gang had little to do with their friendship.

“Jeff became a Hells Angel because he wanted to. It had nothing to do with me,” Greenwood said, adding he never questioned Lynds’ involvement with the gang “because he ain’t never done me wrong.”

During the cross-examination Wednesday, some of Audet’s questions touched on the murder of Mark Stewart, a South Shore resident who was killed by Robert Simpson, weeks after Murray and Onesi were killed. Both Simpson brothers testified that Stewart was killed because Lynds knew Stewart had a large supply of marijuana and wanted to steal it from him. Robert Simpson said he went along with the plan to kill Stewart because Lynds was unable to come up with the $40,000 he had offered to Simpson for murdering Murray and Onesi and that the stolen marijuana would serve as a form of payment.

Greenwood is not charged with Stewart’s murder, but Audet wanted Greenwood to clarify comments he made about his death in a wiretapped conversation with an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia on June 4, 2010, shortly after Lynds had been arrested. Greenwood had not been arrested at that point in the double homicide.

The trial resumes on Monday.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

A former underling in the Hells Angels who took part in the murders of two prison guards and then turned informant on the biker gang began testifying before a jury Wednesday in a hearing where he is seeking to have his parole eligibility reduced.

Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné, 45, told the six women and six men selected to hear the special case about his life leading up to the point when, in 1994, he was introduced to Maurice “Mom” Boucher, the Hells Angels leader who ordered the murders in 1997. Gagné is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder and attempted murder and is currently eligible for full parole in 2022. He is asking that he be eligible for parole now, after having served roughly 17 years of his sentence.

Gagné said he started working with Boucher and the Hells Angels during the summer of 1994, just as the gang began a war across Quebec with rival criminal organizations. Gagné said that when he worked as a drug dealer before the war started he could buy cocaine from several organized crime groups in Montreal and resell it a neighbourhood in Hochelaga Maisonneuve, where he was based. He said that during the summer of 1994 everything changed and the Hells Angels made it clear they wanted him to only buy from them and he agreed with their ultimatum. But, he added, he is no longer a friend of the bikers.

“In the view of organized crime, in the view of the Hells Angels, I am a rat,” he said.

Gagné resumes his testimony on Monday.

Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné hasn’t been entirely a saint while preparing for his hearing, before a jury, where he is seeking an earlier chance at parole on his sentence for murdering a prison guard.

In fact, something Gagné did got a chaplain fired five years ago. The sin involved was a secret correspondence Gagné had with a journalist as the chaplain snuck letters in and out of a penitentiary for more than two years.

Since 1998, efforts have been made to protect Gagné, an informant, while he serves his life sentence for killing provincial prison guard Diane Lavigne, on June 26, 1997, under orders from former Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher. Gagné also took part in another shooting, on Sept. 8, 1997, that killed prison guard Pierre Rondeau and left his colleague Robert Corriveau badly injured. Following his arrest in December 1997, Gagné agreed to become a collaborating witness for the prosecution, and helped convict Boucher, in 2002, and another Hells Angel, Paul Fontaine, in 2009. Fontaine was an accomplice in the latter shooting.

Related

• Prosecutors and Judges support Stéphane Gagné's efforts

Gagné’s testimony in other trials helped convict at least three other influential members of the biker gang. His life has been in danger ever since he agreed to sign his witness contract and Correctional Service Canada has protected him for 17 years. In the hearing that resumes on Monday, Gagné is asking a jury to reduce his parole eligibility date, set at Dec. 6, 2022, to as early as now.

An 80-page document, prepared by Stéphane Perron, a criminologist based at a penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, was submitted to the jury last week. The document, a summary of Gagné’s life behind bars since 1998, reveals that his anticipation of the current hearing has been his greatest source of stress since 2012.

The document also describes the efforts Gagné has made to transform from an illiterate drug dealer from Hochelaga-Maisonneuve who would have done anything to join Boucher’s elite club of wealthy drug traffickers, to the version of himself he is presenting to a jury at the Montreal courthouse. According to the 80-page document, Gagné refers to it as the process of “changing from Godasse Gagné to Stéphane Gagné.”

The process has involved a few bumps in the road, including the correspondence with the female journalist (who is not identified in the document) discovered in 2010. Perron quotes from an evaluation of the incident was filed months later: “(We) recently discovered that Stéphane Gagné used a contract employee, a chaplain, to correspond with a journalist. The employee was fired after we learned that (the chaplain) had been secretly acting as a courier for Gagné for two-and-a-half years. (Gagné’s) case-management team (the people who prepare an inmate for a release) therefore concluded that the situation clearly demonstrated that, under the cover of a conformist attitude and behaviour, Stéphane Gagné managed to outwit the system to his advantage in defiance of the rules and regulations.”

Gagné had spent the first decade of his sentence isolated from other inmates in special sections of maximum-security penitentiaries. He was allowed private visits with relatives and with a woman he had planned to marry until they broke up in 2000. Early on in his sentence, he told psychologists he had difficulty thinking back on his crimes, in particular Lavigne’s murder because she was a woman. He reported having nightmares involving her death and that recalling what he did would sometimes cause him to vomit.

In 2006, his security-level was changed, from maximum to medium, and he was placed in a penitentiary where he could associate with other inmates who were in situations similar to his.

In July 2009, his security level was decreased again, to minimal, after staff noticed he had begun achieving the goals assigned to him as steps toward rehabilitation. Perron’s summary also notes that there was a very noticeable difference in how Gagné had testified, near the end of 2008, during Fontaine’s murder trial compared to how he had handled himself during Boucher’s first murder trial a decade earlier. He was calmer during Fontaine’s trial and had stopped boasting about his exploits from his days as a criminal.

The correspondence with the journalist prompted a decision, in October 2010, to return Gagné back to a medium-security penitentiary. According to the lengthy summary, Gagné dealt with his return to medium-security well. He admitted immediately that he knew, while corresponding with the journalist, that he was placing the chaplain’s job at risk and that his security level would be increased if he were caught.

Gagné’s own protection is part of the decision-making process that determines his security level. The summary notes that Correctional Service Canada had information, on three different occasions between 1999 and November 2010, involving threats or plots to kill Gagné. The most recent threat involved information that another inmate (who is not identified) “has been seeking revenge on him for all of his life.” The same document alleges an attempt was made “to corrupt” Gagné in 2001, just before Boucher’s second trial was set to start.

In April 2011, another problem arose for Gagné after a fellow inmate, at a medium-security penitentiary, asked to be placed in isolation to protect him from Gagné. The inmate’s girlfriend also alleged that Gagné had “threatened to shoot her in the head” during a visit. The woman filed a complaint with the police and a lawsuit seeking $70,000.

When Gagné’s security level was assessed later, corrections staff filed an evaluation stating they weren’t impressed with how he handled the allegations. He called the lawsuit “a joke,” but wasn’t forthcoming when asked for his version of what happened. A member of the correctional staff at the penitentiary wrote, as part of the evaluation: “We were surprised that an individual who supposedly accomplished much over the years decided to manage the situation in an inadequate fashion.” But another section of Perron’s summary states Correctional Service Canada found no information “to corroborate the allegations.”

Another problem for Gagné arose when, in June 2012, corrections staff found “cigarettes, a jar of Nutella and a pot of coffee hidden in a box in a cupboard” in the section where Gagné was incarcerated. He was suspected of being the person who smuggled in the contraband tobacco and denied it at first. But he later admitted he had the tobacco smuggled in to impress a chain-smoking friend who was about to visit him. Gagné’s case-management team filed their evaluation of what happened and wrote: “It demonstrates that Stéphane Gagné still has difficulty setting his limits, that he decided to bypass the rules for his own benefit and that the delinquent values can still resurface in certain situations.”

The 80-page document was prepared in 2013. Gagné’s security level was still considered as medium when it was written.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Not every convicted killer seeking a reduction in parole eligibility on his life sentence can present letters of support from judges and prosecutors when he brings his case before a jury. But unlike most convicted killers, Stéphane Gagné testified as a collaborating witness in at least five lengthy trials, between 1998 and 2008, and helped convict five influential members of the Hells Angels in Quebec.

Below are excerpts from five of nine letters Gagné received from prosecutors (including two who are now judges) and police detectives over the years in anticipation of his hearing. The letters were filed as evidence last week.

*Justice André Vincent — The Chief Prosecutor for the Montreal area when Maurice (Mom) Boucher was tried (twice) for the prison guard murders he ordered. He was ultimately convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder. Vincent is a Superior Court judge and is presiding over the murder trial of Guy Turcotte.

From Vincent’s letter date Nov. 4, 2015: “Having met Mr. Gagné several times during his incarceration in anticipation of the testimony he was about to deliver I can assert that he took great care to respect to the letter the conditions of his agreement and to carry out his duty to adequately prepare for a trial.”

2004: Crown prosecutor Madeleine Giauque leaves a Montreal courthouse after the end of the Hells Angels mega-trial, where nine bikers were convicted with 26 charges.

*Madeleine Giauque — The only prosecutor in Quebec to take a so-called mega-trial heard before a jury (involving charges against Hells Angels) all the way to a verdict. Gagné testified in the trial that helped convict Hells Angel Richard (Dick) Mayrand and several of the gang’s underlings. Giauque is the director of the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, the provincial bureau that will investigate police shootings starting in April.

From Giauque’s letter dated Oct 27, 2015: “Having worked on cases involving organized criminality, I have to admit that I have little belief in the rehabilitation of the people he used to associate with. For me, Stéphane Gagné is the exception (to the rule).”

2009: Crown prosecutor Randall Richmond after former Hells Angels member Paul Fontaine, 41, was found guilty in a Montreal courtroom of the murder of Pierre Rondeau.

*Judge Randall Richmond — A former prosecutor who handled a trial where Gagné testified and resulted in the convictions of Hells Angels Walter Stadnick and Donald (Pup) Stockford on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, drug trafficking and gangsterism. Richmond was also the prosecutor in the murder trial of Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine, one of Gagné’s accomplices in the prison guard murders. Fontaine, who was made a member of the Hells Angels while on the lam, was convicted of first degree murder in 2009. Richmond is a municipal court judge.

From Richmond’s letter dated Oct. 16, 2009: “I believe that Stéphane Gagné was sincere and honest, and we should believe that the members of the jury believed him as well, because they rendered a unanimous verdict against Paul Fontaine on all of the charges.”

2006: Crown prosecutor Jacques Dagenais at the Palais de Justice.

*Jacques Dagenais — A prosecutor in one of the two murder trials held involving Maurice (Mom) Boucher. Dagenais is still a prosecutor and recently prosecuted a case that resulted in the conviction of Timothy Rapley, a West Island resident who murdered his wife.

From Dagenais’s letter dated June 23, 2008: “Over the course of (many) years, I have noticed nothing but positive in your attitude and your words and, frankly, it always impressed me to the highest point when you consider the very difficult conditions of your incarceration.”

2013: Robert Pigeon at the Charbonneau Commission. In the 1990s while working undercover, Pigeon bought drugs from Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné.

*Robert Pigeon — Gagné sold cocaine to Pigeon, in 1994, while he was a detective with the Sûreté du Québec and working undercover. Pigeon later became a lead investigator in anti-biker gang squads and was recently named an assistant-director with the Quebec City police.

From Pigeon’s letter dated Nov. 15, 2005: “Throughout the long and laborious procedures, you collaborated in an exemplary fashion with the authorities and that allowed for the conviction of Maurice Boucher.

“Without a witness like you, the outcome of these proceedings would have surely been different.”

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Related

• A glimpse into the recent life of a man the Hells Angels would love to kill

Eighteen years later, the daughters of murdered prison guard Diane Lavigne say they’re still struggling to cope.

Testifying Wednesday at a hearing where former Hells Angels underling Stéphane Gagné is seeking an earlier parole eligibility on the life sentence he is serving for taking part in the murders of two prison guards in 1997, 40-year-old Isabelle Daoust said she still remembers how sunny it was on the Friday morning her uncle knocked on her apartment door and told her “my sympathies, Isabelle. Your mother’s been assassinated.”

Gagné killed Lavigne in June, 1997, shooting her from the back of a motorcycle as she drove home from her job at the Montreal Detention Centre. He later became a collaborating witness against biker boss Maurice (Mom) Boucher and helped convict him. Boucher is now serving a life sentence for the murders of Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau and the attempted murder of Robert Corriveau, all of them guards at provincial detention centres targeted in an effort to intimidate the Quebec justice system.

Daoust called the sequence of events in 1997 “surreal. Things like that didn’t happen in Quebec. It’s like a film that I was watching from above … too big and unexpected to ever see coming.”

“I was 22 … I was enrolled in university (that fall) to study law,” she said.

She dropped those plans because she wanted nothing to do with criminals.

At that point, she and her sister, Chantal, already were “half-orphans,” Isabelle said, since their dad died when she was 10.

In the years following the murder, what had been a close family drifted apart, Isabelle said. “It was too sad to see each other. We’d be crying together.”

Now a full-time parent with two children, she said she worked at a number of jobs until about five years ago but was absent often because of depression.

Even today, she won’t make any long-term plans because: “I’m too scared to make a promise I can’t keep. I decide things the same day. We enjoy the time we have when we have it.”

In an interview outside the courtroom, Isabelle said she doesn’t feel hate or rancour toward Gagné, but “I don’t wish him a better life than ours.”

“I’m ready to give him a second chance, hoping there won’t be a third.” she said.

Sister Chantal Daoust, 38, made her jury statement via letter, saying she’s still in pain and can’t talk about her mother without getting emotional.

A mail carrier, Chantal said she walks by Bordeaux jail every day at work and always thinks of her mother’s fate.

“To this day, after 18 years, I still cannot look at photos of her or talk about good times spent together without bursting into tears,” she said.

“My mother, a single parent, was my role model,” she wrote. “She’s never coming back, for the good moments or the bad. I had a lot of failures in my life, my studies, my self-esteem and self-confidence, because everybody knows your proudest admirer is your mom, and I almost didn’t know my dad.”

Chantal said she has young children of her own now and they ask where her mother is. “She’s in heaven, my mother. Because somebody who wanted to advance in life, have patches on his vest, killed her without thinking of the damage that could cause.”

The hearing will conclude today with closing arguments. Deliberations are expected to begin Monday. Gagné is currently eligible for parole in 2022. The jury is being asked whether that date can be reduced.

Some of the most well-known names in Montreal’s underworld were arrested Tuesday in sweeping raids.

Sûreté du Québec Chief Inspector Patrick Bélanger said the arrests targeted “very influential heads of organized crime who formed an alliance” between the Mafia, the Hells Angels and street gangs.

Here is a description of some key people and places thrust into the spotlight by Projects Magot and Mastiff.

Gregory Woolley: Once a protegé of Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, the Haitian-born Woolley founded the Syndicate gang in 1998. He was Boucher’s bodyguard during the violent biker wars of the 1990s, and it’s alleged he holds authority over both the Blues and the Reds — the two families of street gangs that have waged war for decades in Montreal.

Gregory Woolley in 2013, at the Montreal funeral of Mafia leader Vito Rizzuto.

Woolley (whose name is sometimes spelled Wooley) was called the cornerstone of the alliance on Thursday, described as a key link between the Hells Angels, the Italian Mafia and Montreal street gangs.

The 43-year-old has beaten three murder charges.

Stefano Sollecito: Identified by police on Thursday as being the new head of the Montreal Mafia along with Leonardo Rizzuto, son of former Mafia Don Vito Rizzuto who died in 2013.

Stefano Sollecito.

The 48-year-old is the son of Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito, who is a longtime associate of the Rizzuto organization.

Police alleged Thursday that Sollecito had stepped in with Leonardo to fill the void following Rizzuto’s death.

In 2003, he was identified as being part of Rizzuto’s plans to expand into Toronto.

Leonardo Rizzuto: Vito Rizzuto’s son and a practising lawyer, the 46-year-old was identified by police on Thursday as the head of the Montreal Mafia, along with Stefano Sollecito.

Leonardo Rizzuto in 2008.

He worked in the Montreal law office of Loris Cavaliere, who was also arrested Thursday.

His brother, Nick Jr., was gunned down in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in 2009.

Loris Cavaliere: A Montreal lawyer who has long represented members of the Rizzuto family and been seen at different Mafia members’ funerals throughout the years.

Loris Cavaliere.

On Thursday, police said Cavaliere, 61, acted as a facilitator and moderator for the alliance, regularly providing his office for “decision-making meetings” by members of organized crime. Police said Cavaliere would resolve any conflicts that came up between the different players.

“All the crucial decisions were made in his office,” Sûreté du Québec Chief Inspector Patrick Bélanger said on Thursday.

Both Leonardo Rizzuto and his sister, Bettina, practise law at Cavaliere’s law firm in Little Italy, which was the target of a Molotov cocktail attack in September.

Salvatore Cazzetta: The 60-year-old is believed to be a leader among the Hells Angels in Quebec and one of its most influential members.

Salvatore Cazzetta: He’s been described as controlling everything the Mafia doesn’t.

Cazzetta founded the outlaw motorcycle gang Rock Machine before joining the Hells Angels. In 1994, he was convicted in the U.S. and jailed for attempting to smuggle 200 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. He was released 10 years later.

He’s been loosely described in Montreal media reports throughout the years as controlling everything the Mafia doesn’t.

According to police, the recent investigation alleges that he took care of handling the money being shared between the so-called alliance.

Maurice (Mom) Boucher: Currently serving a life sentence in prison, Boucher, 62, is the former president of the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter.

Maurice (Mom) Boucher.

Boucher was heading the Nomads, an elite chapter of the Quebec Hells Angels, when Quebec’s biker gang wars started in the mid-1990s, during which more than 160 people were killed.

Boucher is now serving a life sentence for ordering the murders of Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau and for the attempted murder of Robert Corriveau in 1997, all guards at provincial detention centres. He was found guilty of the murders in 2002, and is detained at the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines penitentiary, northwest of Montreal.

Alexandra Mongeau: Maurice Boucher’s daughter, 25, was also arrested on Thursday.

Police allege the two met at the penitentiary where Boucher is incarcerated and used coded language to discuss a murder plot to have a former right-hand man of Vito Rizzuto, Raynald Desjardins, killed. Police said Mongeau would have relayed messages from her father to Gregory Woolley.

Raynald Desjardins: Once a known associate of Vito Rizzuto, Desjardins also had ties to people who challenged the Rizzuto organization. The 61-year-old is considered by police to be the leader of one of the factions that battled for control of the Mafia in 2011. In July, he pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to murder New York Mafia boss Salvatore Montagna in 2011.

Raynald Desjardins.

Police said Thursday that Boucher wanted Desjardins dead primarily to “ensure they could continue to control the territory,” but noted that there was also “certainly an aspect of vengeance.”

NOTABLE PLACES: 

Cavaliere and Associates: Loris Cavaliere’s law firm, which represented members of the Rizzuto crime family, is located at 6977 St-Laurent Blvd., near Mozart Ave. in Little Italy. It was the target of a Molotov cocktail attack in September. Police didn’t comment on the act at the time.

Police raid the Cavaliere & Associés offices in Montreal Nov. 19, 2015.

“It was kind of used as a legal shield,” Bélanger said of the offices on Thursday. “And on a number of occasions, important players from organized crime groups would meet there on an almost daily basis.”

Vito Rizzuto’s son, Leonardo, and his daughter, Bettina, also practised law there.

Ste-Anne-des-Plaines Institution: The Ste-Anne-des-Plaines Institution where Boucher and his daughter allegedly plotted Desjardins’s murder is one of the two highest security prisons in Canada.

Aerial view of the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines institution (Google Earth).

Roughly 40 kilometres northwest of Montreal, Boucher has been held in the special handling unit there since 2002. The unit is generally reserved for fewer than 100 of the country’s most dangerous inmates.

It has been almost two years since the likes of Salvatore Cazzetta, Gregory Woolley and Stefano Sollecito were seen in public at the same event, as among about 1,000 mourners at the visitation for Vito Rizzuto, the head of the Mafia in Montreal who had died a week earlier.

With their arrests in a drug-trafficking investigation on Thursday, along with Montreal defence lawyer Loris Cavaliere, Rizzuto’s surviving son, Leonardo Rizzuto, whom police describe as one of his two co-successors, and 43 other people, the police operation has exposed a “perfect” criminal organization that had been assembled since Vito Rizzuto’s passing and that might have made the don proud.

Among those arrested are members of the Hells Angels, major street gangs and the Mafia, and it recalls the legacy of Vito Rizzuto, who during his reign struck new ground for his organization by forming alliances with outside criminal gangs, says Antonio Nicaso, an expert on organized crime who has written several books on the Mafia and teaches a course on Mafia history and culture at Queen’s University in Kingston.

“One of his major accomplishments was the creation of the consortium, the strategic alliances between the Mafia, Hells Angels, West End Gang, the Colombian cartels,” he said.

“What this new management was trying to accomplish was a new strategic alliance with the Hells Angels and the street gangs. They were trying to rebuild the same concept introduced by Vito Rizzuto. … They were trying to put together a perfect organization to deal with drug-trafficking or other major sources of income.”

In fact, the pieces were already present at the time of Rizzuto’s death.

Nicaso lauded the police operation, which he said bored through three layers of the illegal drug trade in Montreal: the importation of large quantities of illegal drugs, which is handled by the Mafia, the distribution of the drugs, which is the domain of outlaw biker gangs, and point-of-sale on city streets, which in parts of Montreal is the bailiwick of street gangs.

“So this was a brilliant operation,” he said of the police. “This operation targeted in a very good and efficient way the (entire) criminal organization. So this should be a case study.”

A fourth and crucial layer in a criminal conspiracy is money-laundering, he said, but it was unclear as of Thursday whether the police operation had attacked that.

However, what is significant is that among those arrested is a lawyer, a profession that represents the juncture between the underworld and the legitimate economy, Nicaso said.

“The Mafia without professionals, without accountants, without lawyers, without businessmen, without politicians, is like coffee without caffeine,” he said.

The police charge that Cavaliere acted as a facilitator and mediator for members of the criminal alliance and allowed his law office in Little Italy to be used for their regular meetings. (Leonardo Rizzuto is also a lawyer.)

“If you want to dismantle a criminal organization, you have to target the upper world and the underworld,” Nicaso said. “You can’t just put in jail alleged members of a criminal organization because they’re replaceable. But if you target the wider circle that helps the Mafia get stronger, then you can accomplish something.”

The arrest of the lawyer is a coup for the police, organized crime experts say, because lawyers are a difficult group to target in an investigation because of solicitor-client privilege. It’s difficult for police to obtain permission for a wiretap, and lawyers are the one profession exempted from Canada’s money laundering and terrorist financing law.

The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the exemption in February, which means that lawyers are not required to report on clients’ suspicious financial transactions to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or Fintrac.

The Supreme Court ruling said the law provides inadequate protection for confidences that are subject to solicitor-client privilege.

Canada is unlike a lot of countries in excluding lawyers from such provisions, said Margaret Beare, a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.

“I think it’s a problem,” she said, adding that she too was surprised to see lawyers among those charged on Thursday. “The very large money-laundering cases will very often have a lawyer involved in it.

“Lawyers are important to organized crime.”

Meanwhile, pundits and experts are speculating about who may fill the void following Thursday’s arrests.

Just as two years ago, one of the elements may already be staring everyone in the face, Nicaso suggested. One of the largest wreaths at Vito Rizzuto’s funeral was sent by the Hells Angels in Ontario, he said.

“I don’t think we’ll have a super crime family with the same power they used to have,” Nicaso said of the Montreal Mafia. “But a very strong and rising power is the Hells Angels in Ontario and Quebec. And we got the indication that they were strong players and strong allies of the Mafia at the funeral of Vito Rizzuto.”

lgyulai@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/CityHallReport

On Gérald Tremblay, who quit as Montreal’s mayor in 2012 when the commission was looking into municipal contracts, and Frank Zampino, who was chairman of the city’s executive committee during the Tremblay era:

“Between April 1996 and April 2009, at least six internal reports identified significant anomalies in relation to the granting and management of construction contracts,” the report says. “In most cases, the reports were not followed up, mostly due to lapses in the management of documents and the transmission of information to decision-makers.”

As mayor, Tremblay “did not adequately exercise his oversight and supervisory role over the municipal administration, preferring to defer to the chair of the executive committee.”

“As senior city of Montreal officials, (Tremblay) and the chair of the executive committee had the power to require that employees and senior officials meet highest integrity standards,” the report states. “Tremblay took few initiatives in this regard. He only took actions when scandals broke, or when he feared they might explode. Frank Zampino did not respect the rules that his administration imposed on his employees.”

On Lino Zambito, former construction company boss:

“Lino Zambito and (Génius Conseil) engineer Michel Lalonde paved the way for many other witnesses who followed them. The contribution of all these witnesses in the commission’s work was exceptional and priceless.

“Without their testimony, the commission could not have carried out its mandate. It took a lot of courage and determination from them and their families to reveal publicly, on camera, acts of collusion and corruption …

“They revealed the existence and the workings of several collusion and corruption schemes orchestrated by engineering firms and construction companies in Montreal, Laval and elsewhere in the province, as well as at (Transport Quebec) and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

“They allowed us to understand the mechanisms and their subtleties.”

On Antonio Accurso, former construction magnate, who spent five days on the Charbonneau witness stand:

Calls for a corruption inquiry grew in 2009 after it was revealed that union leaders and Montreal executive committee chair Frank Zampino had vacationed on a yacht owned by construction company owner Antonio Accurso.

Accurso is now facing many charges, including corruption, fraud, tax-evasion, conspiracy, influence-peddling, breach of trust. During the hearings, he testified that he gave a $250,000 cheque to former Montreal police chief Jacques Duchesneau to help him pay debts incurred during a failed mayoralty run. Duchesneau, an anti-corruption crusader, denied having received the cheque.

In its report, the commission notes that during its hearings, Accurso said he would provide the commission with “all documents relating to a check he claims to have written on behalf of Duchesneau. But he never provided this documentary evidence and therefore did not support his assertion, which leads us to believe he is not telling the truth on this point.”

On the Hells Angels, who figured prominently at commission hearings:

Forty-nine pages of the inquiry’s final report are devoted to the biker gang. But only 11 of those pages are legible, the rest having been redacted because of ongoing investigations.

Most of what was made public in the report is about the history of the Hells, from the gang’s origins in California in 1948 to its establishment in Quebec in 1977 to its infiltration of the province’s masonry industry beginning in 2006.

By controlling businesses in the industry, “their goal was to launder drug-trafficking profits, find jobs and contracts for their members or sympathizers and expand their influence into the legal economy,” the report says.

About 75 per cent of Hells Angels members own their own companies, often in the construction industry, according to the commission. The masonry industry is particularly vulnerable to criminals because companies tend to be small, with seasonal cash-flow problems. Legitimate companies with liquidity problems “often have no choice but to turn to illegitimate sources of funding to the often very high (interest) rates.”

Almost all of the major players arrested in last week’s stunning police roundup of the alleged heads of organized crime groups in Montreal will remain behind bars for a while.

Arrangements were made Wednesday, at the Montreal courthouse, to have dates set for bail hearings in the cases of Leonardo Rizzuto, 46, Stefano Sollecito, 48, – alleged by the Sûreté du Québec to be the new heads of the Mafia in Montreal – and lawyer Loris Cavaliere, 54, along with many other people who were arrested in Projects Magot and Mastiff. Dozens of lawyers packed into a courtroom on the sixth floor of the Montreal courthouse for a hearing before Quebec Court Judge Marie-Josée Di Lallo who had planned to split many of the accused into two groups who would have bail hearings at the Gouin courthouse.

The courthouse next to the Montreal Detention Centre on Gouin Blvd. was designed specifically to handle cases involving large groups of accused. More than 40 people were arrested in the roundup last week.

Rizzuto and Sollecito are charged with committing a criminal act “for the profit of, under the direction of, or in association with a criminal organization.” The pair are also charged with taking part in two different conspiracies to traffic cocaine between Jan. 1, 2013, and Nov. 16 of this year. Cavaliere is charged with facilitating a crime for a criminal organization as well as trafficking cocaine with a few well-known street gang leaders.

Di Lallo’s original plan was to schedule two separate bail hearings beginning on Dec. 2 and Dec. 14. But defence lawyer Danielle Roy, who represents Sollecito, asked Di Lallo to delay that plan. The hearing was suspended for about 30 minutes while the Crown discussed matters with some of the defence lawyers outside the courtroom. When everyone returned the plan had changed. Lawyers representing most of the accused agreed to let their clients remain behind bars for several more days as Dec. 3 was set as a mere formality hearing in the case.

Rizzuto is the son of Vito Rizzuto, the former head of the Mafia in Montreal who died of natural causes in December 2013. Leonardo’s sister Bettina sat in the sixth-floor courtroom on Wednesday but did not take part in the proceedings. In the corridor of the courthouse she could be seen discussing matters with Dominique Schoofey, the defence attorney who is representing her brother.

David Pépin-Massé, one of the accused, leaves the courtroom during a preliminary bail hearing for the accused in Project Magot and Mastiff at the Montreal courthouse Wednesday November 25, 2015.

Salvatore Cazzetta, 60, alleged to be a leading member of the Hells Angels in Quebec, was also arrested last week. He was allowed to have a bail hearing this week, before Quebec Court Judge Pierre Labelle, because he recently underwent an operation and is still recovering from it. Labelle finished hearing evidence in the bail hearing on Wednesday and said he will deliver his decision on Dec. 2.

Cazzetta was charged in Project Mastiff last week but a few days later a new indictment was filed against him. He is also accused of violating the conditions of a release he was granted in 2009 after he was arrested in a case involving contraband tobacco. He has yet to go to trial in that case and was supposed to follow the conditions in order to avoid jail. One count in the new indictment alleges Cazzetta met with fellow members of the Hells Angels on Jan. 13, which he was not allowed to do as part of his conditional release.

Another person charged in Project Mastiff, David Pépin-Massé, 32, appeared before Di Lallo on Wednesday to make a request to have his conditional release modified. Pépin-Masse is a hockey player with the Laval Prédateurs, at team that is part of the North American Hockey League. He was granted a conditional release last week but asked to have it modified so his curfew won’t affect his hockey team’s schedule. He faces three charges related to Project Mastiff including drug trafficking and being part of a conspiracy to do the same.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

One of the lawyers representing Leslie Greenwood in his murder trial has asked the jury to carefully consider the credibility of the Crown’s most important witnesses before reaching their decision.

Greenwood, 46, is charged with the first-degree murders of Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi and with conspiring to kill both. The victims were shot on Jan. 24, 2010, in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

The Crown’s theory is that Jeffrey Lynds, a Hells Angel based in Nova Scotia, ordered Murray dead and that Robert Simpson, 53, carried the hit out for him and killed Onesi, because as Murray’s frequent driver, he was a witness to the slaying. Simpson’s younger brother, Timothy, 50, took part in the murders by watching his brother’s back while armed with a shotgun.

Greenwood is alleged to have driven the Simpson brothers from Nova Scotia to Montreal for the sole purpose of carrying out the murders and then drove them back.

Both of the Simpson brothers decided to become collaborating witnesses shortly after their arrests. Much of the Crown’s evidence is based on their testimony and, while making final arguments at the Montreal courthouse this week, defence lawyer Paul Skolnik called both men “amoral sociopaths” who would lie about anything for their benefit.

Skolnik reserved his harshest criticism for Robert Simpson. He described him as someone who kills humans like most people “would step on a spider.”

During his testimony, Robert Simpson admitted to having killed five men inside federal penitentiaries while he served sentences during most of his adult years. That included the 1982 death of Robert Conroy, a man Simpson considered to be his best friend when they were teenagers.

Simpson said he killed Conroy, inside a penitentiary in Ontario, because he had introduced him to a group of high-ranking mobsters who later found out Conroy was alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman during a robbery — something the mobsters considered beneath them. Simpson told the jury in October that he didn’t have a choice because the mobsters would have killed him as well for having brought Conroy into their group.

“He had choices. He could have gone to the guards and asked to have him and his friend transferred,” Skolnik said. “He has no concept of right or wrong.”

Skolnik asked the jury to consider things like Conroy’s death when weighing the Simpson brothers’ version of Greenwood’s involvement in the murders against Greenwood’s version. The brothers alleged Greenwood was aware of their plans when he drove them to Montreal and that he followed their orders and acted as a getaway driver immediately after Murray and Onesi were shot several times.

Greenwood testified at length in his own defence and told the jury he simply gave the brothers a lift to Montreal as a favour to Lynds, his best friend, and that he had no idea why they were going to Montreal. Greenwood also testified that eight hours after dropping the brothers off, they ran into him by pure coincidence after Murray and Onesi had been shot. He testified that he only agreed to drive the brothers back to Nova Scotia because Robert Simpson pointed a gun at him.

Skolnik argued that Robert Simpson lied throughout his testimony to settle “some kind of a score” against his client.

“These people are accomplished liars,” the defence attorney added, while highlighting two instances where Timothy Simpson admitted that he was able to lie well enough to become part of a methadone program inside a federal penitentiary and, in 2010, skilfully managed to talk his way out of an arrest after committing a home invasion in Prince Edward Island.

“When it is in their interest to lie, they lie,” Skolnik said, adding that the benefit the brothers sought from lying came in the form of how they are incarcerated. Robert Simpson testified that he is serving his time with only five other inmates and, because he is a collaborating witness, he is not among the general population of a federal penitentiary, a violent atmosphere that he acknowledged he wanted to avoid. He cited this as one of the main reasons he decided to become a collaborating witness and why he convinced his brother to do the same.

“It gives him peace of mind. He doesn’t have to worry about all of the enemies he’s made over the years,” Skolnik said, while arguing that served as an incentive for Robert Simpson to lie about his client.

Skolnik told the jury he plans to complete his arguments on Friday. The Crown is scheduled to begin making its closing arguments on Monday.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

A jury that began hearing evidence on Sept. 16 in a trial involving a double-murder carried out in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce will finally begin its deliberation on Friday morning.

The 12-person jury listened to final instructions from Quebec Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque on Thursday before being sequestered. For several weeks they heard evidence alleging that Leslie Greenwood, 46, of Nova Scotia, was the getaway driver when Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi were fatally shot in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant on Jan. 24, 2010. The Crown’s main witnesses were brothers Robert and Timothy Simpson. Robert, 53, told the jury he killed both men for Jeffrey Albert Lynds, a Hells Angel based in Nova Scotia. Timothy, 50, testified he watched his brother’s back, armed with a shotgun, while the murders were carried out. Both brothers are serving life sentences for the slayings.

Leslie Douglas Greenwood.

Despite the remarkable length of Greenwood’s trial, the jury never heard from two witnesses who played significant roles related to the firearm used in the crime.

Both men turned out to have been police informants, or tipsters, who later became contract informants for the RCMP. And both represented the bookends in how Robert Simpson, got his hands on the firearm used in the murders and how he got rid of it.

Robert William Simpson.

Following his arrest for the two murders, Simpson decided to become a collaborating witness for the prosecution and his brother followed suit. They would have testified against Lynds but the Hells Angel committed suicide while he was charged and detained in the same case. While testifying during the trial, Simpson said he sold the 9 mm handgun to a crack dealer who operated near Truro, N.S., and knew Lynds well.

What Simpson did not know was that, at the time, the crack dealer was feeding information to a police investigator. Sometime after he purchased the firearm — and realized its importance when Lynds and Simpson were arrested — the crack dealer provided information to an RCMP investigator that led to the gun being recovered, in a wooded area in East Mountain, a small town in Nova Scotia.

After the firearm was recovered, the crack dealer became a contract informant for the RCMP and helped them in a different investigation, in Nova Scotia, that was dubbed Operation Tango.

The Crown in the Greenwood trial planned to call the crack dealer as a witness to support Robert Simpson’s testimony. During the last weekend of October, the crack dealer was brought to Montreal and put up in a hotel to prepare him for testimony that was supposed to be heard on Oct. 28. But before the jury was called in on that day, prosecutor Richard Audet had a surprise announcement for Bourque.  Audet announced the Crown was dropping the crack dealer as a witness because he insisted on being paid for his testimony or he might start forgetting things.

What Simpson was also unaware of, back when he was hanging around with Lynds in the months leading up to the double murder, was that the man who steered him towards the Taurus 9 mm pistol was also a drug dealer who was secretly feeding information to the police.

Louis (Le Gros) Vigeant was supposed to be one of Lynds’ sources for drugs while he tried to re-establish the Hells Angels presence in Nova Scotia, and in particular Halifax. The gang’s ability to control drug trafficking in Canadian cities east of Ontario had been dealt a serious blow by Operation SharQc, a Sûreté du Québec-led investigation that produced the arrests of almost every Hells Angel based in Quebec in March 2009.

SharQc somehow had a significant influence on the gang’s drug trafficking turf in Halifax. Lynds was supposed to fix that while using Simpson as his bodyguard. The plan was to enter bars in Halifax and inform the people running them the Hells Angels were back. Robert Simpson testified that Lynds told him to start carrying a firearm and to wear a bulletproof vest while they did their work. He said it was Vigeant, a Montreal-based drug trafficker, who advised Lynds to visit with Vigeant’s business partner, a Verdun drug dealer named Daniel (Dany) Ponton. Simpson said it was Ponton who supplied him with the gun that was later used to kill Murray and Onesi.

Lynds ended up owing Vigeant at least $40,000. The Hells Angel believed Vigeant’s complaints about the debt are what prompted a Hells Angels chapter based in Ontario to suspend Lynds from the gang and take away his patch. The Crown’s theory is that Murray was ordered, by Lynds, to kill Vigeant but the failed hit only injured him. What no one knew at the time, (outside of the RCMP) was that Vigeant had just agreed to become a contract informant for the Mounties in Project Cynique, a probe into three drug smuggling conspiracies.

When Lynds learned Vigeant had survived the shooting, he asked Robert Simpson to kill Murray because he feared Murray would either talk to the police or the Hells Angels about the hit the gang never authorized.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Defence lawyer Loris Cavaliere has agreed to put his practice on hold as part of a series of conditions to be released from detention two weeks after his arrest in a major organized crime bust.

Cavaliere, 61, agreed to follow a long list of conditions, as laid out by the Crown, during a court hearing before Quebec Court Judge Nathalie Fafard at the Montreal courthouse on Friday.

The conditions forbid Cavaliere from meeting with his clients, even those with cases pending, and he is not allowed to associate with people who have criminal records. He is also not allowed to go to his own law firm, Cavaliere et Associés on St-Laurent Blvd., while his case is pending. He is also only allowed to be at a courthouse for court dates related to his own case. Another condition forbids him from even identifying himself as a lawyer.

Cavaliere, who is being represented by lawyer Gilbert Frigon, was also required to deposit $150,000 and have someone post a bond worth $150,000 in order to be released. Other conditions that were imposed on the attorney were more of the standard variety. He is not allowed to have a cellphone, smart phone or a firearm in his possession and he is not allowed to be inside bars.

Cavaliere was arrested on Nov. 19, along with several other people, including alleged Mafia bosses Leonardo Rizzuto, 46, and Stefano Sollecito, 48, in Projects Magot and Mastiff, a police investigation into the Mafia, Hells Angels and Montreal street gangs.

Related

• Find more on the Montreal Mafia

As Frigon waited for the hearing to proceed Friday morning he could be seen chatting with several experienced defence lawyers who appeared to be interested in Cavaliere’s release. Rizzuto’s sister, Bettina, a lawyer with Cavaliere et Associés according to the Barreau du Quebec’s website, joined in the courthouse hallway conversations as well. Leonardo Rizzuto is also listed as a lawyer with Cavaliere et Associés. Their father, Vito Rizzuto, was the head of the Mafia in Montreal for decades before he died of natural causes two years ago.

After the arrests were made, the Sûreté du Québec alleged that Cavaliere’s office in Little Italy was used as a meeting place for high-ranking organized crime figures to allow them to discuss criminal conspiracies. The provincial police force also alleged Cavaliere had acted as an intermediary between Rizzuto and Sollecito and other high-ranking organized crime figures. An organizational chart presented at a police press conference on Nov. 19 portrayed Cavaliere as a middleman between the alleged Mafia bosses and Hells Angels leader Salvatore Cazzetta, 61, as well as three well known street gang leaders; Gregory Woolley, 43, Dany Sprinces Cadet, 45, and Jean Winsing Barthelus, 37.

Cavaliere is charged with “participating or contributing to the activity of a criminal organization with the goal of increasing the organization’s facility” to commit a crime. He is also charged with trafficking in cocaine, along with nine other men including Gaétan Sévigny, a man with known ties to the Hells Angels. The alleged crimes occurred between Jan. 1, 2013 and Nov. 16 of this year.

Cavaliere’s case returns to court on Jan. 18.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

The Operation SharQc trial, which ended abruptly in October setting five men free, involved a general murder conspiracy charge as well as seven first-degree murder charges. At the heart of Justice James Brunton’s decision to end the trial was the prosecution’s failure to turn over evidence to the defence about the March 12, 1997 murder of Sylvain Reed. 

The five men who had been on trial for Reed’s slaying were alleged to have been members of the Sherbrooke chapter of the Hells Angels between 1994 and 2002. 

The key witness in the SharQc investigation, a Hells Angel named Sylvain Boulanger who turned informant, gave the prosecution one version of how Reed was killed in the Eastern Townships. The prosecution appeared to hold back on revealing to the defence that as far back as 2001, the police had a very different version of how Reed was murdered from an informant who was working for them under a contract. That account was only turned over to the defence once the trial was well underway.

While neither version is from an actual eyewitness, Brunton pointed out that by failing to divulge the evidence for four years the prosecution prevented the defence from having the time to prepare to challenge Boulanger’s credibility, which was a crucial part of the trial.

This was the gist of Boulanger’s version of how Reed was killed:

Gaétan David, a man who would later become a member of the Hells Angels chapter in Sherbrooke, approached Sylvain Vachon (one of the Hells Angels who was on trial) and informed him Reed had just been released from prison and had become an associate of the Rock Machine, a rival gang.

Vachon talked to several members of the chapter and suggested Reed should be eliminated. Boulanger claimed that fellow Sherbrooke Hells Angels Louis Brochu, Guy Rodrigue, Jacques Filteau, Michel Fortin and Yvon Tanguay (one of the accused on trial) agreed with Vachon.

Boulanger also told police that after Reed was killed, Vachon told him the following: That Gaétan David went to Sylvain Reed’s home and invited him into his car. David then brought Reed to Vachon’s home where Vachon and Michel Vallières (one of the accused on trial) were waiting. The trio then beat Reed with the goal of getting information on the Rock Machine from him. Reed gave up no information so Vachon, David and Vallières killed him by suffocating him, Boulanger told police. Vallières and David drove away with the body, using a Blazer as their vehicle, while Vachon stayed behind and cleaned up his home.

This was the other, much different version of Reed’s slaying, which police had on file from a drug trafficking investigation:

This version, from another police informant, claimed that Gaétan David ordered a man named Serge Pinard to kill Reed and that Pinard was very worried about the police investigation into the murder. The police also received information that Pinard was in a getaway vehicle used during Reed’s murder and that at the time he drove a black Blazer. Included in the evidence was a summary where the contract informant told two police investigators “that in the end it was Serge Pinard who killed Reed under orders from (Gaétan) David.”

The five men who had been on trial for Reed’s death, until Brunton ordered the stay of proceedings in October, were Claude Berger, 66, Yvon Tanguay, 65, François Vachon, 44, Sylvain Vachon, 49, and Michel Vallières, 49. They had all been charged with conspiracy to commit murder and also faced first-degree murder charges.

The head of the provincial prosecutor’s bureau has received the report she ordered in October into how the prosecution failed to turn over evidence, within a reasonable delay, to defence lawyers in the SharQc murder trial. 

Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s bureau (DPCP), said that Jean Lortie submitted his report to DPCP Director Annick Murphy on Friday.

Boucher said Murphy will go over the report carefully before making any decisions and has no comments to make for the time being.

Murphy gave the mandate for an administrative investigation to Lortie, a former prosecutor and former deputy minister with the provincial government. The investigation was requested one week after Superior Court Justice James Brunton placed a stay of proceedings on seven first-degree murder charges and a conspiracy charge that aborted a jury trial on Oct. 9. 

The five men who had been on trial, who were alleged to have been Hells Angels during Quebec’s biker gang war between 1994 and 2002, were freed after Brunton’s decision. The judge had ruled that the prosecution abused procedure by failing to turn over crucial evidence to the defence until ‎the trial was well underway. 

The decision has had a ripple effect as 35 Hells Angels who were also arrested in Operation SharQc are seeking to have the guilty pleas they entered — to having taken part in a general conspiracy to commit murder during the biker gang war — reversed. They are arguing they would not have entered the guilty pleas if their lawyers were aware of the evidence the prosecution failed to disclose for four years.

Lawyers representing the 35 men attended a brief hearing at the Quebec Court of Appeal on Friday but the case was merely carried over to January. 

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

A man who was once considered one of the most powerful Hells Angels in Quebec has been told he cannot deal in real estate while he continues to serve a lengthy sentence for conspiring to murder rival gang members.

Normand Robitaille’s ascension within the Hells Angels while the biker gang was at war with rival gangs like the Rock Machine, between 1994 and 2002, revealed he was a very active participant in the conflict that claimed more than 160 lives. Beginning in 1995, he went from being a member of the Rockers (an underling gang that did the dirty work for the Hells Angels’ Nomads chapter) to becoming a full-patch (or full fledged) member of the chapter in 1998.

He was arrested in 2001, along with most of the Nomads chapter and the Rockers, in a police crackdown on gang violence. The investigation, dubbed Operation Springtime 2001, revealed the Nomads chapter generated $111 million in revenue from drug trafficking between March 30, 1999, to Dec. 19, 2000 — a period during which the police were able to secretly monitor the gang’s accounting practices. In 2003, when Robitaille, now 47, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, drug trafficking and gangsterism, he was left with a 15-year prison term to serve. The sentence was increased to 17 years, in 2005, after a Quebec Superior Court judge ruled Robitaille used a company to launder money made from drug trafficking by investing in several buildings in Quebec. 

While serving his sentence, Robitaille told Correctional Service Canada that he quit the biker gang and, in 2009, the Sûreté du Québec confirmed it appeared he had severed ties with the Hells Angels. In 2013, he obtained permission for unescorted leaves that allowed him to attend courses at a Montreal business school. The Parole Board of Canada allowed Robitaille to take the courses because he appeared to be highly motivated to leave the world of organized crime. 

When he reached his statutory release date (the two-thirds mark of his sentence), on Jan. 22, 2015, Robitaille already had a job waiting for him. The parole board ordered that Robitaille reside at a halfway house while he worked as a means to monitor him. 

According to the most recent parole board decision made concerning Robitaille’s release, he collaborates with his parole officer but has become so busy in his business activities “they have taken on a proportion that has become impossible to monitor.” A written summary of the decision notes Robitaille is currently working for a company (whose name was redacted from the summary) where his primary functions are to develop new business opportunities. 

The summary states that while Robitaille has been transparent, problems arose when he worked on a project to develop software connected to the auctioning of cars. This was interrupted because a background check of the people involved “revealed that one of (Robitaille’s) associates was a subject of interest to the police.” Other verifications found a bank account and a credit card Robitaille had failed to report to his parole officers and that he had contacted the son of a member of the Hells Angels through the Internet — all were considered potential violations of the conditions attached to his release. 

In December, Robitaille responded to the parole board, in writing, to all of the questions raised by the verifications and argued, successfully, that the person he contacted did not have a criminal record. He also complained that having his finances and phone records verified “has become a task that is too big and too voluminous for his parole officer.”

 The parole board agreed with Robitaille’s arguments but decided it had to do something about his business activities “because it represents an increase in the risk” of him reoffending. To that end, it recently imposed an additional condition to Robitaille’s release prohibiting him from doing work “paid or not, that would lead you to participate in the acquisition of, or the management of,” real estate. 

Robitaille’s sentence expires in 2020. 

***

In another decision made recently by the parole board, Stéphane Faucher, 44, a former member of the Rockers also arrested in Operation Springtime 2001, was ordered to remain behind bars even though his statutory release date came and went in January 2013. Faucher’s role in the biker war was to do surveillance on men the Hells Angels plotted to kill. He did this while managing to sell five kilograms of cocaine per week for the biker gang. Shortly after his arrest in 2001, Faucher agreed to become a collaborating witness for the prosecution. He pleaded guilty to the same charges as Robitaille and was sentenced to a 12-year prison term. 

When Faucher finally appeared before a jury, in 2003, as a prosecution witness, he shouted: “All of this is a frame-up by two pigs!”(a reference to police investigators) before he was removed from the witness stand by guards, and returned to jail.

The recent decision by the parole board sheds light on what might have been behind Faucher’s behaviour. In November 2014, a psychiatrist diagnosed him as suffering from paranoid-schizophrenia. One month later, a psychologist came up with a different opinion and suggested Faucher shows some light symptoms of autism.  

The parole board recently decided to maintain Faucher’s incarceration because he refuses to reside in a halfway house for the time that remains on his sentence. 

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

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The two men alleged to be the new heads of the Mafia in Montreal when they were arrested in November, as part of a police investigation targeting the leaders of criminal organizations in the city, are scheduled to begin their long-awaited bail hearing on Monday.

Evidence is expected to be heard over the course of three days, at the Montreal courthouse as Leonardo Rizzuto, 46, and Stefano Sollecito, 48, seek to be released while both face two charges related to Project Magot, a Sûreté du Québec-led investigation into drug trafficking in Montreal. Both men are charged with taking part in a conspiracy to traffic in drugs between Jan. 1, 2013, and Nov. 16 last year. They are also charged committing a crime “for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal organization.” 

When they were arrested in November, the police identified Rizzuto and Sollecito as the heads of the Mafia in Montreal. A organizational chart presented during a press conference identified Sollecito as the “Interim Godfather” of the Mafia. Rizzuto’s father, Vito, was the head of the Mafia in Montreal for more than two decades until his death, by natural causes, in December 2013. Leonardo Rizzuto, recognized as a lawyer by the Quebec Bar Association, has been convicted twice in the past for impaired driving and was sentenced to serve a 14-day prison term in 1995. 

Sollecito, the son of Mafia leader Rocco Sollecito, 67, was arrested in 2001, as part of a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation dubbed Project Oltre. The investigation, based in Ontario, uncovered a group that had distributed tens of thousands of ecstasy pills in Canada. Sollecito ended up with a four-year prison term in Project Oltre, after being convicted of drug trafficking and the illegal possession of a firearm. According to a Parole Board of Canada decision made in 2003, while serving his sentence, Sollecito was “perceived as a person who had power over other inmates.”   

Both Rizzuto and Sollecito have been detained since Nov. 19, when the SQ, along with several other police forces, arrested dozens of people sought on arrest warrants filed in Project Magot as well as Project Mastiff, an investigation into a drug trafficking network related to the Hells Angels. During the course of Projects Magot and Mastiff, the SQ also uncovered a plot to murder Raynald Desjardins, 62, a former close associate of Rizzuto’s now-deceased father, Vito. Desjardins is behind bars and awaiting his sentence for plotting the murder of Salvatore Montagna, a Mafioso who was killed near Montreal on Nov. 24, 2011. 

Eighteen people in all were charged in Project Mastiff alone and seven have since been released. The other nine people who are detained and charged on the same indictment as Rizzuto and Sollecito have yet to have bail hearings and have court dates scheduled for next week. 

Forty-six people have been arrested in Projects Magot and Mastiff since Nov. 19. Another two — José McCarthy, 39, and Patrick Williams, 41 — are still being sought by the Sûreté du Québec. Both men face drug trafficking charges in Project Mastiff. 

pcherry@postmedia.com