John Allore's Blog, page 7

The Dirty Reich

“We’re not looking for trouble, we just want to have fun, we like the trip, the meeting of pretty girls, a beer from time to time, etc”

Po-Pol, Playboys MC

Before they were Hells, even before the Gitans, they were The Dirty Reich. This isn’t going back as far as the Montreal Irish Red Hand Gang, but it’s pretty far back – 50 years, the 1960s. Georges “Bo-Boy” Beaulieu, the de-facto president of The Gitans who rose to prominence in the Hells Angels, was, at first, a member of The Dirty Reich.

The Gitans/Gypsies first formed as the Dirty Reich in the early 1960s. They changed their gang name to Gitans in 1970. They were allowed to patch over to be the Sherbrooke /Lennoxville Hells Angels on December 5, 1984. Then on May 24, 1985 we have the massacre of Laval chapter members at the Lennoxville bunker, and there you have a very brief history of the evolution of The Dirty Reich.

Going back even further, we find that the Dirty Reich actually spun off from an early version of what would become the Gitans number one rivals, The Atomes. So The Atomes begat The Dirty Reich begat The Gitans, then patched over to The Hells Angels. The earliest written evidence of The Dirty Reich appeared in a 1968 La Tribune article documenting a meeting in Sherbrooke between the Dirty Reich and an MC out of Montreal, The Playboys.

The Playboys came to Sherbrooke for a Saturday meeting with the Dirty Reich, at which a reporter was permitted to sit in and take notes. For their leader, Po-Pol, Sherbrooke was a bad memory. The last time they cruised through, the local police hassled Po-Pol and fellow members, Ronnie, Ti-Bob, Bonnie, Francisco, Jean and Luc. After reading this article, I have to admit, I was beginning to believe I had misunderstood the bikers:

“They travel together on the weekends. They laugh all the time. They live in Montreal but never spend time there. They have been as far as Percé, in Gaspesie. They promise to return to Boston in every week. Their only passion: their bike – that it is in order and in good condition.

They only live according to this motorized machine which represents freedom and escape for them….

For them, it’s friends and the motorbike…. They affirm indeed that their main motto is: “All for one, one for all” and they are ready to come to each’s aid.…

Bikers do not try to cause trouble. They want to ride a motorbike and sail in the open air, that’s all. Besides, when they leave like this for a weekend or even a few days, they admit wanting to take the fresh air, to sleep under the stars, under a bridge in a barn or an abandoned house.

On ne cherche pas le trouble: on veut tout simplement avoir du plaisir, La Tribune, September 15, 1968

The council at Rivendell didn’t see such fellowship. The Tribune article documents what was an early, carefully crafted myth about bikers: They were misunderstood, and unfairly villainized. According to Po-Pol, your average biker was a harmless libertine like Authur Rimbaud. If he had enough to quench his appetite, a bike to ride, an abandoned barn in which to rest his weary head after a long day’s ride, then he was content. Or maybe they were like wild animals; if you didn’t mess with the bikers then the bikers wouldn’t mess with you and society. Except that most bikers weren’t average. They didn’t mind preying off society, stealing property and cashing pensioners welfare checks, as documented in the CECO report – a jug of wine, a line of coke and thou.

Po-Pol of the Playboys MC and his band of musketeers – La Tribune, 1968

Despite apologies years later like ‘we didn’t know’ and ‘it was a few bad apples’, the La Tribune article demonstrates very clearly that the press, police and society were being fleeced from the very beginning. Witness this article from the spring of 1969 which must have gotten lost amidst all the giddy excitement over the moon shot:

A young priest from Sherbrooke will wear a leather jacket and the crest of the “Dirty Reich” motorcycle club

La Tribune – May 21, 1969

Father Jean Salvail, vicar at Ste Famille parish in Sherbrooke, and chaplain for the Dirty Reich motorcycle club, has no intention of imposing himself.

“Like all movements of young people, we must not be accepted, we must be desired; it is the same thing with the “bikers””.

Father Salvail said it is important that he be able to take part in the club’s outings, and that he is present at their meetings.

“You have to be close to these young people and know them well”, continues Abbe Salvail, “to realize that the outward appearance is very deceptive and that they are far from being as too many people imagine them. ”

Acceptance

A group of Dirty Reich club members, asked what they expect from the chaplain, first insisted that Father Salvail is first and foremost a friend, that they did not know he was a priest during their first meeting.

The bikers added that he is an adviser, a guy who knows them well and who thinks more than them.

Thus the members of the Dirty Reich club specified that Father Salvail had acted as an intermediary with the parents of their friend Andre Coulombe who lost his life in a motorcycle accident during the weekend.

Funeral of Andre Coulombe – La Tribune

Explains Marcel “Frank” Thibault, vice-president of the Dirty Reich club, “We were squeamish, and we didn’t have enough psychology to talk to Andre’s parents and convince them to let us participate in the funeral.”

The few Dirty Reich members present all agreed on one point; Father Salvail knows them well, they are more at ease with him, which makes him better able to advise them when problems arise.

Dirty Reich flower arrangement for the funeral of Andre Coulombe – La TribuneIn The Club

During an interview, Father Salvail specified that the decision to become chaplain to the bikers was not taken immediately.

Ordained a priest less than a year ago, Father Salvail met the bikers on several occasions, then he was asked “Are you “game” to board with us?“

Since then, he has attended a few biker meetings and meetings have even taken place in the basement of the church.

“Make no mistake about it”, explains Abbé Salvail: “the members of the Dirty Reich club want to be at peace and they don’t want to trouble anyone ”

A project

Father Salvail explained that bikers realize that when several of them meet at one place, everyone is uncomfortable and many are afraid. It is for this reason, he said, that steps will be taken with the municipal authorities of Sherbrooke, in order to obtain financial assistance that could allow the acquisition of a house outside the city, where all the members of the Dirty Reich club might get together. The members of the club know that the municipal authorities of Granby have contributed a grant to set up “Les Québécois”, a biker club of this city, in a building outside the city. They would like the same thing in Sherbrooke as a contribution to the organization for leisure activities for young people.

His motorcycle

Yesterday, Gingras et Fils Ltée lent a motorcycle to Father Salvail and it will be available to the young priest as long as he acts as chaplain to the bikers. The firm will also take care of the maintenance of Abbé Salvail’s motorcycle. The latter welcomed the news with joy, but the joy was even greater among the members of the Dirty Reich club.

Father John Salvail is presented with his Dirty Reich MC jacket by members Marcel “Frank” Thibault and Georges “Bo-Boy” Beaulieu – La TribuneThe crest

Father Salvail said he wants to dress like the members of the Dirty Reich club. “I want to wear ‘jeans’ like them, a jacket and most importantly the club crest.”

The name of their club, he said, is very important to them and they see to it that they conduct themselves well so as not to sully that name.”

Abbe Salvail’s jacket will have the small “chaplain” crest, at the very request of the members. The chaplain added that his presence in the club had the effect of overcoming the objections of several relatives. who did not value their son being part of the club.

“Finally,” he said, “I could allow myself to be more present with them. when I get to know them better.”

La Tribune, May 21, 1969

There is so much to digest here. Who was this Father Jean Salvail? As the article states, he was a young priest with the Ste. Famille parish in Sherbrooke who believed his ministry should be fulfilled in the community. In this way, working with the early biker gangs, he was not unlike John Dalzell, the Montreal cop who In April 1969 – one month earlier than the publication of this article – launched La MUQ or Association of United Motorcyclists of Quebec / La Fédération des Motocyclistes unis du Québec, one of Quebec’s earliest community policing programs.

Efforts by people like Dalzell and Salvail would have had the effect of instantly legitimizing biker culture at a time when the gangs were eager to establish a foothold in Quebec communities. As the article suggests, if you were a parent, and you were having doubts about the people your son was associating with – but then not only the police, but your priest told you there was nothing to worry about, you wouldn’t question the authority of such figures. As well, there was the media – The Montreal Gazette, Sherbrooke’s La Tribune – promoting these olive branch initiatives as something to be desired by communities. It is not unlike, say, a parent believing there was foul-play involved in the disappearance of their daughter, but then the police and town college coming out and suggesting she was a drug addict, a lesbian or a runaway, so you should just go home and forget all about it. Everything is fine here. That’s the power of institutional influence.

I have no doubt in those early biker days there were members who genuinely only wanted to ride their bikes on weekends and be left alone. But they were easily manipulated and duped by members like “Boy-Boy” Beaulieu who knew they were taking advantage of the good graces of stooges like Father Salvail. Accepting bribes like leather jackets and a bike with free maintenance is the surest road to becoming co-opted and corrupt. Remember that Georges “Bo-Boy” Beaulieu was involved in the murders of five Hells Angles at the Lennoxville bunker in 1985 (the Lennoxville Massacre or Sleeping-Bag Murders). In 1988 he was arrested in Amsterdam and extradited back to Canada, where he pled guilty for his involvement in those five murders.

We don’t hear of Father Salvail again, he’s involved in community work until about 1972, and then he drops off the radar. We can only speculate as to the reason; I wonder if he eventually saw the light that he had been used as a tool. Less than five years later in 1974, Atoms and Gitans were literally shooting it out in the downtown streets of Sherbrooke. I can’t imagine by then any resident of Sherbrooke would have had tolerance for Salvail’s sermon that bikers “want to be at peace and they don’t want to trouble anyone.”

Father Salvail wasn’t quite finished with his do-good ministry for The Dirty Reich. He would re-emerge in the fall of 1969 with a show-stopper – this P.T. Barnum man-of-the-cloth bringing the Eastern Townships the greatest shit-show on earth. It’s some kind of church voodoo fuckery.

But that is a story we will bring you next time.

The post The Dirty Reich first appeared on Who Killed Theresa?.

Les Motards de Quebec – Québexique

One of the many reasons I wanted to start a French podcast was to create a space that would allow for a different perspective on the same basic information. Each episode for the French and English podcasts share the same basic text, but the hosts (myself and Tracy Wing) have permission to go off-script and present our own unique observations. Which is exactly what happened in episode 4, Les Motards de Quebec / The Bikers of Quebec.

The script ends with the report concluding that police couldn’t get a lot done with the Sherbrooke bikers in the ’70s because of the “wall of silence” that surrounds biker culture. Tracy then goes in a very different direction than myself by suggesting that there was also a “wall of silence” around police culture, and that that might be the more damaging element in this era where police lacked the moral courage to dutifully uphold the law. And this comes from Tracy’s personal experience of her son, Riley Fairholm having been shot and killed be Quebec police during a crisis intervention in that region in the summer of 2018.

Oh, and music is different too, you should listen to both!

The post Les Motards de Quebec – Québexique first appeared on Who Killed Theresa?.

The Bikers of Sherbrooke

In order to understand the biker problems, you have to know the bikers. It’s not enough to rattle of a bunch of funny names like the “Sex Foxes” and the “Peckerwoods”, and then conclude, “Well there you have it – The Bikers!”. Which bikers, specifically. And where and when, specifically. It is one thing to say, “Well, the bikers were probably peddling drugs in the local schools and colleges”, quite another to have a government report that documents, from town-to-town this activity.

So for an example, we know from the CECO report that the bikers in St. Gedeon region in the 1970s, were the Missiles. And we know their names, because CECO tells us their names:

Luc Michaud “Bardot” Michel Guénard “Canard” Richard Poudrier “Filtreur” Guy Cossette “Souris” Jerry Coulombe “Le Chat” Jocelyn GIrard “Le ‘Prof” Marcel Blackburn ”Polpon” Jean-Yves Tremblay “Bebé” Gaétan Lavole “Yeti”Roland Cousineau “Mannix”Alain Girard “L’Ours”

We also know that in 1976, before the start of the Olympic Games, Montrealers Jocelyne Beaudoin and Renée Lessard set out on a camping adventure to the Saguenay, and one of their last confirmed sightings was at Saint Gedeon. In fact they were thought to be seen in the company of bikers near Riviere du Loup, and one of the theories is that Beaudoin and Lessard were murdered by bikers.

Jocelyne Beaudoin and Renée Lessard

So 46 years later the murders are still unsolved. And Quebec has a cold case unit. And the theory was bikers, and we have these names of people known to be bikers in that era. Wouldn’t the sensible thing to do would be to track down these names, to figure out who is dead and who is still alive, and interview or re-interview these people? Listen, I know the argument, ‘John, it’s desperate, it’s looking for a needle in a haystack.’ Well, yes and no. No, because it’s Quebec, little changes there – your haystack is not that big, and the needle is more of an awl. Yes, it seems desperate – decades have past, people are dead or close to it, what’s the point? The point is Quebec set up cold case units to fulfill exactly this mandate. It doesn’t matter that it’s difficult, go do what the public resourced you to accomplish.

Where the bikers roamed in 1970s Quebec

The following is the chapter of biker gangs in Sherbrooke from the 1980 CECO report, The Biker Gangs of Quebec. And you can see that when we are talking about biker gangs in the 1970s in Sherbrooke we are mostly talking about two groups: the Atoms (Atomes) and the Gitans (Gypsies):

“Bikers of Sherbrooke

In Sherbrooke, the activities of two motorcycle clubs drew our attention. We held in camera hearings between June 18 and October 18, 1979: in 14 sessions, 47 witnesses were heard and 104 exhibits produced.

From the start of the hearings, there was a great deal of acceleration among motorcyclists in Sherbrooke and the surrounding area. But our work has enabled us to better understand the extent of the phenomenon, to analyze the numerous allegations of crimes and finally to recommend to the Attorney General that charges be brought against individuals.

History

In Sherbrooke, the “Gypsies” and the “Atoms” share the same territory, which has given rise to deadly conflicts between the two clubs.

Thus, during 1973-74, when the two factions were heavily armed, there were frequent scuffles, several bloody ones. There were six murders during this troubled period.

Finally, at the beginning of the year 1975, during a meeting of the presidents of the “Gypsies” and of the “Atoms” as well as their deputies, we succeeded in finding a modus vivendi. The two clubs now manage to co-exist smoothly although there is still enmity between “Gypsies” and “Atoms”.

The “Gitans”

Before 1970, the “Gypsies” were called the “Dirty Reich”. The club was then led by a denounced Jacques Filteau “Boubou”. He is still the leader, even if officially it is Georges Beaulieu “Bo-Boy” who calls himself president. The “Gitans” club had about twenty members at the time of the club wars, and now about fifteen, whose names are:

Georges Beaulieu “Bo-Boy” (president)Jacques Filteau “Boubou” (the one who rules all)Claude Filteau “Vic” or “Victor”Charles Filteau “Cash”Andre Jacob “Dede”Jacques Emond “Israel”Pierre Auclair “Sapeur” or “Sap”Daniel Drouin “Dan”Yvon Tanguay “Bagosse”Guy Auclair “Junior”Robert Tremblay “Couleuvre”Ludger Gagnon “Buck”Gaetan Berger “Ti-Coun”Yves Savoie “Ballotte”Real Lesperance “Yogi”

Hostilities between the “Gitans” and the “Atoms” arose with the arrival, in the sector, of a man named Yves Buteau “The Boss” who liaised with the “Popeyes” of Montreal, who have since become ” Hell’s Angels “.

Buteau was a member of the” Hell’s ​​Angels “with whom he never failed the occasion to support the “Gitans”. There are also two “Popeyes”, Maurice Auqer “Le Grec” and MicheI Roy who were suppliers of weapons to the “Gitans” and even to the “Atoms”.

These two clubs have always been heavily armed with rifles, revolvers, and military weapons.

The “Gitans” displayed their harshness through repulsive and ragged exteriors. One of theirs described some sordid initiation sessions to us.

Another witness informed us about the lifestyle of the “Gitans” at 584 rue Montreal, in Sherbrooke. Despite complaints from neighbors, the building owner was unable to drive them away.

The “Atoms”

These bikers behave like the “Gitans”. They occupy a room, rented by Daniel Carrier “Le Jeune”, rue Wellngton, in Sherbrooke. The Immediate neighbors sought to move away from them.

The “Atomes” have 13 members. Their president, Réjean Gilbert, seeks harmony between the biker clubs of Estrie. Here are their names:

Rejean Gilbert “Farmer” (president)Rejean Adams “Adam” (vice-president)Ronald Sigouin “Big”Yvon Lecours “Castro”Daniel Lincourt “Beone”Daniel Carrier “Le Jeune”Michel Fortier “Ballon”Alyre GrondinRegis Lachance “Chinois”Christina Lecours “Kiki”Jacques Lecours “Coco”Christian Therrien “Boucane”Jacques Leclerc “Festus”

Narcotics

“Gitans” and the “Atoms” are especially preoccupied with drugs, the trade of which gives rise to many crimes.

From 1976 to 1979, the “Gitans” took control of a licensed establishment located in Rock Forest. They terrorized the owners, their employees, even their children. The bartender had to turn a blind eye to the drug trade in the establishment or face reprisals.

The “Gitans” are so masters of the place that they themselves filter the customers. They forbade access, for example, to citizens who displeased them and to people of black races.

Witnesses described to us the drug circuit among the “Gitans”, the sources of supply and the networks of “pushers” who were busy in particular at the Bistro and at the Hôtel Gaspé, in Sherbrooke.

A student admitted his activities of “pusher” on behalf of the “Gitans”. He supplied the children of the Montcalm school, and the young strollers of the rue Wellington, in Sherbrooke. As for its suppliers, they operated in two discotheques, Le “Pharre” and le “Triolet” by selling “pot” for $30.00 an ounce.

The same student was taking delivery of the drugs from a bar in Rock Forest where one of the “Gitans” was permanently present, seven days a week.

Two “Gitans” assaulted those who objected to their business. Another individual admitted to having sold drugs for the “Gitans” at the beginning of 1976. One day, when he was trying to get a clientele, at the Moulin Rouge at the Hotel Gaspé, with the agreement of the “Gitans”, he was beaten by bikers, members of the “Marauders” club of Asbestos. They even shot him in another circumstance: he had entered the territory already served by the “Marauders” of Asbestos. He had to cease his activities.

The “Gitans” also got their supplies of narcotics from the “Hell’s”, given their close relations with Yves Buteau “Le Boss” and Yves Bilodeau “Gorille”. A biker revealed the tricks used to outsmart customs officials and police officers, during the transport of drugs.

According to the treasurer of the “Gitans”, the club’s business is booming: a loan of $10,000.00 had even been granted to a merchant in Sherbrooke.

Selling narcotics in nightclubs and billiard halls paid off big every night.

A Waterville hotelier had to close his establishment following the trouble he caused the “Gitans”. They would consume drugs on the spot, sometimes at the same time as members of the “Atoms”, which caused fights and helped to drive out the regular clientele.

Sexual Assaults

So many witnesses have convinced us that bikers from the “Atoms” club have raped minors and infected them, that we ask the police to complete their investigations so that the suspects answer for their acts in court.

A 16-year-old drugged girl was sexually assaulted. In this circumstance, a biker would have sold her for money to members of the club.

Another minor, under the threat of a beating, had to have sex in front of bikers. She would then have contracted a venereal disease. She told us that all the girls who had relations with a biker she named were also infected.

Another young girl was forced to be sexually assaulted by seven “Atoms” bikers that same night, under threat of beatings.

Several other minors were trained in the biker room to be abused.

Allegations of Crimes

Some witnesses recounted a certain number of crimes for which the police forces are working to complete the necessary proof:

A) In 1978, two bikers allegedly stole a considerable number of motorcycles which they were immediately reselling;
B) two bikers attacked homosexuals they were attracting and then robed them;

C) assault, stabbing, August 2, 1978, in Magog;

D) in 1976, theft of $ 30,000.00 at Farbstein, and $ 40,000.00 at Electrolux;

E) Young people stole Social Welfare checks from letter boxes on behalf of “Gitans” who had them cashed in the bank by young girls;

F) three motorcyclists specialized in theft of safes, they would have succeeded in about thirty;

G) at the “Gitans” club, we found about a hundred forms: birth certificates, driver’s licenses, registrations and credit cards that were sold for between $ 25.00 and $ 100.00.

The Police

On the whole, the police force of the city of Sherbrooke was up to the situation, especially during the last two years preceding this investigation.

To this end, the patrollers joined forces, organized regular visits to biker premises, and carried out frequent checks on the road. Some police officers have received threats. The authorities of the city of Sherbrooke have passed a by-law banning motorcycles on Wellington Street, a favorite spot for bikers for drug trafficking.

Conclusion

The small number of charges that the Commission can recommend is due on the one hand to the fact that a large number of criminal acts were not reported to the police in a timely manner, and on the other struck by fear of reprisals from victims and witnesses, as well as by the law of silence among bikers.”

Georges “Bo-Boy” Beaulieu, centerLuc Gregoire

That was the synopsis of the Atomes and Gitans in 1970s Sherbrooke. One of the first things we learn is that the headquarters of the Gitans was at 584 rue Montreal. That is an interesting location, it’s just off Belvedere in Sherbrooke, and about a 5 minute walk from the headquarters of the Sherbrooke Hussars, where Luc Gregoire may have worked, where Louise Camirand definitely worked. We also learn that the Atomes were not far away, “They occupied a room, rented by Daniel Carrier “Le Jeune”, rue Wellngton”, about a 15 minute walk from the Gitans HQ. This is the neighborhood where Luc Gregoire was living in 1981, when he committed a rape in a downtown parking lot off Belvedere ( during the same period, he robbed a gas station on rue Wellington, but we are getting ahead of ourselves).

By 1980 it appears that The Gitans were asserting dominance over The Atomes. They were supplied by The Hells Angels out of Montreal; they controlled establishments in Rock Forest (we’ve heard that name before), they supplied drugs to a high school three minutes away, the Ecole Mitchell Montcalm up on Portland ( the high school Gregoire was thought to attend), and both groups vie for control of the drug trade among the clubs in downtown Sherbrooke, places like The Bistro, Le Pharre, Le Triolet and The Moulin Rouge along the Wellington corridor. We also learn of biker activity in the remote town of Waterville ( a curiosity we will get to later). Finally we learn that the bikers frequently smuggled drugs across the Canadian – U.S. border, so it was not only the St. Lawrence ports that were supplying the drug trade.

1968 biker film, Angles From Hell which played at the Granada on rue Wellington in Sherbrooke, QC

A lot of names are catalogued here. We won’t go into every name, though we will spend some time on one of them very shortly, the Gitans president, Georges Beaulieu – sometimes referred to as “Bo-Boy” or “Boy-Boy”. And, who knows? With some of these characters, we might discover things as we make our journey here.

To sum up, it appeared that Bikers controlled all criminal elements in Sherbrooke; they were running drugs into the schools, they were heavily armed with military weapons, they brutalized woman at will, yet the CECO report – Marc Andre Bedard’s report on behalf of the Quebec Government – concluded that police were doing a good job and “up to the situation”, demonstrated by the passage of a by-law banning motorcycles from city streets.

The post The Bikers of Sherbrooke first appeared on Who Killed Theresa?.

CECO

CECO was La Commission d’enquête sur le crime organisé / the Commission of Inquiry into Organized Crime. It was set up under Liberal party Premiere Robert Bourassa in 1972. The goal of CECO was the dismantling of drug, gambling and prostitution networks in Quebec, targeting in particular the Italian mafia. The commission’s original mandate lasted only three years, but that mandate was extended 12 times (10 of those extensions at the request of the Parti Québécois’ Justice Minister, Marc Andre Bedard) and CECO lived on well into the 1980s.

CECO was intended to only go after the higher echelons of mob power, avoiding street level operations, but the government quickly broke their own rules and began prodding and probing into everybody’s business (if we haven’t already said it, Quebexico is a very small place). In the beginning the panel hearings looked into the gaming world and wiretapping initiatives like Operation Vegas. By the ’80s they had their noses into corruption in the fur industry, the liquor commission, and tainted meat scandals. The head of Quebec’s Bar Association quipped, “Any gang of bums is considered to be organized crime.”

Some very good work got done. The commissioners (one of whom was Denys Dionne, the ad hoc coroner who found officers criminally responsible in the Rock Forest Massacre case) held mobsters like Paolo Violi and Vincent Cotroni to account daily and live on Quebec radio and television (“Mr. 10-4”, CKVL’s Claude Poirier was a constant presence). The commission investigated the “Dubois clan”, nine brothers with a criminal operation of two-hundred people in Montreal’s Saint-Henri district. It’s worth noting that CECO operated under the umbrella of the Surete du Quebec with its offices located on the top floors of the SQ’s headquarters on Rue Parthenais in downtown Montreal.

CKVL’s Claude Poirier

For today, I want to focus on a CECO report published in 1980 titled, Biker Gangs in Quebec. For our purposes, this report tells us what the government knew about motorcycle gangs in the 1970s, or what they thought they knew. What we know now is that within the decade of the 1970s police underestimated the threat of biker gangs. The Quebec government incubated their growth providing government assistance through projects like the MUQ experiment. By the end of the decade biker gangs had become such a serious threat that Marc Andre Bedard saw the need to study them.

Biker Gangs of Quebec is broken down in to two sections. Part One focuses on biker gangs in several targeted regions where the commission held focus sessions and hearings: the port of Saint Pierre, Sept Iles, Mount Joli, Saint Gideon, Sherbrooke, and Asbestos and Danville. Part Two is more of a sociological study where the commission conducted interviews with various players in the biker world. The report ends with some recommendations (we’ll get to those in a moment).

The report begins with the simple question, Who Are These Bikers? These bands of fun-loving misunderstood youths who had grown from street peddling of drugs and prostitutes to now acquiring substantial assets like thousand dollar vehicles and tracts of real estate? CECO then answers this question:

“To be honest, some motorcycle clubs, especially those discussed in this report, are bands of lazy, lawless parasites, drug addicts, the diminished and the contaminated. They have no legitimate aim or ambition. They expect nothing from life in society and have nothing to offer to others. They are violent and dangerous for those around them and for themselves, which makes them an organized crime environment even more dangerous than the mafia or other organized criminal groups which have been identified in the past, and whose ongoing criminal activities consist of murder, trafficking in drugs and offensive weapons, theft and concealment of automobiles and motorcycles, assault, rape and intimidation.”

Les bandes de motards au Québec – 1980

The report’s introduction continues:

“Indeed, these gangs are well structured and their members appeared to us as major traffickers in drugs and offensive weapons. It is from there that they obtain most of their means of subsistence as well as the capital necessary to acquire buildings and very expensive motorcycles.”

“The number of crimes of which they are guilty, the sexual orgies of which young girls sometimes underage are victims, their dirty clothes, the heavy metal belts, the knives, the chains and the metal badges they wear, their sessions initiation secrets have earned them the admiration and fear of others. But we must keep in mind that all this staging is only a facade to cover up well-established criminal organizations whose activities are very lucrative.”

Les bandes de motards au Québec – 1980

The introduction ends with this account of the typical biker, and it’s telling because – though not specifically addressing Lennoxville – it gives an accurate account of how drugs might take control of a high school like Alexander Galt or a college like Champlain and Bishops – how organized crime could co-exist with seemingly upstanding homeowners and local businesses in a sleepy little tourist town:

“Needless to say, the meeting with a 22-year-old biker physically built as a “piano mover”, who receives a social assistance check of $ 417.00 per month on the pretext that occasional asthma prevent him from having a job, and who confesses to us that in reality he leads a very comfortable life because he is a wholesaler of drugs sold to adolescents in secondary schools and cegeps, is an experience that we have experienced and that should be the launch of a collective effort to eliminate these unnecessary and harmful groups.”

Les bandes de motards au Québec – 1980

The heart of the report we will get to at another time. For now I want to jump to the report’s conclusion, and scattering of some of the closing remarks:

“The “Outlaws” and the “Hell’s Angels” “are arguably the most powerful clubs on the North American continent and possibly the world. The “Hell’s” have their headquarters in Oakland, California; the “Outlaws” are established in Chicago, Illinois, as the attached annexations show.

During the 1970s we saw the “Hells Angels” and the “Outlaws” lead an Intensive campaign to amalgamate the other motorcycle clubs with a view to exerting ever greater territorial grip and making substantial profits. in the drug trade, prostitution, counterfeiting and other related crimes. Several members of these gangs are now investing their profits in legitimate businesses: restaurants, shops, furniture, etc. In the following chapters, we relate the main incidents and the activities of bikers in each of the regions visited during this investigation.

The evidence shows us the evolution of bikers. The turbulent youth have moved on to organized crime. Weak clubs rally to stronger ones when they are not devoured by them. Lucre wins, thanks to narcotics. Bikers engage in all kinds of criminal activity, as long as it pays. We’re actually seeing a restructuring of clubs that will make them more powerful, more elusive.

In Quebec, there are 14 biker clubs with a criminal tendency, which should not be confused with a majority of honest sportsmen….

It is known that, in the province of Ontario, the “Outlaws” have recently allied Toronto’s two most powerful clubs: the ”Vagabonds” and the” Para-Dice”. They took over the “Satan’s Choice”, the “Last Chance”, the “Iron Hawgs” as well as the “Queens Men” and the “Lobos”, in the area of ​​Windsor.

This annexation phenomenon began to make itself felt in Quebec as well. The “Hell’s” absorbed the “Popeyes” of Montreal and became affiliated with the “Marauders” of Asbestos, the “Missiles” of Lac Saint-Jean and the “Sex Fox” of Chlbougamau.

To the “Outlaws” in Quebec, they had already absorbed the “Satan’s Choice” of Montreal and they recently succeeded in affiliating themselves with the “Nomads” of Valleyfield.

Sex Fox MC from Chibougamau, QC. Mid-1970s. Courtesy of rebuiltone / Instagram

Women are abused in motorcycle clubs; after a first motorcycle ride, the young girl is exploited like a thing. It belongs to a member or to all members of the club. Sooner or later she will be abused. Many work as dancers while withdrawing from social assistance which they pass on to the bikers. They often become prostitutes.”

Missiles hideout in Saint-Gédéon

To many this will all seem like old news, quaint even. To me it is astonishing that as early as 1979 the Quebec government had a full grasp of the problem at hand and still did not see the need to address the crisis with any serious actions. And this is clear when we turn to CECO’s recommendations:

“We recommend to the directors of municipal police forces to ‘inspire the methods used by your authorities in Quebec City and its police force to eliminate the annoying and noisy presence of bikers among your local and tourist population of Old Quebec, within the limits of this territory. The police force of your city of Quebec also applies for your entire summer season a foot patrol program which employs two to six police officers in the evening depending on the extent of the foreseeable faults. The instructions given to the police officers who carry out this patrol and the equipment with which they are provided should, in agreement with the authorities of the police force of the city of Quebec who deserve to be recognized for their efforts and their success in the field, do subject of verifications on the initiative of the police forces which have to intervene to suppress the escapades of the motorcyclists, in order to apply at home the fruit of a profitable experience and fertile in results. “

Les bandes de motards au Québec – 1980

Interior of the Missiles hideout in Saint-Gédéon

I’m not kidding, that’s it. To the prospect of biker gangs totally overrunning society, and overtaking business, government, and property transactions the government of Quebec recommended increased foot patrols and (I guess?) a noise reduction ordinance.

It’s like putting a bandaid on an amputation.

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Folie à deux

This year my posts will be a little more episodic and random. I’ve distilled down some stories I’ve heard or read about over the years, and I’ll be reporting out on the best stuff. It’s like dumpster-diving except you don’t have to do it; I’ve sifted through the crap and pulled out all the good stuff for you. That means not everything will have a neat conclusion. Last time we talked about some bikers who recovered a safe in an old plane. What was in the safe? What does it mean? I don’t know. As Pepe says in the most-excellent Ernst Lubitsch film, The Shop Around The Corner, “Draw your own conclusions.”

Theresa Allore – high school yearbook photo 1976

There’s an even more frightening theory than the one where it’s “statistically improbable” that a serial killed didn’t commit three similar murders in the space of 19 months in the Eastern Townships: the idea that all sorts of people were getting away with some very bad things, including murder in the era of my sister Theresa’s murder. One of the ideas that has persisted over the years is the theory of a folie-a-deux; more than one offender committing these murders, as a shared, escalating experience with one partner being more dominant, possibly older than the other.

The classic folie a deux can be seen in the Papin sisters, two maids who murdered their employer in Le Mans, France (1933). The case became the subject of Jean Genet’s play, The Maids. An American variation is the murder of a 14-year-old boy by two University of Chicago students, Leopold and Loeb. They did it for kicks, just to prove to themselves that they could get away with it as a sort of right of passage, not unlike what we know of biker gang initiations. It’s never entirely clear which of the partners is in control, but there is always a sense of one dominating the other and egging them on in a shared psychosis. You recognize this relationship from many Alfred Hitchcock films like Rope and Strangers on a Train. The one folie a deux we’ve talked about most recently is the case of the twin New York Gynecologists, Stewart and Cyril Marcus. In this affair, their drug addiction moved them to symbiotic self-destruction and suicide, as represented in the David Cronenberg film, Dead Ringers.

The Papin sisters, Christine (in foreground) and Léa (behind), arrive at their trial in September 1933. Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

The folie a deux theory was introduced to me very early in investigating my sister’s case. Shortly after the publication of the Who Killed Theresa stories in The National Post in 2002, a woman came forward with a strange tale. At first glance it appeared unrelated, but she felt it might have been connected to the Township murders of Theresa Allore, Manon Dube and Louise Camirand.

In the summer of 1976 this woman was a teenager hitchhiking with a friend along Sherbrooke St. in Montreal’s East End, They were headed in the direction of what today is CFB Longue Pointe, which is just before the intersection with Route 25. They were picked up immediately by two men, a younger man with a “military haircut” who was driving, and an older man riding in the passenger seat dressed in a suit with greased-back hair. The girls climbed in the back of this “brown American car with construction rags hanging out of the trunk”. Almost immediately the older man reached in the back of the car, knocked the girls’ heads together, and began beating them. He told them they were going to die, at which point one of the girls stuck her cigarette in his cheek. The two girls jumped from the moving vehicle (shades of Peggy Coleman here) and tried to hide in a nearby field. The vehicle returned and attempted to run them over before racing off into the night.

This horrifying account captures the imagination because it contains elements that hint at narrative threads in the Allore-Dube-Camirand story. There is the young man with the military haircut in a car going in the direction of the Montreal Canadian Forces Base. We know that in the summer of 1976 – the summer of the Montreal Olympics – cadets from the Sherbrooke Hussars were sent to Montreal to work at the Longue-Pointe base, building lockers and generally making themselves busy in preparation for the games.

Sherbrooke Hussars work the Montreal Olympic Games – 1976

Luc Gregoire may have been one of those cadets with the Sherbrooke Hussars ( we definitely know that Louise Camirand worked at the Hassars compound in Sherbrooke). Is it possible that Luc Gregoire was the young man at the wheel of the car in this 1976 Montreal attack? One of the reasons a folie a deux is so compelling in the case of Luc Gregoire is it helps to justify one of the major obstacles in a theory of him being the murderer of Allore-Dube-Camirand: his age. In 1976 Luc Gregoire would have been 16; the right age to be off on a summer in Montreal doing cadet training, but is it the right age for a murderer?

If the theory holds, Gregoire was just 17 when he committed the brutal sexual assault, mutilation and strangulation murder of Louise Camirand. Not impossible. I would remind you that Richard Bouillon – long suspected in the disappearance of Julie Surprenant, in a death bed confession he admitted to her murder – raped dozens on girls before the age of sixteen. But the probability is elevated if we consider that Gregoire may have been groomed and tutored at the hands of an older, more experienced offender.

So if this is Gregoire in 1976 – and I don’t think it is, we are just doing an exercise here – then who is the older, greasy guy? Someone once suggested that it might have been Jean-Luc Pouliot, the patriarch of the Pouliot clan thought to have orchestrated the shotgun murders committed in Compton in 1984. It’s an interesting idea. Compton is where Theresa was found, the Pouliots had a cottage on Lake Memphremagog near where the body of Louise Camirand was found. But it’s really a case of cherry-picking people to fit the information. We know Gregoire and Pouliot because I have discussed them at length, so now we put them together, because these are the offenders we know. I can tell you there were hundreds of older and younger offender combinations in the Eastern Townships in that era who you could equally consider as possible suspects in a folie a deux.

Jean-Luc Pouliot

I will leave you with one further thought before we move on: Although I do not think that Gregoire and Pouliot were the pair in the 1976 Montreal folie a deux, simply by introducing that possibility allows for the idea to capture your imagination.

Perhaps a better approach would be to look at some of the cases we’ve covered from the ’70s and consider which of them may have been committed by more than one person. Sharron Prior from Montreal in 1975 seems like a case of more than one offender. It’s believed she was held captive for a number of days before being dumped in Longueuil. Louise Camirand is very similar. The dump site near Magog is not the site of her torture and murder. In both cases, police have always held out the possibility of more than one person committing the murders. Jocelyne Houle, who disappeared on a night out in Montreal (last seen at the Old Munich), appears to have been a gang-rape killing ( she was dumped in Sainte Calixte where many bikers lived, and were known to dump bodies).

If we look at the following table, we can sort some of the cases into two groups. These are not all of the cases; if I’ve left some out it’s because I’m undecided which category the fall under. But when you consider these two groupings, something else in common becomes apparent:

Single OffenderMore than one offenderKatherine HawkesSharron PriorLison BlaisLouise CamirandNicole GaudreaultJocelyne HouleTheresa Allore

The single offender groupings (Hawkes, Blais, Gaudreault) are all urban murders. The more-than-one-offender groupings are all rural. Considering this, I would say it’s easier for one person to commit murder in a city. The work can be done undetected. You can be on your way to a bus or metro rather quickly. It also implies something of the motive: perhaps a purse snatch that escalates. Or a purse snatch that is the initial justification to mask a crime of a more sexual nature. The group murders suggest something else: the joyride, the gang-bang, something for kicks, because women are expendable. But let’s not get too attached to these distinctions. Remember that Guy Croteau acted alone when he picked up Sophie Landry at a Longueuil bus station in 1987, stabbed her 173 times, and dumped her in a corn field north of Montreal.

Compton Station look toward Compton, Quebec

Why might Theresa Allore be a matter of a folie a deux? I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this but in the early 2000s I consulted a psychic, Laurie Campbell, known from the book, The Afterlife Experiments. She described Theresa being picked up just outside of her King’s Hall residence in Compton, at the mailbox actually. There was a large car with more than one person in it, and she was persuaded to get in the vehicle. That’s just information, it’s not evidentiary, and I’ve sat on it for a while.

The more compelling reason is because that’s what the evidence tells us. We know she was last seen in Lennoxville. We know she wanted to get to her residence 10 miles away in Compton. We know there was no bus service and she didn’t have a car. And we know she was prone to hitchhiking.

We also know that over the years, there have been several first-hand reports of horror-show hitchhiking experiences along the Lennoxville – Compton corridor that ended in sexual assaults or attempted assaults – most notably the account of Catherine Dawe who was orally raped in the parking lot of King’s Hall in 1977.

Finally this: We know that shortly after the publication of Wish You Were Here, the Quebec police received a phone call from a witness documenting something they observed in the fall of 1978. The Surete du Quebec consider this account very credible. The person was driving in the area of Lennoxville – Compton in the fall of 1978. They observed a vehicle with three individuals inside chasing a young woman who was running down the road.

That too is just information. And now that terrifying idea is out of my head and into yours.

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The double-tap of tragedy

I think often about the double tragedy that struck my friend, Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu. It wasn’t enough that his daughter Julie was abducted and murdered in 2002. In 2005, his second daughter, Isabelle was killed in a car accident.

I met Isabelle twice. Once for supper at Pierre’s place in Sherbrooke. The second time was in Montreal. It was for some victims advocacy function, and in that way that only Pierre can manage – you know, how he somehow gets you out on a Saturday afternoon to wash cars at some fundraiser – he had convinced everyone to pitch-in and assist. Isabelle and I were tasked with stuffing envelops. We got placed together in some vacant banquet hall at some hotel – it might have been the Bonaventure – and were told not to come out until the job was done. So there we were, charged with this menial task for two hours. The two of us and small talk. I liked Isabelle a lot. She was smart and funny.

My father warned me never to get too comfortable with life. In early 1978 he was riding high. He was promoted to managing one of the most sophisticated engineering projects in the country – building the nuclear power plant at Point Lepreau, New Brunswick. He was able to buy my mother the house of her dreams, a Victorian beauty that once belonged to an old sea captain. He had a plush expense account, there were lavish dinners at fancy restaurants every weekend. Then in the fall of 1978, he got knocked on his ass when his eldest child disappeared. He was never the same again. The only advice he ever gave me was borrowed from Sinatra: “Life is nothing but a series of setbacks, you pick yourself up and get back in the race.”

The double-tap of tragedy hit another friend this week. I don’t often talk about Marcel Bolduc, mostly because I’ve never been sure of the lesson in his story. The Bolducs were also from Sherbrooke. In 1996 his daughter Isabelle was kidnapped and murdered by a repeat offender. Marcel has made it his mission to see that the man is never paroled. Together with Pierre Boievenu, Marcel co-founded the Association of Families of Persons Assassinated or Disappeared (AFPAD).

Marcel Bolduc

Believe it or not, murder is rare in the Eastern Townships. Sexual murder in the late ’90s and early 2000s was even more uncommon. Everyone knows about the horrible tragedies suffered by these two fathers and their families. I know Marcel casually. We may have crossed paths at some general assembly, but we mostly communicate through Facebook. He’s good for a joke, and it helps me practice my French. Marcel loves Pink Floyd, and he has a frothy hatred for Canada’s current prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

This week, on the eve of yet another parole hearing for Isabelle’s murderer, Marcel lost his second daughter, Julie. She died at 43 from a brain aneurysm. Julie Bolduc had been involved in the fight against sexual assault. Among other things, she participated in fundraising activities for the Center for Assistance and the Fight against Sexual Assault (CALACS). She and Marcel were preparing for the parole hearing together, as they always did. Marcel Blanchette submitted a request for escorted leaves. He has since withdrawn the request.

Marcel and Pierre were already joined at the hip in tragedy. The cruel symmetry of their daughters’ names only makes that sting worse.

I still don’t know what the lesson is here. The world is indifferent to our sufferings.

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Le monde est indifférent à nos souffrance

Je pense souvent au double drame qui a frappé mon ami Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu. Il ne suffisait pas que sa fille Julie ait été enlevée et assassinée en 2002. En 2005, sa deuxième fille, Isabelle, a été tuée dans un accident de voiture.

J’ai rencontré Isabelle deux fois. Une fois pour souper chez Pierre à Sherbrooke. La deuxième fois, c’était à Montréal. C’était pour une fonction de défense des victimes, et de cette façon que seul Pierre peut gérer – vous savez, comment il vous fait sortir un samedi après-midi pour laver des voitures lors d’une collecte de fonds – il avait convaincu tout le monde de participer et d’aider. Isabelle et moi étions chargées de farcir les enveloppes. Nous avons été placés ensemble dans une salle de banquet vacante d’un hôtel – cela aurait pu être le Bonaventure – et on nous a dit de ne pas sortir tant que le travail n’était pas terminé. Nous étions donc là, chargés de cette tâche subalterne pendant deux heures. Nous deux et bavardage. J’ai beaucoup aimé Isabelle. Elle était intelligente et drôle.

Mon père m’a averti de ne jamais être trop à l’aise avec la vie. Au début de 1978, il roulait haut. Il a été promu à la gestion de l’un des projets d’ingénierie les plus sophistiqués au pays – la construction de la centrale nucléaire de Point Lepreau, au Nouveau-Brunswick. Il a pu acheter à ma mère la maison de ses rêves, une beauté victorienne qui appartenait autrefois à un vieux capitaine. Il avait un compte de dépenses somptueux, il y avait des dîners somptueux dans des restaurants chics tous les week-ends. Puis, à l’automne 1978, il a été assommé lorsque son aîné a disparu. Il n’a plus jamais été le même. Le seul conseil qu’il m’ait jamais donné a été emprunté à Sinatra : “La vie n’est qu’une série de déboires, you pick yourself up and get back in the race.”

La ‘double-tap’ de la tragédie a frappé un autre ami cette semaine. Je ne parle pas souvent de Marcel Bolduc, surtout parce que je n’ai jamais été sûr de la leçon de son histoire. Les Bolducs étaient aussi de Sherbrooke. En 1996, sa fille Isabelle est kidnappée et assassinée par un récidiviste. Marcel s’est donné pour mission de veiller à ce que l’homme ne soit jamais libéré sur parole. Avec Pierre Boievenu, Marcel a cofondé l’Association des familles de personnes assassinées ou disparues (AFPAD).

Marcel Bolduc

Croyez-le ou non, les meurtres sont rares dans les Cantons-de-l’Est. Les meurtres sexuels à la fin des années 90 et au début des années 2000 étaient encore plus rares. Tout le monde connaît les horribles drames subis par ces deux pères et leurs familles. Je connais Marcel par hasard. Nous nous sommes peut-être rencontrés une fois lors d’une assemblée générale, mais nous communiquons principalement via Facebook. Il est bon pour une blague, et ça m’aide à pratiquer mon français. Marcel aime Pink Floyd et il a une haine écumeuse pour l’actuel premier ministre du Canada, Justin Trudeau.

Cette semaine, à la veille d’une énième audience de libération conditionnelle pour le meurtrier d’Isabelle, Marcel a perdu sa deuxième fille, Julie. Elle est décédée à 43 ans d’un anévrisme cérébral. Julie Bolduc avait été impliquée dans la lutte contre les agressions sexuelles. Entre autres, elle a participé à des activités de financement pour le Centre d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions sexuelles (CALACS). Elle et Marcel se préparaient ensemble pour l’audience de libération conditionnelle, comme ils le faisaient toujours. Marcel Blanchette a soumis une demande de congé accompagné. Il a depuis retiré sa demande.

Marcel et Pierre étaient déjà joints à la hanche dans la tragédie. La cruelle symétrie des noms de leurs filles ne fait qu’aggraver cette piqûre.

Je ne sais toujours pas quelle est la leçon ici. Le monde est indifférent à nos souffrances.

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Québexique

Bonjour/Hi :

En collaboration avec Tracy Wing, j’ai commencé une version française de mon balado, Who Killed Theresa. Cela s’appelle Québexique, et les deux premiers épisodes sont maintenant disponibles sur Spreaker (si vous consultez le menu à droite, vous pouvez également écouter sur d’autres plateformes).

Nous espérons que vous l’apprécierez ! Merci de le partager ! John A

The post Québexique first appeared on Who Killed Theresa?.

Quebexico

In January 1968 a Canadian Forces Otter aircraft broke through the winter ice of Memphremagog and sank to the floor of the lake. Several recovery efforts of the military aircraft were attempted, none succeeded. Then in 1976, a five man crew from Montreal managed to locate the wreckage and raise it 280 feet to the surface from the lake bed. Who were these guys?

Canadian Forces plane goes through Memphremagog ice – Sherbrooke Daily Record, January 8, 1968

This story was told to me while having a bowl of coffee in Sherbrooke. When I first heard it, I didn’t believe the guy, I thought he’d made it up. At best, he probably conflated a series of events. When I got back from Canada and researched it, I was amazed to find – word for word – it was pretty much exactly as he had told it to me.

Quebexico

January 7, 1968, a Canadian Forces Otter aircraft from the 402 Axillary Squadron, 11th Wing out of St. Hubert airport near Montreal was practicing ski landings on Lake Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. 18-year-old Real Bernais was on the wharf at Georgeville, a village 12 miles south of Magog. He watched the aircraft go halfway across the lake when suddenly one of the ski landings broke through the ice.

The aircraft was sinking fast, but it slowed when the wings touch the surface of the ice. Flight Lieutenant Morrow escaped first, momentarily plunging into the frozen water before climbing back on the ice.

The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Evans wanted to stay with the aircraft. He then realized he couldn’t get his door open. Morrow yelled at Evans to get out fast, by this point the aircraft had sunk to its fuselage. Evans managed to exit along the wings of the plane, joining Morrow on the frozen lake.

Risking his own life, Bernais jumped on his snowmobile and rode out onto the lake through blowing winds and snow to rescue the men. “They only asked me, is the ice safe” before they climbed on, he later said.

The snowmobile deposited the two airmen at the Georgeville boarding house where owner Henry McGowan gave them some hot coffee and a change of clothes. McGowan was discussing ways of salvaging the plane with the two airmen when they heard a tremendous “whoomp” which rattled the windows of the house. The men ran to the window and saw the visible portion of the aircraft above the ice in flames:

“There was a terrific fire for a while but within three or four minutes, the plane had disappeared beneath the ice.”

Henry McGowan

In the summers, Georgeville was a popular Eastern Townships tourist stop (it still is). Because of the depth of the lake, McGowan doubted the wreckage would disrupt summer boating. The two airmen returned to Montreal the following day, leaving McGowan to wonder if he would ever get his clothing back.

A Routine Job

Over the years the aircraft became the focus of several salvaging operations including one by Marine Industries of Montreal, which reportedly spent $30,000 to located and raise the aircraft. With that kind of money you could buy a brand new airplane.

Then in 1975 Lafitte Salvage, also from Montreal, located the plane and purchased the salvaging rights for $1,000. In June 1976 Lafitte sent a mysterious five-man crew to raise the wreckage and haul it onto dry land. This latest crew appeared better equipped for the job using sophisticated closed-circuit television cameras for deep water searching. The salvage crew refused to comment on motives for attempting the recovery. Some claimed the skis alone could fetch anywhere from $6,000 to $17,000, substantial money in the 1970s, but it hardly appeared worth the effort.

After eight years, a phoenix arises from Memphremagog – Sherbrooke Record, June 3, 1976

After hauling the tail section and fuselage of the De Havilland on shore in Georgeville, the wreckage was towed to a hotel parking lot in Magog. Lead salvager, “Brian Power” boasted, “The best salvage company in Canada tried, and they couldn’t do it. But we did.” Powers said he and his crew – Robert Chou, Michael French, Michel Veiellette, and Jean Paul St. Michel – took the “routine” job for the challenge, refusing to comment on unconfirmed reports of a safe still being on board in the fuselage.

“Brian Power” is, of course, Brian Powers. And by now you should recognize the names Michael French and Bobby Chou. I wouldn’t call anything undertaken by members of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club as “routine”.

Mike French at far left, Bobby Chou at top right,
and Brian Powers in centre with beard – photo courtesy of Coolopolis

Recall that it was only about six months after the salvage operation that Powers, French, Chou and two others – a crew of about five – were involved in a bar fight where Chou stabbed two patrons at the Moustache Club near the Montreal Forum. There was also speculation that Michael French could have been the subject of the mysterious tattoo, “F.V. Frenchy I Love You”, carved on the stomach of the murdered 14-year-old girl, Teresa Martin in 1969. (this is all detailed in last year’s series of episodes on the Teresa Martin case).

Brian Powers would die two years later, gunned down outside his St Genevieve home in the summer of 1979, a victim of another biker war that pitted Satan’s Choice – Outlaws against their rivals, The Popeyes – Hells Angels. Chou died in 2018 at the age of 68 of chronic liver failure. What happened to Michael French is the stuff of biker legend.

Michael French was last seen at the Cavalier Hotel-Motel at 6951 Rue St. Jacques West in Montreal

French was last seen at the Cavalier Motel bar in NDG in November 1982. West End Gang hitman Jackie McLauglin lived at the Cavalier where his girlfriend tended bar. Montreal police suspected McLaughlin assassinated French. According to Eddie Collister of the Montreal Gazette, French was found dead with a bullet in his head near a South Shore Kahnawake graveyard.

French’s murder was rumored to be “a sort of community service” for his allegedly murdering 16-year-old Sharron Prior in late March 1975. Other versions say French was killed for raping the daughter of a cop, or possibly a Mafia boss. In 1984, McLaughlin himself was murdered, his remains alongside those of his bartender girlfriend and pet dog were found in a shallow grave outside Saint John, New Brunswick.

At the time of the plane salvage in 1976, Satan’s Choice – with Powers, French and Chou as members – was allied with the West End Gang, one of the most powerful organized crime outfits in Montreal. Their rivals,The Popeyes motorcycle club were backed by the Dubois Brothers. The Dubois supplied the Township region with drugs, and controlled organized crime in the region.

“Lafitte Salvage” appears to be a front, there’s no record of any such company. Jean Lafitte was a French pirate who along with his brother Pierre ran a smuggling operation trading stolen coins and goods in 19th century Louisiana.

Lake Memphremagog

So what were these rivals of the Popeyes and Dubois Brothers doing in Magog? Maybe they were looking for Memphré, the elusive, serpent -like cryptid rumored to stalk the waters of Memphremagog.   Better still, what were the contents of the plane’s safe that salvage outfits would risk time and energy, and spend $30,000 to attempt to recover it?

What was the Canadian military doing on the lake in the first place? If you cross the lake and go a little north toward Magog you’ll come to Chemin Giguare, the road off of which the body of Louise Camirand was found in 1977. Now I’ve visited this place many times. And on one occasion, a bunch of us came upon a cache of military documents stashed in the woods. I’m talking about a small mountain of purchasing records that someone had attempted to burn and destroy. So what was that about? What was the Canadian military’s relationship with Lake Memphremagog?

Downed aircraft is hauled out of Memphremagog after 8 years – Sherbrooke Record, June 16, 1976

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Bang-Bang Knock-Knock – The Rock Forest Massacre Part 3

“You are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass”Funeral for Brink’s security guard Yvan Charland – photo La Tribune

In the downtime between Part 1 of this story and where we are now, a resident of Sherbrooke, Quebec contacted me to share that in 1983 his father had owned a gun repair shop in town. One day an officer from the Sherbrooke police – presumable Andre Castonguay, as he was the one who was trained in the use of such firearms – came into the shop with the UZI submachine gun used in the raid. He complained that the site on the weapon was calibrated incorrectly, causing it to miss targets. This would have been just before the incident in Rock Forest.

This is part three of Bang-Bang Knock-Knock, our final chapter about the 1983 Rock Forest Massacre in which two carpet layers were mistaken for armed and dangerous criminals involved in the fatal shooting of a Brinks security guard. Quebec police tracked the men down to a motel in Rock Forest, a small community in the Eastern Townships wedged between the city of Sherbrooke and the town of Magog. Police stormed the Chatillon motel in the early hours of the morning of December 23, 1983 strafing the carpet layers’ room with bullets from an UZI submachine gun, wounding Jean-Paul Beaumont and killing Serge Beaudoin who died four hours later in a Sherbrooke hospital. We pick up after the coroner’s process, the trial, and inquiry by the Quebec Police Commission. The three Sherbrooke police officers in question, Dion, Castonguay and Salvail were recommended for demotion for their actions, but kept their jobs, some were even promoted. The family of Serge Beaudoin took legal action, but never saw a penny in restitution. No one sent flowers or said they were sorry.Pretty good, eh

On Wednesday afternoon, April 11, 1984, 27-year-old Brink’s armored car security guard, Bern Saintes was attacked by two men while attempting to make a cash delivery at the Intercontinental Bank in Houston, Texas. Saintes was clubbed over the head and shot in the leg and shoulder, but managed to return fire as the men fled in a waiting getaway vehicle, leaving a trail of blood from the bank lobby to the parking lot. Police quickly tracked the suspects down to a Regal 8 Inn near the Astrodome. Within 24-hours they arrested Mario Valiquette, Doris Gatien, and Yves Lasalle, all the subject of intensive searches in Québec on various charges, including armed robbery. The men were in the company of three women and two young children. Less than 6 months after the bungled siege that unfolded in Rock Forest resulting in the death of an innocent carpet layer, Serge Beaudoin, American police managed to do what had alluded Quebec police all winter; quietly arrest the Pascal hardware store robbers who killed Brinks security guard Yvan Charland in the December 22, 1983 Carrefour l’Estrie shopping mall heist.

The arrests were made without incident by the Houston Police Department’s SWAT team in what one officer described as “a beautiful operation.” The fugitives surrendered when ordered to do so after talking to police on their motel phone. Two of the women and the uninjured man came out of their motel room and were arrested as they walked away. The other woman, the two wounded suspects and the two children remained inside. A number of weapons, including an Uzi submachine gun and a shotgun, were found in the suspects’ room, but they were never used. Not one shot was fired. Compared to the massacre at the Motel Chatillon, the calm, ordered precision of the Regal 8 operation was striking. It again leaves you wondering what were they teaching these police cadets at the Quebec academy in Nicolet?

After the arrests, four Quebec police detectives – the QPF’s Real Chateauneuf, Yvon Fauchon, and Jean Dagenais, and Sherbrooke police officer Michel Salvail – flew to Houston to confer with Houston police, and interrogate the suspects. Yes, Michel Salvail – who was still awaiting trial for leading the “botched, improvised” raid at Rock Forest – was permitted to travel to Houston and question experts on their textbook operation at the Regal 8 Motel.

Quebec Police’s arrogance knew no limits. In a communique issued by the Surete du Quebec / QPF they brayed, “The Sherbrooke municipal police in collaboration with the Quebec Police Force have solved the murder of Brink’s security guard Yvan Charland.” Apart from a wiretap on the suspects – which may have been illegal – Quebec police played limited, if no part in the arrests of Valiquette, Lasalle and Gatien. When QPF spokesman André Blanchette tried to take credit for giving Houston police the hotel name and room number of the suspects gushing, “Pretty good, eh,” Houston Police public information officer, Raul Correo corrected that it was their officers who found the motel while looking for a “brown Buick” with Canadian plates.

Brinks Security Guard Yvan Charland – Allo Police

What was true was that Valiquette, Lasalle and Gatien had been “strongly suspected” in the Carrefour l’Estrie holdup. Valiquette and Lasalle were both escapees from the Leclerc Institute in Laval, today a women’s minimum security prison. Gatien, who had escaped from custody in New Brunswick, was wanted in the Eastern Townships for a series of robberies committed at Caisses Populaires banks in the weeks before the Carrefour robbery-murder. The three were facing a maximum sentence of 99 years in the United States.

Mario Valiquette and Yves Lasalle – The Record

On Tuesday, May 27, 1986 Yves Lasalle, 31, and Mario Valiquette, 30 pleaded guilty to the second degree murder of Brink’s guard Yvan Charland during the Christmas week heist, and were handed life sentences by Superior Court Justice Georges Savoie. The two had been serving 20 and 40 year terms respectively in the United States (their accomplice, Dores Gatien had been the getaway driver and sentenced to lesser charges). Lasalle and Valiquette returned to Canada on their own request under a prisoner exchange program, wanting to serve their prison time in Quebec.

During the trial, previously unpublished information was presented in court, including that Lasalle had rented an apartment well before the robbery under an assumed name to use as a headquarters. As reported by Philip Authier in the Sherbrooke Record, Dores Gatien planned the robbery. Valiquette had the job of detaining one guard while Lasalle — armed with a 12 gauge shotgun — went ahead to meet Charland. In the confusion of the moment, two shots were fired, one into Charland’s face, killing him instantly. After fleeing the scene, Lasalle and Valiquette hid out in the Townships before eventually slipping across the border with the help of Gatien.

At the sentencing, Lasalle’s defence lawyer said his client had shown signs of wanting to pull his life back together. He had a regular girlfriend and had started an industrial design course in prison. Both defence lawyers said the two would profit from their time in jail, and agreed that the Crown’s suggestion — 18 years for Lasalle and 16 for Valiquette — was justified. Speaking directly to the manacled prisoners, Judge Savoie told them he held out hope that by the time the two were out of jail they might become productive members of society.

Allo Police

In passing sentence Justice Savoie said he considered that many other people could have been hurt in the shopping mall shooting, especially since it was in the middle of the Christmas rush. Because of their reckless actions, one person was killed, and this could not be ignored, so he had to provide a sentence which would not only serve as an example but also as a deterrence to others. The circumstances the judge described were frighteningly similar to the events at the Rock Forest motel, but with a starkly different outcome when the offending parties wore a badge.

Sherbrooke Record

The hope for rehabilitation didn’t last long. Less than two months later, Yves Lasalle along with four other convicted murderers managed to escape from the Archambeault prison, then a maximum security detention centre in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec. Lasalle was reportedly using the $53,000 from the Brink’s heist which was never recovered to evade capture. The money didn’t last long. By December he was wanted for the armed robbery of a guard from Loomis security in Burlington, Ontario. He was never heard from again.

Dores Gatien didn’t fair much better. He was involved in crime all his life, last reported as the head of a drug smuggling operation in 1994. Presuming he behaved himself, Mario Valiquette was paroled in 2002.

File 119-831226-004

Whatever became of the Surete du Quebec’s voluminous report on the Rock Forest affaire? According to La Tribune in 1984, the report, which was the work of Sergeant Germain Gauthier and Corporal Roch Gaudreault from the criminal investigation office of the SQ was more than 300 pages, and “…the two sleuths interviewed no less than 75 people in the context of this investigation in subject of the death of Serge Beaudoin”.

The report was intended to be bound and reproduced in ten copies, then distributed to key stakeholders; the coroner, prosecutor, Quebec Police Commission, and investigators. Gaudreault and Gauthier were even working on a second report focusing on the comings and goings of Serge Beaudoin and Jean-Paul Beaumont during their stay in Sherbrooke and in the immediate region. According to La Tribune, “[the report was ] of prime importance to shed full light on the actions of the two people who were at the heart of this operation.”

In 1999 the report became the subject of a Access to Information challenge between a Quebec newspaper (perhaps La Presse or the JdM) and Quebec’s Ministry of Public Security. The FOIA request was made to obtain “a copy of the Sûreté du Québec file concerning the death of Mr. Serge Beaudoin at Motel le Châtillon on December 23, 1983. The Sûreté du Québec file is number 119-831226-004.” The initial request invoked sections 94 and 88.1 of the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information. Under review with the Ministry, more details of the challenge and the document became apparent.

Representatives from the newspaper and the Surete du Quebec travelled to Sherbrooke where “Mr. Rock Gaudreault, ex-investigator in charge of the file, for his part agreed to go to the Sûreté du Québec Headquarters to consult this file.” The FOIA challenge continues:

“The court file was also examined; It appears that during the trial of the 3 police officers Castonguay, Dion and Salvail, Corporal Gaudreault never testified and that his report was not entered into evidence. In the lawyer’s opinion, the record in dispute has not been made public. The lawyer also indicates that Corporal Gaudreault did not testify at the coroner’s inquest and that his report was not filed there either. Finally, the file of the Deputy Attorney General in which disputed information could have been found has been destroyed and it remains to be verified with the Police Commission which had investigated at the time.”

File: 00 00 72, June 16, 2003, Commissioner Hélène Grenier – Applicant vs. MINISTRY OF PUBLIC SECURITY

The FOIA request then goes on to say that the file does exist under the umbrella of the Police Commission, but that that file is “under seal in the National Archives for a period of 150 years. All the documents in dispute which are kept by the Surete du Quebec represent approximately 750 pages.” Anyone who listens to this podcast and reads the words, ‘under seal for 150 years’ will immediately flash to the 1969 investigation into the shady dealings of police in the Louis-Georges Dupont affair.

L’Affaire Dupont

At one time the prosecutor’s office in Sherbrooke apparently had a copy of the SQ file, but that copy was destroyed within one year after the expiry of the time limit to appeal the verdict rendered at the end of the police trial in 1984.

According to the newspaper that filed the challenge, not only did Corporal Rock Gaudrault not testify at the coroner’s inquest, he did not testify at the trial or during the Police Commission inquiry, and no element of the investigation report of the Surete du Quebec was made public. The Ministry of Public Security then used the argument that since, “There is no evidence that the Sûreté du Québec report which is in dispute was made public…”, it is not a public document and “The request for review must be dismissed.”

A colleague at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec commented to me that it is “very strange indeed that we do not have the investigation report on the December 23, 1983 intervention in Rock Forest.” But not so fast. There is evidence that at least some of the report was made public. In July 1986, during the Quebec Police Commission process, Le Devoir published an excerpt of the Surete du Quebec report (I’ve posted a translation of the article here on another post).

L’affaire Rock Forest – Le Devoir, July 31, 1986

The excerpt of the report is excellent and I encourage everyone to read it. It is too lengthy to delve into in detail, but here are some highlights:

The report calls the raid on the Motel Chatillon “regrettable improvisation.” … “The police had enough time to coordinate their action. Did they do it? The police were questioned in depth on this issue. Nothing in the evidence suggests thoughtful preparation or planning.”“Monsieurs Dion, Castonguay, and especially M. Salvail, who was in charge of it, are to blame for not having planned the operation when they had time to do so…”There was plenty of blame to go around, including the officers supervisors: “We reproach the detectives Dion, Castonguay and Salvail for not having sufficiently informed and consulted their officers, on the morning of the 23rd, and to the officers, in particular Lieutetant Jacques Testulat, sergeant Roger Cloutier and especially the sergeant Camille Vachon for lacking leadership, according to the tasks assigned to them, for submitting to the action rather than controlling it. Even assuming that this mutual consultation would not have changed the outcome of the operation, the police were required to do so.”There was no ‘book’ that Castonguay, Dion and Salvail were working from. The report suggests several other options that were open to them including asking for assistance from the Surete du Quebec who had more experience in these types of operations, calling the occupants of room 5 on the phone, using a megaphone, or simply waiting, instead of invoking the worst option, the use of deadly force. They did not check the vehicle parked outside room 5: “They would then have realized that it belonged to Mr. Beaumont’s companion, Serge Beaudoin, whose name appeared on the motel listing.”Castonguay shot through the closed door of room 5: “Before unloading his submachine gun into the door of room 5 (which was closed), did Mr. Castonguay think that the projectiles could easily pierce the weak interior partitions?”

To the appellants in the 1999 FOIA challenge: your lawyers fleeced you. They should have easily spotted that Le Devoir published a portion of the report. So never mind a 150 year seal, shouldn’t the fact that a major Quebec newspaper published a portion of the report provide enough proof that it was at one time made public, and therefore should be made public once again? I have put this very question to the folks responsible for Quebec archives, response pending.

In researching the matter further, I found that the report does in fact exist in odd public places. Here it is in the University of Manitoba’s law library (I can’t be bothered to do the international inter-library loan, that would practically take an act of God):

The question becomes, who buried the report? I don’t think it’s the Quebec Police Commission. I believe l’Affaire Dupont shows us that it’s pretty standard procedure for them to seal their dealings for a lifetime. It’s not the Surete du Quebec. They would have no motive to do so, there’s no blame thrown at them, they are simply following the laws of public access. I would place my bets on the City of Sherbrooke, With their reputation at stake, and the need to maintain their robust tourist economy, they would have the most to lose from such a negative report.

“Si c’était dans les mêmes circonstances, j’aurais fait la même affaire.”

In 2019 Andre Castonguay gave an interview with Radio Canada in the Eastern Townships. There is so much that is wrong with this interview, both in concept by the writer, Genevieve Proulx (according to her, no relation to Marcel Proulx who defended the officers in the ’80s) and Castonguay’s choice of words. It left me wondering if he had learned anything on reflecting about those events that transpired that Christmas in 1983. Most troubling is his fixed belief that, “If it were under the same circumstances, I would have done the same business. I could not do otherwise.”

Andre Castonguay

Proulx chooses to begin her story on the afternoon of December 22, 1983 with Castonguay and fellow officers, we are told, giving out Christmas baskets to the less fortunate. When the news breaks that a Brink’s guard has been shot and killed at a Pascal’s in a local shopping mall, and in the midsts of thousands of Christmas shoppers, the officers spring into action. “Decisions must be taken at full speed”, Castonguay says. It’s as if there is some compelling force driving them towards this unfortunate yet somehow unavoidable outcome.

Proulx writes that, “Everything indicates that the wanted suspects are staying at the Motel Le Châtillon in Rock Forest”, yet what we know to be true is that very little indicated this, but the narrative in their own heads that the suspects must be at that motel. Recall that Serge Beaudoin’s vehicle was parked outside room 5, but no officer bothered to check who that car belonged to.

“We looked at what we had gathered as evidence and we had enough information to make arrests. It is difficult these cases, because we are always in uncertainty.”

Andre Castonguay

If there is uncertainty, then you do not proceed. You do what the SWAT team did in Houston with the actual perpetrators of the Brinks robbery; you pick up the phone, you negotiate, you wait. Castonguay argues that their objective was to execute something he now refers to as a “dynamic entry operation“ aimed at surprising suspects, as if this was a planned response. But we know from the Quebec Police Commission and the excerpt of the Surete du Quebec’s report in Le Devoir that it was improvised. The Sherbrooke police were admonished for having no manual to carry out such a mission. “Simple on paper. More complicated in practice.”, Proulx writes. Except there was no paper.

Castonguay states that at the moment he heard his fellow officer, Roger Dion’s pistol discharge, “I had no choice but to open fire.” But this is really about all the choices that led up to that point. The choice to enter the motel building. The choice to use non-standard issued weapons such as Dion’s personal Colt .45 automatic pistol and the UZI. The choice to destroy the phone rather than using it. The choice to bring a submachine gun to achieve what could have been worked out using words.

Judging from how well this interview is going it will come as no surprise that Castonguay then begins to paint himself as the victim in this process, relating how after the shooting, there was, “No time off. No follow-up on his condition. No meeting with a psychologist”. But recall that the first action after the shooting would have been the standard procedure of an interview about the incident, and both Castonguay and Dion refused to participate in this fundamental step in the process of any police shooting. The officers could have taken time off. The community was begging for them to be suspended.

Castonguay says that “During the trial, I found it hard for the victim’s mother. I wanted to tell her, but we couldn’t…” He wanted to tell her what? That he was sorry, but he couldn’t? This is an often repeated line of bullshit heard in the victims’ world. How the players in the justice process want to say sorry, but they can’t because it would be perceived as an admission of guilt. What I say is, you send the flowers anyway. It is then the victim’s decision whether to throw them back in your face. ‘We would have sent a police escort, but it would never bring your loved-one back’‘. You do it anyway. Then the public gets to decide whether to pelt the vehicle with eggs. That’s the way it works.

But maddeningly, that was not what Castonguay was struggling to express to Serge Beaudoin’s mother. He already states in the article, “I never felt guilty for what I did…”, so Castonguay feels no remorse. What did he want to tell Madam Beaudoin?

“I would tell her today that we did our best, that life is like that.”

Andre Castonguay

This is the police agency that former chief and mayor of Sherbrooke, Jean-Paul Pelletier called, “one of the best forces in the country”. The same force that in the summer of 2021 mistook a missing victim for a store mannequin. The same force with an officer in their ranks, Samuel Ducharme, who was recently arrested for sexually assaulting an individual in Sherbrooke while on duty, also in the summer of 2021. Mr Castonguay, your best is looking pretty shaky.

Through the article we learn that the now retired Andre Castonguay eventually became director of criminal investigations of the Sherbrooke Police force. His career prospered. It’s difficult to interpret what Radio Canada l’Estrie was attempting to do here. If this is a restorative justice piece, then where is the Beaudoin’s perspective? Reconciliation between victim and offender takes both parties, it can’t happen otherwise. If the Beaudoin’s refused to participate then the article should have never been undertaken. The story completely from Andre Castonguay’s perspective is a white washing of events, and an insult to the memory of Serge Beaudoin.

Serge Beaudoin and his son – Allo PolicePilgrim’s Progress

Recently I travelled to Canada and visited many places – either intentionally or by chance – we’ve talked about many times along this true crime journey. I had a poutine in Ste Therese, where Andre Vassard was shot down by a police officer. On the road to Cartierville I passed the hospital where Johanne Dorion worked. In Longueuil I talked with Surete du Quebec cold case investigators about a variety of cases.

Overnight in Sherbrooke I stayed in Rock Forest at the Jardins de Ville motel, it’s very similar in style to the Motel Chatillon, long gone and replaced, I believe by a Jean Coutu. It has an outside entrance where you park your car, and also an interior entrance with a traditional corridor that leads to the lobby. The Jardins de Ville is where Claude Poirier stays when he visits the area, I think it may be where he held up during his negotiations in the Charles Marion affaire.

My white car at the Jardins de Ville Motel

I stopped in Knowlton to see Tracy Wing, and buy a gift at Lac Broome Books, AKA the Louise Penny store. In Lennoxville I had dinner at the Lion Pub with Stephane Luce of MDIQ. I also drove to Compton Station and spent time and the place where my sister’s body was found. Back in Montreal I had been to Luna Pizza where Theresa once worked. Later in Saint John, I went back to the train station where we saw her for the last time, Thanksgiving 1978. The mapping of memories.

The post Bang-Bang Knock-Knock – The Rock Forest Massacre Part 3 first appeared on Who Killed Theresa?.