Gang leader Gregory Woolley was hit by gunfire Friday morning in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, according to several sources.
The boss died as a result of his injuries, according to our information.
The investigation, which was initiated by the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu police, has just been transferred to the Sûreté du Québec.
A suspect was reportedly apprehended at the corner of highways 10 and 30.
A major player
Since his parole in 2020, Gregory Woolley, 51, formerly very close to the Hells Angels, was considered by the police to be close to the Sicilian clan of the Montreal mafia.
In October 2018, he pleaded guilty to charges of gangsterism, conspiracy and drug trafficking filed in the wake of Operation Magot-Mastiff, carried out in November 2015, and he was sentenced to eight years.
Before his arrest following the Magot-Mastiff investigation, Gregory Woolley was considered by the police as one of the leaders of a mafia-biker-gang alliance which led Montreal’s organized crime.
It took up a lot of space in the metropolis between 2012 and 2015, while most of the Hells Angels arrested after Operation SharQc in 2009 were still detained or had to respect conditions.
He was notably at the origin of a merger of major street gangs in the metropolis.
A trusted man of the late godfather Vito Rizzuto, he also took advantage of this period to get closer to Stefano Sollecito, whom the police considered to be the leader of the Montreal mafia in the fall of 2015.
“He watches my back, I watch his back,” Sollecito said of Woolley in a conversation captured by investigators in the office of former criminal lawyer Loris Cavaliere during the Magot-Mastiff project.
During his last incarceration, Woolley was also accused of plotting, with the late Hells Angels warlord Maurice Boucher, the murder of kingpin Raynald Desjardins, but the prosecution later dropped the charge.
“The murder of Gregory Woolley is a major symbol. We have just eliminated the armed wing of the organization which had access to its services. This is a turning point for the future of Montreal organized crime. Woolley was a very powerful individual who had access to many people and was well respected by some organized crime organizations. He was, I believe, on the list of the ten most important individuals in Montreal organized crime,” an observer who knows Montreal organized crime very well told us, on condition of anonymity.
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.
Who is Gregory Woolley?
- Former member of Master B, a blue allegiance street gang
- Former founding member of the Syndicates, a defunct biker-linked street gang
- Very close to Maurice Boucher, he is the only Black to have climbed so high in the hierarchy of bikers in Quebec
- Ex-member of the Rockers, the late Hells Angels school club
- Sentenced in 2005 to 13 years for conspiracy to murder, gangsterism and drug trafficking following his arrest in Operation Spring 2001
- Arrested again in 2009 for drug trafficking while in custody (Project Axe). He will be sentenced to four years.
- He was released unconditionally in 2011. A year later, he was seen in the company of former criminal lawyer Loris Cavaliere, in the latter’s Ferrari, going to the funeral home where the remains of Hells Angels Gaétan Comeau were on display. This was one of the premises of the Magot-Mastiff investigation.