Mom Boucher aggressive and contemptuous until the end

Maurice “Mom” Boucher died of cancer on Sunday at the Archambault penitentiary in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, where the former head of the Hells Angels showed his contempt for the authorities until his last breath.

• Read also: “We forgot the victims of the biker war”

Boucher, who turned 69 on June 21, allegedly refused medical assistance in dying on Friday on the pretext that he preferred to suffer, according to information obtained by our Bureau of Investigation.

The fallen biker, who had taken to saying his prayers every evening during his incarceration, had been transferred to a palliative care bed at this penitentiary 11 days earlier. According to our sources, he had been admitted not under his name, but rather under a number, that is to say “detainee no. 11”.

Since his 2002 life sentence for ordering the murders of two correctional officers, he had been incarcerated at the Special Handling Unit (SDU), neighboring Archambault Institution and the only “super-security” penitentiary. maximum” in Canada.

Despite the very advanced state of his throat cancer, the man who was reputed to be one of the worst criminals in the history of Quebec had been escorted to Archambault by a tactical squad responsible for intervening with any inmate at risk of escape, which is the usual procedure in his case.

Visits are not permitted in this section of the penitentiary and the management did not make an exception for anyone who refused any treatment.

Aggressive until the end

His transfer was carried out in secret to avoid any overflow in this prison complex where he still enjoyed the respect of several prisoners.

Thin and weakened, the man who was considered the most powerful criminal biker in the country was fed liquid food supplements there for several days, in addition to needing morphine to calm his pain.

Yet Boucher’s final hours did not seem to lessen his visceral hatred of the authorities, or inspire repentance for ordering the assassinations of prison guards Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau in 1997.

Even on his deathbed, he continued to express aggression and contempt towards officers and prison staff, according to our information.

The outlaw had ordered these murders from Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné to “destabilize the judicial system” during the biker war and dissuade his killers from collaborating with justice, testified Gagné, who nevertheless became an informer, during the Boucher trial.

Mom is considered the instigator of the bloody war that the Hells waged against the Rock Machine and independent traffickers to take control of the drug market.

“Boucher did not respect the verbal agreements that we had always had with them. He began to eat into our territories and the Hells dope sellers settled in our bars, ”said Marcel Gauthier, who was in the opposing camp, to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ).

According to the SQ, the conflict killed 165 people between 1994 and 2002, including nine innocent victims, including Daniel Desrochers, 11, killed by the explosion of a trafficker’s Jeep in the Montreal district of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve in August 1995.

“Render crackpot… »

In addition, this war led to 181 attempted murders, claiming 20 other innocent victims, including journalist Michel Auger, who was shot several times in the parking lot of the Montreal Journal, September 13, 2000.

Twenty years later, retired Montreal police commander André Bouchard, who led the team of investigators tasked with elucidating this crime, told the Log that “it was Mom who placed the order to have Michel killed […] because of what he wrote about them”. He mentioned that half an hour after the shooting, Boucher, who was then the subject of a police surveillance, “was giving high five to the suspects in a restaurant on rue Sainte-Catherine.

“Boucher had become quite crackpot and thought he was so above it all that he has already said that if he wanted, he could be elected mayor of Montreal! It was time to arrest him, ”observed Mr. Bouchard, adding that several Hells told the police that they did not agree with his tactics.

Anti-gang law and eviction

It was further to the death of young Desrochers that the federal government had the first anti-gang law passed in Canada in 1997. Other anti-gang provisions were also added to the Criminal Code in 2002, in response to the attempted murder of Michel Auger.

However, in the spring of 2014, Boucher suffered what he considered the ultimate affront: he was expelled from the motorcycle club following a unanimous vote taken in assembly by all of the Hells Angels of Quebec.

For them, their ex-leader was finally part of “the past”, according to a member of the Hells quoted in court documents.

A FULL CRIMINAL CAREER

• Born the June 21, 1953 in Causapscal, in Bas-Saint-Laurent, he was 2 years old when he and his family moved to Montreal.
• Between 1973 and 1984he has accumulated several convictions for armed robbery, breaking and entering and sexual assault on a minor.
• the May 1, 1987he became a member of the Hells Angels of the Montreal chapter, which he led in the early 1990s.
• In 1994he founded the elite Nomads chapter of the Hells, the year when war broke out between his band and the alliance formed by the Rock Machine and independent traffickers.
• the June 26, 1997correctional officer Diane Lavigne is killed after leaving Bordeaux prison.
• the September 8, 1997correctional officer Pierre Rondeau was murdered near the Rivière-des-Prairies prison.
• the December 5, 1997Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné becomes an informer and incriminates Maurice “Mom” Boucher as being the one who ordered the murders of the two guards.
• the December 18, 1997, Boucher was arrested at Notre-Dame Hospital, where he was to be operated on for a tumor in his throat. He is accused of the premeditated murders of the two agents.
• the November 27, 1998Boucher is acquitted and emerges triumphant from the Montreal courthouse with several other bikers.
• at thesummer 2000hitman Gérald Gallant receives a $250,000 contract to eliminate Boucher, but fails to do so.
• the October 10, 2000the Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal and ordered a new trial.
• the May 5, 2002the jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison.
• In 2018, he received a symbolic sentence of 10 years for a murder plot targeting the kingpin Raynald Desjardins. The following year, he confessed to having attacked a fellow prisoner with a pickaxe.

His cancer had come back

In the fall of 2015, Boucher himself told his daughter, Alexandra Mongeau, during her visit to the Special Handling Unit (USD), that her throat cancer had “returned”. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

They were unaware, however, that the police were recording them without their knowledge at that time, because Boucher was then the subject of an investigation for a murder plot aimed at the mafia kingpin Raynald Desjardins.

Our Bureau of Investigation had access to these police recordings which are the subject of the book The Parlor, published in October 2021.

Among other things, Boucher confided to his daughter, laughing, that he had befriended a fellow prisoner imprisoned in the same place for having also killed a prison guard.

Spending most of his time confined to tiny cell number 104 of the SHU, the 60-year-old has remained an embittered and angry man, despite all these years of detention.

“It’s not good for me”

He never digested his expulsion from the Hells in 2014, going so far as to call them “cowards” during one of his discussions with his daughter.

“I was at bat all the time for them. It was me who made them eat. There, it is me who is in prison. Worse, it’s not good for me”, he vociferated, saying he was aware that in the world of bikers, “the world [l]’do not like “.

He hated some former Rock Machine color bearers who became influential members of the Hells after the two gangs reached a truce.

Resentful

“They know that me, I’m going to revenge myself. All those who did anything to me… If I ever go out, it’s the first ones I’m going to kill”, promised the convict, saying to himself “resentful for life”.

When he learned that a parole could be granted to Stéphane Gagné, the informer who helped the authorities to have him convicted, he reacted in these terms: “Godasse, the sickening dirty…”.

A former drug addict himself, Boucher disapproved of drug use among those close to him, even though the sale of narcotics is the number one criminal activity in the Hells.

“It’s when you take things that you do stupid things,” he said.