Canada's most feared Hells Angels kingpin is the mastermind behind the assassination of at least 15 people, authorities alleged yesterday after a dragnet operation that was billed as the biggest police operation of its kind in Canadian history.
Already in jail while he awaits trial on charges of ordering two prison guards killed, Maurice (Mom) Boucher was charged yesterday with an additional 13 counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. His son, Francis, was charged with first-degree murder in eight of the same deaths.
Most of those killed were rival bikers, but police said one man was shot by mistake. Serge Hervieux's only sin, they said at the time, was that he had the same first name as an enemy of the Hells Angels.
The charges came after nearly three years of investigation and a huge police operation against the Quebec Hells Angels yesterday. Sweeping in under dawn's semi-darkness, 2,000 officers in three provinces raided clubhouses and private homes, surprising some biker gang members in their beds and seizing documents, weapons, cars and motorcycles.
"I think this is a major blow to them," Captain Michel Martin of the provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec, said. "Other than an atomic bomb, we can't guarantee anything. But I think this will slow them down in a big way."
In Montreal alone, 87 suspects were to be arraigned late yesterday by videolink with Bordeaux jail, the indictment papers reading like a Who's Who of the biker world.
The police net caught some of the biggest fish of the gang. Most members of the Nomads, the upper echelon of the Hells Angels, were arrested, their lawyer, Gilbert Frigon, said.
In an example of what police describe as the entangled nature of organized gangs, one of those arrested was Gerald Matticks, reputed to be a member of the West End Gang, a mostly Irish group. In 1994, police charged Mr. Matticks with smuggling more than 26 tonnes of hashish, one of the largest drug seizures in North America at the time. A judge tossed out the case because police planted evidence.
Prominent Nomads who were named in the arraignment papers yesterday included Walter Stadnick and Richard (Bert) Mayrand, two former national Canadian presidents; René (Baloune) Ouellette-Charlebois, at whose wedding the Quebec diva Ginette Reno sang; top strategist Normand Robitaille and Stéphane Hilareguy, missing and believed dead.
Police in Vancouver arrested Richard Gemme, allegedly the gang's accountant.
The suspects named yesterday face charges of drug trafficking, prostitution, first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Other charges come under federal gang legislation, which calls for additional jail time when people are found guilty of major crimes committed while members of a gang.
The murder charges date as far back as 1996, to the worst of the biker turf war in Quebec, when rivals of the Hells Angels -- the upstart Rock Machine -- were gunned down in their homes or attacked with car bombs.
Zeroing in on Montreal, but spreading into Ontario, Manitoba, the Maritimes and even British Columbia, the police operation saw gang members led away in handcuffs and weapons, drugs and crucial documents carted away in police vans.
In St-Basile, south of Montreal, black-helmeted tactical team members stormed the fortified clubhouse of the Hells Angels South chapter.
In Ontario, minutes after 4 a.m. yesterday, police arrested Nomad Donald (Pup) Stockford at his residence in Ancaster, outside of Hamilton.