Slain biker said he sought new life
Rock Machine gang member was killed on Dec. 1; motive still murky
One of two men who were murdered in Vaudreuil-Dorion last month told a parole board he knew his life was in danger if he continued living in Quebec and remained a member of a notorious biker gang.
Joseph Fluet, 45, foreshadowed his own death 13 months before he and Steven Lamarsh, 38, were shot to death on Dec. 1, in a field in the suburb west of Montreal, according to the written summary of his parole hearing.
At the time of the hearing, Fluet was serving a two-year sentence for having used two fellow members of the Rock Machine biker gang to intimidate and defraud an elderly man out of tens of thousands of dollars. After the victim had agreed to invest $60,000 in a company with Fluet, the biker falsely claimed that shares the 80-year-old man had offered as his contribution had been rejected by his bank. Fluet sent the two other bikers, who convinced the man to hand over two vehicles worth $30,000 and another $30,000 in cash. Then they demanded he pay them more as interest. Several days later, the victim learned that his shares had actually been cashed by the bank and called the police.
When the Sûreté du Québec investigated Fluet and the two other men for criminal harassment, they executed a search warrant at a warehouse on Balmoral St., in the St-Laurent borough, and found three leather jackets with Rock Machine patches sewn onto them.
Fluet had managed to join the Rock Machine even though, in 2001, he had agreed to become a prosecution witness under his original name, Éric Lefebvre. He testified for the prosecution after having set fire to a pub in Moncton, N.B. while working as a drug courier for the Hells Angels in Quebec City. Other businesses were destroyed in the fire and police estimated Lefebvre caused $4.5 million in damages. He ended up testifying against a part owner of the pub, who had hired him to set the fire. He also provided evidence that helped convict a lawyer who had offered him a $35,000 bribe not to testify against the pub’s owner.
While Éric Lefebvre likely never would have been able to join a criminal organization like the Rock Machine, Fluet apparently had no problem doing so under his new identity. Fluet even continued recruiting for the Rock Machine as soon as he entered a federal penitentiary in 2014. However, according to Fluet’s parole records, months later, something caused him to seek a dramatic change in his life. The unilingual francophone was transferred to a penitentiary in Saskatchewan and, by May 2015, had expressed a desire to be released to a halfway house outside of Quebec.
He was turned down for any form of release in May 2015 and during his next hearing, on Oct. 19, 2015, he told the Parole Board of Canada he wanted to leave the Rock Machine and planned to reside outside of Quebec.
“The board takes into positive consideration that you are being
released in a community other than where you resided in the past. You state (you have not) established negative associations in this community (somewhere outside Quebec). You have also stated your wish to disassociate yourself from the gang in which you were a full-patch member. Of concern to the board is your belief that your life might be in danger if you fully disassociate from them and its potential impact in your choices and behaviour as relate to gang activity once released,” the author of the parole decision wrote. At the time, Fluet also had concerns he still had not learned enough English to start a new life outside Quebec.
Fluet was released in late 2015 but whether he ever acted on his proposal to make a new life for himself outside of Quebec is not known.
Richard Hunt, 38, of Les Cèdres, and his longtime girlfriend, Melanie Binette, 28 have been charged with the first-degree murders of Fluet and Lamarsh. They are also charged with the attempted murder of a woman who managed to flee from the shooting in Vaudreuil-Dorion.
While the SQ has said little about a possible motive behind the shooting, the Journal de Montréal recently quoted anonymous police sources as saying it appeared to involve a dispute over a drug transaction.
Both Hunt and Binette have served prison terms in the past for having brought drugs into provincial detention centres in the past.
On Jan. 10, 2011, Hunt was out on day parole while serving a threeyear sentence for drug trafficking, when he somehow managed to steal more than $800,000 from a Garda armoured truck while it was parked in a municipality west of Montreal. He was placed under police surveillance later that month and was found carrying $600 when police arrested him at a halfway house. Hunt originally claimed that his mother gave him the cash but changed his story a few times when questioned later on. On March 13, 2014, he pleaded guilty to the theft and he received a two-year sentence.
The murder case returns to court in February.
Of concern to the board is your belief that your life might be in danger if you fully disassociate from (the gang).