Brothers accused in West Island robberies
Career criminals earlier ordered to stay apart
As Peter Weinmeister was preparing to be released on yet another lengthy prison sentence last year, the Parole Board of Canada ordered him to follow a rather unusual condition.
Weinmeister, 52, a career criminal, was not allowed to meet his older brother, Kevin, 54, who possesses an even longer criminal record, unless his parole officer approved.
“The influence you have on one another appears to be negative,” the parole board wrote in its decision made on Peter Weinmeister’s statutory release early in 2016.
Late last week, the Montreal police obtained an arrest warrant that alleges the Weinmeister brothers teamed up to rob a business and three banks in the West Island between June 14 and July 2. Kevin Weinmeister is detained and is scheduled to have a bail hearing next month. On Tuesday, the Montreal police confirmed that Peter Weinmeister is still being sought.
According to provincial court records, the last time the brothers were charged together in a criminal case was in 1984, when they were convicted of a relatively minor offence. They are now accused of carrying out three bank robberies — two in Pointe-Claire and one in Dollard-des-Ormeaux — as well the armed robbery of a business in Dollard-des- Ormeaux.
Initially, Kevin Weinmeister was the only person accused of the robberies when he was arrested on July 4.
But the warrant issued on Thursday alleges Peter helped out in each robbery and that the brothers conspired to commit armed robberies between June 14 and July 2.
The warrant was issued at roughly the same moment a 54-month sentence Peter Weinmeister received in January 2013 expired.
That sentence involved an unusual bank robbery carried out in LaSalle on Nov. 30, 2012. While wearing a disguise and armed only with a toy gun, he ordered an employee to hand over cash. He exited the bank but did not attempt to flee. Instead, he waited for the police to arrive and arrest him.
He was serving that sentence, in January 2016, when the parole board ordered that Peter Weinmeister not associate with his brother while he was out on a statutory release. Almost all inmates in Canadian federal penitentiaries automatically qualify for a release if they have not been granted parole by the two-thirds mark of their sentence.
“It is well documented that the two of you share similar criminal backgrounds. In addition, you were both involved in tobacco trafficking within the prison system as well as the assault on another inmate,” the parole board wrote in the decision it made on Jan. 13, 2016. The older brother objected to the condition being imposed.
He made this clear in a letter he wrote to the board in preparation for his release hearing.
In the letter he acknowledged that “there were concerns about the two of you during incarceration but you argue that this has nothing to do with your lives on the outside. You feel it would be unfair to take away from your mother, who is ill, the opportunity of seeing you both together.”
The 54-month prison term was Peter Weinmeister’s third sentence inside a federal penitentiary since 1991, when he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of armed robbery.
The decision on his statutory release notes he had 30 prior convictions before he was arrested in 2012 and that since 1984 there had been “no significant lull” in his criminal record.
In 1993, he made headlines when he and two other inmates at a penitentiary in Laval managed to scale a fence and escape.
Kevin Weinmeister has spent most of the past 15 years behind bars for a series of armed robberies he carried out in the West Island in 2002 and 2008.
His most recent sentence, of seven years, expired in November and six months later he was charged with assaulting a woman and the police officer who responded to her conjugal violence complaint.
He was released on bail five days later and is alleged to have carried out the first bank robbery in his current case less than a month later.
His criminal record includes a conviction related to a single-vehicle accident, on Dec. 26, 1994, where he was behind the wheel of a Suzuki Sidekick when it lost control and skidded off Highway 138 in Howick, 60 kilometres southwest of Montreal.
A 30-year-old Pierrefonds man died after being tossed from the vehicle when it flipped over onto a field.
The three other passengers inside the sport utility vehicle suffered serious injuries. According to the coroner’s report on the accident, the Sûreté du Québec found Weinmeister walking through a field two kilometres away.
He handed police officers fake identification in an apparent effort to keep them from finding out that he was wanted on warrants that had been issued for his arrest in Ontario and British Columbia.
The SQ suspected that Weinmeister was impaired when the accident occurred but he was ultimately only charged with offences related to the fake identity card he handed to the officers.
The influence you have on one another appears to be negative.