Gangster set to appear before parole board
67-year-old, whose term expires in 2023, seeks permission to leave halfway house
One of the most influential organized crime figures in Quebec is scheduled to appear before the Parole Board of Canada on Friday to continue his demand that he no longer be required to reside at a halfway house.
The board imposed the condition on Raymond Desfossés, 67, a leader in the West End Gang, on June 28 as he was about to reach his statutory release date. He is serving a combined 18-year sentence for cocaine smuggling and for having hired professional hit man Gerald Gallant, 67, to kill six people between 1980 and 2001.
As part of a lengthy investigation dubbed Project Baladeur, Gallant also told the Sûreté du Québec that Desfossés hired him to kill Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher in 2000. The plan was called off because Gallant sensed Boucher was under intense police surveillance at the time.
Desfossés was originally charged with six counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. But he ultimately pleaded guilty to being part of a general conspiracy to commit murder. His sentence will expire in 2023.
Several years after the failed plot to kill Boucher, Sylvain Boulanger, a former Hells Angel who turned informant, told the Sûreté du Québec that the biker gang was offering $100,000 to anyone willing to kill Desfossés.
“In your case, the parole board concludes that there exists within you an imposing potential for violence and that the level of the risk of reoffending violently is still there. You were the head of a criminal organization with a significant reach and you did not hesitate to use murder to reach your goals,” the parole board wrote in its decision last summer ordering Desfossés to reside at a halfway house until he shows signs of change.
The board made the decision even though Desfossés’s casemanagement team, the people who prepare an offender for a release, felt the condition wasn’t necessary and “would only provide us with a false sense of security.” Since then, Desfossés has pushed to have the condition lifted.
In November, the Parole Board of Canada’s appeal division delivered a decision ordering that Desfossés have a new release hearing “because it considers that the (parole) board failed in its duty to act fairly and did not produce sufficient written reasons (for the order to reside at a halfway house) and that it proceeded in an insufficient analysis of your risk.”
TIMELINE
1975: According to the book Gallant: Confessions d’un tueur à gages, Gerald Gallant, who went on to become a prolific hit man for organized crime groups, met Raymond Desfossés for the first time in 1975 at the Cowansville Institution, a federal penitentiary in the Eastern Townships. Gallant would later tell police: “Mr. Raymond Desfossés really impressed me. He controlled drug trafficking inside the penitentiary. He was a real big crime boss.”
Jan. 30, 1980: Gallant kills Louis Desjardins in Port Cartier. After his arrest in 2006, Gallant revealed he killed Desjardins, a drug dealer, for Desfossés because the gangster was concerned Desjardins was an informant.
Feb. 16, 1984: Gallant kills Marcel Lefrançois in Ste-Foy. In this case, Gallant said, Desfossés didn’t order the slaying but supplied a driver for the hit.
May 28, 1990: Gallant kills Salvatore Luzi in Lorraine. Luzi ran a strip bar in Montreal and, at the time, police suspected the motive involved money Allan (The Weasel) Ross, at the time the leader of the West End Gang, lost in the business. Gallant said Desfossés, who was close to Ross, gave him the contract to kill Luzi.
March 18, 1991: Gallant kills Richard McGurnaghan inside a tavern in Point St-Charles. Gallant told investigators Desfossés paid him $12,000 to kill the 42-year-old.
March 1992: Desfossés is arrested and detained in Montreal after authorities in the U.S. requested his extradition on several charges, including the May 1985 murder of David Singer, an associate of the West End Gang who was killed in Florida. Desfossés challenged the extradition for years but was eventually sent to the U.S. In May 1998, he entered a no contest plea to the murder charge and was sentenced to a 12-year prison term. His lawyer estimated Desfossés would be paroled within 14 months because of the time he spent behind bars fighting his extradition.
July 7, 2000: Gallant kills Robert Savard, a notorious loan shark tied to the Hells Angels, inside a restaurant in Montreal. Desfossés ordered the hit that turned into a disaster. Savard was having breakfast with another loan shark, former Quebec Nordique Normand Descôteaux, that morning and Gallant and his accomplice decided to keep firing toward the retired hockey player even though they had killed their primary target. Descôteaux used Hélène Brunet, a waitress, as a human shield to protect himself, but both gunmen kept firing. Brunet was seriously wounded in the shooting.
May 30, 2001: In a case of mistaken identity, Gallant kills Yvon Daigneault, the manager of a bar in Ste-Adele, and wounds Michel Paquette, another innocent victim of Gallant and his accomplice’s sloppiness. According to Gallant, the actual target was Claude Faber, a former associate of the West End Gang who owed Desfossés $250,000. But, the hit man claimed, Desfossés supplied his accomplice with the wrong licence plate number. Gallant said Desfossés still paid him $25,000 because the error came from his source. Another error made that day was that Gallant left his DNA on a beer bottle recovered at the crime scene. That mistake was key to the police launching Project Baladeur, the investigation that revealed Gallant killed 28 people.
September 2004: Desfossés is arrested along with more than two dozen other people in Project Calvette, an RCMP investigation that revealed he was the ringleader of a network that imported cocaine from South America. In 2005, Desfossés pleaded guilty at the Montreal courthouse and was sentenced to a prison term of 13 years.
Aug. 18, 2006: Gallant makes his first appearance before a judge at the St-Jérôme courthouse, where he is charged with Yvon Daigneault’s murder and the attempted murder of Michel Paquette. By then Gallant had begun working with the Sûreté du Québec to help them investigate the other people involved in the 28 murders he committed. In 2009, Gallant pleaded guilty to the 28 murders and received a life sentence.
March 17, 2009: Desfossés and 10 other people who ordered or took part in the 28 murders Gallant carried out learn the hit man began supplying information to the SQ shortly after his arrest in 2006. On Feb. 20, 2014, Desfossés pleaded guilty to a general conspiracy to commit murder. His sentence was combined with the sentence he received for cocaine smuggling.