Hells Angels may soon be free despite guilty pleas
Two admit to taking part in a conspiracy to commit murder
Eighteen men with ties to the Hells Angels, including two who were among the gang ’s first full- patch members in Canada, pleaded guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to commit murder on Tuesday, putting an end to yet another possible trial before a jury in Operation Shar Qc.
What transpired before Superior Court Justice André Vincent at the Gouin courthouse on Monday was symbolically significant in that two of the biker gang ’s founding members in Canada, Michel ( Sky) Langlois, 68, and Normand ( Billy) Labelle, 59, were among the group who pleaded guilty and the land in Sorel where the gang built their first bunker, after chartering the Montreal chapter in 1977, was officially confiscated by the government.
The gang, which originated in the U. S., first planted its flag in Canada in Sorel in 1977 and the Montreal chapter’s members then helped establish other chapters across the country in the decades that followed. Langlois and Labelle were there from the beginning and, on Tuesday, they admitted they had a role in the gang ’s most violent period in Quebec, between 1994 and 2002, when the Hells Angels sought to kill the members of rival gangs who opposed their monopolistic attitude toward the sale of drugs like cocaine, hashish and marijuana. The conflict resulted in the deaths of more than 160 people, including several innocent victims.
Another four Hells Angels are expected to plead guilty to the same conspiracy on Tuesday and a fifth, who was ill on Monday, has a court date set for April.
If the four guilty pleas go ahead as planned on Tuesday, it will bring the number of men who have admitted to taking part in the murder conspiracy to 86, or more than twothirds of those originally charged with the conspiracy in 2009. As has been the case in previous guilty pleas, any first- degree murder charges the accused were facing were placed under a stay of proceedings.
The conspiracy charge is the basis of Operation Shar Qc, the joint police investigation led by the Sûreté du Québec that, in April 2009, led to the arrest of almost every member of the world’s most notorious outlaw motorcycle gang in Quebec at the time. The gang appears to have regrouped since then and recently assembled enough members to allow the Montreal chapter to restart, based on the Hells Angels’ international rules requiring that a certain amount of members be able to attend monthly meetings. And with the sentences gang members received Monday, the Montreal chapter is likely to have reinforcements before the year ends.
Six of the 18 men were sentenced to serve one day in a detention centre on top of the time they have already served behind bars since 2009, the equivalent of 11 years and seven months. Another nine, including Langlois and Labelle, were sentenced to a nine- month prison term on top of the time they have already served. Vincent ordered that the nine be required to serve at least half of those sentences before they are eligible for parole. Claude Pépin, 53, a member of the Montreal chapter, was granted bail in November and had to be returned to custody on Monday to serve his remaining day. Other members of the gang laughed at Pépin while he was frisked by a special constable before he was returned to a detention centre. Some made mocking hand gestures suggesting Pépin was enjoying the experience. Pépin laughed and appeared to take the teasing in stride.
The sentences are consistent with many of the other sentences already ordered in Operation Shar-Qc. Robert Rouleau, a prosecutor who summarized the guilty pleas, could only use very vague terms to explain how the joint recommendation on the sentences were agreed upon because one trial in Operation Shar Qc, involving 25 accused, is currently in the jury selection stage and is scheduled to begin later this year. Most of the men who pleaded guilty on Tuesday were supposed to be part of a trial that would have followed. Two other men, Robert Bonomo and John Coates, have been granted the right to have a separate trial in English. A publication ban on specific details on the role those who have pleaded guilty had in the conspiracy is currently in place.
Rouleau said the sentence recommendations were part of “intensive and complex” negotiations held over the past three months.
Eric Bouffard, 49, is expected to be sentenced on Tuesday and was separated from the group who pleaded guilty on Monday because he has another unrelated case pending.
Another two men who pleaded guilty on Monday, Sylvain Tetreault, 47, and Frédéric Landry-Hétu, 46, will having sentence hearings in November. Both men would have difficulty arguing they merited being sentenced to time served because both managed to avoid arrest, and lived on the lam, for years before the police finally tracked them down. Tetreault, a man who became a full- patch member of the South chapter in 2001 while he was serving time for plotting a murder, was arrested only last year while he was living under an alias on the north shore of Montreal. Landry- Hétu was arrested in March 2013, after police discovered he was living in a chalet in St- Michel- des- Saints. Eight other men are still being sought on warrants related to Operation Shar Qc.
The South chapter might also have new life breathed into when the sentences ordered on Monday expire by the end of this year. But the gang won’t be able to use a bunker it had established on Verchères St. in Longueuil to hold its meetings. The bunker, which was owned by a numbered company controlled by a Hells Angel named Roberto Campagna, 52, ( currently serving a 15- year sentence in Operation Shar Qc) was officially confiscated on Monday.
The building was demolished in 2012 and the land it was on is owned by another man who, the court was told on Monday, had no idea the Hells Angels were using it as a bunker. The decision taken on Monday means the land can be returned to the owner.