Getting Maurice (Mom) Boucher to court is a security challenge
Moving former Hells Angel invites jailbreak or assassination, they say
Two criminal cases brought against Maurice (Mom) Boucher, one of Quebec’s most notorious criminals, pose potential logistical nightmares for provincial prison guards who will transfer the former member of Hells Angel from a penitentiary to two different courthouses in the coming months.
For the past 14 years, Boucher, 62, has been incarcerated at the Special Handling Unit (SHU), the so-called super-maximum federal penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines where he’s serving a life sentence for issuing orders that led to the murders, in 1997, of two provincial prison guards, and the attempted murder of another.
Despite being imprisoned there since 2002 (and reportedly being kicked out of the gang in 2014), police sources say Boucher still wields influence in Quebec’s organized crime circles.
That influence is believed to be at the heart of the case brought against him on Nov. 19. An arrest warrant was issued alleging Boucher, his daughter Alexandra Mongeau, 26, and Gregory Woolley, 44, a longtime associate of Boucher’s, had been plotting over the course of four months to kill Raynald Desjardins, 62, an equally notorious organized crime figure who is currently detained at the Montreal Detention Centre. A preliminary inquiry, which will require Boucher’s presence, is scheduled to begin in May at the Longueuil courthouse.
Near the end of last month, Quebec Court Judge Stéphane Godri dealt with concerns expressed by provincial prison guards over having to transfer Boucher from the Special Handling Unit to the South Shore courthouse (a distance of roughly 50 kilometres) for the preliminary inquiry, which is scheduled to last four days. Their concerns are that the transfers present an opportunity for either an attempt on Boucher’s life or a chance to free him.
Boucher has survived at least two serious attempts on his life at the penitentiary, which is one of the most secure in Canada, in 2002 and 2010. And, in 2004, Correctional Service Canada uncovered a plot to spring Boucher from the SHU.
Provincial prison guards requested that the murder conspiracy case be transferred to the Gouin courthouse in northern Montreal, which has many additional security features. But during a hearing on March 31, Godri ruled the case involving the alleged plot to kill Desjardins will be heard in Longueuil.
“All of the courthouses in the province are supposed to be able to hold this type of a trial,” Godri said. “I see no valid reason why the trial shouldn’t be held anywhere but here.”
Mathieu Lavoie, president of the union that represents provincial prison guards (Syndicat des agents de la paix en service correctionels) was unavailable for comment on Wednesday, but earlier this month, in an interview with the Journal de Montréal, he said he disagrees with Godri’s decision. He noted that history has shown Boucher has no concern for the safety of prison guards.
On Monday, Boucher is scheduled to have his first court date at the courthouse in St-Jérôme since he was charged in January with attempting to murder Ghislain Gaudet, 66, a fellow inmate at the penitentiary, on Nov. 3. Boucher’s co-accused in the attempted murder is René Girard, 53, a man who is serving a life sentence for murder.
Boucher’s presence is not required in the courtroom on Monday for what’s expected to be a formality hearing. The court will likely have to deal with the fact that Boucher’s lawyer in the case, Joëlle Roy, was recently selected to become a Quebec Court judge.
Gaudet was stabbed several times when he was attacked and had to be taken to a hospital. Boucher and Girard face five charges each in the attempted murder case including one related to a weapon used in the attack, reportedly a homemade knife.
Here are profiles of the two accused and the victim:
MAURICE (MOM) BOUCHER
Boucher became a member of the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter in 1987 and quickly ascended through the ranks of the biker gang to the point where, eight years later, he was allowed to create and lead his own chapter, the Nomads.
The portrait that later emerged, through many criminal court cases, was that Boucher created the Nomads chapter because he wanted to monopolize drug trafficking across Quebec and was willing to have anyone who stood in his way killed.
He’s widely considered to have been the protagonist in a bloody war with rival criminal organizations
that stretched from 1994 to 2002. More than 160 people, including several innocent victims, were killed during the conflict.
Shortly after a special police squad was formed to target the Nomads chapter, Boucher tried to intimidate the justice system. He assigned several people who worked underneath him to kill any provincial guards they considered a feasible target.
On June 26, 1997, prison guard Diane Lavigne was murdered as she was driving home from her job at the Montreal Detention Centre. Then, on Sept. 8, 1997, another shooting ended the life of guard Pierre Rondeau and badly injured his colleague Robert Corriveau, while they were in a bus preparing to transport detainees to court.
Boucher was convicted in 2002 on two counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.
CO-ACCUSED RENÉ GIRARD
In September 1986, Girard travelled from Chute-aux-Outardes, a small town about 20 kilometres southwest of Baie Comeau, to Quebec City with the goal of getting off welfare. While job searching in the city, the then 23-year-old Girard met someone and followed the person home, where both consumed large amounts of cocaine and beer. They had sex and Girard, high on cocaine and alcohol, fell asleep in
the person’s home.
When he woke up a few hours later, Girard learned the person he believed was a woman was actually a man. In a fit of rage, Girard stabbed the man about a dozen times and left him for dead. He drove away in the victim’s car and was arrested a few days later.
On April 14, 1987, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received the life sentence he is currently serving. At the start of the sentence, professionals who evaluated Girard found that he felt more guilty about having had sex with a man than he did over having taken a human life. Despite being initially eligible for parole in 1996 Girard has never been released and, according to a decision made in 2014 by the Parole Board of Canada, he has been incarcerated at the same penitentiary as Boucher since April 22, 2008, because he wants to be at the SHU. In May of that year, he faked a heart attack in an attempt to injure prison guards with a shiv. The assault is what prompted the transfer.
The parole decision describes Girard as withdrawn and immature. His parole eligibility date has been pushed back twice after he threatened to kill guards in 2007, and for having smuggled PCP into a penitentiary in 1992.
He has told his case-management team, the people who prepare an inmate for a potential release, that he’ll never discuss the murder he committed with anyone again.
VICTIM GHISLAIN GAUDET
Like Boucher, Gaudet is serving a life sentence for the murder of a prison guard.
On July 11, 1978, he and three fellow inmates broke out of a maximum-security penitentiary in Laval by overpowering guards using knives and a firearm that an inmate had somehow managed to get his hands on beforehand. Shots were fired and guard Guy Fournier was killed along with Jean Lachapelle, the inmate Gaudet would later claim, in court, possessed the firearm.
As recently as 2014, Gaudet has maintained he didn’t know Lachapelle planned to use a gun for the escape. Three other guards were injured that day. All four men who escaped, including Gaudet, were eventually arrested.
Following a trial at the Montreal courthouse, Gaudet and the three other inmates who made it out were convicted of first-degree murder and received life sentences. In the decades that have followed, Gaudet has been a consistent headache for Correctional Service Canada.
In 1990, Gaudet and four other inmates broke out of the Donnacona Institution, a maximum-security penitentiary near Quebec City, by using a cement truck to smash their way out. Gaudet was arrested about a month later.
In 1998, while incarcerated at the Special Handling Unit, Gaudet somehow managed to make a homemade bomb inside his cell and used it to injure a guard while he was being escorted during a walk outdoors. Since 2007, the Parole Board of Canada has rejected five of Gaudet’s requests for release.
The stabbing on Nov. 3 wasn’t the first time Gaudet was attacked while behind bars. In June 2009, he was placed in isolation for a period that ultimately lasted four years after he was assaulted by a fellow inmate who kicked and punched him. The decision to place him in isolation had to be reviewed every four months by a committee, but Gaudet refused to take part in its hearings. During that time spent in isolation, Gaudet went on a hunger strike for 10 days in April 2012, and, several months later, he threatened to kill the assistant-warden of the penitentiary.
In August 2009, while in isolation, he threw excrement at guards. In October 2011, he used a bottle containing his urine to spray a guard while his meal was being transferred through a slot in the door of his cell.
According to his parole records he claims he didn’t take part in Fournier’s death and that prison guards lied about his involvement in the murder during his trial. He has told parole officers several times that the violent acts he committed on guards after his escape in 1978 were payback for what was said during his trial in 1979.