Desjardins gets 14-year sentence for his role in killing fellow Mafioso
Raynald Desjardins was sentenced to a 14-year prison term on Monday for his leading role in the plot to kill a Mafioso, but he did get his St-Joseph’s prayer card back.
As part of a joint recommendation made on the sentence, Desjardins admitted, through a series of facts submitted in writing to the court, that he was part of a group of men who plotted to kill Salvatore Montagna in 2011. The admissions were agreed upon by both sides in the case along with a list of items the Crown will confiscate from Desjardins as well as a longer list of the items seized in 2011 that will be returned to him. One of the items listed indicated Desjardins, a very influential organized crime figure who was involved in the construction industry when arrested in 2011, was interested in a land development in LaSalle.
The item that stood out the most among the other 33 being returned was a St-Joseph’s prayer card. StJoseph is the patron saint of the ill and Desjardins has serious health problems. Another item being returned is a Lotto Max lottery ticket purchased four days before Desjardins was arrested on Dec. 20, 2011. The Crown’s list didn’t indicate if it was a winning ticket.
Superior Court Justice André Vincent deliberated for less than an hour at the Gouin courthouse before deciding to approve the recommended sentence. With time served factored in, Desjardins has 61/2 years left to serve.
He spent almost exactly five years detained waiting for his case to finish. Each day that he served behind bars counted as a day-anda-half against the overall sentence.
Montagna was murdered in November 2011 and Desjardins and a small group of men who were in on the plot to kill him were arrested on Dec. 20, 2011. Desjardins also admitted that he and the other coconspirators used BlackBerry pinto-pin messages during the plot. They believed the messages sent under BlackBerry’s messaging system were encrypted, but the RCMP were able to read them through access to BlackBerry’s global decryption key. The messages were intercepted during an investigation into drug trafficking. But it became clear Desjardins and the others focused on plans to kill Montagna after someone tried to kill Desjardins in Laval on Sept. 16, 2011.
Both Montagna and Desjardins were part of a group of influential crime figures who tried to take control of the Montreal Mafia in 2010 while the Rizzuto organization was struggling to stay in charge. Some of the messages intercepted during the investigation indicated Desjardins eventually considered Montagna — a newcomer to Montreal’s organized crime circles — to be too greedy.
In another part of the admissions, Desjardins admitted he was the one who set up the meeting, on Nov. 24, 2011, that Montagna was lured to before he was killed. Montagna was shot inside the home of Jack Simpson, one of the co-conspirators, on Île-Vaudry St. in Charlemagne, a municipality east of Montreal.
Simpson and five other men pleaded guilty to playing a role in the conspiracy earlier this year. They have a sentence hearing scheduled at the Laval courthouse on Tuesday.