POLICE SOURCES SEE BROUILLETTE AS LEADING DRUG-TRAFFICKING FIGURE

He is a Young Turk among the Hells Angels and smart enough to have
brushed up on his accounting skills while biding his time behind bars.
And the police suspect that before his arrest yesterday, Mario
Brouillette had taken over for Maurice (Mom) Boucher in the city's
drug trafficking circles.

"He's the leader among a younger, second generation in the Hells
Angels' chapter in Trois Rivieres," biker gang expert Guy Ouellette
said.

Police in Montreal noticed the 34-year-old Hells Angel on occasion
during the biker war in the 1990s, hanging out with members of
Boucher's elite Nomads chapter. He was often described by police as a
close associate of Louis (Melou) Roy, a founding member of the Nomads
who mysteriously disappeared in 2000.

With Boucher serving life sentences for orchestrating the murders of
two prison guards and almost all of the Nomads serving lengthy
sentences as a result of the megatrials that followed the biker war, a
drug-trafficking void was created in major pockets of Montreal.

According to a Montreal police intelligence report made public this
year, the gang's Trois Rivieres chapter stepped in for fellow Hells
Angels along with the help of a street gang called the Syndicate.

Police sources point to Brouillette as the leading figure in that
takeover. He is a man who does not hide the fact he wears the gang's
patch, the notorious winged skull.

In 2003, Brouillette confirmed to the National Parole Board that he
was a full-patch Hells Angel, as he was preparing to finish a six-year
sentence for his role in the 1995 murder of a Rock Machine associate.

He was initially charged with first-degree murder and with conspiring
to kill Claude Rivard, a man who was shot to death in Repentigny. But
Brouillette managed to plead guilty to being an accessory after the
fact to murder.

He used part of the sentence to study accounting on a part-time
basis.

During one parole hearing Brouillette described the Hells Angels as a
group of motorcycle enthusiasts and dismissed the gang's criminal
reputation as "public rumours propagated by the media."

But he was turned down for parole during the same hearing, in part
because he was suspected of drug trafficking at his penitentiary. A
psychological evaluation in 1997 - near the start of his sentence -
"revealed the strong presence of antisocial and narcissistic
personality traits."

Parole board reports filed during his sentence reveal the influence he
had within the gang even in 1999, when he was 27.

It was noted while incarcerated he had received greeting cards from
members of the Hells Angels from all over the world.