THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE

As the Mega-Trial Draws to a Close, Convicted Bikers Get Light
Sentences for Heavy Crimes

The Hells Angels mega-trial will soon be over.

After nine of the 12 Hells accused of murder, drug dealing and other
crimes pleaded guilty to reduced charges last week, the Crown's
prosecutor Andre Vincent has asked Judge Rejean Paul for sentences
ranging from 20 years for a full-patch Nomad to 15 years for a
full-patch Rocker.

Vincent, audibly sick with a cold, spent the day on his feet
describing the mountains of evidence that the police had gathered
against the nine men. While Vincent described the financial details of
their multi-million-dollar dope-dealing empire, the nine sat quietly
behind the bulletproof glass of the prisoner's box. When Vincent
described the killings done by the gang in order to maintain their
control over the city's drug trade, one of the bikers, Guillaume
Serra, yawned while leaning back into his chair.

The nine are all members of the Hells Angels, and most of them belong
to the Nomads club, an elite chapter made up of killers loyal to the
Hells. Vincent's presentation stressed how murder had to be done if
one was to be invited to sit at the Nomads table.

"Many were called," he said, "but few were chosen."

Vincent described how the Nomads developed their dope business into a
wholesale "shopper's drug mart" for the city's entire drug trade. The
Nomads "table" controlled the city's drug prices all the way down to
the $20 spent for a quarter gram of cocaine sold on the street.

At one point, Vincent pointed out how Normand Robitaille met with
another gang leader in Montreal North. Both agreed to raise the street
price for a "quarter" from $20 to $25. They later had to bring the
price back to $20 because dealers were complaining that they had to
make change all the time and they had no place to keep all the coins.

Vincent described how the Nomads were running a business that made
$111-million in gross sales, not to mention the $15-million (net)
profit made off those sales. Vincent showed videos of bikers
delivering hockey kit bags full of money to a Beaubien Street
apartment. When police seized one of the gang's accounting program
discs, it showed how the gang kept strict and detailed accounts of all
its transactions. At one point, when a dealer overpaid the Angels by
$20 on a $50,000 payout, the Angels scrupulously gave him a $20 credit
on the next delivery.

Vincent made a point of mentioning that the Hells Angels do not pay
corporate taxes of any kind.

The Nomads, and their "B" team the Rockers, strong-armed any
competition on the streets of Montreal. If the competition did not
want to play by the Nomads rules, the club would use its available
options.

The competition would be eliminated.

Testimony was quoted, and one witness was cited as saying, "You
wouldn't last 10 minutes on the corner of Ste-Catherine and
St-Lawrence if you tried to sell dope without their [the Nomads]
permission."

The Hells used the Nomads (and the Rockers) as their iron fist. Over
164 murders have been directly linked to Montreal's infamous biker
war. Not all the victims were linked to organized crime.

Daniel Desrochers, 11 years old, was playing on Adam Street deep in
the heart of the city's east end when a nearby bomb tore a dealer
apart in his Jeep Cherokee. Shrapnel from the bomb tore the top of
Desrocher's head off. He died a day later.

While a waitress was serving the breakfast shift in a Montreal North
restaurant, someone walked in and tried to shoot one of her clients.
The client, a biker, reached for her and used her as a human shield as
the killers tried to shoot him. They missed him but they did manage to
shoot the waitress in the leg. The woman will limp till the end of her
days.

A car salesman named Serge Hervieux had the bad luck to share the same
given name as Serge Boutin, a member of the Rock Machine, the Hells'
sworn enemies. When someone walked into a Saint-Leonard car lot and
asked for Serge, Hervieux answered and asked the man what he could do
for him. The man shot Hervieux through the eye. Boutin, the intended
victim, was working in the car lot's office located on the second floor.

The list goes on.

Murder charges against the nine were reduced to complicity because the
Crown realized that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove
that there was a direct link between the nine bikers and any of the
murders that took place during Montreal's infamous biker war.

Police do, however, have a strong case against the three bikers who
were not included in the deal. Greg Wooley, Pierre Laurin and
Jean-Richard Lariviere all stand accused of assorted murders and will
be tried for their crimes in separate trials.

Of the nine convicted bikers, with time spent in jail since their
arrest (March 2001), good behaviour and varied concurrent sentences,
the Nomads will serve a maximum of 15 and a minimum of 71/2 years in
prison, and the Rockers a maximum of 10 and a minimum of five years.

One of the trial's observers was not impressed. "So that's the price
of a life in Montreal," he said. "Ten years." Another observer, a
policeman who worked with the famous Wolverine investigation squad,
did not bother to hide his disappointment. "It's all part of the
game," he said.

As much as the Nomads are all going away for a long time, the Hells
Angels still rule the city's drug trade. Reports say that it's
business as usual on the streets of Montreal.