Former Hells Angels crime boss Maurice (Mom) Boucher dies of cancer

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When Maurice (Mother) Boucher was on the peak of his powers as a Hells Angel, he was probably the most intimidating crime boss in Quebec.

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However most cancers isn’t intimidated by anybody.

The previous biker gang member died Sunday inside a federal penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, 40 kilometres north of Montreal. Two sources instructed the Montreal Gazette he died of most cancers. After refusing to be handled for the illness for months, he was just lately transferred from the Particular Dealing with Unit, a super-maximum safety facility, to a different on the identical property that may present palliative care, each sources mentioned.

“On July 10, 2022, Maurice Boucher, an inmate below medical care at Archambault Establishment, died whereas in our custody of obvious pure causes,” Correctional Service Canada mentioned in an announcement issued Sunday afternoon. “On the time of his demise, Mr. Boucher had been serving an indeterminate sentence for 2 counts of first-degree homicide, tried homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, assault with a weapon and carrying a weapon for a harmful function.

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“The inmate’s subsequent of kin have been notified of his demise.”

“The one factor I can say immediately is that it closes one other chapter on the Hells Angels in Quebec,” mentioned Man Ouellette, the Chomedey MNA and former Sûreté du Québec investigator who was a part of the mixed police pressure that helped take down Boucher and the immense prison community he constructed after 1994, the beginning of battle between organized crime teams that lasted eight years. Greater than 160 individuals died throughout what got here to be often called Quebec’s biker gang struggle.

“My first thought was of Diane Lavigne, the jail guard he ordered to be murdered (on June 26, 1997). I had considered her just lately as a result of it was the twenty fifth anniversary of her demise,” Ouellette mentioned whereas noting that, till a number of years in the past, Boucher would have been eligible for full parole quickly on the life sentence he acquired for the murder.

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In 2005, after he retired from police work, Ouellette revealed Mother, a e book in regards to the infamous prison. It was slated to be re-released in a number of weeks, Ouellette mentioned.

In 1997, Boucher was below intense stress from police who have been sure he was the person calling the photographs for the Hells Angels in Quebec as they battled different prison organizations for management over drug trafficking within the province. In an effort to intimidate the justice system, Boucher instructed the individuals beneath him to kill individuals associated to it.

Individuals who took orders from Boucher determined to focus on jail guards and killed Lavigne as she was heading residence from work from the Montreal Detention Centre. Then on Sept. 8, 1997, they killed Pierre Rondeau and wounded Robert Corriveau by firing a number of photographs into the bus the guards have been driving in as they headed to the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre.

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Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné, a Hells Angels underling who participated in each murders, turned an informant and helped get Boucher convicted of the homicides and the tried homicide in 2002.

Lavigne’s demise marked an necessary turning level within the biker gang struggle and Ouellette mentioned the date used to function a reminder to him that Boucher can be eligible for full parole this 12 months. However, as Ouellette famous, Boucher’s interval of parole ineligibility was prolonged in 2018. An investigation into the Montreal Mafia and Hells Angels revealed that Boucher was behind a plot to have Mob chief Raynald Desjardins killed.

Boucher was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for plotting to kill Desjardins and the investigation revealed he nonetheless held sway amongst Quebec’s organized crime circles.

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Boucher spent most of his time behind bars contained in the Particular Dealing with Unit. He survived makes an attempt made on his life and, in line with a police supply, he managed to speak with Vito Rizzuto in 2006, simply earlier than the Montreal Mafia chief was extradited to the U.S. to face prison expenses in New York. Rizzuto was briefly detained on the Particular Dealing with Unit as a part of a plan to have him flown to the U.S. as quickly as attainable after the Supreme Courtroom of Canada refused to listen to his enchantment of the extradition order.

The supply mentioned a video digital camera recorded photographs of two highly effective organized crime figures practising their golf swings in entrance of one another.

Boucher’s early years confirmed little, if any, indication that he would turn into some of the highly effective organized crime figures in Quebec. He was born in Causapscal, a village within the Gaspé Peninsula. When he was two years outdated, his household moved to Montreal, the place Boucher’s father labored in development as an iron employee.

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As a younger grownup, Boucher appeared destined to be a petty prison. On the age of 21, he attributed his crimes to heavy drug use. He was about to be sentenced for a collection of break-ins and admitted he had already used LSD, cocaine and heroin.

Seven years later in 1982, the Montreal police started to take discover of Boucher as a police report famous they have been maintaining shut tabs on him whereas he operated out of a brasserie in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

At across the similar time, he joined an outlaw motorbike gang based mostly in japanese Montreal referred to as the SS. One police detective who investigated the gang’s crimes would later inform the Montreal Gazette that Boucher didn’t stand out from the remainder of its members.

On Might 1, 1987, Boucher was welcomed into the Hells Angels as a full-patch member of its Montreal chapter, and by 1994 he had gained a repute amongst Montreal drug sellers as a fierce competitor.

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He used his standing as a Hells Angel to intimidate rival drug sellers to give up their territory to him. When some members of the rival gangs, notably the Rock Machine, determined to face as much as Boucher, the biker gang struggle started.

Boucher’s energy within the underworld grew when he determined to kind his personal Hells Angels chapter. It acquired a particular Nomads designation, which meant it was not restricted by geography as most different chapters have been.

The Nomads chapter was dealt a big blow in March 2001 when virtually all of its members have been arrested as a part of an investigation dubbed Operation Springtime 2001. One a part of the investigation that stood out revealed how the chapter Boucher created offered 1,916 kilograms of cocaine between Nov. 10 and Dec. 19, 2000 alone, for a revenue of greater than $8 million.

pcherry@postmedia.com