Posted 1:27pm Updated 5:00am
At around 11:30 a.m. on February 9, 1992, two nervous men arrived at the Cage aux Sports on Boulevard de la Concorde in Laval. They know they screwed up. You are accountable. They received $8,000 from two kingpins for a shipment of 125 stolen washers and dryers. But they were arrested by the police four days earlier. All stocks were confiscated. You burned the money. And they are “broken like a nail”.
This Monday afternoon, it’s time for explanations.
The two men are called Gérard Bourgade and Claude Riendeau. Bourgade is a seemingly uneventful trucker who supplements his salary by importing cocaine on his trips to the United States.
Claude Riendeau, he’s a former cop-turned-army robber, loan shark, coke dealer, and “arms dealer,” as he likes to humbly put it.
The men Bourgade and Riendeau date do not have a reputation for being “the forgiving insurer” or a believer in the “third-chance loan.”
You are Denis Lemieux, a South Shore drug lord, and his trusty lieutenant, François Leblanc.
ILLUSTRATION MARIE-HÉLÈNE ST-MICHEL, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
If the rendezvous is in Laval, it’s because Lemieux owns a “Cantel” branch that sells cell phones in the same complex as the Cage aux Sports. The trade serves as a legal umbrella for its true activities. Officially, Leblanc is his employee. What are these two drug dealers doing in the stolen van business? Fast money and a lot less risk than dope. Lemieux is the one who has the contacts to sell the stolen trailers. The business is very lucrative. A single stolen trailer can fetch $50,000, $100,000, or $250,000 depending on the merchandise stolen.
That afternoon, Bourgade and Riendeau had to explain themselves. The job was “burned”. The anti-gang police had an informant, they were arrested and the goods confiscated.
Thirty years later, one wonders if that informant wasn’t Riendeau himself. It wouldn’t have been his first betrayal in the “Mitte”. He had been an informant in the 1987 trial of his accomplice robbery convicted of murdering a police officer. And when he’s an informant again, at the Daniel Jolivet trial, we’ll learn that he was a “coded informant” with the Montreal Police Department. Police said it was only for his work as a spy in 1987. But doubts remain. Especially since Riendeau was quickly released without charge when the anti-gang police seized the trailer – but he was driving Bourgades’ car without a license and subject to conditions.
According to Bourgade and Riendeau, the meeting at the Cage aux Sports went wonderfully. The two creditors agreed: we’re never safe from bad luck, are we? Lemieux and Leblanc didn’t even set a deadline for repaying the $8,000, Riendeau said.
Little did Lemieux and Leblanc know that the duo had played a double game by selling the pendant a second time, this time for $12,000, to another buyer, as Lemieux and Leblanc were slow to take delivery of the goods.
But did they have any doubts about this Riendeau who had been introduced to them by Jolivet a few months earlier? An ex-cop snooping on his profits… And then how could the anti-gang have known? That’s never good for business. Were these two reliable?
The meeting isn’t over when two more thieves show up: Daniel Jolivet and Paul-André St-Pierre. Jolivet is in a good mood. He returned from Mexico the day before and must return there by the end of the week to marry Sara, a Mexican woman he met in Cancún. Jolivet has known Lemieux for a long time. He is his mentor, his boss, but also a friend. However, he receives his orders from Leblanc.
We’ve already seen Jolivet’s name in the newspapers. In 1990 he was jailed for selling nine luxury cars, three yachts, etc. A $375,000 deal at the time.
Jolivet has known St-Pierre since 1992. He’s a Pointe-Saint-Charles guy, like him, and he’s also worked his way up in the criminal world. But it’s more with Riendeau that he made recordings. They shared an over-the-top taste in gunpowder – Jolivet had always had a horror of alcohol and cocaine.
From that very moment, when the two new guests appear, around noon on November 9th, everything changes in this restaurant in Laval.
To the weapons
Let’s go back to the scene. you are six There are Lemieux and Leblanc, the bosses who finance coups. There’s Bourgade and Riendeau who have just had their stolen goods stolen by the police, who have already been paid by the bosses. And there is Jolivet and St-Pierre.
Version number 1, according to Jolivet.
Boss Lemieux ordered the two screwed up thieves (Riendeau and Bourgade) to pay him back before midnight.
Riendeau said he had a plan: steal a seafood truck bound for Red Lobster.
Leblanc would supply a gun.
When he wanted to become an informant in 1994, St-Pierre would confirm this version of the La Cage meeting.
Riendeau and Bourgade are hot. You have 12 hours to pay off your debt. In their car they follow Jolivet and St-Pierre, which stop at Rue d’Iberville. Jolivet signals them to wait. He enters an apartment (an arms depot controlled by Leblanc) and comes out with a paper bag containing a machine gun, which he places in Riendeau’s car at Bourgade’s feet.
The four then go to the not-so-posh Motel Nittolo, a bandit hideout in NDG.
Still, according to Jolivet, one must first try the gun that Riendeau was loaned and two others that Leblanc gave him to sell. Bullets in magazines tend to get stuck. Riendeau, an ex-cop who has sold guns before (in addition to heists), understands that the chargers’ “lips” need to be adjusted with pliers. Boys pull up the bedspread. Jolivet and Riendeau fire silenced shots into the mattress just to test the magazines. The projectiles (a dozen) found by police under the bed show that all the shots were fired from a single gun, as Jolivet said: We only tested the three magazines set by Riendeau.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
Motel Nittolo
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
The bed in room 104
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
The mattress where Jolivet fired the bullets
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
Bullet marks on the floor of room 104
1/4
Everything works. All is well.
The four can relax. Jolivet gets coke for the other three and hash for himself in his truck. St-Pierre then calls Leblanc to get a kilo of Coke, then a second, which he is said to be selling that evening for $34,000 a pop.
If Riendeau and Bourgade can sell one, they can pay off their debt.
This version of the debt to be repaid that same evening and the weapons tested is that of Jolivet, but also that of St-Pierre when he made his confession to the police in 1994.
Riendeau and Bourgade tell a very different story.
In her opinion, everything was very cool with Lemieux and Leblanc. There was no plan to pay off their debts. On the other hand, a reference to an old Jolivet affair had led Leblanc to believe that Jolivet had betrayed a secret at a reckoning.
According to Riendeau, Jolivet became paranoid and instantly decided to kill Lemieux and Leblanc before he did it himself – in addition to robbing them. Riendeau and Bourgade say Jolivet was cheered on at the motel, talked about killing and even had an erection while shooting the mattress. Both told police they feared for their own lives because he looked insane.
The two duos (Jolivet/St-Pierre and Riendeau/Bourgade) left the Motel St-Pierre at around 5:30 p.m. with two kilos of coke for sale.
What happened the rest of the evening? And who took the lives of Lemieux, Leblanc, Katherine Morin and Nathalie Beauregard the following night?
The judgment
It’s Tuesday, November 10, 1992, 8 a.m. Apart from the assassins, no one knows that four people were shot dead overnight in an apartment complex in Brossard.
Claude Riendeau pages Detective Daniel Kerouac of the Montreal Police Department’s Anti-Gang Unit on his pager. It was this police officer, with his partner Robert Octeau, who had arrested him five days earlier in the “van” carrying home appliances case.
Curiously, Riendeau had been released without charge and received Police Officer Daniel Kerouac’s business card as a gift. This fine treatment for a career criminal caught in the act of violating his suspended sentence is very similar to the treatment of a police informant.
Riendeau informed the police officer on the phone.
“Write down these names carefully: Denis Lemieux and François Leblanc,” Riendeau said. He adds that he will be having lunch with Daniel Jolivet at a restaurant counter in Pointe-Saint-Charles.
Strange news for a man who doesn’t know what happened during the night and who is said to have gone to bed quietly at 11pm in the matrimonial bed in Saint-Hyacinthe.
In principle, Riendeau does not yet know anything. Why call a cop?
According to him, it was because he was concerned about the events of the previous day: Jolivet trying out a gun in the motel’s mattress, talking about murdering Lemieux and Leblanc…
For Daniel Jolivet, this ex-cop’s motivation is far more twisted: He’s laying the groundwork. He sows the first seeds in the minds of the police to charge Daniel Jolivet with the murders he committed.
Riendeau says that Jolivet called him himself to meet him for lunch at the Barabé restaurant. Telephone records show that it was Riendeau who called Jolivet that morning.
According to Riendeau, during that crucial luncheon, Jolivet informed him that his $8,000 debt was paid off when he murdered Lemieux and Leblanc that night.
Riendeau, who is supposed to be terrified by this report, does not go straight to the police. In fact, he goes to Gérard Bourgade and celebrates with him. They drink and “sniff” all afternoon.
It wasn’t until 6 p.m. that Claude Riendeau met the police in the parking lot of the Bifthèque restaurant on Highway 20 on the south coast.
He tells the two policemen the story of the slaughter, as Jolivet would have confessed to him at lunch.
Following these alleged confessions, Jolivet went to Leblanc in Brossard at the end of the previous day’s evening. He had neglected to sell the coke and Leblanc angrily demanded a fee. In fact, in Riendeau’s version, it was Jolivet who had to redeem himself by selling the coke, and not him.
Jolivet would then have pretended to return to his truck to look for the money owed and returned with his machine gun, accompanied by St-Pierre. Back in the apartment, he is said to have shot Leblanc, Lemieux, two other men and the two young women. Because in this first version, Riendeau says that Jolivet confessed to him not four, but six murders.
The police are impressed by this history of extreme violence. They call Sûreté du Québec at 7:30 p.m. to report this possible six-fold murder in Brossard. The SQ has just learned of the discovery of four bodies at Brossard.
As soon as the bodies are discovered in Brossard, the police consider Jolivet a suspect, thanks to the informant Riendeau. But that’s all she has: the word of a very dubious guy.
Jolivet and St-Pierre are quickly tapped. Microphones are installed in Jolivet’s truck. A tape recorder is even installed on Riendeau to record confessions made by Jolivet. They are spun day and night.
All of this is useless.
It’s about the informers and proof of movement based on mobile phones.
Daniel Jolivet did not testify in his defence. His attorney, Ronnie MacDonald, reminded him of his criminal record and explained an old principle from the great “book” of criminal defense attorneys when the client was a habitual criminal: “If the jury has the choice to believe the crown gangster [Riendeau] or the defender [Jolivet], who do you think they will believe? »
Jolivet was found guilty.
Four years later, the two-judge Quebec Court of Appeals agreed with him on one point: the judge should have allowed his attorney to refer the jury to the unexplained absence of witness Gérard Bourgade. However, the Crown had told the jury that this witness would corroborate the testimony of whistleblower Claude Riendeau. A new process is ordered.
The case was moved to the Supreme Court in 2000. The judges agreed that “this refusal to allow defense counsel to comment on the absence of an announced witness was a mistake”.
But, writes Judge Ian Binnie, “there is no reasonable possibility that the verdict would have been different had the trial judge not made the mistake”.
The guilty verdict is restored. Jolivet has exhausted all his remedies.
All ? Not quite. He has one last card to play.
The people involved
The victims
- Denis Lemieux: South Shore drug dealer
- François Leblanc: drug dealer, lieutenant of Denis Lemieux
- Katherine Morin: François Leblanc’s ex-girlfriend
- Nathalie Beauregard: new girlfriend of François Leblanc
The protagonists
- Daniel Jolivet: Co-defendant in the four murders. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1994.
- Paul-André St-Pierre: Co-defendant in the four murders
- Claude Riendeau: ex-cop, drug and arms dealer, key witness against Daniel Jolivet
- Gérard Bourgade: Trucker, Riendeau collaborator in caravan theft and cocaine dealing