Gérald Gallant, a self-admitted freelance hitman who pleaded guilty last year to the 2001 murder of a bar owner, has been spilling his guts, and yesterday police arrested ten individuals and are seeking another pursuant to his tale of "a gang war that eventually killed 160 people":
Police said Mr. Gallant was a contract killer at the centre of a shifting roster of gangsters accused of carrying out 28 homicides and 13 attempted murders over three decades, peaking with Quebec's biker war from 1994 to 2002. Ten suspects were rounded up yesterday, based on evidence Mr. Gallant provided after turning informant. An 11th person facing a murder charge remained at large. * * * From his unassuming redoubt near Quebec City, Mr. Gallant was in the middle of a gang war that eventually killed 160 people, police said. He and the 11 suspects targeted bikers, street gangsters and Italian mobsters with little regard for allegiance. They also had little regard for the innocent. At least one of the dead and several of the wounded were described by police as bystanders or victims of mistaken identity. * * * Some arrested suspects, such as Frédéric Faucher, a former leader of the Rock Machine, and Raymond Desfosses, an alleged high-ranking member of the West End Gang, are alleged to have ordered hits. One of the more prominent dead was Paul Cotroni, the son of Montreal mob boss Frank Cotroni, who died in 1998.
Police allege the suspects "all had links to the Hells Angels, the Rock Machine or the West End Gang." Desfosses, already serving time for cocaine trafficking, has been charged with six murders and three attempted murders, and Faucher has been charged with six murders and one attempted murder. Others arrested include:
Another Rock Machine, Marcel Demers, was arrested and charged with 12 murders and four attempted murders. Among other major players arrested by police is Raymond Bouchard, an associate of Desfosses. He is charged with 16 of the murders and six of the attempted murders.
