Gary Joseph Comeau (born 6 January 1952) is a Canadian outlaw biker and one of the Port Hope 8 whose conviction for first degree murder in 1979 is widely considered a miscarriage of justice.
[5] In 1968, he attended a party hosted by the Satan's Choice at the Blue Bird Inn in Richmond Hill, which he described as a scene out of "Sodom and Gomorrah" which his Catholic education had not prepared him for.
[6] Comeau was initially blocked from joining Satan's Choice as the club rules required that an applicant be sponsored by a current member who had known him for at least five years.
In March 1970, Comeau joined Satan's Choice at the age of 18 after finally finding a sponsor and he became a "full patch" member in May 1970.
[11] Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of the Toronto Star wrote: "The Crown said the bikers could plead guilty to indecent assault or all be tried for rape.
[10] Many other Satan's Choice bikers such as Lorne Campbell considered Comeau to be excessively "loud" and overtly fond of crude jokes.
[8] At about 9:15 pm, he took a phone call from Richard Sauvé of the Peterborough chapter to say that he wanted some other bikers to be with him as he just been invited to a meeting with William "Heavy" Matieyk of the rival Golden Hawk Riders at the Queen's Hotel in Port Hope.
[12] When Comeau arrived at the Queen's Hotel shortly before 11 pm, there was an atmosphere of fear and tension in the bar-room as everyone expected some sort of confrontation.
[16] Bleeding, Comeau fled from the Queen's Hotel with a bullet struck in his arm in the same car as Sauvé and Merv Blaker.
[31] The Crown Attorney at the trial, Chris Meinhardt, presented the case as a first-degree murder, calling it "a foul, horrible, planned execution.
[33] Kerbal had planned to bring in Campbell as a surprise witness who would testify that Comeau had been shot at the same time as Matiyek as a way to force the judge to order the bullet removed.
[33] To avoid violating the outlaw biker code, both Comeau and Hurren gave Campbell permission to mention their names during his testimony.
"[37] When Kerbal asked her how she knew the killer had blonde hair, she admitted that it was not from her memory of the murder as she had testified to, but from seeing later photographs of Comeau.
[37] Thompson also conceded under cross-examination that she had been less certain when viewing the photo array in October-November 1978 as she stated at the time that Comeau could "possibly" be the killer.
[38] Gillespie testified that he heard Comeau ask Richard Sauvé and Merv Blaker just before the murder: "Are we going to do it to this fat fucker now or what?
[41] In response, Justice Counter Osborne ordered Comeau to be taken to the hospital to remove the bullet, a request opposed by Meinhardt.
[42] Furthermore, pieces of threading from the coat that Matiyek was wearing at the time he was killed were found wrapped around the bullet in Comeau's arm.
[45] In his final submission to the jury, Meinhardt still claimed that Comeau was the gunman as he dismissed Campbell's confession given on the stand that he had killed Matiyek.
[46] Meinhardt told the jury: "It is my respectful submission that you should treat him [Campbell] with all the contempt that he deserves...There isn't an iota of evidence except from the lips of a convicted perjurer that the gunman was a dark-haired man with a goatee and an earring in his left ear...All of the evidence points to a blond-haired, blonde-bearded gunman".
[49] Comeau came to be obsessed with establishing his innocence and read the entire trial transcript, which amounted to 17 volumes that weighted 35 pounds, in an attempt to find flaws in the Crown's case.
[53] Comeau played for the Satan's Choice prison hockey team, the Millhaven Bulldogs, which became his main form of relaxing.
[56] Lavoie devised a scheme to use an old Sherman tank named Conqueror from World War Two that was parked outside of the Oshawa armory to break into Millhaven to free Comeau and the rest of the Port Hope 8.
[58] Lafleaur had been a FLQ member who had raised money to buy guns by robbing banks and who had his head smashed in with a baseball bat by another prisoner for reasons that remain unclear.
[59] Campbell who was more accustomed to violence than Comeau took his place in the Millhaven Bulldogs, and used his skates in an unsuccessful attempt to slash Barnes's throat.
[61] Comeau along with Blaker's lawyer Terry O'Hara continued to pursue his case and on 20 November 1984 received a letter from one of the witnesses for the Crown at his trial, Roger Davey, who stated that his testimony was perjury made under police pressure.
[65] The Port Hope 8 case became a cause célèbre in the 1980s-1990s with many using the implausibility of the "boomerang bullet" to argue for Comeau's innocence.
[66] In February 1994, a rally hosted by the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted was held in Toronto where the boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter called in a speech for the Crown to release Comeau and Sauvé.