Yves Trudeau (4 February 1946 – July 2008), also known as "Apache" and "The Mad Bomber", was a Canadian outlaw biker, gangster and contract killer.
Frustrated by cocaine addiction and his suspicion that his fellow gang members wanted him dead, he became a Crown witness after the Lennoxville massacre.
In exchange, he received a lenient sentence – life in prison but eligible for parole after seven years – for the killing of 43 people from September 1973 to July 1985.
[2][3][4] The years 1936 to 1960 is a period of history known to Québécois as the Grande Noirceur ("Great Darkness") when Quebec was mostly ruled by the ultra-conservative Catholic Union Nationale party.
[5] As part of the reaction against the "medieval" Catholic social mores of the Grande Noirceur, the Québécois embraced a culture of hedonism in the 1960s with Quebec having for example a significantly higher rate of illegitimate births and drug use than English Canada.
They were considered to be the most violent outlaw biker club in Quebec, and were infamous for engaging in gratuitous and sadistic violence that attracted the attention of the Hells Angels.
[8] This led the Hells Angels-backed Popeyes into open conflict with the Satan's Choice Montreal chapter and their Outlaw allies, resulting in a number of casualties on both sides.
[9] The Devils' Disciples and the Montreal chapter of Satan's Choice were engaged in the manufacturing and smuggling of chemical drugs, a market that the Popeyes decided to violently enter in 1974, leading to the biker war.
[11] By January 1976, the Devil's Disciples gang had voted to disband themselves after 15 of their members had been murdered since 1974, thereby giving the Popeye Club control of the area around St. Henri Square.
[6] Pierre de Champlain, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer who wrote the book Histoire du crime organisé à Montréal, stated in an interview: "He was very professional, very meticulous, and that's why they used his services.
[13] When the two Outlaws stood outside cursing the Angels, a green car came down the street out of the snowfall, and briefly stopped while the driver opened fire.
[16] Standing five-foot-six, weighing 135 pounds and clean shaven with short hair, Trudeau did not resemble the prototypical biker, but he is considered to be the Hells Angels' most prolific killer.
[14] Other Angels weighed between 300 and 400 pounds, had an average height of 6'0 feet, and had long hair and beards, leading the journalist Jerry Langton to write that "...nobody would have guessed he was the club's enforcer and primary weapon".
[14] The Irish-Canadian West End Gang led by Frank "Dunie" Ryan, who controlled the Port of Montreal and thus the importation of drugs into Quebec, frequently made use of Trudeau's services to liquidate their rivals.
At that gathering, five members of the North Chapter were shot to death, wrapped in sleeping bags, and dumped in the St. Lawrence River.
After his release from the detox centre, Trudeau discovered that the Hells Angels had taken his motorcycle and $46,000 in cash that belonged to him from the North Chapter clubhouse.
[21] However, after being laid off in 2000, he slid back into cocaine addiction and sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy after plying him with wine and beer, for which he pleaded guilty in 2004.
[22] Quebec Court Judge Michel Duceppe noted "In your lifetime, you have killed more people than the Canadian military did in the Gulf War."
Trudeau returned to prison under the double stigma of being both an informant and a child molester, meaning that he had to be kept in isolation 23 hours a day.
[1] The sister of one of Trudeau's victims, opposed to him being granted parole, told the Journal de Montréal: "Killing to him was like buying a bag of milk.