Maurice "Mom" Boucher (born June 21, 1953) is a convicted murderer, reputed drug trafficker, and outlaw biker—the former President of the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter. Boucher led Montreal's Hells Angels against the rival Rock Machine biker gang during The Quebec Biker War (French: Guerre des motards) of 1994 through 2002 in Quebec, Canada.

In 2002, Boucher was convicted of ordering the murders of two Quebec prison guards (as an effort to destabilize the Quebec Justice system), and is currently serving three life sentences in a Canadian prison. He has one known daughter Moragh Boucher and a son Francis Boucher.

Early life

Born in Causapscal, Quebec, Canada, he was raised in poverty in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve section of inner-city Montreal, where his family moved when he was two years old. Boucher dropped out of school in grade 9 to work odd jobs. Unhappy with his income and desperate to support his drug habit, he turned to crime. He was arrested for three break & entries in the fall of 1974 and served nearly six months in detention. In November 1975, Boucher performed an armed robbery, but was caught and sentenced to 40 months in prison.

Around 1982, Boucher was a member of a white-supremist motorcycle gang named the SS, who were based in Pointe-aux-Trembles, on the eastern tip of the Island of Montreal. A fellow member of the SS was Salvatore Cazzetta; the two became friends. As leaders of the gang they became candidates to join the Hells Angels when that gang decided to expand its operations into the rest of Canada.

In March, 1985, a Lennoxville, Quebec chapter of the Hells suspected the Laval chapter of wasting drug profits by using too much of the product themselves and ripping off the Nova Scotia chapter of $96,000.00. The Laval chapter was invited to a Lennoxville chapter party. When the five Laval members arrived, they were ambushed and murdered. Two months later, at the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, divers located the decomposing bodies of the victims wrapped in sleeping bags and tied to weightlifting plates.

What became known as the Lennoxville massacre, was considered extreme even for the criminal underworld, and it gave Quebec's Hells Angels a notorious reputation. Cazzetta found the ambush—essentially, biker "brothers" killing their own—to be an unforgivable breach of the outlaw code. He refused Boucher's offer to join him at the top of the Quebec Hell's Angels, and instead formed his own, smaller gang with his brother Giovanni—The Rock Machine -- in 1986.

Hells Angels

By late-1987, soon after finishing a 40-month sentence for the armed sexual assault of a young teen, Boucher joined the Hells Angels motorcycle club in Montreal, and quickly rose through its ranks. By the early-1990s, he was considered one of the most powerful bikers in the province, and was involved in numerous lucrative criminal activities such as cocaine trafficking and loan sharking.

In 1994, following the arrest of Salvatore Cazzetta on charges of conspiring to import 200 kilos of cocaine, the Rock Machine was rendered temporarily leaderless. Boucher, by now president of the Montreal chapter of the Hells Angels, decided to make his move against the Rock Machine and other independent dealers. His ultimate aim was to establish a Hells Angels monopoly over street-level, biker gang drug-dealing in the Montreal area—and eventually, all of Quebec.

Boucher organized to persuade Rock Machine controlled bars and their resident drug dealers to surrender their illegal drug business. Rock Machine resistance led to bloodshed. On July 14, 1994, two members of the Hells Angels' top puppet club entered downtown motorcycle shop and shot down a Rock Machine associate. This would be the spark that would set off the Quebec Biker war.

That August, a Jeep wired with a remote-controlled bomb exploded killing an 11-year-old boy, Daniel Desrochers, who was playing in a nearby schoolyard. A month later, the first full Hells Angels member was shot to death entering his car at a shopping mall. Nine bombs went off around the province during his funeral."

In 1995, Boucher decided to start a new Hells Angels chapter which he would lead. The Hells Angels Nomads chapter was a group made up of the most powerful Hells Angels in Quebec and not bound by geographical locations like other Hells Angels chapters.

Legal issues

During the intense war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine, he ordered the murders of Quebec correctional officers Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau in 1997. Both officers had been chosen at random. Besides the blow to the judicial system in Quebec, Boucher wanted crimes committed by bikers that would be so serious that prosecutors wouldn't want to make deals to turn bikers into informants.

In 1998, a jury acquitted Boucher of having ordered those murders. He was then closely followed by the police. In 2000, an appeals court dismissed the earlier acquittal, and he was arrested again. He was convicted for the murders with the help of a police informer in May 2002.

The key witness for the prosecution was Stéphane Gagné, nicknamed Godasse, who was involved in both murders. He testified that Boucher ordered him to carry out the killings and was later congratulated by Boucher himself. After 11 days of deliberation by the jury, Boucher was found guilty of attempted murder and two counts of first-degree murder. Boucher received an automatic life sentence, with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years.

He is currently detained in the only Canadian Super-Maximum security penitentiary located in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, north of Montreal.

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Mom Boucher guilty of murder

CBC News

May 06, 2002

After 11 days of deliberations, a Quebec jury convicted an alleged leader of the Hells Angels, Maurice (Mom) Boucher, of all charges Sunday in the shooting deaths of two prison guards.

Boucher, 48, grinned as the verdict was read out. He was found guilty of attempted murder and two counts of first-degree murder.

The jury of eight men and four women concluded that Boucher had masterminded the killings of Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau in 1997. The Crown accused him of ordering the killings in a plot to destabilize the justice system.

Boucher will get an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

In a trial notable for its security measures, the jury was shielded from public view by an opaque screen. They received their final instructions from Superior Court Justice Pierre Beliveau on April 25.

He told the jurors they had to convict Boucher if they were convinced he had "incited, counselled or brought about" the guards' deaths. He also said they had to find him guilty of all three charges, or not guilty of all three charges.

This was Boucher's second trial on the same charges. He was acquitted in 1998, but the Crown successfully appealed that ruling last year challenging the judge's instructions to the jury.

Lavigne was shot and killed while driving home from work in June 1997.

In September of the same year, Rondeau was killed when the prison bus he was driving was ambushed. Robert Corriveau was also working on that bus and escaped injury.

The Crown based its case on wiretaps, video surveillance, documents seized from Boucher when he was arrested and on the testimony of two former bikers.

The key witness for the prosecution was Stephane Gagne, who was involved in both murders. He testified he was ordered to carry out the killings by Boucher lieutenants Andre (Toots) Tousignant and Paul (Fon Fon) Fontaine and was later congratulated by Boucher himself.

Crown prosecutor France Charbonneau contended that the killings were intended to destabilize the justice system by making targets of guards, police, prosecutors and judges.

Charbonneau argued that Boucher wanted crimes committed by bikers that would be so serious that prosecutors wouldn't want to make deals to turn bikers into informants.

Defence lawyer Jacques Larochelle didn't call any witnesses and challenged the credibility of Gagne and Serge Boutin, the Crown's other key witness. He said the men were career criminals and habitual liars trying to get deals from justice officials.

He argued Gagne worked alone to kill the guards.

Charbonneau said she wasn't surprised by the verdict, and expected Larochelle to appeal.

Hells Angels 'Mom' Boucher stabbed in jail

CBC News

October 25, 2010

Quebec police are remaining tight-lipped on the reported prison stabbing of one of Canada's most notorious criminals — Maurice (Mom) Boucher, alleged former leader of the Quebec Hells Angels chapter, who is serving a life sentence for murder.

Organized crime watchers say the attack reflects changing power dynamics in Quebec's criminal underworld.

Officers with Quebec police have confirmed that four inmates were involved in a dispute at the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines Penitentiary Saturday afternoon, but wouldn't verify several media reports that Boucher was stabbed and injured during the incident.

Ruefrontenac.com reported on the weekend that Boucher was attacked with a homemade knife during a prison yard scuffle that broke out Saturday afternoon at the prison located 50 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Sources told Ruefrontenac.com that Boucher and one of his bodyguards were attacked by two inmates transferred last week to the super maximum facility.

Prison guards intervened quickly and used pepper spray to break up the altercation, according to sources quoted by Ruefrontenac.com (an online publication produced by locked-out Journal de Montréal reporters.)

Boucher is said to have been stabbed in the stomach and foot, and was treated by a prison doctor.

Boucher's influence waning, says crime expert

Sûreté du Quebec Sgt. Gregory Gomez del Prado told CBC News that two prisoners were injured in the incident, but wouldn't confirm that one of them was Boucher.

"We're investigating, of course, to try to determine what happened," Gomez del Prado said. A Crown prosecutor will review reports of the event to determine whether any charges will be laid.

Regardless of the details, an expert on organized crime in Quebec says the reported attack on Boucher reflects his declining influence.

Boucher may not hold the power he once did, and may not attract the protection he once enjoyed, said Julian Sher, a Montreal-based investigative journalist and biker gang expert.

"We have to see 'Mom' Boucher as the pale reflection of the gang leader he once was," said Sher, who authored several books on the Hells Angels.

"I don't think he has clout and can exercise the level of fear that he once had when he was roaming the streets and really ruled the gang world of Quebec."

Under Boucher, the Hells Angels led a bloody turf war over drugs in Montreal during the 1990s.

Sher said the latest prison incident may not have been a planned assassination, even though Boucher remains a notable figure inside prison walls and a tempting target for would-be-attackers.

"If you could harm the once-great 'Mom' Boucher, that's a notch in your belt," Sher explained.

Boucher is being housed in a special unit of the prison and has little contact with other inmates. "It's very secure, but it's also very isolated, which means he is cut off from the rest of his gang members [who] are in prison," Sher said.

Meanwhile, on the street, the Hells Angels in Quebec have been hampered in recent years by sweeping arrests, notably the 2009 Operation SharQC, when more than 100 full-patch members were arrested based on informant evidence.

Montreal's organized crime scene is going through a major period of flux, and "there's a shakeup going on," Sher said.

"One thing is clear, it won't be 'Mom' Boucher that comes out on top."

Boucher attacked several times

It's not the first time Boucher has been threatened since he went to prison after being found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1997 deaths of two prison guards.

He has been attacked several times while behind bars, including an assassination attempt shortly after he was incarcerated. A fellow inmate tried to kill Boucher with a homemade knife.

Boucher was spared after other inmates rushed to his defence and killed the attacker with his own crude weapon.

Boucher is serving three concurrent life sentences for the two murder convictions, and for a conviction of attempted murder, with no chance for parole until 2022.