(Prime Time Crime exclusive April 09, 2005)
Mass murder nothing new in Canada
By Leo Knight
The discovery of eight bodies dumped in several cars outside the small farming community of Shedden, Ontario, while shocking, is nothing new in this country.
With all the hallmarks of a gangland mass execution, it seems likely the OPP probe will reveal yet another chapter in the ongoing violent world of organized crime. Speculation is already growing that the Hells Angels were involved in these killings. And why not? They do have a history of this kind of thing given the brutal eradication of the Laval chapter in March 1985, when the five members of that chapter were invited to the clubhouse in Lennoxville, Quebec.
All five were ambushed and shot ostensibly, because their ruthless biker buddies thought they were consuming too much of their own product and risking the collective business. Their bodies were discovered two months later by police divers in the St. Lawrence River, wrapped in sleeping bags bound in chains.
The sheer brutality of these types of cases only serve to underline what a menace organized crime is in Canada. The biker wars in Quebec may have ended with the dismantling of the Nomads chapter by police in Operation Springtime in 2001, but the violence continues unabated elsewhere.
For sheer brutality though, I am reminded of a case I covered as a young police reporter in Montreal.
In the 60s and 70s, before the Hells Angels became a presence, the Italian mafia dominated the organized crime front. A two-bit thug name Richard Blass went to war with them to try and wrest some of the control from the Cotronis.
Blass, who was to earn the nickname “Le Chat” after surviving numerous attempts on his life, got tagged after a botched bank hold-up in 1969 and was sentenced to four consecutive ten year prison terms. In October of that year, Blass and eight fellow inmates made a daring escape when being transferred from Bordeaux prison to the courthouse.
He was recaptured in short order after someone dropped a dime about his hideout. A police officer, Albert Lysiak, who used to carry a sawed-off shotgun on a sling under his trench coat, was in on the arrest and promised Blass that he got lucky this time. Lysiak whispered to Blass, if he escaped again, he wouldn’t live through the arrest.
On October 24, 1974, Blass again staged a daring escape with four other inmates. Bent on vengeance, a week later Blass went to a local tavern, the Garguantua, and executed his two partners in the ’69 botched bank robbery who were never charged, Raymond Laurin and Roger Lévesque. Blass was bitter that they were never jailed and always suspected they traded information for their freedom.
On January 21st, 1975, a night I will never forget for its sheer horror, Blass returned to the Garguantua. In a bid to eliminate any witnesses to the murders of Laurin and Lévesque. Blass and Fernand Beaudet, another small-time, but vicious hoodlum, herded ten men and three women into a cooler. They shoved a jukebox in front of the door trapping the thirteen people inside. Then, using bottles of cognac from the bar, they set fire to the place, guaranteeing those thirteen people died an excruciating and horrible death and his own infamous place in the history books.
Three days later, Albert Lysiak and some colleagues tracked down Blass to a chalet in the Laurentians, north of Montreal. Blass was in bed with Lucienne Smith, a 28 year old woman. With the chalet surrounded, Lysiak made his move. Blass reached for his gun on the night table. Smith bailed out a bedroom window and was unhurt. When the smoke cleared, Blass had used up his nine lives. He had 23 bullet holes in his body. He was 28 years old when Albert Lysiak made good on his promise.
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