Conrad Bouchard
Montreal Mafia
    Conrad Bouchard  started in  the Montreal underworld  by singing Italian  operatic melodies  in mafia owned  night clubs. He befriended many mobsters and was soon working alongside Peter "The Russian" Stepanoff and Giuseppe "Pep" Cotroni in narcotics trafficking, armed robberies, and fencing stolen bonds.

     The organization's second-in-command, Luigi Greco, took a liking to Bouchard and decided to "school" him  in the life. Bouchard wasn't partically well-liked by most underworld figures but his relationship to Greco kept  him breathing. He even bought  a house  next door to the Underboss and they spent a lot of time together.

     In  June 1959, police tracked  Bouchard, accompanying Giuseppe Cotroni  and René  Robert, on  a trip to New York City  to meet with drug traffickers.

     The singer-turned-gangster  ran into serious legal problems  in the late 1960s. He was linked to two enormous frauds in 1966. A Quebec City branch  of the  Provincial Bank reported  a loss of  $110,000 and
the  Canadian Acceptance Corporation  in Montreal was taken for $269,000. Bouchard  was also charged in  a $723,000 armed robbery  at a Laval bank  and for receiving  a share of  the profits from  another bank  robbery. He  was convicted on the crimes but only received  a 30 month jail sentence.

     Bouchard was again arrested  in June 1969 and charged with conspiring  to manufacture and distribute  hundreds of thousands of counterfeit six-cent stamps. Things got even worse for him when, while out on bail, he was implicated in a sophisticated million-dollar scam involving a bank and two firms.

     With all of his legal expenses, Bouchard sunk deeper into drug trafficking. But police tracked all of his movements and took notes as he met with known traffickers. Narcotics Squad officers burst  into Bouchard's hotel room on January 15, 1972 and  arrested him. He tried desperately to hide an address book into his waistband but it was confiscated. He was charged with conspiring to import heroin and of drug possession and was released on bail. 

     Luigi Greco, Bouchard's mentor and Underboss of the organization, died in a chemical fire in his  pizzeria in 1972. Bouchard  was devestated by the unfortunate  news paid his respects to his teacher by singing Schubert's "Ave Maria" at the religious ceremony.

     Police kept the pressure on Conrad Bouchard and an agent managed to infiltrate his narcotics network. Even more harmful evidence was gathered against the mobster and, in 1974, Bouchard was was seen  as beyond rehabilitation  and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of cancer in 1995.