Harold Pelletier
Independent Criminals
    Harold  Pelletier, born  in  the  late 1950s,  would  be  described  as  an underworld “hitman for hire” by the media. With his brother Sylvain as the group’s leader, the  Pelletier Clan gained  notoriety  through out the 1980s, as they committed profitable  armed robberies  and seized control of much of the drug market in Montreal’s east end.

     On August 7, 1983, Harold Pelletier  met  with  Michel Beaulieu, also  a member of the Pelletier Clan, and they drank in a bar. Later on, as Beaulieu lay in his bed, Pelletier broke into his  apartment  and fired three shots into the  sleeping  man’s body. Beaulieu  had supposedly  racked up large debts and the order that he  had  to  go  allegedly  came  from  Harold’s  brother Sylvain.
    In 1994, the Hells Angels made  a  move  to  seize control of  Montreal’s drug market. In order to fend off the larger gang, the Rock Machine  and  several  independent groups, including  the  Pelletier Clan, joined forces. If the Big Red Machine wanted a fight, that’s what they’d get.

     On October 28, 1994, Sylvain Pelletier left his apartment on Notre-Dame Street in Repentigny and entered his Jeep Cherokee. Within seconds, a bomb planted under the vehicle, tearing the man apart.

     The  killing  came  shortly  after  Hells Angels  associate  Maurice Lavoie was gunned down as he exited  his  car  at his  Repentigny home. An  associate  of  the  Pelletier Clan  would  be  charged  in Lavoie’s death and sentenced to 25 years.

     With  his  brother  dead, Harold  Pelletier  became  the  leader of  the gang. But in October, 1995, tormented by his brother’s murder, he  approached  authorities for protection. He  was  brought to  a secret location, where he spilled his guts  and  gave  police  information on  a large number of crimes that occurred around Montreal, as well as a better understanding of the biker war.

     He  also  admitted, according  to  news reports, to participating in 21 killings and planting a bomb under the vehicle of prosecutor Jacques Pothier, who was trying  to prosecute the  Pelletier Clan  for crimes on the city’s south shore.

     On June 27, 1996, Pelletier pleaded  guilty to the 1983 murder of  Michel Beaulieu. A  week  later, he was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole before 10 years.