| John "Big John" Slawvey |
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| John Slawvey, born in the late 1930s, was a reputed truck hijacker and armed robber for the West End Gang. He was known as “Big John,” as well as under the alias of Johnny Wilson. Montreal police considered Slawvey as the number one suspect in the December 17, 1971 downtown Montreal killing of Constable Jean-Guy Sabourin, according to a news report. Three men robbed the Simpsons department store of $50,000, and as they ran out of the store, spotted Sabourin ticketing a vehicle. One of the robbers, armed with a machine gun, sprayed the police officer with bullets, before making their escape. On March 30, 1976, bandits, using an anti-aircraft gun, hijacked a Brink’s armoured truck in downtown Montreal. The operation was pulled off perfectly and netted the thieves $2.8 million in cash. It was the biggest Brink’s robbery in North America. |
| Police immediately suspected Slawvey of participating in the robbery and sought him out for questioning. The reputed West End Gang member’s name was mentioned several times by informants as having been involved in the hijacking, a police source allegedly told a Montreal newspaper. Around 3:15 a.m., May 15, Slawvey pulled into the garage of his apartment building on Benny Avenue in Notre-Dame-de-Grace. As he walked towards the elevator, he was approached by five policemen. They identified themselves and told Slawvey not to move, a police s pokesperson later said, but Slawvey allegedly crouched down and pulled out a loaded firearm. Police gunned him down before he could pull the trigger. Police found a radio scanner on Slawey and a loaded .12 gauge shotgun in his apartment. In June, 1980, journalist and author Daniel Proulx writes, police knocked on the door of Fred Meilleur’s west-end home. They had a warrant, and Meilleur, who had lived there for the last 40 years, had no idea what the cops could be looking for. Their search revealed nothing until they went into the cellar. There, burried in the dirt, officers found plastic bags stuffed with a total of $290,000 in cash. They reportedly took Meilleur in for questioning but released him soon after, since he apparently had no knowledge of the money. Interestingly, Proulx continues, one of the Meilleur family’s old friends was none other than John Slawvey. If Slawvey did participate in the infamous 1976 Brink’s robbery, could this have been where he had stashed the cash? Almost 20 years after Slawvey’s death, Jean Belval, a former undercover police officer, would claim that police “executed” Slawvey because they suspected him of killing a police officer. He also accused police of “executing” Richard “Le Chat” Blass and Jean-Paul Mercier. |