| Luc "Sam" Michaud |
 |
| Luc Michaud was born in 1951 in Saint-Gédéon, in Lac-St-Jean. As a child, Michaud was very shy but, by the time he reached adulthood, he had grown to become a delinquent with a fascination for the biker culture. In the 1960s, Michaud formed the Missiles biker gang, a group of thugs that dealt dope and pimped women in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean area. Michaud and other gang members often partied with the Hells Angels Montreal chapter and he became obsessed with becoming a member of the infamous gang. He and fellow Missle Jean-Yves Tremblay, who would later become a Hells Angel, ran the Sunshine agency for strippers with Hells Angels Laurent Viau and Charles Harvey. |
| In 1980, Michaud became a full-patch member of the Hells Angels. He was very proud and, he would later recall, "the club was [his] life." He was a member of the club's North chapter. Based in Laval, the North chapter was formed on September 14, 1979, when the Montreal chapter, packed with members, was divided in two. While other Hells Angels chapters were cleaning up their image and taking care of business, the North Chapter, spending the majority of their time drinking and taking drugs, grew wreckless. They murdered on impulse and skimmed drug profits that was meant for other Hells chapters. Michaud, Réjean "Zig-Zag" Lessard, and Robert "Tiny" Richard, all members of the North chapter, grew tired comrades' drug use and transferred to the Montreal chapter. Fed up with the North chapter, the Montreal chapter decided to make an example. A meeting was set-up at the Sherbrooke chapter's Lennoxville clubhouse for March 24, 1985. As the five members of the North chapter - Laurent "L'Anglais" Viau, Jean-Guy "Brutus" Geoffrion, Jean-Pierre "Matt le Crosseur" Mathieu, Michel "Willie" Mayrand, and Guy-Louis "Chop" Adam - entered the bunker, they were shot to death. Michaud was present during the slaughter and reportedly pulled the trigger on "Brutus" Geoffrion, firing two bullets in the victim's skull. After the murders, Michaud and two other Angels, Gilles "Le Nez" Lachance and Louis "Ti-Oui" Lapierre, went to Viau's apartment. As they loaded all his possessions into a truck, Ginette Henri, Viau's girlfriend, arrived on the scene and asked the bikers what they were doing. Lachance explained that the club had expelled five members of the North chapter. Perhaps figuring out what had really happened to her boyfriend, Henri ran to the bedroom crying. Michaud and other Angels then went to the North chapter's clubhouse, where they emptied the safe of its contents and loaded three trucks with other valuables, including motorcycles and guns. When Hells Angels prospect Gerry "Le Chat" Coulombe turned government informant, he told police that shortly before the slaughter, he had saw Michaud, Réjean Lessard, Jean-Yves Tremblay, and Denis Houle talking business in low voiced in the Sorel clubhouse. Coulombe allegedly overheard Michaud say that "I can't wait until it's over. I can't wait to get rid of them. I don't sleep anymore at night." After police fished out the bodies of the five murdered Angels from the St. Lawrence River, police arrested Michard, Réjean Lessard, Robert Richard, and Jacques Pelletier and charged them with first-degree murder. In 1986, Michaud, Lessard, and Pelletier were convicted and received life sentences. Richard was acquitted. While behind bars, Michaud was kicked out of the Hells Angels in 1993 for allegedly arguing with other full-patch members. "I had given my life to club," he later said, and remembered falling into a deep depression. In 2001, a Quebec parole board, sensing a deep change in Michaud's outlook on life, reduced his sentence by five years. He went up for parole in June 2002 and may be back on the streets where, Michaud says, he wants to help others stay away from gangs and crime. |