Pierre McSween
Independent Criminals
    Pierre McSween was born in or  around 1936. Over the years, he would become  a force  in  the city's west-end, heading  a group  that  waged war against the powerful Dubois Gang, before switching sides to become one of Quebec's best known informants.

     McSween  and  his  brother  Jacques  joined  the  Dubois Gang in 1957, after  allegedly meeting one of  the Dubois brothers in a reform school. McSween was serving a two year sentence for theft.

     He  and his crew, McSween would later testify, primarily worked as truck  hijackers, selling the  merchandise to the  Dubois Gang. The latter would  also  allegedly supply McSween and his friends with the weapons and stolen cars needed for the heists.

     McSween and his bunch became uphappy with their shares from the hijackings and left the group to form their own  gang. The leader of  the gang was Jacques McSween, and  the  other members of the group included McSween's other brother André, Roger "Le Moineau" Létourneau, Gilles Roy, and Paul-Émile Lapointe.

     The Dubois Gang soon tried to takeover the McSween Gang's territory in southwestern Montreal. The latter resisted. "Our gang tried to take the control, we tried t o go  too far  and  them, they  try to take our control  and  after, people  get  killed like that," McSween later  told  the Connections CBC tv series about organized crime in Canada.

     On October 5, 1974, McSween's brother Jacques was ambushed outside his Longueuil home and riddled with bullets. Donald Lavoie, a Dubois Gang hitman, would later turn informant and testify that he participated in the hit. While he sat behind the wheel of a van, Lavoie claimed, three men, including Jean-Guy  and  Adrien Dubois, shot  down  Jacques  McSween. The brothers were  acquitted of  the murder.

     On February 13, 1975, the eve St. Valentine's Day, three  masked  men  burst  into  the bar of the Hotel Lapiniere and opened fire. Four McSween Gang  members - Roger Létourneau, Pierre Provost, André Lefebvre, and  Richard Bannon - were killed. Five others, including Gilles Roy  and  Paul-Émile Lapointe, were injured.

     In  all, the "war of the west," as the media dubbed the  underworld  power struggle, resulted  in  a dozen of so deaths, with the Dubois Gang as the clear winner. 

     With his gang in shambles, McSween cut a deal with authorities. He testified  at the Quebec Police Commission's inquiry  into  organized  crime, providing  details  on  Dubois Gang's  activities. On  the stand, McSween, who  admitted to participating in five or six murders, had some  harsh words to say about his former enemies:

     "In our bunch, now, we all stuck together. If we pulled something off, it was worth something to all of  us, but  the  Dubois there, say like [Claude] Dubeau or [Donald] Lavoie  who  worked for them just like that, just for the  murders, they're  not  really  in the gang...what you could call real bastards, they'll go  and  kill somebody for five hundred bucks, a thousand bucks...they work for peanuts, they get no more than five hundred bucks, they're not even in the business..."

     McSween was paid $15,000 for his testimony, with the promise of an additional $250 a month for life, and relocated with his family to a location in Ontario.

     During an interview for the Connections CBC television series, McSween said "You know, if I did something, I don't dream about that. I mean, I dream about something else, you know, maybe it's me I'm gonna get killed. One day maybe it's going to be  my turn, you know, it's  a, you just worry about me, I don't worry about the other people."

     McSween soon regretted testifying at the commission, complaining that police backed out of their promise of $250 monthly payments, and was seen back in  Montreal, driving  a taxi.

     The underworld certainly didn't appreciate McSween showing his face around Montreal again and there were  several  attempts on  his life. McSween was shot  at on four occasions  and  had  his taxi bombed once but always escaped injury.

     In May 1983, police  arrested McSween and charged him with writing a total of $30,000 worth of bad  cheques  from  October 1982  to  April 1983. He  was  convicted  and  sentenced to 927 days in prison.

     For  his  own  protection, McSween  was  kept  in protective  custody in  prison. According to  a Montreal Gazette article, inmates would spit at him whenever they got close enough.

     On  April 1, 1984, McSween became sick in his prison cell. He was  brought to  a  Laval hospital, where he later died, apparently of a heart attack.