| Roger "Le Moineau" Létourneau |
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| Roger Létourneau, known as “Le Moineau” (The Sparrow), was born around 1944. Létourneau was a part of a small band of crooks known as the McSween Gang, a group that specialized in armed robberies, loansharking, and extortion. The gang was active in the south-western part of Montreal. In the 1970s, tensions soon arose between the McSween Gang and the Dubois Clan for control of the Point-Saint-Charles rackets. In mid-August, 1974, Létourneau, Jacques McSween, his brothers Pierre and André, and several other gang members surrounded Roger “Fon Fon” Fontaine, who ran the Dubois Gang’s operations in the area, and beat him severely. The message was clear: the territory is now ours. |
| On September 30, 1974, Raymond “Chapeau” Gagné, reputedly one of Fontaine’s associates, was murdered in Chez Jean-Pierre, a Point-Saint-Charles bar. Three days later, an anonymous letter was reportedly sent to a newspaper, accusing Létourneau, Jacques, Pierre, and André McSween, and Marcel Paradis as being responsible for the Gagné killing. A week later, the McSween Gang suffered a severe lost. Jacques McSween, the group’s leader, was shot to death in front of his Longueuil home on October 5. Shortly after, Jacques’ brothers Pierre and André quit the rackets. According to information in the new edition of The Canadian Connection, by Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, Pierre McSween found it suspicious that Jacques’ bodyguards, Gilles Roy and Paul-Émile Lapointe, were not present during the shooting. He suspected that it was Létourneau, not the Dubois Gang, that was responsible for his brother’s death, because he wanted to become the gang’s leader. It was never proven that Létourneau played a role in Jacques McSween’s death, but he did take over as the gang’s boss. Donald Lavoie, a Dubois Gang enforcer, would later turn informant and claim that members of the Dubois Gang were involved in McSween’s murder. The McSween Gang struck again on October 20, 1974, gunning down Pierre Brunette, and again on December 12, 1974, killing Serge “Sardine” Champagne. Both men had links to the Dubois Gang. A few days after Champagne’s murder, Montreal police pulled over a car containing Létourneau, Paul-Émile Lapointe, and Sam Orchard. A search of the car revealed numerous weapons. The three were arrested and charged. On February 13, 1975, the eve of Saint Valentine’s, Létourneau and others in his crew went to the Hotel Lapiniere, a Brossard discotheque. At around 11:30 p.m., with more than 50 customers gathered in the bar, three masked gunmen entered and opened fire. Within seconds, four lay dead and five others were wounded. Létourneau was among the casualties. The others were identified as Pierre Provost, Richard Bannon, and André Lefebvre. Among the five injured were Gilles Roy and Paul-Émile Lapointe. Létourneau had been shot 12 times. He was 31 years old. Pierre McSween would later testify at the Quebec Police Commission’s inquiry into organized crime that Roger Fontaine was one of the three shooters at the club that night. |