Gerald Matticks

Matticks was born in the Goose Village section of the Pointe-Saint-Charles district of Montreal, the youngest of 14 children in a very poor family of Irish immigrants.[1] His father worked as a driver of a wagon for the city of Montreal while his mother was a housewife.[1] Matticks was married at the age of 17 and had fathered four children by the time he was 21.[1] By the 1960s, Matticks together with his brothers John, Fred, Robert and Richard were leaders of a gang whose forte was hijacking trucks.[1] The Matticks brothers eventually joined the West End Gang led by Frank Ryan.[1] Initially, the Matticks brothers started to sell their stolen goods to Ryan, but ultimately joined his gang.[2] The Matticks brothers were alongside Patrick "Hughie" McGurnaghan, Paul April, Allan "The Weasel" Ross, Peter White, and Kenny McPolland the principle lieutenants of Ryan.[3]

In 1971, Matticks was charged with attempted murder of a Montreal dockworker who had complained to the police that he and his brothers were stealing from the Port of Montreal.[1] At his trial, Matticks was acquitted when three witnesses gave him an alibi, saying they were drinking with him at a local pub.[1] One of the men who gave Matticks an alibi, an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), later joined the West End Gang.[1] In 1977, Matticks was found by the police to have some stolen jewelry worth $5,000 in his house, but was acquitted when the Crown was unable to establish that he had stolen the jewelry.[4] In 1979, the Commission d'Enuête sur le Crime Organisé (CECO) accused Gerry, Richard and Frederick Matticks of being the most aggressive and prolific truck hijackers in Montreal between 1972 and 1979.[5] The three brothers were subpoenaed to appear before the royal commission, where they denied all of the allegations.[6] On 12 November 1979, Matticks together with his two brothers, Ryan, Fred Griffith and André "Sappy" Martin were indicated on charges of perjury for their testimony at the CECO together with 158 courts of theft and possession of stolen goods.[6] In December 1981, the accused were acquitted on all charges.[6] In 1981, Matticks was again acquitted of charges of hijacking a truck in 1973.[7]

Increasingly prosperous, Matticks became the owner of a trucking firm, a farm for cattle and a beef wholesaling company.[1] Matticks left Montreal and purchased a rural estate outside La Prairie consisting of nine buildings.[8] In the South end of Montreal, Matticks became celebrated for dressing up as Santa Claus every Christmas to hand out free food to the poor.[8] Matticks in particular was known for handing out frozen chickens and turkeys for Christmas and Thanksgiving, which he seemed to posses an endless supply of.[9] At the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, Matticks would ride in a float and threw out dollars to the crowds, which made him very popular with the people of Montreal.[7]

A devout Catholic, his parish priest, Father Marc Mignault, has praised him for his generosity in supporting the Catholic Church, saying that Matticks had the leaking roof of his church repaired for free.[8] Father Mignault argues that Matticks is a fundamentally decent and good man.[8] A different picture of Matticks was presented by Commander André Bouchard, the head of Montreal police's Major Crimes Unit. Bouchard stated that starting in the 1980s: "People were literally sniffing it [cocaine] right there on the bar and on the tables, even on boards' bellies. I mean they weren't even hiding it in the toilets... So we said, 'Wait a minute, how the fuck is all this shit coming in?' And that's when the name Matticks kept popping up. We'd bust a [drug] dealer downtown and he'd give up a name. It was always Gerry Matticks and the West End Gang".[10] In 1992, when Allen "The Weasel" Ross, the boss of the West End Gang, was convicted of drug charges in the United States and at that point, Matticks replaced him as leader of the gang.[7] The West End Gang controls the Port of Montreal, making them into critical players in the Montreal underworld as the gang to a large extent controls the supply of illegal drugs imported into Canada.[7] In 1990, Matticks was convicted of a 1988 hijacking of a truck, for which he served 24 weekends in row in prison for.[9]

Matticks controls the hiring of "checkers" at the Port of Montreal, whose task is to oversee the loading and unloading of containers from the ships that dock at Montreal.[11] Matticks's eldest son, Donald, worked as a "checker" at the port for 15 years from 1987 to 2002.[11] Donald Matticks later testified that during his time as a "checker" that his real job was to ensure that the containers holding drugs were never inspected.[11] The Port of Montreal is the world largest inland port where 90% of all goods destined for Quebec and Ontario are unloaded off container ships.[12] In addition, many goods are offloaded in Montreal for "lakers" (ships that sail the Great Lakes) that sail down the St. Lawrence Seaway to the American Great Lakes port cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Duluth.[12] Matticks once served as the president of the Coopers and Checkers Union for the port, which allowed to place his followers into key positions at the port.[2] In November 2001, Pierre Primeau, a RCMP officer, testified to a committee of the House of Commons in Ottawa: "To become a [Coopers and Checkers] union member you need to be sponsored by someone who will vouch for you. Most of the employees...are either family members or very close friends of Gerald Matticks".[13]

In April 1994, a Norwegian container ship, the Thor 1, docked in Montreal.[14] Acting on an anonymous phone tip, the Sûreté du Québec searched the Thor 1 and discovered some 26.5 tons of hashish hidden within the ship in the precise location where the anonymous caller said it would be found.[14] On the basis of the drugs seized from the Thor 1, Matticks was charged with conspiracy to import drugs in May 1994.[14] The case against Matticks collapsed in the courtroom in 1995 when Mattick's lawyers established that the Sûreté du Québec had planted evidence, most notably documents written in French that were found in Mattick's house.[14] Matticks had never attended school, spoke English as his first language, was illiterate, and was quite incapable of writing anything in either French or English.[14] The fall-out from the Thor 1 affair was a royal commission headed by Justice Lawrence Poitras which criticized the Sûreté du Québec for routinely engaging in unprofessional actions such as planting evidence, threatening witnesses, and perjury.[15] According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) informer Dany Kane, the anonymous caller was Hells Angels Montreal chapter president Maurice Boucher who had also bribed the Sûreté du Québec detectives to plant the evidence, as this would be a "win-win" for him.[16] If Matticks was convicted, he would eliminate a potential rival or if Mattick's lawyers would expose the planted evidence, the resulting backlash would bring disgrace and discredit upon the Sûreté du Québec.[16] The scandal, known as L'Affaire Matticks, did much damage to the reputation of the Sûreté du Québec.[17]

As part of an investigation into the Hells Angels, the police observed Boucher meeting Matticks on 25 May 1999 at his office at Viandes 3–1, an office complex owned by Matticks.[18] On 2 December 1999, Boucher was again observed meeting Matticks at Viandes 3–1.[18] On 10 October 2000, Mattick's business partner, Louis Elias Lekkes, was observed by the police picking up two boxes full of money from the Hells Angels and taking it to Viandes 3–1, and from there to Mattick's estate.[4] On 16 November 2000, Lekkes was observed taking a bag with some $500,000 in cash from the Hells Angels to Matticks's estate.[4] On 7 December 2000, Matticks and Lekkes were observed meeting with Normand Robitaille of the Hells Angels' Nomad chapter at an Italian restaurant.[19] Robitaille handed over to Matticks a briefcase.[19] The Hells Angels in their records referred to Matticks as "Beef 1" and Lekkes as "Beef 2".[4] According to the police, in the year 2000 Matticks oversaw the importation of eight shipments of drugs into Montreal totaling some 44 093 tons of hashish and 265 kilos of cocaine with a total street value of some $2 billion.[20] Matticks and Lekkes preferred to use walkie-talkies instead of cellular phones, and Matticks was constantly on his guard for phone bugs.[21]

On 28 March 2001, Matticks was arrested as part of Operation Springtime, a crackdown aimed at the Hells Angels, but which also embraced him.[22] As part of Operation Springtime, the police seized the records of the Hells Angels, which showed that Matticks was one of their main suppliers of drugs.[20] At the time of Operation Springtime, the Hells Angels owned Matticks some $7 million accordingly to the records seized by the police.[20] In Mattick's office at Viandes 3–1, the police found a refrigerator with a note-tag reading "Mom" (Boucher's nickname) and "Guy" together with two phone numbers.[23] One number was for the cell phone number for Guy LePage, a former policeman turned chauffeur for Boucher while another was for a pager registered in LePage's name.[19] In Mattick's house, the police found some $6,200 U.S dollars in cash and $41,000 Canadian dollars in cash.[24]

After the arrests, Lekkes tried to commit suicide on 16 July 2001, the next day as he recovered decided to turn Crown's evidence[25] in exchange for a lesser sentence.[20] According to Lekkes, the West End Gang controlled the port of Montreal, which Matticks used for drug smuggling, selling drugs to the Rizzuto family, the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine.[7] Lekkes testified that he started working for Matticks in 1995 in his meat-processing plant.[26] Soon after, Lekkes was involved in stealing a shipment of Tommy Hilfiger clothing from Asia for Matticks at the port of Montreal, and he was also became involved in stealing chickens intended for Europe.[27] Having gained Mattick's trust, Lekkes testified that he was sent to Colombia to make contact with the Cali Cartel.[27]

Lekkes signed a statement for the Crown stating that Matticks, who controlled the longshoreman's union at the Port of Montreal, had made profits of $22 million from smuggling drugs into the city and had sold the Angels at least 700 kilos of cocaine in the last two years.[28] Lekkes testified: "From different series of importations, we would take a percentage of the product. The first one was 33 percent. That is what we could charge to bring in merchandise for either ourselves or the people who owned it...We had different people we sold to. Namely one was Norm Robitaille. He was a Hells Angel".[27]

On 6 August 2001, Matticks pleaded guilty to the drug charges in exchange for a lesser sentence.[7] Matticks was sentenced to 12 years in prison.[7] Lekkes later testified at other trials in 2002 and 2003 that he regularly took cardboard boxes containing about $500,000 in cash from the Hells Angels as payments to the West End Gang and that the chicken which Matticks was so generous in donating to Catholic charities at Thanksgiving and Christmas times were stolen from container ships meant to export the chickens to grocery stores in Europe.[26] Inspired by Lekkes's example, John McLean, one of Mattick's lieutenants, agreed to turn Crown's evidence and to testify against Matticks's son, Donald, in exchange for an 8-year prison sentence.[29] Lekkes received a 7-year prison sentence with the promise that he would receive a new identity and police protection for the rest of his life when he was released, and as a result Donald Matticks pleaded guilty in 2002 rather than face extradition to the United States, where he was wanted on charges of smuggling cocaine.[22] At his sentencing hearing, Gerald Mattrick's own lawyer admitted that his client controlled the port of Montreal and would demand a cut of anything illegal coming in.[27]

During his time in prison, Matticks became a friend of Danny Wolfe, the imprisoned leader of the Indian Posse gang.[30] As Matticks was illiterate while Wolfe was literate, the latter wrote and read letters for the former.[30] Wolfe in a letter to his brother Richard wrote "Running the fucking shit yet he couldn't read or write".[30] When Wolfe asked Matticks as to why he was illiterate, he received the reply that his family was so poor that he had to work as a child rather than attend school. Matticks served as a mentor for Wolfe, recounting his youth in a working-class Montreal neighborhood and recalled how the West End Gang fought off the attempts by the Mafia to take over the port of Montreal.[31] In Montreal, Matticks is widely considered to be a folk hero, seen as the champion of the working class, and his conviction led to a campaign to have him released early.[8]