Ten true crime stories from Montreal in the eighties

   He had fulfilled his dream by opening a French restaurant at 1202 Bishop (now home to the Mango Bay restaurant) in 1983.
   He called it the Colibri and the Monagasque-Canadian (ie: from Monaco) leaned upon his experience as a maitre d' at Drapeau's old Vaisseau d'Or restaurant. (Have we discussed that place here? It was an extravagant flop because protest groups would target the joint and it eventually went belly-up).
   Marie-Francoise Hanriat, from France, living in Saint Leonard (is St. Leonard a bad luck place or what? -- Chimples) ran her own small company that seized assets of failing businesses. So she got a legal writ of seizure and came to claim the furniture on January 4, 1984.
    Krysiewski - who lived upstairs with his wife Ida and 19-year-old cutie daughter Isabelle - disagreed that she should have the right to take the stuff.
   So he got angry and knifed her in the alleyway next to his place. Police came and he was charged.
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   This charming man is Denis Lagace, 25. He was stabbed 17 times in a bizarre half-naked chase outside of his Sacre-Coeur St. apartment in Ahuntsic by a 17-year-old white boy from a wealthy family whose name cannot be revealed because he was a minor on 21 September 1983.
   The boy started his evening with had a date with his girlfriend. He then brought her home. He stayed out, going solo to grab a burger at a Harvey's.
   But he was still bored so he called up Lagace who he later claimed that he hung out with socially on occasion.
   The two just sat on a couch at Lagace's home and listened to music, including classical music, which Lagace loved.
   The kid said he was too tired to go home, so he'd sleep over but Lagace said the couch was too expensive for him to sleep on so he got him into his bed. Lagace then made an unwanted pass at the youth.
   The kid ran out and Lagace ran after him. Both were half naked and the kid was terrified and  stabbed him to death in the street.
   He ran home and confessed to his dad who brought him to the police immediately.
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Laporte and Pigeon, killed

   Simone Laporte, 36, and Gaetan Pigeon, 30, were shot dead at their home at 3447 Iberville on January 9, 1984.  
  He was a career criminal thief and she was an aging stripper who had just returned to the peeling trade..
   She had invited the killer into the home and he waited until Pigeon returned.

Jocelyn and  Denis Julien

   Pigeon then told Laporte to go to the other room while he and the visitor discussed some business, as was their custom.
   While Laporte was gone from the room, the killer shot Pigeon dead and then came and shot her in turn, likely to eliminate a witness.
   Investigators believed that the killing might have been the result of a drug burn.
   Pigeon was also a suspect in a double gangland slaying in a Montreal tavern at 427 Rachel East on Tuesday December 21, 1982.
   On that evening a hooded man walked in and shot the unemployed Jocelyn Julien, 30 and his waiter brother Denis Julien, 32, to death just before closing time.                                                                    
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DDO resident Allan Wasserman,a 35-year-old  co-owner of a fledgling car restoration business, was shot dead with a dozen bullets from a Sten gun as he sat in his car in the parking lot outside of  his business at 3465 Royalmount on 19 December 1983.

Gad Bitton

Allan Wasserman, killed dead

   His business partner, Gad Bitton,  who would have been about 20-years-old (I happened to go to Westmount High School with him and he was a nice, quiet guy) was on the scene and expressed extreme shock at the traumatizing situation.
   Bitton appears to have recovered from that shock and is now a well-known luxury car dealer not far away from that scene.  
   Motive for the murder wasn't clear but it seems to have been an organized gangland slaying.
   The only motive anybody could think of was the fact that Wasserman had a mistress and somebody imagined that there might've been a jealous husband somewhere but that seemed unlikely.
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Roland Lord

 Roland Lord, 47, was a criminal living in a halfway house at 6970 15th in Rosemont when he decided that he wanted to hunt down and kill all of Montreal's prostitutes.
   So he went down to the Lower Main and hooked up with a woman who was not a prostitute and killed her.

Claire Alarie-Desjardins and 2 of her 8 kids

   Claire Alarie-Desjardins, 45, of 1820 Sanguinet, was the mother of eight who went to bars to participate in singing contests.
    On Sunday January 26, 1984 she sat down with Lord and the two continued their drinking at Peter's, the Rialto, Cleopatra's and the Alouette.
   The two got pretty hammered and he brought her to the hotel at 57 St. Cat E. room 407. He left early and told the cleaning lady that she'd be sleeping in until 11 a.m. Staff found her dead body in the room with the words "slut, thief prostitute" written in lipstick on the mirror.
   The next morning, Tuesday March 28, Lord picked up transvestite hooker Mario Poulin at St. Catherine and St. Dominique and went back to her place at 1908 Dufresne 
   He plunged a knife into her back when she turned away but she managed to flee his further attack.
   Her alert friends Jean Lafortune and Jean Legault caught Lord a block away and brought him back until police could come.
   Lord is believed to have attacked and stabbed many other street prostitutes who chose not to file complaints.
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Richard Riopel, killer

Denis Riopel, victim

   Petty drug dealer Richard Riopel, 38, who lived at 9213 A Lionel Groulx in St. Leonard killed his younger brother Denis Riopel, 21, at 5635 Henri Bourassa E. Apt 4 over a $50 debt on a Tuesday evening, January 31, 1984.
 That evening he boasted to two others that he killed his brother over $50.
  One of the two, Alain Nadeau, 25, was buying $5 worth of hashish off of Riopel, who threatened him with a knife to force him to help carry his brother's dead body out into a field about 300 metres away.
   At his trial Richard Riopel denounced all the witnesses as "bullshitters."
   Denis was the third child in the family that had died a violent death by that point.

Johnny Plescio at 19 and brother Daniel Plescio

   The next day Riopel decided to sell his stuff, probably in an attempt to get out of town.
   He sold a piece of furniture to Johnny Plescio, 19. Small world: Plescio went on to become a founder of the Rock Machine biker club. He was killed about 15 years later when he came to his window after assassins cut his cable TV as a lure to get him to the window.
   Plescio's older brother Daniel Plescio, who also served as witness, later attained notoriety when he and boxer Alex Hilton blasted bullets from a shotgun through a St. Leonard motel window a few years later.      
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