Reporters routinely interview random bystanders to fill out news stories and those interviews are almost always useless toss-aways.Yet one such interview conducted in Montreal in 1986 foreshadowed tragedy.
André "Toots" Tousignant, 22, happened to be in attendance at a local motorcycle show where Hells Angels were also present. Not only did the young Toots decline to express any suspicion about the gang, he brazenly told the reporter that he he wanted to join them
His wife Susan Beckett also called the Hells Angels "a nice bunch of guys."'
They had clad their tiny son Richard Tousignant in a cute little leather biker jacket.
Tousignant would go on to join the Hells-affiliated Rockers about five years later.
He, along with Paul "Fon Fon" Fontaine controlled much of the drugs that went to the gay bars in the Village.
Officially, however, Toots' income came from his vending machine business.
Tousignant was also an unofficial spokesman for the gang and would occasionally talk to reporters.
I once even interviewed him over the phone in the Hells Angels clubhouse, where he said the boys liked listening to classical music.
During the biker war he also tossed a rival bomb into a nearby field, an act that surely required some nerves of steel.
Related: Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 8 Andre "Toots" Tousignant
Where have all Montreal biker bunkers gone?
Tousignant was a driver and bodyguard for Hells Angels boss Mom Boucher and was eventually given the task of murdering prison guards, killing Diane Lavigne on June 26, 1997 in a motorcycle drive-by with help from Stéphane "Godasse" Gagné
Tousignant was then promoted to the elite Nomads Chapter.
However things went sour for Tousignant when Gagné was arrested and turned informant a few months later.
Tousignant, wanted for murder, went into hiding. He hid successfully from police but not from his enemies. His dead body was found near Bromont, shot several times, fingers cut off and body burned, almost surely by fellow bikers.
Tousignant and Beckett appear to have had four children together and judging from their online profiles appear to have turned out quite normal.