On the cold night of February 15, 1978, a single act of violence in Montreal, Quebec, ignited a brutal, years-long war between rival motorcycle clubs. The victim was Robert Côté, a male member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. His death was not a random event but a calculated assassination that marked the beginning of the First Biker War in the province, a bloody conflict for control of the city's lucrative drug trade.
The attack occurred outside the Brasserie Joey, a brewery and bar
known as a hangout for the Hells Angels. Côté and another member of the Outlaws were outside the establishment when Yves "Apache" Trudeau, a member of the rival Hells Angels, opened fire. Côté was killed in the shooting, and his fellow Outlaw was wounded. This brazen murder was a declaration of war by the Hells Angels, who were determined to eliminate the Outlaws from their territory.
The killing of Robert Côté was the first major blow in a conflict that would last until 1984, claiming numerous lives on both sides. The war was characterized by shootings, bombings, and beatings as the two powerful clubs battled for dominance. Just over a month after Côté's murder, Trudeau assassinated the president of the Outlaws' Montreal chapter, Gilles Cadorette, using a car bomb. The violence continued to escalate, pulling associates and even innocent bystanders into its deadly orbit.
The man responsible for Côté's death, Yves Trudeau, was one of Canada's most prolific and feared contract killers. Known as "Apache" and "The Mad Bomber," Trudeau was the Hells Angels' top assassin. Standing at just five-foot-six, his small stature belied a capacity for extreme violence. He was an expert with firearms and explosives, a skill he learned in his youth, and he was the first Canadian Hells Angel to earn the "Filthy Few" patch, an award for members who have killed for the club.
For years, Trudeau operated with impunity, carrying out murders for the Hells Angels and other criminal organizations. His methods were varied and brutal, including shootings, strangulations, beatings, and his signature car bombs. Between September 1973 and July 1985, Trudeau was responsible for at least 43 proven killings. During the biker war he personally initiated with Côté's murder, he was responsible for killing 18 of the 23 Outlaws who died in the conflict.
Trudeau's reign of terror ended not on the streets, but in a deal with prosecutors. In 1985, after a bloody internal purge within the Hells Angels known as the Lennoxville Massacre, a paranoid Trudeau, fearing for his life, became a police informant. In exchange for his testimony against his former associates, he pleaded guilty to 43 counts of manslaughter. The controversial deal resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment, but with parole eligibility after only seven years. He was also convicted of sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and other charges, receiving a four-year sentence for a sexual assault charge in 2004.
The information Trudeau provided was invaluable to law enforcement, helping to solve dozens of murders and leading to the arrests of numerous high-ranking criminals. However, the leniency of his sentence was a source of public outrage, given the sheer number of lives he had taken. Robert Côté's murder, the shot that started a war, was just one of many violent acts in the life of a man considered one of the most ruthless killers in Canadian history.
