On a spring evening, May 9, 1981, a man named Donat Lemieux and his girlfriend, Lucie Vallières, were spending time on their porch in the Rosemont neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec. In a sudden, violent intrusion, their lives were cut short when they were both shot and killed. Their deaths would go unsolved for years, two more victims of the city's brutal underworld violence, with no immediate suspects and few public leads.
The couple had the profound misfortune of crossing the path of one of Canada's most prolific and ruthless contract killers.
The man responsible was Yves "Apache" Trudeau, a notorious hitman for the Hells Angels motorcycle club. Standing just five-foot-six, Trudeau did not fit the stereotypical image of a biker enforcer, but he was the club's most effective assassin, known for his meticulous and vicious methods which included shootings, bombings, beatings, and strangulation. His work as a killer began in the early 1970s and he was a key figure in the violent biker wars that plagued Quebec for years. Trudeau was the first Canadian member of the Hells Angels to earn the "Filthy Few" patch, a grim honour bestowed upon members who had killed for the club.
For years, the murders of Donat Lemieux and Lucie Vallières remained officially unsolved, their case file gathering dust along with those of dozens of other victims of gang violence. The breakthrough came not from a single piece of evidence found at the scene, but from the perpetrator himself. In 1985, following an internal purge within the Hells Angels known as the Lennoxville Massacre where five of his own chapter members were slaughtered, a paranoid and drug-addicted Trudeau feared he was next on the hit list. The Angels had reportedly put a $50,000 contract on his head.
To save his own life, Trudeau turned informant and became a Crown witness. In a series of stunning confessions, he laid bare the bloody history of his life as a hitman, admitting to a staggering 43 murders committed between September 1973 and July 1985. Among the many names he gave to investigators were those of Donat Lemieux and Lucie Vallières, whom he confirmed he had killed on their porch that night in Rosemont. His confession officially closed their case, finally naming the person responsible for their deaths.
In exchange for his extensive testimony against his former biker "brothers," which helped police solve numerous homicides and led to the conviction of other Hells Angels members, Yves Trudeau struck a deal that was widely seen as controversial. He pleaded guilty to 43 counts of the lesser charge of manslaughter, not murder. This plea deal resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment, but with the shocking condition that he would be eligible for parole after only seven years.
Trudeau was granted parole in 1994 and given a new identity. His freedom was short-lived; in 2004, he was arrested again, this time for the sexual assault of a young boy, which added another four years to his prison time. Diagnosed with cancer, the man who took Donat Lemieux's life died in a medical facility in 2008. For the families of his many victims, the legal outcome was a source of outrage, a sweetheart deal for a self-confessed serial killer whose reign of terror left an indelible scar on the community.
