Grégory Woolley
Grégory "Greg" Woolley was a Haitian-born Canadian gangster and outlaw biker associated with the Hells Angels motorcycle club in Montreal. Woolley was the protégé and bodyguard of Maurice "Mom" Boucher, a controversial senior Hells Angels leader who led his chapter in a long and extremely violent gang war against the Rock Machine, in Quebec, from 1994 to 2002. Woolley was known in Montreal as the "parrain des gangs de rue".
Criminal career
Master B
Woolley grew up poor in the Saint-Michel neighborhood of Montreal, the child of Haitian immigrants. His parents had fled the poverty of their native land and the tyranny of President-for-life Jean-Claude Duvalier, known to the Haitians as "Baby Doc" to distinguish him from his father, President-for-life Dr. François Duvalier, the "Papa Doc". From his teenage years, Woolley was involved in a street gangs in Saint-Michel. He committed his first known murder at the age of 17 when he killed a rival Haitian-Canadian street gangster, which gave him the nickname of "Picasso".Woolley was the leader of a street gang known as Master B., who bought drugs from the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter led by Maurice "Mom" Boucher. Boucher had once belonged to a white supremacist biker gang known as the SS that existed to beat up non-white immigrants. Boucher's son, Francis Boucher, is an avowed Nazi who had started the Aryan Fest musical festival in 1992 for fascist and white supremacist musical acts and which existed only to glorify Nazism. The Aryan Fest remained the premier annual musical gathering for racist bands and singers. Despite this background, Woolley was very close to Maurice Boucher and served as a bodyguard. Although the Hells Angels are a whites-only group, Boucher made Woolley a member of the Rockers puppet gang. The journalist Jerry Langton wrote: "He appears to have been right about Woolley, who became a very big earner an enthusiastic intimidator, and a loyal member who never informed on anyone". The Rockers were not like the other Hells Angels puppet gangs like the Evil Ones, the Rowdy Crew, and the Condors, which merely performed the same work as the Hells Angels. The Rockers were exclusively the enforcement arm of the Hells Angels divided into a "baseball team", which committed assaults and arson, and the "football team", which committed murders.
The Rockers
Woolley served as the bodyguard for Boucher and was the best assassin working for the Angels. Woolley was known as "Picasso" in the Montreal underworld because it was said that he was such an "artist" when it came to killing, having first killed at the age of 17 when he killed another Haitian immigrant and gang member. Woolley was said to have done such an "exquisite" job at carving up his rival that he earned the nickname "Picasso", and he was ultimately made the president of the Rockers by Boucher, becoming the first black man to lead an outlaw biker club in Canada, since Rod McLeod of the long defunct Montreal chapter of the Satan's Choice MC in the 1970s. Francis Boucher joined the Rockers with the aim of following his father into the Hells Angels, which put him under Woolley's authority. Besides for the Hells Angels, Woolley's closest allies were members of the "Young Turk" faction of the Rizzuto crime family, such as Francesco Arcadi, Lorenzo "the Skunk" Giordano, and Francesco "Chit" Del Balso.On 20 December 1996, Woolley murdered a Rock Machine biker, Pierre Beauchamp, whom he shot and killed when he was using his pager inside of his truck, which was parked on the street. Woolley fled in an automobile with stolen license plates, which he later abandoned to take the Metro. The get-away driver was another Rocker, René "Balloune" Charlebois, whom Woolley was to be closely associate with. Found abandoned near the metro station was the gun used to kill Beauchamp along with a toque, which had some hair samples. Afterwards, Woolley went to a bar to tell several other Rockers that he had just "gotten one" for the Hells Angels. Woolley told another Rocker, Stéphane Sirois, who later turned Crown's evidence, that the orders to kill Beauchamp had come from Boucher, who told him not to take any money from Beauchamp as Boucher did not want Montrealers to think that the murder was a drug deal gone bad.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police informer within the Rockers, Dany "Dany Boy" Kane, reported to his handlers in February 1997 that the Hells Angels had taken control of almost all of the Rock Machine's former drug markets. Kane further reported that the Hells Angels were set upon taking control of the Rock Machine's last strongholds of Pointe-Saint-Charles, Verdun, Lasalle, Saint-Henri, Lachine, Ville-Émard, and Côte-Saint-Paul. Kane continued that the Rockers had set up a death squad whose principal members were Woolley, Pierre Provencher, Normand Robitaille, Stephen Falls, and Stéphane "Godasse" Gagné. Kane added that the members of the Rockers death squad were to receive 30% of the profits from drug sales once the Hells Angels had taken control of the last Rock Machine drug markets.
On 28 March 1997, the Rocker hitman Aimé "Ace" Simard, acting under Woolley's orders, murdered a Rock Machine biker, Jean-Marc Caissy, as he entered a Montreal arena to play hockey with his friends. After Simard was arrested in April 1997, he turned Crown's evidence and named Woolley as the man who gave him the orders to kill Caissy. Woolley was charged with first-degree murder, but Simard proved to be a poor witness on the stand, and Woolley was acquitted.
Woolley was little known to the public until 1998 when he came to public attention as the chief security officer at a Hells Angels funeral. At the funeral, Woolley was seen giving orders to Francis Boucher. A Montreal police officer stated in 2002: "When you're in a position to boss around Maurice "Mom" Boucher's kid, you're somebody." Although the Hells Angels official policies are not racist, experts say many Hells Angels members are racist, and it is rare for individuals of African heritage to join Hells Angels chapters. Woolley, an Afro-Haitian, was described as a rare instance of an individual with black African heritage to rise to a senior position in the Hells Angels. As a black man, Woolley had no hope of ever being allowed to join the Hells Angels, but he seemed very determined to make a career in the Rockers.
The Crack Down Posse
When Woolley left the Master B. gang to join the Rockers, his old gang fell apart. Another Haitian immigrant who once belonged to Master B., Beauvoir Jean, founded a new gang, the Bo-Gars. Woolley founded another gang, the Syndicate, likewise made up of young men of a Haitian background to oppose the Bo-Gars. The Bo-Gars waged a propaganda campaign against Woolley that depicted him as an "Uncle Tom" figure serving the "clearly racist Hells Angels". Langton wrote the claims of the Bo-Gars were "true", but "ridiculous" as the Bo-Gars worked for the Rizzuto family and "if either of the groups was more under the thumb of a largely racist white organization, it was the Bo-Gars".The Bo-Gars decided to rebrand themselves as the Bloods, while the Syndicate along with their puppet gang, the Crack Down Posse, rebranded themselves as the Crips. Unlike the Hells Angels, neither the Bloods nor the Crips of Los Angeles had copyrighted their symbols, and the two Montreal gangs had no connection with the American Bloods and Crips gangs. Langton wrote: "The LA Crips and Bloods were not asked or consulted. In all likelihood, they had no idea that there were Crips and Bloods in Montreal, if they even knew where Montreal was". Woolley, who had often worn red and white clothing, was now forbidden to wear red and had to wear a blue baseball cap and blue clothing. Langton described Woolley as "too smart" to engage in "alleyway beatings". Woolley had the Crack Down Posse serve as a puppet gang for the Montreal Crips. The relationship between the Montreal Crips and the Crack Down Posse was analogous to the relationship between the Hells Angels and the Rockers. The Crack Down Posse operated in the Saint-Michel neighborhood, engaged in robbing dépanneurs and protection rackets. In 1998, Woolley merged the Crack Down Posse and the Rockers together to form the Syndicate.
In August 1999, a bizarre incident occurred on the streets of Montreal when Woolley was riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle while wearing his Rocker patch on his vest and was pulled over for speeding. The constable who pulled over Wooley, Michel Bureau, claimed he was frightened when he noticed that Woolley had something under his vest, saying that knew Woolley was an especially violent man as he was the only black outlaw biker in Montreal. Constable Bureau offered to drop the speeding fine if Woolley would show him what was under his vest. When Woolley refused, Constable Bureau said it didn't matter if Woolley was carrying drugs, he was willing to drop the charges just as long as Woolley showed him what was under his vest. When Woolley informed Bureau that he was not under arrest, and that it was none of his business what he had under his vest, Bureau called for back-up and thus it took five officers to arrest Woolley for speeding. No guns or drugs were found on Woolley, although a handgun was found lying on the streets close to the arrest scene, which Woolley's lawyers claimed was planted by the police. Later, the judge threw out all of the charges, ruling that this was not a routine police stop, and suggested it was an unusually clumsy attempt on the part of the police to entrap Woolley. During his time in jail while awaiting the charges, Woolley was involved in three different fights with the other inmates and an attempt to smuggle PCP into the jail, before finally being separated from the other inmates on the grounds he was too violent.
On 5 April 2000, Woolley was arrested while boarding a flight to Port-au-Prince when airport security discovered he was taking a handgun to Haiti. Following his conviction, he was sent to prison, where he was attacked by another prisoner on 31 January 2001. Prison officials stated it was a "suicidal" gesture on the part of the man who had attacked him.