"I've got the money, the power, the girls - it was a hell
of life. It was a rock-star life."
Stéphane Sirois relished his days as a drug dealer and
enforcer for the Rockers motorcycle gang - but his tumble from
the top was as quick as his rise inside Montreal's criminal biker
underworld.
"It's a spinning wheel - the more you get into it, it starts
spinning faster and faster and then you can't get out because
then you know too many secrets about too many people," he
said.
As the thugs for Mom Boucher's Hells Angels, the Rockers were
known to have a "baseball team" (for beating people
up) and a "football team" (for killing people). Mr.
Sirois openly confesses to participating in a beating of two people
at the Rockers' clubhouse that was so vicious one of the victims
convulsed and had to be brought back to life with a water hose.
"It's like a pack of wolves. One wolf attacks and you have
to follow," he said. "It's been many years and I still
have nightmares about a lot of those things."
But he makes no apologies for his life of crime: "There's
nobody else to blame but me - I made a choice. I contributed to
every murder that was done by the HA [Hells Angels] and the Rockers.
I might not have shot the person but in a little way I helped.
We all knew what was going on."
Once he was forced by betrayals and suspicions in June, 1999,
to start working as an informant for the police, he applied the
same drive to helping the cops.
"He had guts," one of his police handlers told The
Globe and Mail. "He wanted to push things and he was a good
witness."
For several months he wore a body pack, recording drug deals
and biker plots. He was reportedly paid more than $400,000 to
testify in Quebec's famous biker megatrials, which sent dozens
of criminals to jail.
In the witness box, Mr. Sirois impressed journalists covering
the trial with what media accounts called the "surgical precision"
of his testimony, often relying on detailed notes he had taken
during his undercover work. "More a cop than the cops,"
one of them wrote.
Unlike other informants who squirmed under the gaze of the biker
defendants they had betrayed, Mr. Sirois stared them down.
"I wasn't going to shy away from what I was doing and act
ashamed," he said. "I made a choice and stood by it."
One accused biker ran his finger along his neck to indicate Mr.
Sirois's days were numbered. Mr. Sirois admits he still looks
over his shoulder and takes extreme security precautions.
"I might end up in a ditch some day, but I did what I had
to do," he said. "If my actions saved one life, call
it redemption or whatever you want."
Of two of his closest friends, André Chouinard got 22
years and Jean-Guy Bourgoin got 15 years.
His former biker buddies might condemn him as a cowardly rat,
but that doesn't bother Mr. Sirois: "At least I'm a live
rat," he said with a laugh.
