Trudeau was the motorcycle club's most prolific killer. He would admit to having shot, stabbed, beaten, and dynamited over 40 people—some innocent, most not—to death between 1970 and 1985. But Trudeau wasn't one of the architects of the massacre; in fact, he was one of its intended targets. And the revenge he took on his former club would decimate its leadership and earn him notoriety that would long outlive him.

If there's one crime that Yves "Apache" Trudeau is most closely associated with, it would be the Lennoxville Massacre of March 24, 1985. The murder of six Hells Angels by their one-time comrades-in-arms shocked the underworld, law enforcement, and the public, and almost led to the club's complete downfall in Quebec.

Trudeau's criminal career took off in 1968 when, at 22, he joined east-end Montreal's Popeyes motorcycle club. The Popeyes were known for doing the usual gangster stuff: drugs, prostitution, extortion, theft. But even then, notes journalist and true crime author James Dubro, Trudeau was a little different than his fellow bikers.

The violence also attracted the attention of motorcycle gangs based in the US, especially the Chicago-based Outlaws and California-based Hells Angels, who were both looking to expand internationally. In the summer of 1977, five of the 10 Satan's Choice chapters patched over and joined the Outlaws, including the one in Montreal. The Popeyes did the same, joining the Hells Angels that December.

"There's always has been more violence in Quebec," says Dubro. "In the biker world it's known as the Red Zone. I remember an Outlaws hit man telling me he was scared going to Montreal."

But as the Popeyes' wealth and power grew, rival clubs like the Devil's Disciples and the Ontario-based Satan's Choice tried to muscle in on their turf. The violence that ensued cemented Quebec's reputation as one of the most dangerous places for organized crime to do business in North America. By 1975, for instance, the Devil's Disciples disbanded after 15 of their members had been murdered by one criminal group or another.

"He had this fascination early in life with bikers and military things and weapons and bombs," Dubro says. He even worked at an explosives factory, where he honed the skills that would later become his trademark.

Cocaine addiction didn't slow Trudeau's killing, though. In fact, it may have helped it, says Dubro. "Most of the hit men I've met have been cokeheads, and they usually coke up before doing the killings," he says. "Makes it a little easier. Not all of them, but alcoholism and drug use is very common among hit men." In February 1980, Trudeau murdered the grandmother of a former Hells Angel he believed was talking to the cops, along with the suspected snitch and his wife.

Independence didn't help the North Chapter. By the early 1980s, their notorious behaviour—especially their heavy cocaine use, flaunting of club rules, and the disrespect shown to other criminals—was becoming a serious issue.

By September 1979, the Montreal chapter of the Hells Angels was becoming unwieldy, and so that month a second Montreal-area chapter was created, consisting largely of ex-Popeyes. It would be based in the northern suburb of Laval, and became known as the North Chapter, while the chapter based in Sorel, about an hour's drive northeast of Montreal, would remain the provincial mother chapter.

"He had absolutely no conscience, no respect for human life at all," says Dubro.

Trudeau's killing career flourished in the 1970s and early 1980. He gunned his victims down at their homes, planted bombs in their vehicles—it didn't matter if he killed innocents along the way. Girlfriends and wives died alongside their men. His rep as an explosives expert earned him another nickname, "The Mad Bumper."

By the time the Popeyes patched over, Trudeau had already killed four people (he was also reputed to have cut off the head of one of his victims, earning him the nickname "Apache"). His fifth murder would be committed within weeks of joining the Hells, when he shot a young Outlaws member outside a bar in Montreal's Little Italy, sparking a full-fledged war.

Trudeau committed several murders at the behest of the West End Gang, the largely Irish community of criminals operating out of Montreal's predominantly English-speaking southwest. The Hells and the Irish were close: the Gang controlled the Port of Montreal, allowing them to import huge quantities of drugs fairly easily. The Port was then run by the Gang's leading light, Frank Peter "Dunie" Ryan.

Trudeau's reputation was solid enough that he began taking contracts from outside the Hells. Montreal's criminal community "knew Trudeau's rep as a killer," says Pierre de Champlain, author of Histoire du crime organisé à Montréal. "He was very professional, very meticulous, and that's why they used his services."

"That's the thing about biker gangs like the Hells Angels," he says. "They talk about a brotherhood but when they find someone is no longer useful they just get rid of him."

The relationship was so strong that in January 1982 Ryan forced the Hells to murder three of their own members, and one of their girlfriends. The trio, led by founding Montreal Hells Angels and former Popeyes member Denis Kennedy, had come up with a plot to kidnap one of Ryan's children and use the ransom money to pay back the coke money they owed him. Ryan found out and told the Hells that they either kill the idiots behind the plot or lose access to the drugs he was importing. The four were quickly murdered and disposed of in the St. Lawrence. Dubro says Trudeau pulled the trigger on Kennedy.

Ryan had worked with Trudeau before. Just a couple months previously, he'd hired the biker to eliminate Hughie McGurnaghan, a gang member whom Ryan felt had cheated him out of drug money.

"Dunie got a little pissed off and he wanted to set an example," says D'Arcy O'Connor, author of Montreal's Irish Mafia, about the West End Gang. "He hired Yves Trudeau to send a message to the rest of the West End Gang that you don't fuck around with Dunie Ryan if you owe him money."

On October 27, 1981, Trudeau detonated a bomb underneath McGurnaghan's car as it drove along Westmount Park. The explosion blew off McGurnaghan's legs and shattered windows in the upscale neighbourhood. He died en route to the hospital. (In an odd twist, O'Connor says he was living nearby at the time and heard the detonation as it went off but didn't know what it was. He only made the connection years later, when he was researching his book.)

But Trudeau's most infamous killing took place three years later, and was also carried out for the West End Gang. On November 13, 1984, Ryan was gunned down by Paul April, another West End Gang member, and his partner Robert Lelièvre. At Ryan's funeral, his friend and colleague Allan "the Weasel" Ross made contact with Trudeau, and, having heard that April was bragging about the murder, arranged for payback.

Ross didn't have to wait long. In the early hours of Sunday, November 25, Trudeau associate Michel Blass showed up at April's apartment at 1645 de Maisonneuve West bearing gifts: a TV, a VCR, and video cassette copy of Hells Angels Forever, a pseudo-documentary produced by the gang's Manhattan chapter. April was with Lelièvre and two others. Once Blass was safely out of the apartment, Trudeau detonated a bomb hidden inside the TV. The explosion, writes de Champlain, blew the four men to pieces and badly damaged eight other apartments in the Concordia University student ghetto building.