Gérard Matteau was a 39-year-old taxi driver in Montreal. On the night of Friday, November 5, 1965, he was the victim of a holdup when two men hailed his cab and then robbed him of about $50. Before making their escape the robbers locked him in the trunk of his cab. He was eventually discovered and freed by patrol officers. No arrests were made. A little over a month later, at about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 15, police were called to the corner of Rue Villeneuve and Boulevard St.-Laurent after a taxi collided with a lamppost at the intersection. When they looked inside the taxi they found Mr. Matteau dying of four .22 calibre gunshot wounds to the head, stomach and hip. Witnesses saw a man running from the scene after the crash. The killer was apparently sitting in the front passenger seat when he shot Mr. Matteau. The brutality of the shooting at first made police suspect that Mr. Matteau was the victim of a gangland "settling of accounts," but this theory was dropped as more facts came to light. Mr. Matteau was the victim of a savage crime spree that included several armed robberies and another deadly shooting. Five nights before Mr. Matteau's murder, on the evening of Friday, December 10, the same killer shot another man to death. The earlier victim was a 43-year-old longshoreman and father of five children named John Fitzgerald. On the fatal evening he met with the killer and another man at Des Seigneurs tavern on Rue St.-Jacques. Here an argument broke out over ten dollars which the killer accused Mr. Fitzgerald of stealing. Mr. Fitzgerald had no criminal record but police suspected that he was involved with the killer and the third man in a series of recent armed robberies. When Mr. Fitzgerald refused to return the money and made light of the dispute, the killer left the tavern and returned within minutes brandishing a revolver. Mr. Fitzgerald was shot four times and died in hospital. One of the bullets went through his shoulder and hit a bystander at the far end of the bar, wounding him seriously. Police came to believe that the motive for Mr. Matteau's killing was simple robbery and that the killer shot him because he resisted or failed to hand over his money quickly enough. After Mr. Matteau's murder the killer went to another tavern on Rue St.-Jacques where he alarmed customers and staff by reloading the magazine of an automatic pistol. Police quickly responded and took him into custody. Police also arrested the third man who was present at the Des Seigneurs Tavern when Mr. Fitzgerald was shot. The man surrendered to police through the intermediary of a radio show host. By the time police picked him up he was so drunk that he had to be taken to hospital for detoxification. His pockets were full of "goof balls." The killer was charged with first degree murder for Mr. Matteau's death and second degree murder for Mr. Fitzgerald's death. At the time first-degree murder still carried the possibilty of a death sentence because Canada had not yet officially abolished capital punishment. In fact, however, there were no executions in Canada since 1962 and in any case Mr. Matteau's charge was reduced to second-degree murder. [Next column]

Boulevard St.-Laurent in 1962 (Source: Adultes avec réserve [Boulevard Saint-Laurent], a documentary film by Jack Zolov and Marc Beaudet. National Film Board of Canada, 1962; 27 minutes.) For the two murders the killer was sentenced to two concurrent life terms with no possiblity of parole for twelve years. He was sentenced to serve an additional three years for six armed robberies. This brought the total sentence up to a minimum of 15 years in prison. The killer was freed in 1980 after serving his minimum sentence and immediately got into trouble with the law. In November of 1980 he was arrested after a barroom brawl. On January 28, 1981 the killer was staying with two other men at an apartment on Richmond Street when two Montreal police officers arrived with a warrant for his arrest on yet another robbery charge. The two other men immediately surrendered but the killer pulled a revolver. The officers retreated and called for backup. The result was a four-hour standoff during which the killer vowed not to be taken alive. Negotiations came to an end with a pistol shot. A SWAT team fired tear gas grenades into the apartment before they entered. They found the killer lying on the kitchen floor. He had shot himself to death. A large crowd of neighbours pressed against police barricades during the standoff but they began to disperse as the wind blew clouds of tear gas toward them. Many of the spectators were elderly residents of a seniors' apartment block who were able to watch the drama from their windows across the street. "I haven't even had supper yet," a woman resident told reporters. "I didn't want to miss anything."