member of Quebec's Hell's Angels who killed a government witness in 1993 will be sentenced today.Reports say Richard Vallée has only expressed remorse that the victim, a witness who was about to testify against him, was driving a classic sports car when he blew him up. After a career marked by drugs, death plots, and unlikely prison escapes, Vallée will appear in a New York courtroom today to find out if he'll spend the rest of his life behind bars.Vallée's victim was known as the only person who could possibly identify him in a cross-border cocaine smuggling conspiracy.Richard Vallée, once a leading member of Quebec's Hells Angels, expressed some remorse for killing a government witness about to testify against him - he was sorry that his victim was driving a classic Porsche sports car when he blew him up in 1993. After a career marked by drugs, death plots, surprise acquittals and unlikely prison escapes, Vallée will stand today in a New York courtroom to learn whether he will spend the rest of his life in jail. On July 28, 1993, a thunderous explosion tore apart a white, 1977 Porsche, sending both car and body parts across the large parking lot of Bowl-Mart in Rouses Point, N.Y., about an hour's drive south of Montreal. When the victim was identified as Lee Carter, 31, who worked part-time as a bartender at the bowling lane and lived in an adjacent trailer, New York police looked north for answers. Mr. Carter was known as the sole witness who could finger Vallée, a founding member of the elite Quebec Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, in a cross-border cocaine smuggling conspiracy. The Nomads were the architects of the biker war that would claim more than 160 lives. Mr. Carter's troubles, however, started in May, 1992, when he was asked by an acquaintance to move cocaine into Canada. Mr. Carter, whose namesake father said his son "just wanted to do the right thing," feigned interest and then called police, offering to work for them undercover. Working with police, Mr. Carter brought 54 kilograms of fake cocaine into Canada and, at a Montreal motel, was introduced to "Rick" who told him where to deliver the load. Mr. Carter later identified Vallée as the man he met and Vallée and fellow conspirators were soon arrested. In March, 1993, as Vallée's trial approached, his lawyer wrote to the Quebec prosecutor of the case. The letter, U.S. prosecutors claim in court documents, "intended to ferret out what witnesses or evidence connected Vallée to the cocaine." The lawyer was told Mr. Carter was the only witness who was willing and able to identify Vallée.
Mr. Carter did not get a chance to give his testimony; a month before the trial he started his Porsche on a sunny morning after it had secretly been loaded with explosives. Because of the murder of the only witness against Vallée, his drug charges were dismissed. Police in Canada and the United States were fairly sure Vallée was behind the bombing and slowly built a case against him. A neighbour of Mr. Carter said that two days earlier a man who looked like Vallée was asking where Mr. Carter lived. New York police recovered the detonator used in the blast and a year later police in Quebec seized a nearly identical detonator from a man who was visiting Vallée's apartment. Quebec police next searched the apartment of an associate of Vallée's and found a bomb-making kit with Vallée's fingerprints on it.
Then, in 1995, Serge Quesnel, a Hells Angels assassin, agreed to cooperate with police. He told officers that Vallée once learned that Quesnel's mother's maiden name was Carter. "He said, 'Is she any relation to the guy that I blew up in the States?' " Quesnel said. The subject came up a second time: "I was telling him how much the cops hate me because I had killed a guy; they knew it but they weren't able to pin it on me. And he said to me, he goes, 'Well the police hate me even more because I killed one of their witnesses in a drug deal in New York,' " Quesnel said.
"And he said that it was actually a bit of a shame because the guy was driving a really nice car and he had to blow up the car, so it was a shame." Vallée was arrested in Trois-Rivières in 1995 and charged in Mr. Carter's death. He was told there were two witnesses against him. Vallée was unfazed.
"You know what happened to Carter, I blew him up and he did not come to testify. The other two witnesses will also not come to testify," he told officers, according to court documents. Bold action followed those bold words.
In 1997, Vallée concocted a prison fight that gave him a broken jaw and he was taken to a Montreal hospital. There, two days before he was to be sent to the United States, a gun-wielding man confronted guards and helped Vallée flee on a motorcycle.
For years he was a fugitive, featured on both the U.S. Marshals' Most Wanted list and the popular TV show America's Most Wanted. In 2003, he again fooled police when he was stopped in Montreal for drunk driving. After giving officers forged documents and claiming he was a businessman from Costa Rica, he was allowed to walk out of the police station. It was not until the next day, when his fingerprints were checked, that mortified officers learned they had again let Vallée escape. He did not go far, however, and was arrested days later as he left a Montreal dépanneur.
In September in Albany, N.Y., Vallée faced a jury trial for -- as William Pericak, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case, put it -- "procuring the unavailability of the witness by murder." Although the case was circumstantial and Vallée denied his involvement, an anonymous jury found him guilty.
Judge Thomas McAvoy will sentence Vallée this morning. Mr. Pericak is seeking a life term and $1.4-million in restitution to Mr. Carter's family for the loss of his income. "When you go to jail here we have a thing called the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program where you work," Mr. Pericak said.
"It is our hope that Mr. Vallée works every single day for the rest of his life and that every single day a fraction of that money gets paid to the family of Lee Carter so that each day he has a reminder of what he did."
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