MONTREAL Apr 1 – A Canadian hitman has pleaded guilty to 27 murders and 12 attempted murders ordered by warring biker gangs over 25 years, local media reported.
Gerald Gallant is already serving a life sentence for the killing of a bar owner, and the attempted murder of a bar patron in a Quebec town in 2001, according to public broadcaster CBC.
The 58-year-old agreed to testify against 11 of his alleged accomplices and clients in exchange for 50 dollars per month to spend at the prison canteen, CBC reported.
"I agreed to cooperate with police in order to repair the damage I’ve caused and to seek forgiveness," he said. "I understand that forgiving will be difficult, maybe even impossible. I accept that."
Gallant reportedly earned up to $20,000 per contract hit for biker gangs fighting over drug turf between 1978 and 2003.
After being arrested in 2006 in Switzerland on credit card fraud charges, he confessed to a series of murders and gave police information about those in which he was involved between 1978 and 2003, according to Canwest News Service.
The local news agency said most of the murders took place between 1994 and 2002 during a turf war between biker gangs for drug-trafficking territory that pitted the Hells Angels against other gangs, including Quebec’s Rock Machine.
Though prolific, Gallant is not the worst contract killer in Canadian history.
Yves (Apache) Trudeau, who helped found the Hells Angels in Quebec, was sentenced to life in prison in 1986 after pleading guilty to 43 counts of manslaughter.
The Canadian Press described him as "the most prolific hired killer in Quebec’s history."
Gallant’s smalltown neighbours in Quebec described him as an unassuming cycling enthusiast, local media said.
Former newspaper crime reporter Michel Auger, a survivor of a would-be biker assassin, said Gallant was not a big player in Quebec’s crime world.
"Gerald Gallant is a nobody," said Auger, who was shot and wounded outside Le Journal de Montreal’s office in September 2000, just a day after the publication of a piece on mob killings in Montreal.
"In the criminal world, nobody knew him well," Auger told The Canadian Press. "But he had good connections."
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