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| - McLaughlin grew up in Montreal. A reputed tough and feared gangster, McLaughlin worked primarily as an enforcer, collecting debts for the West End Gang and possibly other groups. His rap sheet dated back to 1955 and included convictions for theft, firearm possession, and extortion. McLaughlin also allegedly worked as a hitman, and was suspected in over a dozen underworld murders, including the death of Michael "Crazy Mike" French. French, a member of the Outlaws biker gang, was shot in the head in a Kanawake cemetery on November 12, 1982.
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| abstract
| - McLaughlin grew up in Montreal. A reputed tough and feared gangster, McLaughlin worked primarily as an enforcer, collecting debts for the West End Gang and possibly other groups. His rap sheet dated back to 1955 and included convictions for theft, firearm possession, and extortion. McLaughlin also allegedly worked as a hitman, and was suspected in over a dozen underworld murders, including the death of Michael "Crazy Mike" French. French, a member of the Outlaws biker gang, was shot in the head in a Kanawake cemetery on November 12, 1982. In January 1981, after a five year prison stint, McLaughlin returned to Montreal's west end, where he reportedly became a lieutenant of infamous crime boss Frank "Dunie" Ryan. Ryan had become a major player since McLaughlin been jailed. He was now said to be worth tens of millions of dollars and sitting on top of a very lucrative drug network. McLaughlin became the kingpin's bodyguard and began hanging around the Cavalier Motel, Ryan's base of operations at the time. McLaughlin was also associated with the feared Hells Angels North Chapter, based in Laval, and brought the rowdy bikers around the Cavalier bar. While Ryan and the other west end gangsters didn't seem to care for the of the wild bikers, the gang would hire Yves "Apache" Trudeau, a Hells Angel with 43 murders to his credit, to kill several people over the next few years. McLaughlin was reportedly among the 2000 people who gathered in Sorel to watch the funeral of Hells Angel Yves "Le Boss" Buteau, president of the club's Montreal Chapter, held on September 12, 1983. McLaughlin supposedly boasted that he watched the funeral from a gang member's van, hidden from the police photographers who lurked nearby, according to a Montreal Gazette article. In early November, 1983, McLaughlin, wanted by police for possession of a concealed weapon, a parole violation that would likely land him back behind bars, went on the lam, leaving Montreal. His girlfriend, Maria Kraus-Hillebrand, 20 years his junior and a bartender at the Cavalier, was also being sought by police, on a cocaine possession charge, accompanied him. The couple traveled to Saint John, New Brunswick, where they stayed at a cabin owned by Noel Winters, a local underworld figure.
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