In the wee hours of last Friday, about 1:30 a.m., a police patrol in west-end Montreal stopped a bearded man on suspicion that he was driving while intoxicated.
The man had a loaded revolver and $3,500 in cash in his car, so the patrollers took him in for questioning.
He said he was Guy Turner, owner of a scuba-diving school in Costa Rica. He had credit cards, a Quebec driver's licence and a Canadian passport in that name. He said he was back home for a visit and was going to use the cash to buy diving equipment.
"The man looked like a businessman ... He sounded very credible," Commander Pierre Cadieux, a police spokesman, said later.
Credible enough that the police fingerprinted him and then let him leave on a promise to appear in court at a later date for illegal possession of a firearm.
Oops. The next day, the fingerprint check revealed his real identity: Richard Vallée, 45, a fugitive Hells Angel wanted in the killing of a U.S. government undercover agent.
Mr. Vallée, one of Canada's most wanted men, was finally caught Thursday night in Montreal, after nearly six years on the run. He had apparently been hiding in Costa Rica and had undergone plastic surgery.
After the fumble a week ago, a provincial police tactical squad later spotted Mr. Vallée and nabbed him again in downtown Montreal.
Mr. Vallée is a member of the Nomads, the elite Hells Angels chapter that spearheaded the biker turf wars that killed scores of Quebeckers in the 1990s.
He was arrested the night the provincial police caught biker André Chouinard, a former Nomad who had been on the lam since 2001. Mr. Chouinard, who faces eight murder charges, was found hiding in a cottage in Ayers Cliff, southeast of Montreal.
Mr. Vallée is wanted in New York State in connection to the death of Lee Carter Jr., an undercover government witness.
The Quebecker had been a fugitive since June of 1997 when, while awaiting extradition, he escaped during a hospital visit, subduing his guard while on the way to the showers and roaring away on a stolen motorcycle provided by accomplices.
"Armed and dangerous ... Vallée is a member of a large-scale international cocaine-smuggling organization and a demolition expert with a violent criminal history," says the wanted poster issued by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Now bearded and bespectacled, his face altered by surgery, Mr. Vallée was not recognized when Montreal police stopped him April 11.
"Of course, this raises real questions and we'll review what happened," Cdr. Cadieux said.
A source said the police released him after the first arrest even though Mr. Vallée called Léo-René Maranda, a lawyer who had defended him in the past and was known for representing Hells Angels clients.
Cdr. Cadieux confirmed that the suspect had called a lawyer but could not say which one.
Under the charges filed in the original extradition request, Mr. Vallée would not have faced the death penalty had he been handed over to U.S. authorities.
However, a few days after his 1997 escape, a grand jury indicted him on new charges for which the death penalty is applicable. Had he been arrested in the United States, prosecutors there would have been able to seek capital punishment.
"He's lucky he got caught in Canada," said Don Kinsella, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the Carter murder case.
The son of a prison guard, Mr. Carter lived in Champlain, N.Y., near the Canadian border. In the spring of 1993, a group of Quebeckers played at the bowling alley where he worked as a bartender. Two of them asked Mr. Carter if he wanted to earn some money, picking up some cocaine in New York and delivering it to Montreal.
Mr. Carter pretended to accept the offer but then tipped off police and agreed to work undercover. "He was just somebody who wanted to help out law-enforcement," Mr. Kinsella said.
Investigators traced the plot to smuggle 54 kilograms of cocaine to the Hells Angels. During the sting operation, Mr. Carter travelled to a Montreal motel, where he met Mr. Vallée.
Mr. Carter was the only witness who could tie Mr. Vallée to the plot, Mr. Kinsella said.
Mr. Vallée was suspected in several killings but Quebec authorities had not been able to convict him. Quebec court documents mention Mr. Vallée in connection with at least seven murders or conspiracies to commit murder.
According to a Quebec Superior Court ruling, the Hells Angels figured out Mr. Carter's role from evidence filed against Mr. Vallée.
U.S. authorities say Mr. Vallée slipped across the border in July of 1993 and posed as a mail carrier to plant a powerful bomb that killed Mr. Carter when he started his car.
A few days before the bombing, a man wearing a U.S. Postal Service outfit inquired about Mr. Carter, Mr. Kinsella said, adding that police later found a U.S. postal uniform at an address associated with Mr. Vallée.
Indicted for Mr. Carter's death and facing extradition in 1997, Mr. Vallée was taken to a Montreal hospital because of a broken jaw. There, late one evening, Mr. Vallée got a call from his wife. Meanwhile, nurses saw a man in sunglasses walk toward the showers.
Shortly after, Mr. Vallée asked to be taken to the shower. A security guard accompanied him but found himself confronted by a gun-wielding man. The guard was bound and gagged and Mr. Vallée and three accomplices then fled on stolen motorcycles.
Mr. Vallée was not seen again until police found him this week.
Mr. Carter's father, Lee Carter Sr., could not be reached for comment yesterday, but a woman who answered the phone at his residence said he had been notified of the arrest and "he's feeling very good about it."
Tu Thanh Ha