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| ...and bearded |
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| Vic Levesque shaved |
Levesque's crew were known in news media as the Balaclava Gang, or les cagoulards for the jaunty ski masks they sported while perpetrating their often-unspeakably horrific robberies.
Their 100-or-so robberies, committed mostly in 1963 in Quebec and Ontario, landed them about 800,000 misbegotten Canadian dollars, a giant sum for the time.
Levesque, as his nickname indicates, was supposed to be gorgeous. Young women even reputedly swooned at him at the courthouse in 1964. But from the photos we've seen, we'd suggest that Pschyo, Dimwit or Screw-Loose would be more apt. He's no beauty.
Though Levesque and his gang brought business to news media, police, prosecutors, defence attorneys, prison guards as well as juicy content for retro crime analysts six decades later, they did so at the cost of individuals and families who were devastated by their insane cruelty.
Levesque would routinely enter a home, detain a husband in a closet and then rape his wife or daughter in front of him.
In the summer of 1963 Levesque and three of his henchmen did just that, locking kids and dad in a closet while they robbed a home and raped the victim's wife.
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| Levesque's three women friends |
Then one month later they proceeded to do the same at the home of a Dr. Shapiro in Ottawa. The gang members waited with the two terrified kids and Jamaican nanny for Shapiro to return. Shapiro told them that he had no cash or safe.
Levesque proceeded to rape the nanny in the bathtub of the en suite bathroom. Levesque briefly removed his mask during the sexual assault and the woman, to her credit, remembered his face and later identified him in a courtroom.
Levesque and his gang were finally rounded up in early 1964. Much was made of the fact that Levesque was with three attractive young women while arrested. A judge detained the women without bail on charges of being an accessory to Levesque's hiding.
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| Victim Dudas |
Soon after being detained, gang members escaped from a prison cell in the Montreal courthouse in early February 1965.
One of them asked to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and overpowered the guard. Levesque fled with Jean Claude Messier, Antonio Facchino, Aristide Fecteau, Jean-Guy Darveault, Jean-Rosaire Falardeau and Jacque Vallee.
Two were caught soon after walking on Iberville Street while Levesque and the rest carjacked a vehicle and then crashed it on Henri Bourassa while under police pursuit. The last two, Messier and Facchino, were eventually arrested in Long Island New York after being involved in an estimated 26 hold-ups and break-ins and bagging hundreds of thousands in loot in that area.
Levesque's days as a free man were over. He was charged in a variety of Quebec and Ontario courthouses for his countless crimes. He had already been sentenced to 40 years by the time he faced the charge of the Ottawa attack.
Levesque confessed to the Ottawa robbery but hotly denied committing rape. The judge described his crimes as "cowardly, vicious, cruel and dangerous" and sentenced Levesque to 25 years plus 25 lashes.
On 5 January 1970, Levesque made strips of fabric from the bedding in his cell at St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary in Laval and used it to create a cord which he used to hang himself dead.
Twenty-one inmates connected to the Balaclava Gang were released from prison in 1968. None of them are known to have subsequently left any other mark on the planet other than the foul stench created by their awful crimes.
Some photos below of a few of Levesque's Balaclava gang henchmen
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| Henchman Jean-Guy Davreault |
Ultimately, he hung himself…he did society a favour…what a low life….
ReplyDeleteHis family is still alive and, as much as we don't condone his actions, we also don't condone the glorification and celebration of suicide.
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