"He stared ahead and screamed, gripping the steering wheel with all his strength," new eyewitness account of Montreal's first car-bombing

Larose

  Montreal's first-ever car bomb on 9 September 1962 targeted Armand Larose, 34, one of the thugs charged with killing his own crime gang's boss Rocky Pierson. The Pierson affair was one of the most publicized Montreal crime events of the early 1960s. 

 Coolopolis has corresponded with Desmond Corringdon who offers this eyewitness account of the bombing of Armand Larose. 

9 September 1962

  On the evening of 9 September, 1962, David Rayner, Ingvar Nandrup and I were walking east on the north side of Ste. Catherine Street when we heard and felt the effects of a tremendous explosion. 

   We immediately began to run back along St .Catherine in the direction of what we thought was the source of the blast. We turned right into a side street, Balmoral Street, then right, into a car park at the rear of the buildings that fronted on to Ste. Catherine. Due to the thick smoke and dust I could see no more than six or eight feet ahead of me. The smell of cordite was thick in the air.

  Ahead of me in the darkness and smoke I could make out the shape of a woman running. She was smaller and older than me; had short fair hair and was wearing a light tan-coloured coat with a headscarf tied around her neck. She was yelling and shouting.

Bleury & St. Catherine, 1961

  As we moved forward I could hear the screams of a man but could not see a vehicle or the man. Eventually the screaming drew us towards a corner of the right side of the car park. The woman and I arrived at the car together. I have no recollection of opening the door. I'm not sure whether the door was missing or had been blown open. 

   Inside the car a man was sitting at the steering wheel. He was gripping the wheel and screaming very loudly. I got into the car next to him. David and Ingvar were at the other door, we were worried that the car might catch fire. Over the noise of his awful cries I tried to warn him that we had to get out of the car. The man didn’t respond.  He just stared straight ahead and continued to scream at the top of his voice while gripping the steering wheel with all his strength.

   His shirt collar on the right side was sticking up (similar to what you would see when a person is blown up in a silent movie comedy). His face was covered with blood. It looked to me as if his nose was missing. His right trouser leg was torn away up to and above the knee. In the dark I was unable see his feet but I could see that his right calf was completely missing. His left leg was bare up to the knee and there was some damage to the calf. With David and Ingvar at the other door we briefly tried to get the man to cooperate in us removing him from the car. He wouldn’t budge, or even let go of the wheel. The man just sat there, staring, rocking backwards and forwards and screaming loudly.  

Larose in 1965

   The car was sitting low on the ground as if the wheels had been blown off or the tyres had been shredded. The bonnet was missing and the boot lid was either gone or open. The rear end design of the car was what I would describe as looking like bug eyes (coming from England I was unfamiliar with that kind of design on the rear of a car). I thought the vehicle was two-tone - possibly grey or white and red. I believe the windscreen was intact. I don’t remember any broken glass on the seat.

  I have no idea how long the four of us were at the car but eventually we heard sirens approaching in the distance. This, of course, meant that, if we wanted to avoid being questioned by the police we had to leave there as quickly as possible. As no other person had arrived on the scene we had no choice but to leave the woman alone, with the man still inside the car.

   He was in great distress and, it seemed, beyond reach of anything we could say to him.

   The reason we had to leave was that all three of us were in the country illegally and feared being arrested and deported back to the UK.

   We could see only one entrance/exit to the car park, so we had no choice but to leave the same way we entered. We crossed the road and stood in a doorway just as the emergency vehicles turned into the car park.

   We moved down onto Ste. Catherine Street and walked to a shop doorway. I had a small transistor radio which I carried everywhere and we listened to a midnight radio news broadcast of the bombing.

   I have always been fairly sure that we listened to a midnight radio report of the incident. So given the time we spent getting to the car, trying to assist the injured man and returning to Rue Ste. Catherine, I speculate that all that activity took about fifteen to twenty minutes or even less.

   During those summer months I found Montreal to be a vibrant, and exciting city, but also a dangerous place at night. I witnessed much street violence particularly in the vicinity of a street corner that operated as a kind of Speakers' Corner.’ Can someone remind me where it was?

   Regarding the woman I felt sure that she knew who the driver was.

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See also: Montreal car bombings - a list

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  The motive for the bombing was never made clear. 

  Newspapers reported that Larose was returning from a bar that he had an ownership stake in. Bars around that area included an oft-changing bar on the SE corner of Bleury and St. Catherine, (in the building best known as home of The Spectrum), while nearby Bleury was home to the country music venues the Kit Kat and The Times Square Cafe.

   

Larose 1963

  Armand Larose recovered sufficiently to stand accused of the murder of Rocky Pierson at a pair of trials, one which was dismissed due to jury bickering and the other which led to an acquittal.

  Nobody was ever charged with the bombing, which consisted of a pair of sticks of dynmatic set to explode when he started the car.  

  A few days after the bombing, thugs beat a criminal from Edmonton almost to death on the street outside of the Times Square Cafe. The late Neil Cameron, genius ractoneur and barfly, occasionally referenced this beating, claiming that the man was sent by the New York Mafia to demand protection money from the Times Square folks, who simply refused and beat him up, thus rebuffing future attempts to get Montrealers to pay protection to New York. This account is likely apocryphal but might have some element of truth in it. 

   These stories and thousands more are discussed in detail in my upcoming book on the West End Gang.