John McLean, key member of the Matticks faction of Montreal's West End Gang, has died at age 76

 John McLean, longtime key organizer for the Matticks faction of Montreal’s West End Gang, has died at the age of 76.

   McLean succumbed to lung cancer at a retirement home in Ontario on March 5, where he was in the witness protection program following his fall out with Gerry Matticks. 

   McLean was a top organizer in the gang during a time that it struck a deal with other criminal groups to bring in large amounts of contraband into the port of Montreal before a bitter falling out left him at odds with the Matticks clan.  

     After Gerry Matticks was arrested for his part in a massive drug importation at the port of Montreal, police also arrested McLean and played him audio recordings of people close to the Mattickses threatening to torture and kill his children

 McLean cooperated with the prosecutors as a means of keeping his children out of harm's way. Prosecutors gave him a new name and home but did not pay him other than $250 a month that he received for a year. 

McLean spent his life in the rackets after growing up in Point St. Charles and had a taste for women, ultimately fathering three sons and a daughter with four different women, and also adopting another boy and girl. 

   McLean had smooth social skills that helped his gang stay out of conflicts with other groups during a tense time of the biker war, when nobody in his West End Gang circle was among the dozens killed. 

  McLean’s initial fallout with Gerry Matticks was over a $40,000 payment that McLean distributed at the Do Drop Inn bar on Wellington Street in Point St. Charles. The irritation was likely the result of a previous ongoing festering resentment that Gerry Matticks had towards McLean.

  After McLean left town, anybody who spoke highly of him would suffer the wrath of Jamie Larramee, the street muscle for Richie Matticks on and around Monk Street. 

  In one case Larramee bit the nose off of a man named Brian who praised McLean repeatedly after being warned not to. 

   McLean, in spite of his status in the witness protection program, told police very little about other criminals and could have taken down “the whole eastern seaboard” if he wanted to, according to his son.