Murder at Andrew's Pub - who did it?

Lavoie, MacDonald and McLaughlin in a Coolopolis collage

     The Cat's Den, now known as Andrew's Pub on Guy just below Ste. Catherine, has long been a nice place to enjoy a cheap beer and a free game of pool.  
  It was also the scene of a gruesome murder that ushered in a new reign of gunmen in the fabled West End Gang, Montreal's Irish Mafia.
   The image above is a photoshop dramatization of the shooting that took place at the bar on Sunday March 16, 1969.

John Slawvey

   No arrests were made but from our information Dickie Lavoie (left) and Jackie McLaughlin (right) came to shoot down their fellow West End Gang colleague James MacDonald who was enjoying a drink on that Sunday evening.
    The identity of the masked men remains unconfirmed but legend has it that Lavoie and McLaughlin were the shooters, although one newspaper suggested that John Slawvey was one of the two gunmen, as he had a motive and also went into hiding after the shooting.
    The two masked men entered and shot MacDonald 11 times in the head with an M-1 machine gun while about 20 others watched on, some of whom suffered injuries.

Dick Lavoie

   It's believed that MacDonald - also believed to be a killer - was shot by his own gang because they imagined he might turn informant.
   MacDonald had likely killed his partner Eric McNally and his schoolteacher girlfriend Susan Clarke at their West Island home at 12295 Gouin W. 
   MacDonald was angry at McNally over the resale of a bunch of TVs. MacDonald thought they would fetch a good sum but it turned out they were black and white TVs and McNally couldn't fetch the price MacDonald expected.
   McNally, MacDonald and Jimmy Collins would hang around Bud's, next to Chez Paree on Stanley and one time MacDonald feuded with someone and chopped his fingers off with a butcher's knife that he found in the kitchen of the place.
   Mob boss Louis Greco wasn't too happy about it.
   MacDonald had recently been in a $200,000 theft of a cigarette truck at the port.
   The splashy heist saw him and William Johnston, Philippe Savoie and John Slawvey shoot at cops.
   Slawvey hid, Johnston and the other man were rounded up.
   MacDonald turned himself in to police.

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   By turning himself in MacDonald became a threat of turning informant, as that logic has it.
   Another explanation is that the gang was sore at him for killing somebody they didn't want dead.
   I'm told by an old-timer MacDonald was targeted by the killers just days before.
  According to that story MacDonald drove straight down Atwater with the killers on his tail. He only escaped because he managed to cross the train tracks (now gone) before a train passed, leaving the others behind to wait for the crossing..
   The irony was that the M-1 automatic employed to kill MacDonld might have been one that MacDonald himself had sold on the black market.
***
  Nine days later MacDonald's good friend and business partner James "Jimmy" Collins was gunned down at the Forum Tavern on March 25 1969. 
   The gunman sneaked up on Collins and blasted a bullet into his ear before fleeing. Thirty patrons and three employees saw nothing.
   The crew of McNally, MacDonald and Collins, who liked to hang around Bud Miller's Bud's Salon before it became a famous gay joint on Stanley was all now dead.
   The same suspects might have very well done that deed as well.
   McLaughlin and Lavoie became a new hit-squad for the West End Gang's faction led by Dunie Ryan and Alan Ross. Between them they are believed to have killed dozens, often on impulse. Slawvey likely killed at least three people.
     Slawvey was later shot by police. McLaughlin was stabbed to death by his friend Noel Winters in New Brunswick and Lavoie, a cocaine-sniffing ladies man who lived about the Ye Olde Pub on St. James and Elmhurst, died of natural causes.
      We have much more to say about various other unsolved West End Gang murders but are saving that for another place and time.