Legendary Mike French, brutal biker bad boy at the center of Montreal mysteries

Mike French, top right

   

 
   Mike French (1950-1982) according to the many legends, grew up at the Weredale House for Boys because his family was poor.
   Poor parents would sometimes cast off boys into places and keep their girls, who tended to be much less trouble and better help around the house.
   French attended Queen's School on Olivier in Lower Westmount where he befriended Bobby Chou (1950-2018)..
   The two went on to join the Satan's Choice biker in St. Henri. Chu spent his later years living in NDG around Sherbrooke and Melrose.
   Satan's Choice was a powerful force whose notoriety became known here in 1969 when 12 to 23 gang members raped a 15-year-old, while another woman was forced to beat on her in Ottawa.

   In June 1969 French recklessly drove his motorcycle for at least four miles at over 60 mph downtown, driving through red lights and stop signs. Three months later a judge punished French and his pal for the stunt, sentencing French and fellow biker Robert Bouliane to jail for eight days. He also slapped them with $200 fines and forbade them to ride motorcycles for two years.  
   Soon those who knew French  developed misgivings about hanging around with him.
   An old friend of his tells me that once on a night out he returned to see somebody innocently sitting on his motorcycle on Crescent St. He pounced on the guy and proceeded to hurt him in a way that his friends found incredibly gratuitous and shocking.
   Another time French took four hits of LSD and didn't seem to be affected at all by the massive quantity of acid in his system.
  French, whose photo I have yet to find, was tall, thin and ungainly with buck teeth.
  "He had a Nazi look to him. Germanic. Over 6ft. Fair hair, clean cut. He looked in very good physical shape," said another.
   Another woman who knew French told Coolopolis that he became far more cruel after his four year old daughter died but details of that story remain unclear.
   He would routinely beat up his girlfriend Claire who sported black eyes and bruises, earned for such offenses and declining to make him coffee when he strolled in after a night out.

 French was also known to be a rapist who impregnated a 14-year-old girl who gave birth to the child and put him up for adoption. The child was raised by adoptive parents on the West Island and is an accomplished professional. It is believed that French might have fathered other children in a similar fashion.

Found dead

   French was eventually found murdered in November 1982 and his body was found in Kahnawake. Local legend has it that he boasted about killing young Sharron Prior seven years earlier in Point St. Charles.
   That murder has never been solved. Police named West End Gang hitman Jackie McLaughlin as a suspect in French murder.
   He supposedly killed French upon hearing that news of Prior's murder, as a sort of community service.
   His body was supposedly chopped up in a room at the Belvedere Hotel and dumped elsewhere later.
   According to an anonymous source who has posted about French on the internet, French during his time with Satan's Choice killed several Popeyes and thoroughly enjoyed attacking and torturing others for minor perceived slights. Apparently he quarreled with someone named Michel Cardinal and stepped on his neck and pulled his shoulder out of the poor man's socket.
   The Popeyes became the Hells Angels and supposedly 38 Satan's Choice members were killed (seems a bit doubtful) except French survived.
   Who killed Mike French? Well according to that 2006 version, it was neither McLaughlin or the Hells, but rather people still "operating in the West End." This version suggests that French was killed as punishment for raping the daughter of a Mafia boss, while another alternate version has French killed by police for raping the daughter of an officer.
   The official version of McLaughlin killing French seems to hold most water.