That time gangsters pulled their pants down for reporters

Roland Dubois removes trousers
to display injuries. Adrien Dubois
(beard) and lawyer Sidney Leithman
watch on

 Roland Dubois and Normand Dubois were hardened criminals when they pulled their pants down for journalists at a press conference in St. Henri in lawyer Sidney Leithman's office on Nov. 5, 1975.
  The two men were part of an ultra-violent 10-brother crime clan from St. Henri that had a role in 63 murders between 1968 and 1982, according to police.
   Fourteen of those killed were informants or people ready to testify against them, police claimed.
   So why in 1975 were they dropping trou for reporters?
   The duo lowered their pants to display wounds they suffered at the hands of police after being apprehended outside the La Barina bar in St. Henri in November 1975.
   The exposed bruises led police brass to disband the Night Squad, where legendary cops like Bob Menard and Jaques Cinq-Mars ruled the city with an iron fist.
   The irony? The brothers likely got the idea for the epidermal bruise display from police.
  Just weeks earlier police had forced Roland Dubois to lower his pants for them for a similar damage display, with a different result.

***

Roland Dubois

   Story begins in September 1975 when a petty criminal working for Roland Dubois broke into the home of Frank Zappia at 1949 Cardinal (probably in Dorval)..
  The thief hit paydirt at Zappia's place.
  Zappia was a high-profile developer who ran against Mayor Drapeau in 1970 and was later part of a consortium that won the contract to build the Olympic Village.
   Zappia had links to the Rizzuto mafia crime gang and was eventually convicted of fraud. He made a stink over being shut out in the race for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 1976.
   The thief discovered an envelope jammed with $60,000 in cash and stole it.
   The thief gave the money to his father. Dad rushed to the liquor store to buy a case of hard liquor. The old man told Roland Dubois about the money. Dubois asked for $10,000 and the old man gave it to him.
   Roland Dubois and the father celebrated. They smoked up and drank together.

Zappia

   The next morning the father awoke to find the remaining $50,000 gone.
   He called Roland to ask him for at least $6,000 of the money back.
   Roland came by and gave the father $6,000.
   Suddenly masked men burst in and robbed them.
   They brutally assaulted Roland, kicked him in his private parts and stole his ring.
   The father called police to report the theft and eventually confessed that the cash came from the robbery at Zappia's home.
   Cops called Dubois to Station 12 on September 4 for questioning about the $6,000 robbery. Dubois told them nothing.
   Police had Dubois strip down to display the injuries he suffered in at the hands of the masked men.
   Dubois had no marks, scratches, or bruises.
   Police concluded that the beating was staged. Dubois was later seen wearing the same ring stolen by the hooded attackers, according to La Presse.
   The thief and his father were left with none of the $60,000, at a time when you could purchased a house in the West Island for just two thirds of that.
**
   Two months later, Normand Dubois and his friend Paul Morgan were arrested outside the La Barina bar and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting officers.
   They said that about 10 officers pistol whipped them and dragged them across the sidewalk while another 15 cops watched on.
   The duo were transported to Station 12 in Ville Emard where they beaten some more and then brought to Parthenais Prison. Normand was treated for broken ribs.
  Then the next morning Roland Dubois, with his friends Robert Denis, Frank Rocco and Bernard Lamer were also arrested at the same bar.
   Roland complained that four or five officers beat him over the buttocks with a baseball bat and tire iron at Station 12. They also punched him in the face repeatedly, he said. When he got knocked out they'd wake him with smelling salts to resume their beating.
   The Dubois brothers had their lawyer call the press conference on Nov. 5, 1975.
   It received heavy media play and forced the police to reorganize, removing the Dubois prime foe, rugged police.
  ***
 However police were not yet done with the Dubois clan.
 Four weeks later crime commission testimony revealed that the family had been bringing in large amounts of drugs and selling it around the city and in Ottawa.
  Their pushers were paid almost nothing for selling low-quality drugs such as mescaline, which was actually LSD with chocolate powder mixed in and sometimes even arsenic too.
 One Dubois pusher testified that the gang forced him into becoming a pusher after he borrowed $50 from them. He told the commission that the Dubois brothers made him a virtual slave for two years. They told him that his $50 debt had grown to $800.
   The dealer said that Adrien Dubois and three henchmen kidnapped him near the Forum and drove him to a bar where they force him to swallow cigarettes and drugs.
   And so on.
***
    Six months later Roland and another brother were jailed for refusing to testify at a crime commission. Many more stories emerged about the brutal reign of the Dubois brothers.
   But for one brief moment, with lowered pants, they  had their moment in the sun as victims.