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FAX VALOIS-GAZETTE
Fact related to: THE VALOIS FILE FROM THE MONTRÉAL GAZETTE, QUÉBEC, CANADA.
September 14, 1997 by Eric Siblin, The Gazette
 In
1985 Mr. P. M. Johnson was the person in charge of the justice
in Québec.
Mr. P. M. Johnson Justice Minister in
January 1985 and was Québec Prime Minister in October 16, 1985 when, he name Mr.
J.G. Parent the Québec Industrial and Economic Expansion Minister.
| The FTQ PictureLink |
| are written in French |
  Both were directly and criminally involve
with the C.T.R.S.M Commission of Transport and the F.T.Q. Union
as I describe in my document deposit in court.
In
February 20, 1985: I had a criminal life attempt, they tried to run me out of
the road, as I describe in my document deposit in different court, now on
internet.
The car I had describe (color, mark, tag
number)
identified by the
St. Hubert police department in Québec Canada, belong to a rental business
own by Mr. François Lecompte
(a French Immigrant from France ) as I
describe in my document deposit in different court.
On January 10, 1986 the car with explosive
intercepted by the Montreal Police Quebec Canada in Montreal was driving by Mr.
Eric Valois who succeed to escape, was rented by the same outfit.
On January 10,1986 Mr. Eric Valois who has a dangerous criminal record and
was release on parole a year before (January 1985).
Few month later, Mr. Eric Valois became the
first suspect concerning the bombing of Air India flight 182 from Montréal to
New Delhi, killing all 329 people on board in June 23 1985.
Mr. Eric Valois was arrested in Vancouver B.C.
by the West Vancouver police acting on a tip, concerning the aborted bomb attack
again the Indo-Canadian Times own by Tara Singh Hayer.
Those three Canadian location (Québec, Vancouver B.C and Ontario) related in
the article were Mr. Eric Valois was at different time, also are identified in
my document concerning Mr. Terry Wayne Colburne on Internet at
http://home1.gte.net/serg/index.htm
The special relation between the Quebec
Government and two investors directly related with India
The person involve at Nord Hatley financing,
where many reception occurred, attempt by many minister and high civil servant
from the Québec Provincial, the Federal Government) and different country after
a criminal investigation lost more than 100 millions dollars.
Someone, who invested many
millions in Québec, refused to close the transaction concerning my house when
the lawyer from the C.T.R.S.M tried to force me to bankrupt in December 1988.
This case concerning my former house in Québec still in court of appeal after 9
years.
Both are directly involve with India.
I just want to add that at this
Fact related, some criminal event regarding 1988
 
The year 1986 correspond with:
The gunning in 1986 of the editor down in his
office (Mr. Tara Singh Hayer the owner of Indo-Canadian Times), two year after
the aborted bomb attack involving Mr. Eric Valois in Vancouver B.C. (1986).
The arrested on April 28, 1988 of Mr. Therry Colburne case No
505-01-002295-851 who had travel the same place of Mr. Eric Valois Québec,
Ontario, Vancouver in 1985.
In 1985, the Montréal Gazette reported in
2/13/86 " Colburne was charged with attempted murder, using a firearm to commit
an offense, using a firearm with intent to cause injury and pointing a firearm."
Colburne was a free man within 6 days after
his trial, later killed two persons and received a private trial in 1988.
He was sentences to 12 years...........??????
of prison at provincial custody in the Parthenais detention center, the same
place where Mr. Eric Valois in 1986.
Mr. Therry Wayne Colburne and Mr. Eric Valois
were the most wanted and Québec and in Canada.
They were defended and protected either by a
lawyer who received the mandate from the Canadian Québec Government involve in a
criminal covert-up.
The criminal perjury on March 1988 of the
C.T.R.S.M. in court to obtain the Lapsing Request for my case No
500-05-016630-814.
On march 1988, while I was requesting
(concerned about if they've found the missing file's, containing essential
information of the trial and the non representation of my lawyer), I was rudely
interrupted by the C.T.R.S.M.
 The C.T.R.S.M. told the Judge I was mentally disabled and the case of the
missing files were fiction.
And concerning my supposedly lawyer, the
C.T.R.S.M.'s lawyer advised the Judge that, Mr. Raymond Proulx had already
dropped my case (never advising the court) and now worked for the C.T.R.S.M.'s
lawyer's office
The Judge believed the C.T.R.S.M.'s lawyer and
gave its judgment without files.
Later the Ombudsman found the files in a box
not on file, I describe this event in my document on Internet.
The C.T.R.S.M. in June 29th 1988 made a
criminal misappropriated fund of $927.50 on my check when I've been
illegally fired .
The C.T.R.S.M. in December 1988
tried to force to file bankruptcy, with the help of the buyer who refused to
close the transaction concerning the sale of my house ( at the meeting we're the
only people that don't know that)
The C.T.R.S.M. Seized my house. On the
night of the closing day, we received from the C.T.R.S.M. a court order
advising us they seized my house.
Conclusion: All these facts add with all the
public criminal accusation I did, with proof I transmitted at all level of the
Provincials and Federal Government, the criminally surrounding the Québec
Provincial and the Federal Government still Active and on Power.
Signature... SERGE MOREL, SNAIL
MAIL AT P.O. BOX 17222 SARASOTA FLORIDA 34276 U.S.A.
en exile politic depuis plus de cinq ans
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V
|
The Gazette Valois
file
NB:
On this file I color only
the RCMP member I believe, didn't come from Québec |
|
1) September 14, 1997 by
Eric Siblin, The Gazette
|
|
2) October 7, 1997
rearrested by Jonathon Gatehouse, The Gazette |
The
Gazette Valois file
1) The Valois file by Eric Siblin, The Gazette
Valois
escape Jan. 10, 1986
When Valois
burst out of the courtroom
Valois couldn't escape from
was his father
As with all works of art,
life demands our contemplation
As the Florida sun fades
over West Palm Beach
Valois benefited
from a number of perks not normally associated
Valois escaped twice
from custody in Canada
Eric Valois ......in
March 1988 The art of
escape comes naturally to Eric Valois. He is wiry in frame, mercurial in
mindset and thinks quickly on his feet.
Valois, 35, is given to risk-taking,
improvisation and running away. Be it a police dragnet in downtown Montreal (he
bolted into a crowded métro station); a West Vancouver courtroom (he leaped over
the prisoner's dock); or in handcuffs aboard a Greek ferry (he darted through a
porthole, vanishing into the Aegean Sea) he has managed to arrange his own
exits.
It is a talent, a vocation, but not the sort
of skill that can be typed on a curriculum vitae. It follows a crime, becomes a
crime, leads to crime.
One of Canada's most wanted fugitives over the
past decade, Valois is "of interest" to the RCMP Air India investigation, which
is probing the deadliest act of terror stemming from Canadian territory. He is
sought by police in Montreal and West Vancouver for escaping custody.
Authorities who once held him in the Bahamas, in Reno, in West Palm Beach and on
the Greek island of Rhodes don't want him back. There have been escapes worthy
of Houdini and foiled attempts, close calls with capture, lucky breaks and
unceremonious expulsion. Charges have materialized, gathered dust and expired
while the suspect himself has slipped through the cracks.
The crimes themselves appear less spectacular
than their author: Valois has been charged with offences ranging from firearms
and explosives to armed robbery and drugs. But the extent of his activities remains murky.
More may come to light over the next few weeks
as Valois stands trial in England. Valois or Daniel Montreux, as he's known in
Her Majesty's Prison Leeds faces charges of importing cocaine, speed and the
designer-drug ecstasy. The trial by jury in the West Yorkshire town of Bradford
began last week and is expected to last a month.
Behind aliases like Eric Lavois, André Noel
and Paul Michael Valestin lies the mystery of Valois. An international terrorist
with connections to the 1985 Air India bombing? A police informer for the Sûreté
du Québec? Or a down-and-out kid from north-end Montreal bent on getting a new
life for himself, preferably aboard a luxury yacht?
Valois is not talking, at least not without
monetary inducement. His record convoluted and confusing, full of yawning gaps, missing evidence and silent witnesses will
have to speak for itself.
* * *
The catalyst for far-reaching events can be mundane.
In the case of Eric Valois,
the incident that triggered a decade-long odyssey of
escape occurred Jan. 10, 1986, when a pickup
truck cut him off on Park Ave.
A light snowfall had just dusted downtown
Montreal when Valois was driving southbound in a beat-up gray BMW with a bearded
man in the passenger seat. At about 11 a.m., his vehicle was cut off by a
small Mazda pickup driven by a man who was delivering auto parts, and eating
a couple of hamburgers along the way. When the two vehicles came to a stop side
by side at a red light on Mount Royal Ave., Valois cursed his traffic adversary
and produced a .357 revolver, pointing it to his own head in a threatening
gesture.
The object of this threat was not easily
intimidated, and he shouted back to the BMW driver: "If you're going to shoot
me, you better aim right." A high-speed chase followed, during which the
auto-parts deliveryman tailed the BMW down Park Ave. apparently trying to obtain
his license-plate number accelerating on the snow-carpeted slope of Mount Royal.
They pulled a sharp screeching turn on Pine Ave., twisting through the narrow
streets until police intervened on Hotel de Ville Ave., just as the cars bounced
over the steep drop below Sherbrooke St., Valois got away. The pick-up driver,
protesting to police that he was pursuing a dangerous motorist, was taken to Station 33.
Police soon caught up with the BMW on a
downtown street. But before the two officers emerged from their vehicle, Valois
bolted from his car and vanished into a crowded métro station, leaving behind
six sticks of dynamite, three detonators, a .357 magnum handgun, a bullet-proof
vest, a wig and a 24-year-old Iranian political refugee named Hoak Farouk.
"Iranian Political Refugee Arrested with
BOMB!" screamed the front-page headline in the Journal de Montréal the next day.
Farouk was released after being charged with possession of 2 grams of opium.
There was no immediate mention of Valois, who at 23 years of age would soon
distinguish himself as one of Canada's most slippery fugitives. Police were said
to be searching for the invisible owner of the dynamite-laden car.
The day after the métro escape, Valois arrived
by train in St. Catherine's, Ont., staying at his grandfather's apartment. He
then took a train to Toronto and, using the name of J. F. Martin, Valois had a
blue vinyl suitcase transported to Pearson airport by a courier service, and
from there to Vancouver on a CP Air flight. Inside the suitcase: 18 sticks of
dynamite, five blasting caps, a black leather gun holster, three wigs, two speed
loaders and 12 rounds of .38-calibre ammunition. Valois himself boarded an Air
Canada flight to Vancouver, heading for the West Vancouver residence of his
uncle, Kevin Ford. He was temporarily given his own room while ostensibly
job-hunting. The following day, he claimed his blue suitcase in the name of
André Noël.
About a week later, an attempted bombing
incident took place in suburban Surrey, B.C., an incident the RCMP still want to
question Valois about. The bomb was discovered, shortly before it was set to
explode, outside a printing press owned by the Indo-Canadian Times.
The editor of the newspaper, Tara Singh Hayer,
has since heard of Valois from the RCMP. "They told me only that this guy was
supposed to place a bomb in front of my house," he says. Yet the would-be bomber
rejected his plans at the last minute, apparently because there were about a
dozen people at the residence, says Hayer. "He changed his mind. And then he was
told to put the bomb in front of the printing shop."
The bomb was discovered at about 8 a.m. by an
employee, an hour before it was timed to go off, recounts Hayer, the moderate
editor of Canada's largest Punjabi newspaper who has been critical of Sikh
militants. Though sympathetic to the idea of a separate Sikh nation called
Khalistan, Hayer has inveighed against militant Sikh groups for their violent
tactics on Canadian soil.
Hayer says that, according to the RCMP, two
such groups might have been behind the attack: the International Sikh Youth
Federation, and the Babbar Khalsa, both based in B.C. Both groups have figured
in the RCMP investigation of the Air India bombing, which took place six months
earlier. On June 23, 1985, Air India flight 182 from Montreal to New Delhi
exploded in midair off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board.
Hayer speculates that Valois likely made contact
with Babbar Khalsa elements in Montreal.
There is another Montreal connection to the Surrey
dynamite bomb: it was wrapped in pages of the Journal de Montréal. The
classified section.
(Two years after the aborted bomb attack,
Hayer's opponents would find their mark, gunning the editor down in his office.
He was shot five times and now, paralyzed from the waist down, edits his
newspaper from a wheelchair.)
The day after the newspaper-wrapped bomb was
placed by the front door of the printing plant, West Vancouver police, acting on
a tip, searched the residence where Valois was staying. There they discovered
the contents of the blue suitcase. The bomb disposal team was called in and
Valois was arrested upon his return that evening. He was charged with possession
of explosives, an unregistered weapon (a .38-calibre revolver that was
apparently stolen during a 1984 bank robbery in Montreal) and possession of two
life jackets from the B.C. Ferry Corporation. The suspected bomb-maker with the
kid-next-door demeanour was also charged with two counts of possession of a
narcotic two metal spoons among his belongings were said to be coated with
heroin and cocaine.
Appearing in a West Vancouver courtroom four
days later to answer those charges, Valois was brought up from the cells into
the prisoner's box. He'd appeared in the same courtroom once or twice before,
and was aware of the layout, in particular, a bright red Exit sign that
advertised a back door at the far end of the room. At 9:57 am, the judge had
just set a trial date with the lawyers when Valois, in his bare feet, vaulted
over the waist-high gate of the prisoner's dock, leaving the unarmed sheriff in
his dust, pushing past a few stunned people and speeding in a straight line
across the courtroom toward the door marked Emergency Use Only. The crown
prosecutor hid under a table as Valois made it to the emergency door, pushing
its crash-bar and dashing out onto busy Marine Drive.
"We pushed buzzers and alarms," recalls Marian
Von Wittgenstein, the court clerk who was seated near the prisoner's dock.
"Police officers roared through the doors of the courtroom from their building
next door. They all took off after him. But we never saw him again."
* * * * When
Valois burst out of the courtroom it was unclear whether he had a
long-term plan. He had a short-term plan: to put as much distance between
himself and the West Vancouver courthouse. Crossing Marine Drive, he
disappeared up 13th St.
He was gone; that much was clear. But who was
Eric Valois?
The B.C. report to crown counsel described him
as a 23-year-old single man, with brown hair and brown eyes, 5 feet 8 inches
tall and weighing 131 pounds. Occupation: unemployed. Distinguishing features: a
12-inch vertical scar on his left thigh. Aliases: Jean-François Martin, André
Noël, Eric Lavois ("numerous others"). Bail comments: "Record for escape.
Numerous warrants outstanding."
Not your typical easterner
in search of B.C. employment. Among the firepower and dynamite seized by police
in the West Vancouver stakeout were two life preservers stolen from the B.C.
Ferry Corporation, a hint that Valois may not have been planning to stay on land
for long. Another explosive connection came to light in Montreal.
The day after he slipped away from the
courtroom, his father Pierre-Yves alerted Montreal Urban Community police about
three steamer trunks Valois had stored in the basement of his father's north-end
Berri St. triplex. About 500 kilograms of dynamite were found in the trunks,
part of
585 kilos of explosives stolen
in March 1985 from a Canadian Industries Ltd. plant in Val d'Or,
reported at the time as the largest explosives theft in Canadian history.
+* * *
One thing Valois couldn't escape from was his father. Maybe the only thing
he really wanted to get clear of. When Valois was 5 years old, asleep in his
family's Laval bungalow one Saturday night, his father killed his mother. After
slaying his wife in their kitchen, Pierre-Yves Valois calmly telephoned his
mother-in-law, explaining what had happened and asking her to come pick up Eric
and his sister.
When Laval police Constable Guy Gélinas rang
the doorbell shortly afterward at 880 Blvd. Hôtel-de-Ville in Sainte-Dorothée,
the elder Valois opened the door. He had a curious piece of paper pinned to his
bloodstained shirt an explanation of the slaying, handwritten in bold letters:
"Result of morbid revenge." An identical note was pinned to the pink blouse of
Clare Valois, dead at the age of 29, March 30, 1968.
Pierre-Yves Valois, sounding disoriented to
the police officer, said that he'd tried to kill himself with a bread knife, but
could not summon the courage. He was taken away in handcuffs and treated in
hospital for a light wound to his stomach, the result of his half-hearted
attempt at suicide. At about 10 p.m., two police officers woke Eric and his
sister and carried them out of their home.
The destruction of a family that had
everything going for it was in fact set in motion seven years earlier when
Pierre-Yves Valois was seriously injured in an automobile accident, which left
him with permanent brain damage. Before then, he made a respectable living as a
decorative architect and was said to be a cultivated man with artistic
sensibilities, devoting his spare time to painting, design and reading. After
the accident, everything changed. His intellectual faculties went downhill, he
suffered from depression and worked only sporadically. His young wife, 22 years
old when the accident left Pierre-Yves in a coma for a month and a half, got
steady work as a secretary, taking charge of the family finances.
Soon after the slaying of Clare Valois, her
husband was charged with murder and sent to a psychiatric hospital for
examination. The murder charge was ultimately thrown out in a preliminary
inquiry by Judge Albert Malouf, who concluded that Pierre-Yves Valois suffered
from "mental derangement."
"At the time of the crime, the accused could
not appreciate the nature and the consequences of his acts," wrote Malouf in a
ruling that freed Pierre-Yves Valois 16 months after the homicide.
As for Eric Valois, he continued much of his
childhood and early adolescence as a "ward of the state" in Ahuntsic and
Cartierville, living at times with his anglophone, maternal grandparents. His
grandfather taught him to sail, a skill that would later come in handy for the
budding escape artist. He apparently went through a succession of schools,
becoming something of a teenage holdup artist.
In 1981, he was
convicted of a string of armed thefts in the Laval area and sentenced to six
years in prison. By February 1985, he was released
on parole.
One month later, the mammoth amount of dynamite was stolen from a CIL plant
in Val d'Or. And it was sometime thereafter that Valois stored three steamer
trunks in his father's basement.
Pierre-Yves Valois appeared odd to a man who
later bought the house from him. "He was very strange, that much was pretty
clear," says Daniel Gomez. "He was like an old hippie in the 1970s, with a
bandanna around his head. But he was older, about 55 or 60 at the time. He
seemed a bit lost."
The elder Valois had also joined the Raelians,
says Gomez, referring to the cult-like group that favours liberal sex and
believes extraterrestrials will soon rescue humanity.
The day after Valois made his spectacular
escape from the West Vancouver courtroom, his father notified police about the
three steamer trunks that turned out to be filled with dynamite. That triggered
more charges against the audacious escaper. But the law would have to find him
first.
As the alarm bells were clanging in the West
Vancouver courtroom and police officers scrambled to find the young Quebecer,
Valois darted up 13th St.
"We believe that what he did at that point was
break into a home and lay low in there for several hours and stole some clothes
and skis," says Sgt. Steve Watt, of the West Vancouver police. "It was in the
middle of winter at the time. He portrayed himself as a skier, either took a cab
somewhere or got the bus, and literally walked out of town."
The fugitive would one day regale an RCMP
investigator with the story of how he managed to get away by brazenly ignoring
the police manhunt.
"He was out there with skis on his
shoulder and must have walked by 30 police cars so he said," recalls the RCMP
officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Valois then made his way to Vancouver Island,
where
he was suspected
of stealing a sailboat near the town of Sydney.
He apparently hugged the coastline down B.C. and
along Washington State. "He sailed it and lived on it for a little while in
Seattle," says a Florida police officer who researched the Valois case.
At a marina near Seattle, Valois once again
slipped through the hands of police: "They apparently were coming down the dock
to get him," says the officer, "when he jumped ship there and escaped."
* * * **
"As with all works of art, life demands our
contemplation." from the travel diary of Gaelle Le Balch
The art of escape requires more than
contemplation. Action is necessary. Timing is key. And then there's luck.
Eric Valois manoeuvred
his way out of a police arrest in downtown Montreal with more action than
thought he ducked into a métro station. In West Vancouver, he vaulted over the
prisoner's dock and landed on his bare feet. His next getaway was based more on
luck than anything else.
After ditching the stolen sailboat near
Seattle, Valois made his way to San Francisco, where he struck up a relationship
with a young French woman by the name of Gaelle Le Balch.
On July 16, 1986, the duo were arrested in
Reno, Nev., for shoplifting $70.93 worth of tools and a bath towel from a Sears
department store. Valois was using the alias of Paul Michael Valestin, claiming
to be a San Francisco waiter who was born in Naples, Fla. Le Balch gave her
occupation as computer operator.
Unable to pay the $200 fine, they served six
days in prison. On the day of their release, July 22, Reno detectives discovered
that a beige Volkswagen van, found in the parking lot of the Sears store, had
been stolen from Redlands, Calif. Its Tennessee license plates had been lifted
in Las Vegas.
Inside the abandoned van were explosive
devices, recipes for making high-powered bombs, a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun,
two-way radios, firecrackers and three traffic citations issued to Paul Michael
Valestin. Also in the van was some black clothing and "tools of the type used by
burglars to enter buildings and safes." Bomb recipes were scrawled on scraps of
paper and, incongruously, on a library index card for an Oxford University Press
volume of Lord Byron's poetry and prose.
By the time Reno police put two and two
together Valois and the stolen van the Montrealer and his Parisian girlfriend
had been released and were on their way to Florida. Once again, Valois was one
step ahead of the law. "There was no escape there he was lucky," says RCMP
Constable Pat Monfort, an investigator posted with the Air India task force in
Vancouver.
"He was very lucky."
Florida police say the two then stole another
car in Reno and drove it to Mississippi or Alabama, abandoned it, stole another
car and drove it to the Fort Lauderdale area.
On Aug. 16, 1986, a yacht with the
upmarket name of Capital Gain, belonging to Palm Beach
millionaire Peter Halmos, was docked at the Palm Harbor Marina. It was stolen
and sailed to the Bahamas, where the 65-foot vessel was noticed a week later
with Valois and Le Balch relaxing aboard. It might not have been noticed were it
not for the fact that a Palm Beach attorney was vacationing in the Bahamas
and
recognized the name on the yacht from newspaper reports. "I happen to be a tax
lawyer, so capital gains have some significance," explained Frank Chopin, who
was later interviewed by the Palm Beach Post. Chopin alerted Bahamian police,
but when that had little effect, he contacted West Palm Beach police.
Eventually, the Bahamian authorities nabbed
Valois and his partner, plunking them on a plane bound for Fort Lauderdale with
such haste that Florida police were hard-pressed to get to the airport on time.
"We were beginning extradition proceedings
with the Bahamian government to bring him back," recalls Jack Yates, at the time
a detective with the West Palm Beach police department. "However, the
Bahamian government elected to just kick him out of the country for passport
violations and stuck him on an airplane
and sent him to Fort Lauderdale. Unfortunately, the time it takes to get from
the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale was about a half hour shorter than it takes me to
drive from here to the Fort Lauderdale airport. So he got there before we could
get there."
That proved a problem for Yates, as he was
hustling to get from West Palm to the Lauderdale airport before Valois landed.
And Valois had landing plans of his own.
"As the jet that he arrived on was taxiing up
to the tarmac," recalls Yates, "he elected to get up and run to an emergency
door "
* * * *** As
the Florida sun fades over West Palm Beach, cigars are lit, martinis are
drained and attention-getting cars crawl along Clematis Ave. Consumption
is conspicuous. Follow the trendified strip of restaurants, cafés and
boutiques that has been cut out of inner city decay, cross the railroad
tracks, and the West Palm Beach police station comes into view. The
station is housed in a palm-shaded building that looks more like the
offices of a software company than a cop shop. When the sun goes down, the
building takes on a soft pink colour.
Inside the station, Lt. Jack Yates directs the
night command. Yates has the world-weary voice of a northerner who's seen it
all. In fact, he is only 40, and has a roundish, youthful face that is belied by
the badges, holster, radio-gear and truncheon that cling to his royal blue
uniform. The effect is that of an army general with a desk job. He chews hard
candies, sips diet Coke and listens to a soft-rock radio station.
On Aug. 25, 1986, Eric Valois was
unceremoniously expelled from the Bahamas after being discovered along with his
girlfriend aboard a stolen yacht from West Palm Beach. As the plane was still
moving on the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale airport and while Yates was doing
his best to get to the airport and take his would-be prisoners into custody
before the plane landed Valois attempted a hasty exit through the emergency
door.
"But a quick-thinking stewardess
beamed him on the head with a metal coffee jug,"
recounts Yates, "and a couple of the passengers held him down until Customs
agents boarded the plane and held him until myself and my partner's arrival."
Le Balch and Valois were arrested and charged
with second-degree grand theft. It took some digging for Yates to connect the
man calling himself Paul Michael Valestin to the stolen van in Reno, and to a
Quebecer by the name of Eric Valois. By then, the mystery surrounding Valois and
his French companion took on a more sinister edge in the Florida press.
"I think we've got us a pair of terrorists,"
commented Reno police Detective Mike Bowland, who investigated Valois's earlier
brush with the law in Nevada. "But this has to be confirmed." Interpol was said
to be probing the matter.
The stolen van abandoned by the duo in Reno was
filled with a variety of weapons and paraphernalia that suggested an intricate
criminal
endeavour in the making. Two homemade explosive
devices were identified by police as
termite bombs usually used for two purposes: to cut
through hardened steel, like bank vaults; or kill people in terrorist-style
assaults. The shotgun shells were filled with large pellets.
"You carry that weapon for one reason," Bowland
said. "to kill somebody."
With Valois and Le Balch marking time in the
West Palm Beach county jail, Yates tried to make sense of a story that had more
loose ends than solid leads. His prisoner evasive, taciturn and unhappy gave him
little help.
"He was very introverted," said Yates in a
recent interview at his office. "He was very calculated in what information he
would give out. And it would seem viable. He did a little homework whenever he
gave us any information."
The impression Valois left on Yates suggests a
character of some contradiction. He seemed "meek and mild." But he was also "an
angry young man" with a short fuse and an "anti-government" attitude.
The notion that Valois was involved in
politically charged criminal activities was borne out by Canadian police who
came down to West Palm Beach in mid-September 1986 and claimed the prisoner as
their own. Valois was wanted on a variety of charges north of the border, and,
according to
Yates,
the RCMP
intimated there was more at stake, something to do with the
Air India bombing.
Yates
says the two officers linked the suspect's
alleged theft of dynamite from
Vald'Or in March 1985
to the
Air India explosion
three months later.
"They did not want to be specific and they
didn't want it rebroadcast," says Yates. "They believed that he had some kind of
connection with the explosives that were used to down that airliner. We were
asked not to repeat anything that they disclosed to us."
Both the RCMP and the Sûreté du Québec went
down to West Palm Beach separately.
They were pursuing parallel investigations
(The RCMP was focusing on Air India connections; the SQ was apparently focused
on the theft of dynamite from Val d'Or.)
Ultimately, it was the Sûreté
investigator who succeeded in getting Valois to voluntarily return to custody in
Montreal.
Valois
signed an agreement that allowed for his voluntary transfer to Canada under
SQ authority.
As for
Le Balch,
she was deported back to
France.
The nature of any deal that might have been
struck between Valois and the Sûreté remains unclear.
In Canada, there were still approximately three years that he owed the federal
justice system for his six-year armed robbery sentence in 1982. Valois also
faced a panoply of new charges in the wake of his escapes from Canada earlier in
the year: theft of dynamite from Val d'Or; brandishing a weapon before he
escaped into a Montreal métro station; illegal possession of explosives and
weapons in both Montreal and in West Vancouver.
In October, he was transferred from a federal
institution to provincial custody in the Parthenais detention centre, the SQ
headquarters that rises like a gigantic black tombstone in east-end Montreal.
The federal-provincial deal that placed Valois
under provincial auspices was on the amorphous grounds of "security" the
prisoner's security.
Valois
benefited from a number of perks not normally associated with the incarceration
of an escape-prone convict. He was allowed to attend
courses at the CEGEP de Rosemont.
And he was given about a dozen leaves, each with an armed escort, between
November and April.
Meanwhile, the RCMP were interviewing Valois,
trying to "find the line that the explosives could have followed" after the Val
d'Or theft.
"We were trying to establish whether or
not he supplied the explosives for Air India, and other investigations," says an
RCMP officer who was involved in efforts to pry information out of Valois. "He
put us onto a lead and we kind of shut the door on it," said the officer, who
asked that his name not be published. "He pointed a finger at a guy who we
eliminated only after lengthy interrogation and polygraph."
RCMP access to Valois, however, was cut
short.
On April 10, 1987, Valois was on a
one-day leave with an armed police guard when something quite Valois-like took
place: he got away.
* * * ****
The convict had escaped twice from custody in Canada in the past 16 months, each
time using inventive methods. Serving time owed for armed robbery in Parthenais,
he faced a variety of new charges. And Florida police agreed to let the
Sûreté bring him back to Quebec based on the idea that
he was sought in connection with the Air India bombing.
Despite the severity of his case and his penchant
for escape, Valois was given a one-day leave to attend a party at his sister's
home. The circumstances of the escape are unclear, but Valois somehow managed to
elude his armed SQ escort.
"He had taken temporary absences before and they
had gone well," says
Mario Lacroix, a spokesman for Quebec correctional
services. "There was nothing leading us to believe
that he would try to flee."
Naïveté on the part of the prison system?
Turning a convenient blind eye? Or did a prisoner who was getting special
treatment (in exchange for something)
simply pull a fast one on his patrons?
At a certain point in time one
has to wonder whether Eric Valois was getting any help.
Several aspects of his incarceration in Montreal
beg the question. First of all: the federal-provincial deal of November
1986 that transferred Valois from a federal penitentiary (he
was serving time owed on a federal sentence, i.e. more than two years) to
provincial custody at Parthenais. This was done at the
prisoner's request "for security reasons," says Lacroix.
At the time Parthenais
is no longer a detention centre there was
a cellblock at the
prison widely known to be reserved for police informers.
Could Valois have been transferred
to such a cell? "You might have a good hypothesis there," replies an official in the
Public Security Department, insisting on anonymity.
An access-to-information request made to the Public Security Department
has so far yielded nothing.
The department first replied that "his file has been destroyed."
Under pressure of an appeal process, the file was subsequently discovered but deemed confidential.
An access-to-information commissioner is currently weighing the access
request after three Public Security officials and their lawyer argued the government's case for
confidentiality in a 90-minute closed-door session.
Another eyebrow-raising aspect of the Valois file
is the fact that all of the major charges laid against him in Canada over the past decade have
been quietly withdrawn.
The charges related to firearms and explosives offences stemming from his
escape into a Montreal métro in early 1986 were thrown out, apparently because 10 years
had expired.
(The crown prosecutor who handled the case was unaware that Valois was at the
time one of the country's most wanted fugitives.) Charges connecting Valois to the theft of dynamite
in Val d'Or were curiously thrown out this spring on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
Ditto for the firearms and explosive charges in West Vancouver.
One man who suspects Valois was a police informer is Yates, the Florida
police officer who arrested the fugitive and eventually handed him over to Canada
on the
assumption that he faced serious accusations north of the border. When Valois parted company
with his police escort, Yates was amazed the Canadian incarceration system could be so rickety.
"Given the fact that he had already escaped on a number of occasions,
I couldn't believe that they had such a lackadaisical attitude to release him on this humanitarian
release or whatever it was," says Yates.
The West Palm Beach police lieutenant figures Valois was in close touch
with the RCMP or the SQ over his possible involvement with Sikh militants who have been
investigated for the Air India bombing. "I think probably they were using him as an informant and
then he skated on them," Yates suggests.
The RCMP Air India task force, based in
Vancouver, is discreet about
the continuing probe.
"At the present time, I can't comment on our investigation concerning
Mr. Valois," says Staff Sgt. John Schneider, the non-commissioned officer in charge of the task
force.
"He is one person who we are looking at concerning the investigation
as a person of interest, however I can't release any further details."
An RCMP source who questioned Valois when he was imprisoned at Parthenais
sheds some light on what the federal force was curious about. "As far as I was concerned,
I was getting close to getting him on a polygraph, and I didn't have time to go that route,"
he says.
What would he have asked Valois on the lie-detector? "Did the explosives
that he stole in Val d'Or, to his knowledge, was it used in Air India? Or turned over to
Sikh individuals?"
But Valois didn't stick around. The day after an RCMP visit, he fled
his police escort on the one-day pass. "When he went missing it made it difficult to pursue
anything. He never admitted to very much."
With the RCMP stumped over the Valois file, and the Sûreté
blemished by the embarrassing escape, the fugitive was a free man in Europe. On July 24, a sleek
white yacht was stolen from the southern French port of Antibes. Three months later, a crack unit of
the Greek coast guard toting submachine guns and grenades arrested Valois aboard the yacht at the
island of Rhodes.
Valois was apparently alone aboard the Bahamian-registered Elf Nasseau
when the coast guard stormed the vessel at dusk Oct. 13. The Montreal escape artist was
arrested after a scuffle with the coast guard; two assault rifles, 550 shells and hundreds of rounds
of ammunition were found aboard.
Rhodes police said that Valois appeared to have been travelling around
the Mediterranean on the $2-million yacht. A rubber dinghy and an outboard motor also found
aboard were believed to have been stolen from the island of Ios.
Valois was sentenced in mid-October to 13 months for resisting arrest
and assaulting Greek coast guard officers. Other charges were pending. Canada began extradition
proceedings.
Valois was imprisoned on Kos, an island so lush it resembles a floating
garden, a place of enticing beaches best known as the birthplace of Hippocrates, the father of
medicine. In March of 1988, Valois was being transported by ferry from Kos to stand trial at the
court in Rhodes.
The prisoner was handcuffed behind his back, eying the waves of the
Aegean Sea, when he circumvented the justice system of Greece by catapulting through a
porthole into the ocean.
* * * *****
If the perfect escape means defying mountainous odds and not leaving
a trace, then Eric Valois came very close to such an accomplishment in March 1988.
Consider the facts: a prisoner handcuffed behind his back is being transported
by Greek authorities from a jail on the island of Kos to answer charges in court on the
island of Rhodes. A porthole stands between him and the Aegean Sea. Through the porthole he can
imagine freedom. He leaps through the porthole and disappears into the sea. Presumed dead. End
of story.
More than eight years pass without any sign of Eric Valois. Charges
are dropped. Documents are destroyed. Memories fade.
On Dec. 7, 1996, a man going by the name of
Daniel Montreux is arrested
in London, not far from
Heathrow airport, and charged with smuggling cocaine, speed and the
designer-drug ecstasy. He is imprisoned near the town of Leeds,
West Yorkshire.
His prisoner number
is DN1255. His real name is Eric Valois.
When he's taken from the crowded Victorian prison for court appearances
in the towns of Leeds and Bradford, Valois who is now 35 and bespectacled is not transported,
as are other inmates at H. M. Prison Leeds, by unarmed private security guards. Instead, he
is escorted under armed police guard in a country that frowns upon the use of guns until guilt
is proven. When his lawyer meets with him, Valois is not brought to the medium-security prison's
visitor area but is taken to a separate room under constant guard.
"Because of the reputation that goes before him, he's being kept under
a high-risk category," says Stuart Field, the Leeds solicitor representing Valois.
Valois was willing to grant an interview, but only for a price, a condition
this newspaper is policy-bound to refuse. For the time being, Valois remains as mute
and mysterious as ever.
"If you met him you'd find he is a likable chap," Field suggests, declining
to provide background details about his client. Regarding the Valois file, he acknowledges
its intriguing aspects: "I can see why he's regarded as
colourful."
But there are
no political shades to the activities of Valois, Field
maintains. He dismisses links that have been made between Valois and Sikh militants who have been investigated
in connection with the Air India explosion.
"Though to some extent organized in what he
has done he would be adamant in saying that at no time has he ever committed political crimes
or had political motives," says Field.
Any criminal activities have been more "selfish" oriented, says Field,
citing the lure of "money or
enjoyments." As far as the "Sikh thing" goes, the British solicitor
is dismissive. "I think it's an obvious two and two that anybody would put together the (theft of)
explosives (from Val
d'Or)
in
1985 and this Air India explosion,"
he said in a recent interview.
"And in terms of that, let's just say it's been mentioned."
As to what Valois the fugitive has been doing since he disappeared into
the Aegean Sea nearly a
decade ago, the record is blank. Field says he spent some
time in Germany.
When he was arrested
in London last year, he had a British address. A police source says
Valois had been working in
France as a waiter following his escape from Greece.
More may be revealed in the light of his current trial, which began
last week in Bradford. Valois,
who could testify, entered a not-guilty plea. He is accused along with
eight others of conspiracy to
import illegal drugs with a combined street value of about $1 million.
The maximum sentence for
the charge is in the neighbourhood of 10 years.
Extradition back to Canada may or may not be around the corner. "Once
this business is out of the
way in England, if he is acquitted, I anticipate that he will be headed
your way," a British source
said in an interview last week.
The
main charges against Valois in Canada have been dropped, leaving
only post-escape warrants for his arrest in Montreal (he owes about two years)
and West Vancouver,
a drug possession charge, and an infraction related to giving false information to obtain
a Canadian passport.
Minor stuff compared with the array of explosives, firearms and theft
charges that gathered dust in Canada for the better part of a decade.
Maybe the RCMP has other charges up its sleeve. At a minimum, the federal
force has questions for Valois.
"We tried to approach Valois and he refused our invitation through his
lawyer," says RCMP Constable Pat Monfort, an investigator with the Air India task force.
"The answer from England was that Mr. Valois did not want to talk to us. So at this point there's
nothing much we can do."
At the end of the day, other charges may not stick to Valois, who tends
to land on his feet. Yet if he is an accomplished escape artist, he is no less an arrest artist.
"Look how many times he's been arrested," says Monfort. "What sort of big terrorist is this? He's
not."
A police source in Montreal who worked extensively on the Valois case
concurs: "It's just a silly story in the sense that he's escaped too many times."
From prison, Valois recently consented to answering a lengthy question
through his solicitor: How does the escape artist view his situation? Has he ever worked for Canadian
police or international clients such as militant Sikhs?
"Just returned from Armley Prison on a visit to Mr. Montreux," replied
Field by E-mail, using his client's current alias.
"He says that while police have asked in the past for information that
may assist them in inquiries into others, he has been unable to assist. He has only ever `worked'
for himself, and he would certainly see himself as a survivor. After all, he is still here to
tell the tale, and he has managed to spend all these years in Europe since leaving Canada without (barring
the incident in Greece) coming to the notice of the authorities that is until recently."
Maybe Valois, at 35, is weary of escaping, of the false identities,
the fictitious personas. He may wonder what the future holds for the inveterate driver of a getaway
car.
It is a young person's vocation; yesterday's fugitive is tomorrow's
prisoner.
His escapist reputation precedes him, catches up with him, hems him
in.
**************************************************************************
2) October 7, 1997, Eric Valois freed, rearrested by Jonathon Gatehouse, The Gazette
Eric Valois, the Montreal native who became the bane of police forces
around the world with his daring escapes from custody, has been acquitted of drug-trafficking
charges in Britain.
He was standing trial with eight other people as part of an alleged
conspiracy to import more than $1 million worth of cocaine, speed and the
designer-drug ecstasy into Britain. A jury accepted testimony from some
of his co-defendants that Valois had nothing to do with the plan and was
simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
However, Valois's latest taste of freedom was fleeting. He was immediately
rearrested Friday on a Canadian government warrant for his extradition as he left the court
room.
The Quebec correctional-services department has asked Ottawa to have
the 35-year-old jail breaker returned home to complete the final third of a six-year
sentence for armed robbery. That prison term was cut short by his escape in 1987.
But the repatriation of Valois, one of Canada's most wanted fugitives
over the past decade, is also of concern for investigators probing the
June 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182.
Yesterday, RCMP authorities in Vancouver confirmed that they are keeping
a close eye on efforts to extradite Valois and are eager to question him in their investigation
of the terrorist attack that killed 329 people. The slaughter is widely
suspected to have been the work of militant Sikh groups seeking an independent
homeland in Punjab.
"We've always had an interest in Mr. Valois," said Constable Pat Montfort,
an investigator with the Air India task force. "We'd like to talk to him,
but there's not much we can do until he's back in Canada."
Montfort said police don't consider Valois to be a suspect in the case.
They are however, intrigued by his possible ties to Sikh organizations.
In January 1986, West Vancouver police arrested Valois for possession
of explosives after they found 18 sticks of dynamite hidden in a suitcase at his residence.
The RCMP have since said that they want to question Valois about the attempted bombing of the offices
of a moderate Punjabi-language newspaper in Surrey, that took place the day before
his arrest.
The slippery Quebecer escaped from custody four days later by vaulting
over the prisoners' dock in a West Vancouver courtroom and making a barefoot dash for freedom
during a preliminary court hearing.
The next day, Valois's father led Montreal police to a cache of 500
kilograms of explosives that Valois had stored in the basement of his Berry St. triplex.
Investigators determined that the dynamite was part of a 585-kg shipment
stolen from a Val d'Or factory in March 1985 then described as the largest explosives theft
in Canadian history.
"There's nothing attaching him to the (Air India) file yet," Montfort
said. "But he's well known ...and he was arrested for bringing explosives
to B.C., so we're interested in talking to him."
Valois's British lawyer, Stuart Field, said he hasn't been able to talk
to his client since his rearrested Friday, and has no idea whether the extradition
request will be contested.
While the arrest warrant was not unexpected, he said Canadian authorities
have been unusually close-lipped about their reasons for wanting Valois back. "The warrant
in hand is based on the unfinished prison sentence. Whether there is a hidden agenda isn't
for me to say," Field said.
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