Scott Steinert (1962 – 4 November 1997) was an American outlaw biker and gangster who was a member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is generally regarded as the man behind the 9 August 1995 car bomb which accidentally killed 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers during the Hells Angels' war against the Rock Machine.
Early life Steinert was born in Beloit, Wisconsin into an upper-middle-class family. Steinert's father was a senior executive with the Beloit Corporation and in 1970 he was appointed to a position with the Montreal office of the corporation. Steinert spent the rest of his youth growing up in Montreal. Steinert came from a loving home and was spoiled by his upper-class parents. Steinert was considered to be an intelligent student, but not one who was academically inclined; he was also a badly behaved child who was frequently in trouble with his teachers.
At the age of 16, Steinert started to smoke hashish and was soon abusing LSD. By the age of 18, Steinert had three convictions for selling drugs. He dropped out of school at the age of 18, was expelled by his parents owing to his substance abuse, and moved to Vancouver. In British Columbia, Steinert lived on welfare while working as a drug dealer, leading to a Corrections Canada report to note: "In this way he was fully able to live his hedonist and marginal lifestyle". By the age of 21, Steinert had numerous convictions for break and enter, assault, possession of narcotics, and possession of stolen goods. In 1985, Steinert returned to Quebec and was arrested in October 1985 in Sorel for selling two kilograms of PCP to an undercover Mountie. In December 1985, Steinert pleaded guilty in exchange for not being deported to the United States and was sentenced to five years in prison. Steinert's claims to be an independent drug dealer were not believed as one Corrections Canada report from 1985 stated: "It is difficult to imagine that the Hells [Angels] would permit the intrusion of an outsider into the drug market when one knows how tightly they control this very lucrative business".
The prison file on Steinert stated "He is outgoing and has a good demeanor. He answers questions without any reticence and with a remarkable transparence!" and mentioned he was fond of weight-lifting; however, the report went on to state that Steinert's body was heavily covered with tattoos (which in Canada, at the time, was viewed as an indication of a criminal lifestyle) and refused to see the prison psychologist. Despite their concerns, prison officials wrote that Steinert had "interesting qualities", "higher than average potential" and was "more a marginal than a delinquent". In 1987, Steinert was granted parole. Steinert's parents had moved back to the United States by this point, but Steinert moved in with his French-Canadian girlfriend. Steinert founded an insulating business with money borrowed from his parents. Steinert's parole officer wrote: "Scott spends most of his free time with Louise. He enjoys going to the movies, downhill skiing and playing football during the summer months. He has a very small circle of friends, 'legit' people, he tells us".
In 1988, Steinert was charged with acting as an enforcer for a loan shark. A man who was in debt to a loan shark complained to the police that Steinert had beaten him up and threatened to kill him. Steinert was sentenced to 10 months in prison and was free again in the middle of 1989. Prison officials noted that Steinert had an "elastic morality" and a "pronounced taste for luxury". After his release in 1989, Steinert started to associate more and more with the Hells Angels. Fluently bilingual in both French and English, Steinert was described by the journalist Jerry Langton as being "utterly charming" when he wanted to be. Steinert had an exceptionally long criminal record with numerous convictions for assault, uttering death threats and narcotics possession.
Hells Angel In the early 1990s, Steinert joined the Hells Angels Montreal chapter, being sponsored by Robert "Ti-Maigre" Richard, one of the most famous Hells Angels in Quebec, who played a prominent role in the Lennoxville massacre of 1985. Like many biker nicknames, Richard's nickname of ti-maigre ("tiny") was meant to be ironic as Richard was a gigantic man with only one eye. Detective Benoit Roberge of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal stated: "Steinert started off low, but he gained a lot of power as he got heavily involved in the biker war". Unusually, Steinert skipped the "hang-around" stage in the Hells Angels and entered as a "prospect" (the second level in an outlaw biker club). Langton described Steinert as "big, strong and armed with the power of persuasion", but that his "impulsive, aggressive ways did not endear him to everyone". However, Steinert was one of the top "earners" in the Hells Angels and an expert bomb-maker.
It was Steinert who first recruited Dany Kane, who was to later become an extremely valuable police informant within the Hells Angels, into one of their puppet clubs. Kane reported in 1994 to his RCMP handlers that Steinert had a certain "star quality", and that he thought Steinert would be a "full patch" member within a year or so. Kane described Steinert as the only Hells Angel who provided leadership during his ill-fated time as the leader of the Demon Keepers puppet club in Toronto in early 1994. Steinert had become the leading rival to the Hells Angels national president, Walter "Nurget" Stadnick, and made no secret of his belief that he would be a better national president. Steinert mocked Stadnick for the failure of the Demon Keepers puppet club of 1994, and, reflecting Stadnick's damaged status, Stadnick's bodyguard, Donald "Bam Bam" Magnussen switched over to serving as Steinert's bodyguard. Kane reported to his RCMP handlers that Steinert had unfriendly relations with Stadnick and his deputy, David "Wolf" Carroll. Kane reported that Steinert was already the leader of his faction within the Hells Angels and that friendship with Richard gave more influence than his rank as a "prospect" would suggest.
Kane reported in November 1994 that Steinert had become the right-hand man to Maurice "Mom" Boucher and was buying up C-4 explosives to make bombs. Kane reported that Steinert had purchased twenty pounds of C4 explosives and had assembled a team of bomb-makers led by Patrick Lambert. In late November 1994, Steinert had 10 bombs planted around Montreal with the aim of killing Rock Machine members, but none of the bombs exploded due to faulty detonators. Kane described Steinert as being a very aggressive bully who was completely ruthless in his willingness to win the Quebec biker war for the Hells Angels. In another report to his police handlers in November 1994, Kane stated; "Mom Boucher hands out the execution orders for the current war with the Rock Machine. Steinert is the executioner". Kane stated to his police handlers that Steinert planned to move to Ontario once he received a "full patch" to start the first Hells Angels chapter in that province.
Kane's reports to his RCMP handlers stressed that Steinert had a most belligerent and unpleasant personality. Steinert served as Boucher's favorite Hells Angel as he made more money than any of the other Angels in Montreal. Steinert often mocked his rival David "Wolf" Carroll-whose personality was much like his own-boasting that he made more money than him, and Kane reported that the two men hated each other. The journalists Julien Sher and William Marsden wrote the feud between Carroll and Steinert was like "the twisting schemes of ambitious and sometimes psychotic medieval princes". The Canadian criminologist Steven Schnedier wrote that Steinert was an ambitious psychopath who was one of the most dangerous men in the Hells Angels. Steinert was in charge of building bombs, personally murdered members of the Rock Machine and had purchased aerial photographs of Montreal to better help plan his assassinations. Kane reported that Steinert was supplying strippers all over Canada and the West Indies. Kane reported that the attractive French-Canadian strippers he was recruiting had attracted the attention of the New York Mafia and that a Mafia "soldier" from New York had contacted Steinert to recruit strippers for a Mafia-owned club in the Dominican Republic. Kane stated that the resort which included a number of condos and a marina was a front for money laundering. Kane concluded his report that Steinert was willing to recruit strippers, but only for a cut of the profits from the club, which he used as an example of Steinert's audacity and greed as he did not defer to the Mafia at all.
In January 1995, Kane reported that Steinert was driving around Montreal looking for the Rock Machine leader Paul "Sasquatch" Porter with the aim of killing him. The same month, Kane reported that Steinert was involved in a murder attempt against another Rock Machine member, André "Curly" Sauvageau, leading to a wild car chase down Highway 40. By early 1995, Steinert founded a gang within the gang which he named the groupe de cinq ("group of five"), which started to take over the bars on Montreal's Crescent Street and on York Street in Ottawa, both of which were the territories of his rival Carroll. Likewise, Steinert started selling drugs in western Montreal, which Carroll regarded as his area to sell drugs. At the same time, Steinert started to sell drugs in Toronto, Kingston, and Winnipeg. A kilogram of cocaine that went for $35,000 in Montreal was worth $45,000 in Winnipeg, and Steinert's greed let him to ignore Stadnick's orders not to sell cocaine in Winnipeg in competition with him. A very ambitious man, Steinert founded a stripper agency, Sensation, which competed with the Aventure stripper agency, which was owned by Carroll. Sher and Marsden wrote that Steinert "was a strong money-maker, boldly shipping large quantities of cocaine and hash through the Hells' Canadian network...Steinert was the bolder-or simply-crazier personality [than Carroll]. He was a killer and cared nothing for the privileges of rank if they got in the way of his ambitions". Unlike Carroll, Steinert went to bed early to start work promptly in the morning, which endeared him to Boucher, who respected Steinert for his work ethic and ability to make consistently large profits. In March 1995, when Carroll ordered Kane to drive him to Halifax, Steinert refused to allow it, which almost caused a brawl between the two men. Kane reported to his RCMP handlers that he thought that Stadnick and Carroll were the "past" of the Hells Angels while Steinert was the "future". In one of his reports, Kane wrote that Steinert had told him that he was making $100,000 per month from his cocaine sales in northern Ontario. Steinert also told Kane that he was planning to go to Jamaica to recruit criminals for a black street gang he planned to found to challenge Master 13, a black street gang allied with the Rock Machine.