A man with ties to a Montreal street gang who took part in two murders carried out during a conflict over who should control the Montreal Mafia has been denied parole.
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Olivier Gay, 42, had a hearing before the Parole Board of Canada at the end of last month and the parole board members who heard his case decided to deliberate on the matter before reaching a decision. They then denied Gay both day and full parole, but he will reach his statutory release date within a matter on months. When an offender serving time in a federal penitentiary in Canada reaches the the two-thirds mark of their sentence and have not previously been granted parole, they automatically qualify for a statutory release.
Gay grew up in Rivière-des-Prairies and he told the parole board he became a part of Unit 44, a Reds-affiliated street gang, because some of his friends gravitated toward street gangs when they were teenagers. He told the board he dropped out of high school and worked at a grocery store before he began to notice his friends who were in street gangs were driving around in nice cars.
In 2013, members of Unit 44 were hired to kill Gaétan Gosselin, a close associate of Montreal Mob boss Raynald Desjardins. The investigation into the homicide revealed Harry Mytil, a street gang leader, issued the orders to kill Gosselin and, on Jan. 22, 2013, he was slain outside his home in St-Léonard. Nine days later, a man named Vincenzo Scuderi, 49, was also killed.
In 2017, Gay was the only one of five men who pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Gosselin and also plead guilty to conspiring to kill Scuderi. Both homicides appeared to be a reply, from the Rizzuto organization, to an attempt made by Desjardins and Giuseppe (Ponytail) De Vito to take control of the Montreal Mafia. Gay says his role in both homicides was limited to doing surveillance on both victims.
Mytil was killed in Laval three months after Gosselin and Scuderi were murdered. De Vito, the leader of a Mafia clan that included Scuderi, died of cyanide poisoning at age 46, on July 8, 2013, while he was incarcerated at a federal penitentiary.
Gay received the longest sentence of the five men who admitted to playing a role in Gosselin’s death — 18 years. He had 11 years and 10 months left to serve when he was sentenced in 2017.
During his hearing last week, Gay told the parole board he has nothing to do with organized crime anymore. He said his only contact with street gangs is with a former member who now works for a university, but the that man was shot in an attempted murder carried out in eastern Montreal a few years ago.
“You participated adequately in the interventions that have been offered to you (programs, school, criminological monitoring), but while maintaining links with individuals involved in (contraband) smuggling (by drones) and you did not respect the rules of the (penitentiary) to meet your needs. You have reproduced behaviours similar to those that made up your cycle of delinquency. You have demonstrated that your delinquent values are still entrenched,” the parole board wrote in a summary of its decision.
“Despite the good intentions you show concerning your future, the board is concerned about the choices you could make outside when the time comes to meet your needs or, if necessary, to defend yourself against a threat. The board assumes that you will not call the police.”
For Gay’s statutory release, the board was limited to deciding whether to impose conditions on it. One condition requires Gay reside at a halfway house and that he be required to return to it every night for the first three months of his release.