Gregory Woolley

Gregory Woolley is a Canadian criminal associated with the Hells Angels motorcycle club.[1][2] Woolley was the protégé and bodyguard of Maurice Boucher, a controversial senior Hell Angels leader, who led his chapter in a long and extremely violent gang war against the Rock Machine, in Quebec, from 1994–2002.[3]

Woolley was the leader of a street gang known as Master B., which purchased drugs from the Hells Angels.[4] Boucher had once belonged to a white supremacist biker gang known as the SS that existed to beat up non-white immigrants while his son, Francis Boucher, was an avowed Nazi who had started the Aryan Fest musical festival in 1992 which existed to glorify Nazism.[4] Despite this background, Woolley was very close to Maurice Boucher and served as a bodyguard.[4] The Hells Angels are a whites only group, and Boucher made Woolly the president of the Rockers puppet gang.[4] The journalist Jerry Langton wrote: "He [Boucher] appears to have been right about Woolley, who became a very big earner (he became wealthier, in fact, than many Hells Angels and several Nomads) an enthusiastic intimidator, and a loyal member who never informed on anyone".[5] The Rockers were not like the Hells Angels puppet gangs like the Evil Ones and the Condors which merely performed the same work as the Hells Angels.[4] The Rockers were the enforcement arm of the Hells Angels divided into a "baseball team" which committed assaults and the "football team" which committed murders.[4]

When Woolley left the Master B. gang to join the Rockers, his old gang fell apart.[6] Another Haitian immigrant who once belonged to Master B., Beauvoir Jean, founded a new gang, the Bo-Gars (which is Haitian French slang for "handsome boys").[6] Woolley founded another gang, the Syndicate, likewise made of young men of a Haitian background to oppose the Bo-Gars.[6] The Bo-Gars waged a propaganda campaign against Woolley that depicted him as an "Uncle Tom" figure serving the "clearly racist Hells Angels".[7] Langton wrote the claims of the Bo-Gars were "true", but "ridiculous" as the Bo-Gars worked for the Rizzuto family and "if either of the groups was more under the thumb of a largely racist white organization, it was the Bo-Gars".[8]

The Bo-Gars decided to rebrand themselves as the Bloods while the Syndicate along with their allies, the Crack Down Posse, rebranded themselves as the Crips.[8] Neither the Bloods nor the Crips of Los Angeles had copyrighted their symbols and the two gangs had no connection with the American Bloods and Crips gangs.[8] Langton wrote: "The LA Crips and Bloods were not asked or consulted. In all likelihood, they had no idea that there were Crips and Bloods in Montreal, if they even knew where Montreal was".[8] Woolley who had often worn red and white clothing (red and white are the colors of the Hells Angels) was now forbidden to wear red (the color of the Bloods) and had to wear a blue baseball cap (the color of the Crips).[8] Langton described Woolley as "too smart" to engage in "allyway beatings".[8] Woolley had the Crack Down Posse serve as a puppet gang for the Montreal Crips.[9] The relationship between the Montreal Crips and the Crack Down Posse was analogous to the relationship between the Hells Angels and the Rockers.[10]

In November 2015, Woolley and 47 suspected underworld leaders were arrested in a sweep.[11] Police claim the sweep revealed Woolley was part of a conspiracy to murder another underworld figure, Raynald Desjardins.[12][13]

Although the Hells Angels official policies are not racist, experts say many Hells Angels members are racist and it is rare for individuals of African ethnic heritage to join Hells Angels chapters.[1][3] Woolley, whose ethnic background is Haitian, is described as a rare instance of an individual with African ethnic heritage to rise to a senior position in the Hells Angels. Prior to joining the Hells Angels Woolley's mentor was in a smaller motorcycle gang called the "SS", which had an explicit white supremacist ideology.