Réal Simard

Réal Simard (born 7 January 1951) is a Canadian gangster from Montreal known for being a hitman for Frank Cotroni of the Cotroni crime family, who later turned informant.

Early career Simard grew up in an abusive home. Simard's childhood home was on a rowhouse on St. Timothée street, where he grew up with his alcoholic father who beat him. He started his criminal career as a petty criminal, but soon became a professional bank robber. Simard had a lengthy criminal record with convictions for extortion, possession of illegal weapons, and bank robbery. Simard's uncle was Armand Courville, whom he idolized, and it was always his desire to join the Cotroni crime family.

In Simard's early days, he robbed banks with childhood friend Raymond Martel, but Martel was caught in a heist, while Simard avoided arrest. Another bank robbing accomplice of Simard, Jean-Paul Saint-Armand, was arrested and turned informant, which led to his arrest. The court sentenced Simard to six years in prison. Simard is the nephew of Armand Courville, a long-time associate of Frank Cotroni's older brother Vic Cotroni.

Entering the Cotroni family While Simard was in prison, he met leader of the family, Frank Cotroni, acting for his brother who was ill with cancer; he would become Frank's driver and eventual hitman upon their release in 1979. Simard considered Frank a father figure and looked up to him. After killing Marion, Simard went to see Cotroni and he later recalled: "We kissed each other on the side of the cheek. It's an old tradition in Italian families when you do something for the godfather, the family". For Simard, being kissed on the cheek by his boss proved that he was an important member of the Cotroni family, and was now a powerful man. Cotroni told Simard, "I'm so happy for you. You did a good job".

Simard carried out another hit later that year. The Satan's Choice hitman Cecil Kirby reported a rumour in the underworld that Vic Cotroni had personally ordered Volpe's murder. However, it was noted that Volpe was a friend of both Vic and Frank Cotroni and that the Cotroni brothers would need the help of an established Toronto gangster to set up a drug dealing network in the Toronto area. With Papalia co-opted, the Cotroni family were well placed to take over Toronto. Domenic Racco, the leader of the Siderno Group, was an immature man with substance abuse problems who was not well regarded in the underworld, while the Commisso brothers had been imprisoned in 1982 after Kirby testified against them.

Simard became the Toronto agent of the Cotroni family, bringing in strippers and cocaine from Montreal into the Greater Toronto Area. Simard owned a silver Mercedes-Benz while having the Toronto office of Prestige Entertainment being located on 329 St. George Street. Simard lived at the Sutton Place Hotel, the most luxurious and expensive hotel in Toronto in the 1980s. During this period, Simard became addicted to cocaine, which affected his judgement. Along with his associate Richard Clément, Simard became convinced that two drug dealers from Montreal who just arrived in Toronto, Mario Héroux and Robert Hétu, who were working for the Cotroni family, were stealing from the family. Simard called Cotroni in Montreal and received permission to kill Hétu and Héroux after he accused both of stealing.

In November 1983, Simard and associate Richard Clément killed Héroux, but unknowingly only severely wounded Hétu, in their Toronto hotel room after they conspired to kill Clément. On 29 November 1983, Simard and Clément went to the Seaway Motel, where Hétu and Héroux were staying. Sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 pm, Simard knocked on the door of room 345. When Hétu opened the door of his room, Simard shot him in the face. Simard and Clément then shot Héroux five times. Hétu, a former soldier in the Canadian Army, had enough presence of mind to play dead after he was shot the first time. Hétu took two bullets to his face, but both bullets missed his brain and his spinal cord. Hétu recalled the scene, "When the shot goes in there is no pain, but you feel your head moving." Hétu held his breath and laid still as he watched Héroux scream "Are you crazy, Clément?" and then the five shots that ended Héroux's life. Despite being French-Canadian, Simard recalled after the shootings, "We kissed each other on the side of the cheek. It's an old tradition in Italian families when you do something for the godfather".

The Toronto police found a blood-soaked Hétu still alive in room 345 with his "shattered jaw hanging by a bloody sinew". Despite his condition and his poor English, Hétu was able to tell the policemen that Simard had shot him. Upon hearing that Hétu was still alive, Simard promptly fled to Montreal and was arrested at his Montreal office. Simard was due to return to Montreal soon anyhow as Cotroni wanted him to murder the boxing promoter George Cherry.

Hétu testified against Simard and Simard was later convicted, until he became informant against Frank Cotroni and the family; this resulted in an eight-year sentence for manslaughter against Frank, Francesco and two associates in 1987 for the Montegano murder. The police launched Operation Si-Co (Simard-Cotroni) which led to the arrests of Cotroni, his son Francesco, Faber, Arena and Raso. At the time of his arrest, Faber was on the brink of moving to Acapulco where he planned to set up a pipeline for smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Montreal. Simard had informed the police about Faber's Mexican plans along with the allegation that Faber had murdered a drug dealer, Claude Ménard, in 1982.

Life after the Mafia To reward him for his testimony, the Crown ensured that in prison Simard had his own cell complete with a microwave, telephone, an exercise bike and a TV, giving by the standards of Canadian prisons, a very luxurious lifestyle. After being released on early parole in 1990, Simard went into witness protection as the Cotroni family had put a price on his life. In his 1987 biography, Le Neveu (The Nephew), Simard told the book's author, Michel Vastel, that he was deeply moved by reading in French translation of the book Out of a Limb by the American actress Shirley MacLaine, which convinced him that he had a soul and of the reality of reincarnation. Simard stated: "Whatever action one takes will ultimately return to that person-good or bad-maybe not in this life embodiment, but sometime in the future. And nobody is exempt".

In a 1990 interview with Edwards, Simard accused Cotroni of being responsible for the murder of a well known Montreal lawyer, Frank Shoofey, who was killed execution-style in his law office on 15 October 1985. Simard stated that Cotroni had control of the Hilton family boxers, but owing to an extradition request from the United States was willing to sell the contracts of the Hilton family to the American boxing promoter Don King. Shoofey, who acted as the Hilton family's lawyer, had objected that the contract that Cotroni and King negotiated was an exploitive one with King and Cotroni taking the bulk of the profits from the Hiltons' boxing fights. Simard stated that "powerful people" wanted the King-Cotroni deal to go through and, "Frank Shoofey was very disturbing for them. Because he was helping the Hilton brothers".

In a television documentary produced by Vastel about Simard, one reviewer wrote that Simard "has the charm of a gigolo and looks like a cross between heartthrob actor Armand Assante and singer Gino Vannelli." Subsequently, Simard turned to welfare fraud to support himself, cheating the Quebec government of some $13,000, which led to his parole being revoked. Simard went back to prison for violating his parole for committing welfare fraud in 2004, and his attempts for parole have since been consistently refused by the parole board.