OFF THE WIRE
MICHAEL GORMAN
KELLY SHIERS
thechronicleherald.ca
Jeffrey Albert Lynds (Handout)
The man police believe killed the gangster who helped set up the now-defunct Halifax Hells Angels is dead.
The body of Jeffrey Albert Lynds was discovered in a Montreal jail cell, where the 43-year-old was on trial for a 2010 double murder in Quebec.
It is believed that the former member of the elite Hells Angels group the Nomads, committed suicide.
Police would not confirm the identity, but Sgt. Claude Denis of the Surete du Quebec told thechronicleherald.ca that a 43-year old man was found dead in his cell at Riviere des Prairies Detention Centre.
"He was found without life inside the (cell). We do not have any violence mark on the victim."
Sources told the Montreal Gazette the deceased is Lynds.
Denis said police were called to Riviere des Pariries detention centre just after noon Friday. An autopsy is scheduled on Monday.
A former member of the Halifax Hells Angels, Lynds was named in court documents as the killer of Randy Mersereau whose body was discovered in a wooded lot in North River, outside Truro, in Dec. 2010.
He was never charged in Mersereau's death.
After cofounding the Halifax chapter of the outlaw biker gang, Mersereau left in the 1990s to set up his own drug operation.
He disappeared Oct. 31,1999, not long after a bomb exploded at a used-car dealership in Bible Hill that injured several people. Mersereau is believed to have been the target of that Sept. 23 bombing.
A year later, in Sept. 2000, Randy's brother, Kirk Mersereau, 48, and Kirk's common-law wife Nancy Christensen, 47, were also shot dead in their rural Hants County home.
In their book, The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs are Conquering Canada, journalists William Marsden and Julian Sher write that Kirk put a $50,000 bounty on the head of anyone connected to his brother's murder.
Police have charged Dean David Whynott of Truro Heights and Gerald MacCabe of Salmon River both with being an accessory after the fact in Randy Mersereau's murder.
Court documents filed in connection with MacCabe's case point to Lynds as Randy's killer. News reports in 2010 said Lynds admitted shooting Randy five times with a handgun provided by the Hells Angels.
Lynd's nephew, 34-year-old Curtis Blair Lynds, was charged with accessory after the fact in Randy Mersereau's death, and first-degree murder in the deaths of Kirk Mersereau and Christensen.
Leslie Douglas Greenwood, 41, is also accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of the couple.
Curtis Lynds and Greenwood are in jail, awaiting court appearances.
Michael John Lawrence, 37, from Windsor has already pleaded guilty - and is serving a life sentence - for shooting the couple, as well as Charles Maddison, a man who offered him a drive and whose truck he stole before committing the double homicide.
Jeffrey Lynds was picked up during a series of raids that targeted the Halifax Hells Angels chapter in 2001 and was eventually sentenced to three years in jail.
In Montreal, Lynds was accused in the shooting deaths of two men, Kirk Murray and Anthony Onesi, as they sat inside a car at a McDonald's parking lot in Jan. 2010. He was also facing charges in the Feb. 2010 shooting of another Quebec man, Mark Stewart.