The failed mission of a young hit man
Professional hitmen never lose their temper and rarely improvise. It was the opposite for a young Montrealer and his accomplices during a mission commanded in Ontario, where they had to eliminate a relative of the Hells Angels. That is why Marley Dorphelus, 21, was sentenced to 16 years in prison last month.
Matthew Rodgers had left his home early in the morning, without waking his spouse five months pregnant.
On August 4, 2017, the 35-year-old Ontarian drove away in his black Mercedes, with his Rolex watch on his left wrist and more than $5,000 in $50 and $100 bills in his camouflage style pants pockets.
The 6' and 240 lb. fellow immobilized his luxurious sedan in the parking lot of a small commercial complex on Cornwall Road in Oakville, an hour's drive west of Toronto.
At 8:55 a.m., he entered the Sunset Grill restaurant, where employees used to see him regularly with another muscular colossus.
When Rodgers came home, he told the staff he was waiting for someone. He ordered an orange juice.
But after 25 minutes of poking around on his cell phone, he got up, left $10 on the table and left the room telling a waiter that his "friend" ("my buddy") would not come.
Outside, in the parking lot, two men dressed in black were waiting for him.
Shot in the head
They wore kangaroo hoodies and blue bandanas around their foreheads, like street gang members.
According to witnesses reported to the Halton Regional Police, they approached Rodgers, who became "agitated". A rush followed.
One of the two men, black, pulled out a handgun that appeared to have a silencer at the end of the barrel. Rodgers turned his back on them and ran towards the boulevard.
He fell into a hedge not far from the road when a first bullet hit him below his left knee.
Rodgers got up and crossed the road. But then witnesses saw him collapse on the grassy median between the opposite lanes of the boulevard.
A high-calibre projectile had just pierced his skull, removing the Blue Jays cap he had on his head.
Abandoned and panicked
That's when everything started to go wrong for Marley Dorphelus, one of the two shooters.
While Rodgers was being shot, the shooters' "driver" approached the scene with a black Dodge Ram pickup truck registered in Quebec.
The trio had previously stolen the escape vehicle from a construction worker domiciled in LaSalle, a borough of Montreal.
The second shooter ran towards the van and jumped on board. The accomplice driver immediately left, leaving Dorphelus behind, alone and panicked.
"He was there, near the victim lying on the ground. He looked at her, then he started looking nervously at everything around him. He looked lost," a motorist who witnessed this horrific scene told police.
Dorphelus ran away, fleeing north, without having been able to prepare a "escape route" beforehand, as contract killers are used to. All police officers then on duty in Oakville were quickly alerted.
Mastered by an agent
Less than 15 minutes later, Constable Sarah McCullagh caught up with him as the 5' and 8" runaway climbed up a fence.
The police officer immobilized him on the ground, managing to disarm the suspect, who had hidden his semi-automatic Heckler & Koch gun in one of his socks.
"Without even using handcuffs, she neutralized him by holding his wrists until his colleagues arrived to reinforce him," said Judge David Harris when he convicted the Montrealer on January 23.
Once handcuffed, Dorphelus was not taken to the police station, but rather to the hospital because his heart rate was dangerously high.
The young man had no identification on him and remained silent. Finally, after talking to his lawyer, he told the investigators his name and that he lived in Montreal. That's all they could get him to say.
Evidence in the pockets
But everything the police needed to know was in the pockets of his black jeans.
In the one on the left was a sheet of paper with a photo printed on it showing Matthew Rodgers taking himself in selfie.
The one on the right contained the Mercedes model the victim was driving, his license plate number, as well as the name of the restaurant where Rodgers had been lured into this ambush under the pretext of a business meeting.
The magazine of the Dorphelus.45 calibre weapon, with a capacity of 10 projectiles, was empty. Only three casings compatible with his gun were recovered from the crime scene.
Evidence in the pockets
Matthew Rodgers never regained consciousness. But he is still hospitalized and kept alive in a neuro-vegetative state, from which he will probably never emerge, the judge recalled.
The piece of projectile that the doctors were able to extract from his brain did not come from Dorphelus' semi-automatic pistol.
The police tried to find out who had given Rodgers an appointment and to whom he was texting that morning.
They wanted to search the BlackBerry Q5 phone that Rodgers used in the restaurant and that was recovered from Cornwall Road.
But as soon as the device was turned on again by the police, an application was activated remotely, and all the content of the BlackBerry was automatically deleted, much like in the movie Mission impossible.
It is also a protection technology that is increasingly popular with high-level trafficking networks, particularly in Quebec.
The "f... You crew " You crew
The victim was on file as a close relationship with the Hells Angels of the Ontario Chapter in London, according to the province's police intelligence services.
"He was actively involved in a biker support club, the F... You Crew, in addition to being involved in drug trafficking," said Justice Harris.
The day after the shooting, three members of the Hells Angels showed up at Sunset Grill in Oakville.
They asked the employees about Rodgers and they themselves went to examine the traces of the attempted murder in the parking lot.
Rodgers' wife told the police that he was "not discussing his business" with her, and that she was "not asking him any questions" about how he was making so much money.
Isolated and nervous
"I didn't know much about Mr. Dorphelus," deplored Justice Harris before imposing a sentence on the Montrealer, who confessed to attempted murder.
Coming from a family of three children, he experienced the separation of his parents when he was young, and his childhood was "difficult".
Dorphelus dropped out of school without completing high school "to be able to work and support his family financially," the magistrate said.
He had no criminal record and the police know of no affiliation with a criminalized gang, noted the judge, adding that the Quebecker is distressed by remorse.
Since his arrest, Dorphelus has had to be held in solitary confinement for his safety.
Not only has he become a potential target for motorcyclists, he can also be perceived as an embarrassing witness for his accomplices, even if he refuses to report them, the judge insisted.
"He feels depressed, restless, nervous and tired at the same time," he added.
Quebec Subcontractors
Judge Harris sentenced Marley Dorphelus to 16 years in prison, of which he has already served two years and seven months in pre-trial detention.
The reasons for the young man's participation in this commissioned execution remain mysterious because of his silence and the fact that his two accomplices are still at large.
It seems that Ontario organized crime often uses Quebec "subcontractors" for its dirty work.
According to our information, this thesis is favoured by the police in at least half a dozen homicides or attempted murders of bikers or mobsters in Ontario since 2012.
https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2019/02/10/la-mission-ratee-dun-jeune-tueur-a-gages