Richard Blass

Richard Blass (October 24, 1945 – January 24, 1975) was an infamous Canadian gangster and a multiple murderer. Born in Montreal, he was nicknamed Le Chat, French for The Cat, because of his luck in evading death after surviving at least three assassination attempts and a police shootout, and escaping from custody twice.

Born in the Montreal neighbourhood of Rosemont, Blass would turn to amateur boxing as a way to channel his anger when he was a child. It was after a boxing fight that Blass committed one of his first known crimes, attacking fellow boxer Michel Gouin with a knife after losing a fight to him. Blass pleaded guilty to assault and spent one night in jail.

As time went by, Blass became more obsessed with the mafia activity going on in New York city, south of Montreal. As obsessed as he was with the mafia, however, he was also known for his hatred of mafia organizations: resenting the fact that the Italian mafia held a stronghold on Montreal's underworld business during the 1960s, Blass was involved in minor fights with many mafia members, particularly those related to Frank Cotroni and brothers Jos and Vincenzo DiMaulo, all of which received death threats by Blass. He had also worked as hitman for notorious West End Gang.

Richard Blass and Robert Allard were to ambush Frank Cotroni on May 7, 1968. But the ambush attempt was broken by a policeman who saw them act suspiciously and proceeded to try to investigate them by following them in his patrol car. Cotroni's life was saved by the policeman who was not able to arrest Blass or Allard as they escaped.

By then, Blass had a sizable number of members in his own criminal gang. Angered at the fact that they could not kill Cotroni, Blass and his gang then became more violent, committing a number of murders against Italians, some of whom had nothing to do with crime. The first such killing took place on May 27, twenty days after the attempt against Cotroni's life, when Giuseppe Collizza was killed with five shots to the head.

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