 On October 10, Francis Simard, along with Chenier Cell leader, Paul Rose and his brother, Jacques Rose and Bernard Lortie, kidnapped and then murdered Quebec vice premier and cabinet minister Pierre Laporte.Believing many others would follow in an uprising, their goal was to create an independent state based on the ideals of Fidel Castro's Cuba.In 1982, Simard described the murder of Laporte as "a sincere gesture to show that what we were saying was not just words."