March 9, 2023 • 47 mins
Join us today as we discuss some of the most well-known and dangerous, yet surprisingly charitable outlaw motorcycle groups (as defined by the federal government) such as the Pagans, the Warlocks, the Hells Angels, with an honorable mention of the Bandidos. We detail some surprising facts and this was honestly a lot of fun and hope you guys enjoy listening as much as we did creating it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of Puckaball Talks.
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This is your host, Brad.
And today it's just going to be producer Devin.
How you doing?
No other guest host today.
Just so everybody knows, we are shooting a try to do this podcast every two weeks, approximately.
It's been a little bit of a break here.
Producer Devin is a student studying marketing and so sometimes his schedule is full of tests
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and fun things like that.
And obviously as an attorney, sometimes mine's full of fun things like trials.
So occasionally this will be a little bit spaced out a little bit further, but it is
our goal to try to put out content every couple of weeks.
So we're glad to be back and have you all listening again today.
We're going to take a look at a little bit about the history of biker gangs and they're
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tied to the criminal world.
This was actually a suggestion by one of our viewers who actually watches us quite often
and we greatly appreciate that.
We love the support you guys give.
It really warms our hearts.
You should see Brad and Adam, they're doing jumping jacks when you guys compliment us
and the views that we get.
(01:15):
I feel like they're more ecstatic over the views on the podcast than what their bank
statements end up looking like for running this bitch.
But yeah, you know who you are that gave it to us, gave us this idea.
I don't know if you'd like us to say exactly who you are and because I don't have any
clarification on that.
I won't.
I don't mean that in any sort of disrespect, but we definitely do appreciate you and you
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put this all into motion.
Yeah.
And if we have other listeners out there that have topics you want to hear about, post them
online, shoot us a message, whatever on Facebook.
We're happy to hear about it.
We'd love to have some ideas.
We've got some things in the works for future episodes coming up.
But always happy to hear from our listeners and what you guys might want to hear about.
(02:01):
We would do what you guys recommend before we do anything.
We come up with ourselves just because we're so appreciative of you guys, honestly.
So we're titled, called The Biker Gang's Podcast, the first group we're going to take a look
at.
And we should say a lot of these, the sort of paradigm that's interesting with these
biker gangs, as you want to call them, is a lot of them have very meaningful and even
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charitable purposes.
A lot of them are just guys and gals that are wanting to ride bikes and enjoy time together.
A lot of them do fundraisers and rides across the country to raise money for different organizations,
things like that.
So while it may seem like it a little bit today that we're focusing on the negative,
that's because we're trying it into what we do and what the criminal world is.
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But for those of you out there that might be involved in some biker organizations, we
do realize there's some real good work being done, a lot of good fundraising being done.
And even some of these groups did some of that too.
But there's different individuals that we'll talk about throughout the podcast today that
engaged in some pretty heavy duty criminal activity.
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Our consensus for a majority of biker gangs is that majority of those people in those
gangs are not criminals, are not selling drugs or hurting anybody or doing anything like
that.
So don't think that we're kind of encompassing everybody, especially after the research we
did, really.
Because we do a lot of research and it really opened our eyes to it.
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Just how, I mean, it kind of just shows that you can't let a bad apple necessarily spoil
the bunch.
You can wear a biker jacket but not be affiliated with the things that may come with a real
Rico charge for the rest of the gang.
But because of that, we also understand that because you're affiliated with this biker
gang, there may be innocent people that sometimes get wrapped up in this who never, you know,
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who are there for the charitable situation.
They just want to ride a goddamn bicycle or a motorcycle, not a bicycle.
And you know, so we recognize that, you know, maybe sometimes people get caught up on things
that they didn't necessarily do and wanted to really avoid.
So we don't we don't want to paint a picture that if you're in a biker gang, you're bad
or anything.
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I mean, I fucking love motorcycles and I was in a quote unquote, motorcycle like I would
say gang, but we hung up, we hung out just to ride motorcycles.
We didn't call ourselves a gang.
We didn't have jackets or anything.
You know, so people that ride motorcycles know it's more fun and safer to do it in a
group.
So in no means if our is this supposed to be like bashing anybody or anything and even
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the people that are doing criminal activities, we're not bashing that at all.
I feel like saying someone is a criminal is such an archaic term unless you do some really
heinous shit because you know, what some of these guys did, what some of them did do.
One story in particular that we'll talk about.
But if you're a criminal at one point, you turn your life around.
Is it fair to say you're a criminal 20 years later?
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No, no, exactly.
Yeah.
And a lot of this is I think is the kin to the police brutality episode we did.
There's obviously I think more good police officers than there are bad.
It's same type type of thing.
But you know, we're going to talk a little bit about the history where these came about
and then some of the incidents they've been involved in in the criminal world.
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The first group we're going to take a look at is probably one of the most famous.
That's the Pagan's MC.
They've been categorized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, also shortly
known as the ATF as an outlaw motorcycle club.
They're known to fight over territory with the Hells Angels Motor Club and other motorcycle
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gangs for that motorcycle clubs for that matter.
They're currently active in a number of states that includes California, Nevada, Delaware
and 17 other states.
They were originally established in Prince George's County, Maryland.
The president at that time was a Lou Dobkin.
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It was beginning back in 1957 and then officially organized in 1958.
He was actually a notable senior biochemist at the National Institute of Health during
this time.
Now, what I think is really interesting is, you know, you hear a motorcycle gang called
the Pagan's and there's also like the Warlocks and the things like that.
And it's I find it so ironic because when you hear those names, you would think of at
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least I would a bunch of fucking nerds.
And I mean, this guy, he was a senior biochemist.
He was really smart.
He was really a nerd.
But it just goes to show like the real diversity of a single human because they kind of had
I think the name is cool, but I think it's a little bit nerdy.
But the fact that.
So I mean, their first president was a biochemist.
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Right.
But the fact that these people were willing to chop up bodies and kill people and fight
over territory and things like that, like it just goes to show that like the multiple
dynamics of the human persona.
This guy was a biochemist and then he was running a motorcycle gang that became something
that ended up being outlawed by the ATF.
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It's just a disparity.
It's crazy.
And within their ranks, they had people that had different functions to the enforcers and
people that were designed to be the more intimidating members of the group.
I'm guessing old Lou was probably not an enforcer.
Well, right.
But imagine, you know, you have an organization and you aren't getting your hands dirty,
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but you're calling numbers to people, get your hands dirty for you.
You'll still feel the type of way.
Oh, you're still involved.
Yeah, you're still involved.
And some ways have been the worst way.
You still are the final shot caller.
You are the reason why things are set in motion.
So if anything, you guys are equal.
What is happening?
The Pagan start out wearing denim jackets that were embroidered with an insignia instead
of the more standard three piece patches utilized by most of the outlaw motorcycle clubs.
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They were riding in both the American and they were riding both American and British
motorcycles, mostly hardly Davidsons and Triumphs.
Originally they were a brotherhood of 13 motorcyclists.
So you know, relatively small.
In the 1960s, they adopted a formal constitution and formed a governing structure, choosing
a national president who has paid the same amount as the president of the United States
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at the time, working out to $100,000 a year.
That's pretty crazy fact.
And they called it a show of class.
And their first president's name is tank.
Yeah, so the the organization is getting some real legitimacy at this point.
I mean, they're raising enough money to pay somebody $100,000 a year to run the club.
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And in this time period, 1960s, and that's I don't know what that would be in today's
dollars.
Well, I think I think I could be totally wrong in this.
But I feel like the president is paid 100,000 regardless.
Like it just works out to 100,000 today's money.
So of course, right now it's 100,000, right?
Maybe then it was like 50,000.
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So because it worked out to $100,000 per year.
So that's that would be in today's dollars.
Today's.
Okay, okay.
Okay, that makes sense.
Still, though, for a motorcycle club, substantial amount of money.
Right.
Absolutely.
Side gig.
Right, right.
They were a fairly nonviolent group, which makes sense to be a reflection of probably
their original leadership until 1965.
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It's during this time that they began swelling and growing in numbers, which is, you know,
make some sense as to where they maybe started losing a little bit control over the path
they were on.
And that's when they really started became known as an outlaw motorcycle club.
During a rally in Maryland, the group got into a number of fights, shout outs, and they
were referred to shoot outs, shout outs, shoot outs.
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They were referred to as the 1% motorcyclists who caused problems in local newspapers.
And 1% was being they were saying that there was that smaller percentage that was causing
all the problems in the groups.
They quickly developed a patch of their own called the 1%ers.
And they they took they took full they liked that 1%er name that that was given to them.
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They even claimed to have invented that.
And like I said, like you said, they adopted the 1% patch, they would reference the news
and article papers all the time, and then other when you see you're the 1% of motorcyclists
that cause problems, that probably causes some fear with the other motorcyclists.
They don't want to fuck with you.
You're that guy, you know what I mean?
So then other outlaw motorcycle clubs started also adopting that 1%er patch.
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And I mean, if you know anything about motorcycle clubs today, one thing that is always said
is the 1%ers.
And that just goes to show that 1% of the motor like people that are in those clubs
are the ones that are engaging criminal activity are this or that, or, etc, etc, etc.
So it goes to show how small of a group of a subgroup inside of a much larger group that
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is actually doing like illegal things.
And yet the whole group kind of gets casted as right here.
Yeah, the whole you're judged by your weakest link or whatever.
I mean, it's that sort of humans were just have we have that tribal mentality.
Right.
And if, you know, if this person is that way, then they're all that way.
Exactly.
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And for sure.
And then 1%er became like a badge of honor for those that were into that side of the
motorcycle club.
And it was a separate thing you had to be able to get allowed to be into.
The Pagans have been tied to traditional organized crime that included the La Cosa Nostra region.
I was waiting for you to butcher that.
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That wasn't too bad.
It wasn't too bad.
I was a Spanish.
I didn't learn a damn thing, but I took it.
I don't even know if that's Spanish.
Is that Spanish?
Yeah, that's Spanish.
Okay, good.
They were popping up in cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York.
They quickly became dominant in the mid-Atlantic region.
They were the only OMC in the region, as well as a large portion of the Northeast United
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States.
So they were sort of dominating the territory at that time.
And OMC means Outlaw Motorcycle Club.
Correct.
Their growth under the leadership of John St. Moron saw the Pagans grow to nearly...
Satan.
Not Satan.
Satan.
Yeah, his middle name was Satan, or his at least nickname was Satan.
You called him Saint.
That is the complete opposite.
Wow.
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Yeah, I've really fucked that up.
John Satan Moron, Marin, saw the Pagans grow...
Moron, man, you are fucking this up.
Taking him from a saint to a Satan, and now to a moron, saw the Pagans grow to nearly
5,000 members in the early 1970s.
Their mother club is never in a fixed location, but has generally been located in the Northeast.
The Pagans' top echelon of leadership must always number 13 members.
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That means that's going to be sort of the controlling group.
Yeah, they're the...
Governing body or whatever.
Exactly.
Because they start off with 13 members.
Right.
And so they've kept that as sort of the controlling...
Controlling number of members.
They are still considered one of the largest motorcycle gangs in North America.
Now, we're going to take a little bit of look at how, I guess, probably most of the one
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percenters have gotten tied or did get tied to the Pagan, tied into some criminal activity.
Looking back on...
Probably back in 1974, March 4th of 1974, a 17-year-old by the name of Amy Billig disappeared
near her home in Coconut Grove, Florida.
Billig's fate remained unknown for at least 24 years until in 1998, Paul Branch, who was
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a former Pagan member, he revealed on his deathbed that on the day of her disappearance,
she had been abducted, drugged, raped, and murdered.
According to Branch, Billig's body was dumped in the surrounding everglades, though they
have never been found.
Billig's case received a lot of national attention because she was young when she was only 17
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years old.
And obviously when those kinds of things happen, the media jumps all over it.
Well, she was also white.
That makes a huge difference.
You know what I mean?
Unfortunately.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just look at the coverage even today that murder cases get a suburban white kid versus
an inner-city black kid.
I mean, there was that new story of that lady who had disappeared when her boyfriend...
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They went on a cross-country trip, police stopped them.
And it made national media attention, yet at the same time there were so many similar
instances of black folk having the same thing happen to their children, and it didn't even
make local news.
Oh, the Delphi murder cases.
I mean, it's the same deal.
There's young black kids getting killed in Indianapolis all the time.
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Every day.
This made it all the way up to national programs like Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most
Wanted.
Interesting.
Yeah, I think what you're about to say is I remember you telling me that the lady's
mom didn't even believe this guy, that that's what happened.
She had been looking for her daughter for 24...
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Well, he didn't reveal it until 24 years later.
So she'd been looking through that entire time.
Yeah, that entire time.
Yeah, this mom was like...
She made it her life's mission to find her daughter.
And I was doing some additional reading on this, and it's really kind of sad because
literally the mom spent her entire life and she did not initially believe Mr. Billig.
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There's no way to know 100% sure that his story is right, right?
Because they still didn't find the body.
I mean, you tell somebody you've chopped up their body and put them in the Everglades.
Well, good luck.
Yeah, I mean, there's fucking alligators.
Ultimate needle in the haystack.
Yeah, and he gave example or like things that happened at the crime scene that only the
police knew that they didn't release to her mom.
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And not only that, but they said that like her dying was a total accident.
This doesn't make it any better at all.
But they actually were just trying to rape her and they kept drugging her and trying
to rape her and she kept fighting back, kept fighting back.
She was a fighter, you know, she was a warrior and there was multiple men that were attempting
to rape her.
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So they kept giving her drugs, more drugs, more drugs until she OD'd.
Yeah, and once she OD'd, that's when they said to see they chopped up her body and spread
her out.
One of the things that he described that made the mom sort of officially kind of accept
that that's what the fate was and that he was telling the truth was he described a surgical
scar that she had had on her body that had never been released by the police.
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So there wasn't any information out there about that.
It had to have been unique to somebody that actually knew what happened.
There were also a variety of reports from other witnesses who said they saw her be picked
up by somebody on a motorcycle that was in a large group of motorcycle riders.
So there was some other supporting stuff to his story.
And the Pagans in that area had been long suspected by the authorities of having been
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involved.
They just couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't prove it.
So that was sort of one of the big, one of the first big stories of the Pagans being
involved in some criminal activity.
Next one we'll talk about is the boss at the time of the name by the name of Daniel or
Danny the Deacon's Wibble.
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He was indicted in Rico charges alongside with his co-defendant James Burke and Eugene
Boyd Jusol.
It's Giswala.
It's Giswala.
Devin actually gave me the pronunciation of it and I'm still.
Yeah.
And he was called, despite being called Eugene, his nickname was Nick the Blade.
Nick the Blade.
Makes a lot of sense for Eugene.
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He was infamous Pittsburgh connection in the movies, God of the Goodfellas.
So you guys that, especially the older folks, I know about the Goodfellas, but people that
watch the Goodfellas and know who that the infamous quote unquote Pittsburgh connection
was.
Danny the Deacon was from the Pagans was working with this guy.
Like, you know, this was real stuff.
The Goodfellas was modeled after real stuff.
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And they, this is where they sort of were making their first real headlines, if you
will, being involved in the drug industry.
So the Rico charges were all tied to drug charges.
Matter of fact, in 1978, Danny the Deacon had been in prison before, served 15 years.
He was still running things from the prison, gets back out.
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It gets out early on parole in 1985 and immediately within a couple of years is under investigation
again being charged.
You want to describe what Rico charges are and the history behind them?
Yeah, so Rico charges are basically the way you can take a, where they think they can
prove a criminal enterprise.
So it's not like just an instance of drug dealing or an instant of, it can be theft
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rings, it can be drug dealing, it can be anything that's criminal.
And it's being done like a business, like it's being ran like a legitimate business
would be run.
That gives the government the ability to file what's called Rico charges.
And those Rico charges can be a little bit, sometimes easier to prove, but they also typically
come with a significant more penalty being able to be lopped on top of whatever the underlying
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charge may be too.
So Danny the Deacon gets hit with Rico charges, ends up dying in February of 2014, having
served out his time in prison.
The Pagans actually did a fairly large ceremony for him at the time he died.
Interrelated members of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, known by the name Anthony Rocky LaRocca
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was the nephew to the former Pittsburgh mafia boss, John LaRocca, and acted as a liaison
for the Pagans and the LaRocca crime family.
In 1973, LaRocca and another member of the Pagans were charged with assaulting an ATF
vehicle, conspiracy, firearms, and possession of a silencer.
In 1990, LaRocca and Francis Rick Ferry were sentenced to life in prison for the murder
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of John Heatherton.
While incarcerated, LaRocca continued to control his cocaine distribution network through family
contacts and organized crime members of the Motorcycle Club until he was indicted and
given an additional 20 years.
Yeah, so I wanted to add on to this, you kind of went a little bit ahead, but the Rico charges,
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they actually started with the mafia.
They wanted to, they didn't have a way to prosecute someone who didn't actually have
their hands dirty.
And of course in the mafia, the top guys don't have their hands dirty.
They have the people do it for them.
So they wanted the way they could see the obviously charge it, the obviously link, but
they couldn't charge these top guys that were calling the shots and they were arresting
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all these people and nothing was happening.
You know, so that's actually where Rico charges came in.
And Rico means Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act.
And so it was originally, it was a very rare charge that people would get when it first
came around.
And honestly, for a very long while, this, it came out in the 1970s specifically because
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of stuff like this and it would only be in like drastic situations that people would
get hit with Rico charges.
I feel like now lately you've, people use it all the time, all the time.
Cause they know it will fuck people.
Become one of the kind of one of the harshest tools that can be utilized, but it's now,
I would say charged very, very frequently.
I mean, just, you know, in the terms of like when they came up with Rico, they were thinking
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of a top dog who was collecting all this money, but wasn't getting his hands dirty.
Well, now it's kind of been interpreted as, as if you're working in a group, it's Rico.
Well, if say you're a weed dealer, you're working in a group regard, you can't sell
anything if you don't have a supplier and you don't have buyers.
You can't sell shit by yourself no matter what you're doing.
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So that intrinsically makes you a criminal enterprise.
Exactly.
And in Indiana, they have a thing called Corrupt Business Influence.
It's like the state version of Rico charges.
So you see it on the state side, you see it in the federal side, both.
And it's, it's a tool that basically the legislatures have given the prosecutors to attack what
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they can see, see like a corporate level of crime and it adds significant penalties.
And that's why, that's why you'll see them, I think being utilized more and more.
Last thing we're going to touch on base on the base with, with the pagan group is in
July 17th of 1994, there were at least eight members of the pagans that showed up at the
annual charity picnic fundraiser by another motorcycle club known by Tri County.
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And this was in Hackettstown.
The pagans were there to intimidate the local motorcycle clubs into aligning with the pagans
so that they'd have a larger power base to prevent the Hells Angels from becoming established
in New Jersey.
A fight started and escalated from the fists to knives, from fists to knives and guns.
When it was over, pagans Glen Richie, Diego Vega had been shot dead, pagan Ron Locke and
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the Tri County member William Johnson had gunshot wounds and Tri County member Rick
Hank Rigger had his throat cut.
It's made huge news back at the time when it happened because there was such a, it was
really a bloodbath.
And the part that was really, I found interesting was that these are biker gangs, but the pagans
showed up in a, in a van, popped out of a van and did the attack from a van.
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Yeah, they were, they were ready to get shit popping.
This was all about, this was a coordinated event.
It wasn't like two biker gangs crossed ways and things went down.
This was about the pagans trying to reestablish or continue to establish their dominance in
the, in the Northeast.
And unfortunately this happened at an annual charity picnic fundraiser, you know, and
were they really trying to do good?
(23:48):
Yeah.
But you know, those worlds can collide so quick.
Well, and that's what gives the sort of that negative connotation.
It wasn't the group that was attacked that was doing the good was literally doing nothing
wrong at the moment, at the moment.
They meant they were, you know, worried about their territory and making sure that there
wasn't somebody that was going to develop or be somebody else that might line up with
the hell's angels.
(24:09):
We're going to move on to another motorcycle club known as the Warlocks.
The Warlocks were established by Tom who went by the Grubb or Grubb Freeland.
Interestingly he was an ex-U.S. Navy veteran from Orlando, Florida in 1967.
The mother chapter still to this day is located in Florida and the club's founder, Mr. Grubb
(24:33):
died in 2019.
The club's insignia is a harpy, which is a Greek in Roman mythology, a female monster
in the form of a bird with a human face.
Sounds very appropriate motorcycle club.
So if anybody knows what a harpy is in particular, it's supposed to be like very beautiful and
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it's kind of the same as sirens.
If anybody knows what a siren is, it'd be like basically mermaids and they would chant
sailors and they'd sing beautiful songs and sailors would steer their boats towards them
and they would see these beautiful women in the water and they would jump into the water
to be with them and think that they were going to have sex and stuff and then they would
be eaten.
These were the same way but they were kind of bird-like instead.
(25:19):
So they'd be able to hide the rest of their body and they'd look like a beautiful woman
and then kill these people.
One of the things we love about producer Devon is he's full of random bullshit or at least
shit.
I love Greek and Roman mythology.
I think it's accurate but I have no idea.
So if anybody ever hears something that he's saying that's not true, hey, I will never
correct him.
(25:40):
Call me out.
I don't have any fucking clue.
I can throw links and citations towards my shit.
Their colors are red and white.
The club rapidly expanded at the end of the Vietnam War when thousands of soldiers returned
home to the United States, many of them to Pennsylvania and Florida.
The club is most prominent and has significant territory in the Delaware Valley including
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Philadelphia, Delaware County, South Jersey and Wilmington though they also have a heavy
presence in nearby Lee Valley.
There are now chapters all throughout Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware as well as Ohio
with the mother chapter still residing in the state of Florida.
Rivals with the pagan MC club, they were founded in 1965.
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They've established connections within the Philadelphia crime family and their dealings
are much more obscure and not as much information is known about them except for a few notable
crimes that we will now dive into a little bit.
On May 6th of 1995 and this is really a pretty sad story.
Police Sergeant on all the way around and we'll get into that.
(26:44):
Police Sergeant Ippolito Lee Gonzalez of the Franklin Township, Glaucaster County, New
Jersey.
It's pronounced Glauchester.
It's Glauchester County.
Is that Irish?
I think so.
Sounds Irish.
I think it's also a county or like a place in Scotland.
Scottish.
Sounds Ireland or Scottish.
Anyways, so we're going to get into the story.
It sounds Ireland or Scottish.
(27:06):
He had pulled over a couple warlock members and that was Robert Mudman Simon and Charles
Shovel Staples.
I wonder why he was called Shovel.
Mudman caused the problems.
Shovel buried them.
They were on a traffic stop moments after they had just committed a commercial burglary.
(27:27):
Simon, also known as the Mudman, immediately upon pulling him over, shot Gonzalez twice
in the head and neck and Gonzalez died instantly.
Simon was later said, Simon later said he shot Sergeant Gonzalez because he didn't
want to return back to prison.
He'd been in prison previously and maybe I think was even on parole time.
(27:48):
He was quickly apprehended and pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death.
At the time that Gonzalez's murder, Simon was barely three months out of jail and he
was on parole after a 1981 conviction of killing another woman.
It made a ton of news at the time because the public was outraged that somebody had
already done murder, was out again and within months, while still on parole, has now shot
(28:13):
and killed a cop.
So it made a ton of news at the time.
We still see shit like that in the news.
Absolutely.
Outrage, which granted, valid of course.
Yeah, one of the murder cases I did when I was a prosecutor, the victim was killed with
the claw side of a hammer to her head and the guy that killed her was one week out of
parole on a violent rape.
(28:33):
So it happens.
Terrible, terrible stuff.
At the times of he was out on parole, he was sentenced to death and he was stomped to death
by Ambrose Harris inside the prison, who was another death row inmate in New Jersey at
the Trenton State Prison.
He argued self-defense and his prison killing was, despite being on death row, acquitted
(28:58):
of that murder.
I'm curious, like why even give a fuck?
Yeah, I guess why not make the state do more work, I guess.
Maybe it was going to, well, maybe they, it would have sped up his execution.
The interesting part of this story is that, well, there's a lot out there about Charles
Mudman Simon's involvement in that.
(29:22):
Charles, Robert Mudman Simon, Charles shovel staples also got arrested and convicted of
murder as well.
He actually had no criminal history.
The, the burglary they had, the commercial burglary they had done was designed purposely
to be done at the time that the business was closed and there'd be nobody in it.
And he didn't want to hurt anybody.
He was really adamant to not be hurting him.
(29:43):
And he had nothing to do with the shooting of this sheriff deputy.
It was done spontaneously without his knowledge that it was going to occur.
And that resulted in him being convicted of murder.
And he was also a veteran, wasn't he?
He was a, he was a military veteran.
He had no history.
And he has some interesting things out there where he's, he's accepted his fate.
(30:04):
But there's a decent amount of people supportive of him to say that he's, you know, his punishment
was too harsh given that he had an otherwise pretty reputable life.
And, but he's also, he's actually the, the stuff out there about him, he's pretty humble
about it.
He's like, you know, I did, I did get engaged in something where I should have known it
could have gone wrong.
(30:25):
I didn't want it to go this way.
But I mean, when a cop dies, all shit hits the fan.
And that's what happened.
He, he was down on his dick and he needed money.
They robbed a commercial business and typically they'd go in guns blazing, but he didn't want
to hurt nobody.
So they went in after the fact that I'm not saying that excuses it, but that goes to show
that he wasn't wanting to have this cop be killed.
He had no idea that his, the guy with him was about to murder this cop.
(30:48):
Like, I can only imagine this guy was probably like literally, like not even figuratively,
literally shitting himself.
Yeah, I'm sure as soon as he saw it happen, he's like, Oh fuck.
I mean, what do we do now?
You know?
Yeah.
Terrible.
In October, the warlocks get tied into the drug, the drug industry too, just like most
of the criminal motorcycle clubs did.
(31:09):
In October, 2008, the Pennsylvania state attorney general, Tom Corbett, he alleged that the
warlocks motorcycle club was involved in the dealing and manufacturing of methamphetamine
operation based in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
There was a sting that they dubbed operation underground.
Corbett said the operation manufacturer manufactured and distributed $9 million worth of methamphetamine
(31:33):
throughout the southeastern part of Pennsylvania and possibly supplied to members of the warlocks
motorcycle club, which had allegedly been linked to organized crime and drug trafficking.
So they got tied into the drug industry as well.
There was a number of criminal charges and things of that nature that came out of it.
(31:53):
And you know, just added to the history of that organization.
We're going to next talk about what may be, and this will be our last club that we hit
up, but probably the, I don't know, wouldn't you say the most well known?
Oh yeah.
And the most infamous.
Yeah.
The hell's angels.
I think even those that aren't familiar with motorcycle clubs in general, I've heard are
(32:17):
the hell's angels.
They're huge and indie.
Yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
I've seen them.
Their jackets or whatever, however you call them, whatever they refer to them as, their
gear is all pretty recognizable.
Yeah.
And you've got many, many, many family members that were acquaintances or friends with many
(32:39):
people in hell's angels.
Hell's angels are worldwide outlaw motorcycle club, but was members typically ride Harley
Davidson motorcycles.
In fact, I think I've never seen one that didn't.
I think they would probably be belittled if they were riding something else.
Yeah.
You have, I'm almost certain that you have to have a Harley.
Perspected to have a Harley.
They're throughout the United States and Canada, they're incorporated as the hell's angels
(33:02):
motorcycle corporation.
So there's a lot of formality to them.
Common nicknames for the hell's angels for the, were HA, red and white, HAMC and 81.
They had a membership between 3,000 and 3,600 with 467 chapters in 59 countries.
So we're talking about a huge organization, one of the largest, most famous in the world.
(33:27):
So the number 81, it actually comes from think of where H is on the alphabet and where A
is on the alphabet.
A is the first letter, H is the eight.
That is where the 81 comes from.
I know it's-
You all may have remembered me talking about Devin Fuller with information.
Somehow he knows-
Hey, worthless, but interesting.
(33:49):
And as something so trivial as that, I think that was pretty cool.
That was good.
Yeah.
I had no idea where 81 came from.
Now I do.
That's why we like having Devin on the show.
Many police and international intelligence agencies, including the United States Department
of Justice and Europol, did I say that right?
Europol?
Europol.
Europol.
Consider the club an organized crime syndicate.
(34:10):
Now I want to add, this organization is so damn big that there's not like some freaking
grand master at the very top controlling these strings worldwide.
Now the leaders of all of these different subsections of Hell's Angels may talk to
each other, but based off what I was reading, sometimes Hell's Angels, different sects of
(34:35):
each other will even-
Battle amongst themselves.
Yeah, like bump heads and stuff.
Well, any time you're getting involved in territories and one has this part of town
or that part of town, easily can develop into that.
They originally got their start in Fontana, California back in 1948, and it was the merger
of several motorcycle clubs that led to what was the Hell's Angels.
(34:59):
Otto Friedle... Do that again.
Otto Friedle.
I think it's Otto Friedle.
Friedle.
Okay, we'll go with that.
A World War II veteran credited starting the club after breaking from the pissed off Bastards
Motorcycle Club over a feud with a rival gang.
If nothing else, perhaps Mr. Otto decided just the name pissed off Bastards was one
(35:25):
he couldn't live with anymore.
I don't know.
He was a World War II veteran.
I feel like he was a pretty pissed off bastard.
Could be.
Could be.
Hey, you got to admit, one, the similarities are all of these guys seem to be people you
would respect in everyday life, veterans, biochemists, and they're also very good at
making names.
It's a high level of creativity.
(35:48):
According to the club's website, the name was first suggested by Arvid Olsen, an associate
of the founders who had served the Hell's Angels squadron of the Flying Tigers in China
during World War II.
So exactly kind of what you're talking about.
A letter written to the Guinness Book of World Records by a member of the Hell's Angels,
it is instead stated that the club's name was taken from the Hell's Angels squadron
(36:09):
of the 30th, 303rd bombardment group, which was active in the European theater of World
War II.
It is at least clear that the name was inspired by the tradition from World War I and II,
whereby the Americans gave the squadrons fierce death defying titles as an example of the
lies in one of the three of this lies.
Oh, an example of that lies in one of the three P-40s squadrons of Flying Tigers fielded
(36:33):
in Burma and China, which was dubbed Hell's Angels.
So there's a lot of different varieties, I guess stories, if you will, of where the name
came from.
In 1930, Howard Hughes filmed Hell's Angels showcased extraordinary and dangerous feats
of aviation.
And it is believed that World War II groups that used the name based on that film.
(36:53):
According to the Hell's Angels website, they are aware that there is an apostrophe missing
in Hell's Angels, but it is you who will miss it.
We don't.
That's how they dealt with the name over the years.
I don't think there's an official this is where it came from.
Well, I mean, it's kind of like playing phone tag, you know what I mean?
Or like that telephone game where you all speak through a phone.
(37:16):
Stuff just kind of gets messed up over time.
Stories get changed and where maybe multiple people had similar experiences to where when
you told it to someone else, you know, their memory was different.
But for an outlaw motorcycle group to have a website, that seems pretty legit.
Yeah, I mean, especially in this day and age, the tie to military carries on and that they
(37:37):
have a system of patches that are very similar to military medals.
The specific meaning of each patch is not publicly known, but the patches are an identity
of each biker's specific or significant actions or belief.
The official colors of the Hell's Angels are red lettering displayed on a white background,
hence the clubs nicknamed the red and white.
The patches are worn on either leather or denim, jacks or vests.
(38:00):
The club is not officially a racially segregated organization.
In the U.S., at least one charter allegedly requires the candidate be a white male.
And Sonny Barger said in a 2000 BBC interview, the club as a whole is not racist, but we
probably have enough racist members that no black guy is going to get in.
(38:20):
So at the time, the club had no black members.
The Satan's Angels, MC in Vancouver, had a black member when it merged with the Hell's
Angels in 1983.
The San Francisco and Anchorage chapters threatened to have the Vancouver chapter expelled from
the club when they learned of the situation.
The matter was ultimately solved when the man changed his nationality to Hawaiian.
(38:43):
An unsuggested Hell's Angels chapter in Windsor, England was granted official status in 1985
shortly after its only black member, John Nicholson, had died in police custody.
That's pretty fucked, isn't it?
He changed his for black to Hawaiian?
Well, not even that.
One, I don't know how the hell that fixes anything.
And I don't know how.
He's still black.
Exactly.
And two, I mean, here, obviously this is still crime.
(39:05):
You know, there's no honor among thieves.
But this black member died in police custody, probably getting arrested doing something
on behalf of a Hell's Angels.
And the other chapters were basically excited that he was dead.
Like, that would just hurt so bad.
Thinking you have like a tribe.
Right.
(39:25):
Yeah, I know.
And I don't know.
Weird that they went from black to Hawaiian.
Yeah, where the fuck is that?
I don't understand that.
And the guy, like, maybe he was like really white.
Looked Hawaiian.
Like maybe he looked white.
Or white passing, maybe.
Or he wore a, what do they call it, a lei?
He had a layer on his neck.
(39:46):
Oh yeah, yeah.
A lei.
They're tied to criminal activity.
The members of the organization have always continuously asserted that they are the only
group of motorcycle enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together to organize special
events such as group road trips, fundraisers, parties, and motorcycle rallies.
And that any crimes are the responsibility of individuals not associated with the club
(40:09):
as a whole.
Which I think makes sense if they have a website.
I feel like that gives credence to that.
Because what criminal organization would have a goddamn website?
Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, you can look at any entity, any group, and if it's
large enough, there's going to be somebody that's committed crimes in it.
So it's not like they don't have some, you know, if there's, again, one percenters.
(40:30):
So if there's most of them are doing good things and doing this just to be a part of
a group of individuals that happen to enjoy the same hobby of riding motorcycles, then
yeah, I mean, that's a legit thing.
But yeah, despite this, various US law enforcement agencies classify the Hells Angels as one
of the quote unquote big four motorcycle gangs, along with the Pagans, as referenced earlier,
(40:52):
adult laws and bandidos and contend that members carry out widespread violent crime and organized
crime, including drug dealing, trafficking and stolen goods, extortion and prostitution
operations.
Members of the organization have continuously asserted that they are only a group of motorcycle
enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together to organize social events such as
group road trips, fundraisers, parties and motorcycle rallies, and that any crimes are
(41:15):
the responsibility of the people who carried them out, not the club as a whole.
So this is always like the same thing that they've said.
Like you just said that.
It's not it's not us.
It's a few of them.
Right.
And it did mention the bandidos that is I didn't bring up we were not bringing up the
bandidos because that is a whole podcast in and of itself.
They are the most cutthroat violent biker gang in the in the basically world, definitely
(41:37):
in America surpass the Hells Angels in terms of outright violence.
I'm not even sure if the bandidos have people in them who think that they're not committing
crimes.
I think that is just pure.
They're accepting of that.
Yeah, they are all crimes and they are very cutthroat and they are like the most brutal
murderous and drug fueled OMC that like exists.
(42:03):
And despite the claims of the Hells Angels, the federal government, knowing that this
is an international organization, has designated the or designated the bike group as a known
criminal organization and the Department of Homeland Security as a federal policy prohibiting
its foreign members from entering the country.
(42:23):
So they've put the Hells Angels that are international members on like the do not fly list into America.
They are stating or the federal government has stated the Hells Angels partaken drug
trafficking, gun running, extortion, money laundering, insurance fraud, kidnapping, robbery,
theft, counterfeiting, contraband smuggling, loan sharking, prostitution, trafficking and
(42:44):
stolen goods, motorcycle and motorcycle parts theft, assault, murder, bombings, arson, intimidation
and contract killing.
Those are all the things they've listed as reasons that they've banned members from coming
into the country.
The club's rule and narcotics trades involves the production, transportation and distribution
of marijuana and methamphetamine in addition to the transportation and distribution of
(43:06):
cocaine, hashish, heroin, LSD, MDMA, PCP and diverted pharmaceuticals.
This is all according to the FBI.
The Hells Angels may earn up to a billion dollars in drug sales annually.
So obviously the federal government.
I can hate these guys.
Yeah, they don't agree with the peace loving charity sort of tradition that they are.
(43:31):
That's what they put out.
Yeah.
What I'm really curious is I wonder if it's since all Hells Angels.
Well, I don't know if it's since Hells Angels are not allowed in the country.
I wonder if that includes people who haven't committed crimes and they're literally in
that as a hobby.
It's been designated as a member.
I think so.
Yeah.
Or they're just as a hobby.
I mean, I think it's like being on the known terrorist list.
I wonder how they like how you would even find out that like, would you fly to America
(43:55):
and then get arrested when you're here just because you.
Well, I think they wouldn't even let you pass through customs probably and through the passport
process.
You think they like arrest you or just turn you off, like turn you around?
As long as it's turning you away.
Oh.
Yeah, I mean, all because you you ride a motorcycle and wear a coat.
Even if you maybe didn't do anything wrong.
(44:16):
Yeah.
I mean, I can imagine how frustrating that would be for the people that know they don't
do anything wrong and especially the people that are doing like real charities and.
Well, a lot of that probably does go back to 9 11 where, you know, some very what looked
on their face to be completely normal people that end up being affiliated with the terrorist
(44:36):
group infiltrated the country just by coming here.
And then they spent years here before they did anything criminal or bad.
And obviously they did something horrific.
And so then that created the whole fly list and all these things that they try to be more
proactive as opposed to reactive to.
And so I'm sure that's where these international members of the Hells Angels have gotten caught
up in that same sort of governmental, I guess, watch list, if you will.
(45:00):
Kind of made the term like sleeper sleeper cell agents kind of like in the public eye
as well.
You know what that is, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And so it seems completely normal, but they can do what needs to be done at a blink of
an eye.
I mean, one of the 9 11 guys was like a flight school instructor.
Right.
And so that's how he learned to fly.
And that was all part of his cover that was really designed to teach him how else he could
(45:22):
fly a giant jet into buildings.
Yeah, that's just so you never know.
I mean, so you can kind of see where they're getting with that.
But it doesn't make any less unfair to the guys that are legit.
Yeah.
I mean, it would be tough to because I know that I feel like I wouldn't I wouldn't like
to come to terms with that.
No, and I've known I've known some people that are members of a bicycle group and have
(45:45):
bicycle.
I said I said it today.
Yeah, motorcycle group.
I don't know any bicycle groups.
You're going to get your ass beat walking out of here one time.
They're going to think this is a bicycle.
Right.
I've known some guys in motorcycle clubs that they weren't violent people and they didn't
want other people to be violent people.
But you can't control what everybody does.
In any organization.
(46:06):
Unfortunately, I also kind of feel like if you're treated as a criminal just because you're
part of this group that some of them do criminal activities and you're already being punished
for something you never did, it would enable you to be like, well, fuck it.
I'll commit crimes.
Right.
Right.
No.
Yeah.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to be a wrap on our coverage on bicycle by
some of the bigger biker gangs.
(46:27):
No, then I did it again.
Motorcycle man gangs in our clubs.
Wrapped leaving here.
Exactly.
And just to highlight sort of what that history is and why they have sort of the negative
connotations that have been attached to them.
Again, we thank you very much for listening to Pocket Law Talks.
(46:49):
And until next time, we will see you guys then.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Welcome back to another episode of Puckaball Talks.
(00:10):
This is your host, Brad.
And today it's just going to be producer Devin.
How you doing?
No other guest host today.
Just so everybody knows, we are shooting a try to do this podcast every two weeks, approximately.
It's been a little bit of a break here.
Producer Devin is a student studying marketing and so sometimes his schedule is full of tests
(00:34):
and fun things like that.
And obviously as an attorney, sometimes mine's full of fun things like trials.
So occasionally this will be a little bit spaced out a little bit further, but it is
our goal to try to put out content every couple of weeks.
So we're glad to be back and have you all listening again today.
We're going to take a look at a little bit about the history of biker gangs and they're
(00:55):
tied to the criminal world.
This was actually a suggestion by one of our viewers who actually watches us quite often
and we greatly appreciate that.
We love the support you guys give.
It really warms our hearts.
You should see Brad and Adam, they're doing jumping jacks when you guys compliment us
and the views that we get.
(01:15):
I feel like they're more ecstatic over the views on the podcast than what their bank
statements end up looking like for running this bitch.
But yeah, you know who you are that gave it to us, gave us this idea.
I don't know if you'd like us to say exactly who you are and because I don't have any
clarification on that.
I won't.
I don't mean that in any sort of disrespect, but we definitely do appreciate you and you
(01:40):
put this all into motion.
Yeah.
And if we have other listeners out there that have topics you want to hear about, post them
online, shoot us a message, whatever on Facebook.
We're happy to hear about it.
We'd love to have some ideas.
We've got some things in the works for future episodes coming up.
But always happy to hear from our listeners and what you guys might want to hear about.
(02:01):
We would do what you guys recommend before we do anything.
We come up with ourselves just because we're so appreciative of you guys, honestly.
So we're titled, called The Biker Gang's Podcast, the first group we're going to take a look
at.
And we should say a lot of these, the sort of paradigm that's interesting with these
biker gangs, as you want to call them, is a lot of them have very meaningful and even
(02:25):
charitable purposes.
A lot of them are just guys and gals that are wanting to ride bikes and enjoy time together.
A lot of them do fundraisers and rides across the country to raise money for different organizations,
things like that.
So while it may seem like it a little bit today that we're focusing on the negative,
that's because we're trying it into what we do and what the criminal world is.
(02:47):
But for those of you out there that might be involved in some biker organizations, we
do realize there's some real good work being done, a lot of good fundraising being done.
And even some of these groups did some of that too.
But there's different individuals that we'll talk about throughout the podcast today that
engaged in some pretty heavy duty criminal activity.
(03:09):
Our consensus for a majority of biker gangs is that majority of those people in those
gangs are not criminals, are not selling drugs or hurting anybody or doing anything like
that.
So don't think that we're kind of encompassing everybody, especially after the research we
did, really.
Because we do a lot of research and it really opened our eyes to it.
(03:33):
Just how, I mean, it kind of just shows that you can't let a bad apple necessarily spoil
the bunch.
You can wear a biker jacket but not be affiliated with the things that may come with a real
Rico charge for the rest of the gang.
But because of that, we also understand that because you're affiliated with this biker
gang, there may be innocent people that sometimes get wrapped up in this who never, you know,
(03:56):
who are there for the charitable situation.
They just want to ride a goddamn bicycle or a motorcycle, not a bicycle.
And you know, so we recognize that, you know, maybe sometimes people get caught up on things
that they didn't necessarily do and wanted to really avoid.
So we don't we don't want to paint a picture that if you're in a biker gang, you're bad
or anything.
(04:17):
I mean, I fucking love motorcycles and I was in a quote unquote, motorcycle like I would
say gang, but we hung up, we hung out just to ride motorcycles.
We didn't call ourselves a gang.
We didn't have jackets or anything.
You know, so people that ride motorcycles know it's more fun and safer to do it in a
group.
So in no means if our is this supposed to be like bashing anybody or anything and even
(04:38):
the people that are doing criminal activities, we're not bashing that at all.
I feel like saying someone is a criminal is such an archaic term unless you do some really
heinous shit because you know, what some of these guys did, what some of them did do.
One story in particular that we'll talk about.
But if you're a criminal at one point, you turn your life around.
Is it fair to say you're a criminal 20 years later?
(05:00):
No, no, exactly.
Yeah.
And a lot of this is I think is the kin to the police brutality episode we did.
There's obviously I think more good police officers than there are bad.
It's same type type of thing.
But you know, we're going to talk a little bit about the history where these came about
and then some of the incidents they've been involved in in the criminal world.
(05:21):
The first group we're going to take a look at is probably one of the most famous.
That's the Pagan's MC.
They've been categorized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, also shortly
known as the ATF as an outlaw motorcycle club.
They're known to fight over territory with the Hells Angels Motor Club and other motorcycle
(05:43):
gangs for that motorcycle clubs for that matter.
They're currently active in a number of states that includes California, Nevada, Delaware
and 17 other states.
They were originally established in Prince George's County, Maryland.
The president at that time was a Lou Dobkin.
(06:04):
It was beginning back in 1957 and then officially organized in 1958.
He was actually a notable senior biochemist at the National Institute of Health during
this time.
Now, what I think is really interesting is, you know, you hear a motorcycle gang called
the Pagan's and there's also like the Warlocks and the things like that.
And it's I find it so ironic because when you hear those names, you would think of at
(06:26):
least I would a bunch of fucking nerds.
And I mean, this guy, he was a senior biochemist.
He was really smart.
He was really a nerd.
But it just goes to show like the real diversity of a single human because they kind of had
I think the name is cool, but I think it's a little bit nerdy.
But the fact that.
So I mean, their first president was a biochemist.
(06:49):
Right.
But the fact that these people were willing to chop up bodies and kill people and fight
over territory and things like that, like it just goes to show that like the multiple
dynamics of the human persona.
This guy was a biochemist and then he was running a motorcycle gang that became something
that ended up being outlawed by the ATF.
(07:10):
It's just a disparity.
It's crazy.
And within their ranks, they had people that had different functions to the enforcers and
people that were designed to be the more intimidating members of the group.
I'm guessing old Lou was probably not an enforcer.
Well, right.
But imagine, you know, you have an organization and you aren't getting your hands dirty,
(07:31):
but you're calling numbers to people, get your hands dirty for you.
You'll still feel the type of way.
Oh, you're still involved.
Yeah, you're still involved.
And some ways have been the worst way.
You still are the final shot caller.
You are the reason why things are set in motion.
So if anything, you guys are equal.
What is happening?
The Pagan start out wearing denim jackets that were embroidered with an insignia instead
of the more standard three piece patches utilized by most of the outlaw motorcycle clubs.
(07:56):
They were riding in both the American and they were riding both American and British
motorcycles, mostly hardly Davidsons and Triumphs.
Originally they were a brotherhood of 13 motorcyclists.
So you know, relatively small.
In the 1960s, they adopted a formal constitution and formed a governing structure, choosing
a national president who has paid the same amount as the president of the United States
(08:17):
at the time, working out to $100,000 a year.
That's pretty crazy fact.
And they called it a show of class.
And their first president's name is tank.
Yeah, so the the organization is getting some real legitimacy at this point.
I mean, they're raising enough money to pay somebody $100,000 a year to run the club.
(08:39):
And in this time period, 1960s, and that's I don't know what that would be in today's
dollars.
Well, I think I think I could be totally wrong in this.
But I feel like the president is paid 100,000 regardless.
Like it just works out to 100,000 today's money.
So of course, right now it's 100,000, right?
Maybe then it was like 50,000.
(09:00):
So because it worked out to $100,000 per year.
So that's that would be in today's dollars.
Today's.
Okay, okay.
Okay, that makes sense.
Still, though, for a motorcycle club, substantial amount of money.
Right.
Absolutely.
Side gig.
Right, right.
They were a fairly nonviolent group, which makes sense to be a reflection of probably
their original leadership until 1965.
(09:23):
It's during this time that they began swelling and growing in numbers, which is, you know,
make some sense as to where they maybe started losing a little bit control over the path
they were on.
And that's when they really started became known as an outlaw motorcycle club.
During a rally in Maryland, the group got into a number of fights, shout outs, and they
were referred to shoot outs, shout outs, shoot outs.
(09:45):
They were referred to as the 1% motorcyclists who caused problems in local newspapers.
And 1% was being they were saying that there was that smaller percentage that was causing
all the problems in the groups.
They quickly developed a patch of their own called the 1%ers.
And they they took they took full they liked that 1%er name that that was given to them.
(10:08):
They even claimed to have invented that.
And like I said, like you said, they adopted the 1% patch, they would reference the news
and article papers all the time, and then other when you see you're the 1% of motorcyclists
that cause problems, that probably causes some fear with the other motorcyclists.
They don't want to fuck with you.
You're that guy, you know what I mean?
So then other outlaw motorcycle clubs started also adopting that 1%er patch.
(10:32):
And I mean, if you know anything about motorcycle clubs today, one thing that is always said
is the 1%ers.
And that just goes to show that 1% of the motor like people that are in those clubs
are the ones that are engaging criminal activity are this or that, or, etc, etc, etc.
So it goes to show how small of a group of a subgroup inside of a much larger group that
(10:55):
is actually doing like illegal things.
And yet the whole group kind of gets casted as right here.
Yeah, the whole you're judged by your weakest link or whatever.
I mean, it's that sort of humans were just have we have that tribal mentality.
Right.
And if, you know, if this person is that way, then they're all that way.
Exactly.
(11:15):
And for sure.
And then 1%er became like a badge of honor for those that were into that side of the
motorcycle club.
And it was a separate thing you had to be able to get allowed to be into.
The Pagans have been tied to traditional organized crime that included the La Cosa Nostra region.
I was waiting for you to butcher that.
(11:36):
That wasn't too bad.
It wasn't too bad.
I was a Spanish.
I didn't learn a damn thing, but I took it.
I don't even know if that's Spanish.
Is that Spanish?
Yeah, that's Spanish.
Okay, good.
They were popping up in cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York.
They quickly became dominant in the mid-Atlantic region.
They were the only OMC in the region, as well as a large portion of the Northeast United
(11:58):
States.
So they were sort of dominating the territory at that time.
And OMC means Outlaw Motorcycle Club.
Correct.
Their growth under the leadership of John St. Moron saw the Pagans grow to nearly...
Satan.
Not Satan.
Satan.
Yeah, his middle name was Satan, or his at least nickname was Satan.
You called him Saint.
That is the complete opposite.
Wow.
(12:18):
Yeah, I've really fucked that up.
John Satan Moron, Marin, saw the Pagans grow...
Moron, man, you are fucking this up.
Taking him from a saint to a Satan, and now to a moron, saw the Pagans grow to nearly
5,000 members in the early 1970s.
Their mother club is never in a fixed location, but has generally been located in the Northeast.
The Pagans' top echelon of leadership must always number 13 members.
(12:44):
That means that's going to be sort of the controlling group.
Yeah, they're the...
Governing body or whatever.
Exactly.
Because they start off with 13 members.
Right.
And so they've kept that as sort of the controlling...
Controlling number of members.
They are still considered one of the largest motorcycle gangs in North America.
Now, we're going to take a little bit of look at how, I guess, probably most of the one
(13:05):
percenters have gotten tied or did get tied to the Pagan, tied into some criminal activity.
Looking back on...
Probably back in 1974, March 4th of 1974, a 17-year-old by the name of Amy Billig disappeared
near her home in Coconut Grove, Florida.
Billig's fate remained unknown for at least 24 years until in 1998, Paul Branch, who was
(13:31):
a former Pagan member, he revealed on his deathbed that on the day of her disappearance,
she had been abducted, drugged, raped, and murdered.
According to Branch, Billig's body was dumped in the surrounding everglades, though they
have never been found.
Billig's case received a lot of national attention because she was young when she was only 17
(13:56):
years old.
And obviously when those kinds of things happen, the media jumps all over it.
Well, she was also white.
That makes a huge difference.
You know what I mean?
Unfortunately.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just look at the coverage even today that murder cases get a suburban white kid versus
an inner-city black kid.
I mean, there was that new story of that lady who had disappeared when her boyfriend...
(14:18):
They went on a cross-country trip, police stopped them.
And it made national media attention, yet at the same time there were so many similar
instances of black folk having the same thing happen to their children, and it didn't even
make local news.
Oh, the Delphi murder cases.
I mean, it's the same deal.
There's young black kids getting killed in Indianapolis all the time.
(14:38):
Every day.
This made it all the way up to national programs like Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most
Wanted.
Interesting.
Yeah, I think what you're about to say is I remember you telling me that the lady's
mom didn't even believe this guy, that that's what happened.
She had been looking for her daughter for 24...
(14:59):
Well, he didn't reveal it until 24 years later.
So she'd been looking through that entire time.
Yeah, that entire time.
Yeah, this mom was like...
She made it her life's mission to find her daughter.
And I was doing some additional reading on this, and it's really kind of sad because
literally the mom spent her entire life and she did not initially believe Mr. Billig.
(15:20):
There's no way to know 100% sure that his story is right, right?
Because they still didn't find the body.
I mean, you tell somebody you've chopped up their body and put them in the Everglades.
Well, good luck.
Yeah, I mean, there's fucking alligators.
Ultimate needle in the haystack.
Yeah, and he gave example or like things that happened at the crime scene that only the
police knew that they didn't release to her mom.
(15:42):
And not only that, but they said that like her dying was a total accident.
This doesn't make it any better at all.
But they actually were just trying to rape her and they kept drugging her and trying
to rape her and she kept fighting back, kept fighting back.
She was a fighter, you know, she was a warrior and there was multiple men that were attempting
to rape her.
(16:03):
So they kept giving her drugs, more drugs, more drugs until she OD'd.
Yeah, and once she OD'd, that's when they said to see they chopped up her body and spread
her out.
One of the things that he described that made the mom sort of officially kind of accept
that that's what the fate was and that he was telling the truth was he described a surgical
scar that she had had on her body that had never been released by the police.
(16:27):
So there wasn't any information out there about that.
It had to have been unique to somebody that actually knew what happened.
There were also a variety of reports from other witnesses who said they saw her be picked
up by somebody on a motorcycle that was in a large group of motorcycle riders.
So there was some other supporting stuff to his story.
And the Pagans in that area had been long suspected by the authorities of having been
(16:50):
involved.
They just couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't prove it.
So that was sort of one of the big, one of the first big stories of the Pagans being
involved in some criminal activity.
Next one we'll talk about is the boss at the time of the name by the name of Daniel or
Danny the Deacon's Wibble.
(17:11):
He was indicted in Rico charges alongside with his co-defendant James Burke and Eugene
Boyd Jusol.
It's Giswala.
It's Giswala.
Devin actually gave me the pronunciation of it and I'm still.
Yeah.
And he was called, despite being called Eugene, his nickname was Nick the Blade.
Nick the Blade.
Makes a lot of sense for Eugene.
(17:33):
He was infamous Pittsburgh connection in the movies, God of the Goodfellas.
So you guys that, especially the older folks, I know about the Goodfellas, but people that
watch the Goodfellas and know who that the infamous quote unquote Pittsburgh connection
was.
Danny the Deacon was from the Pagans was working with this guy.
Like, you know, this was real stuff.
The Goodfellas was modeled after real stuff.
(17:54):
And they, this is where they sort of were making their first real headlines, if you
will, being involved in the drug industry.
So the Rico charges were all tied to drug charges.
Matter of fact, in 1978, Danny the Deacon had been in prison before, served 15 years.
He was still running things from the prison, gets back out.
(18:16):
It gets out early on parole in 1985 and immediately within a couple of years is under investigation
again being charged.
You want to describe what Rico charges are and the history behind them?
Yeah, so Rico charges are basically the way you can take a, where they think they can
prove a criminal enterprise.
So it's not like just an instance of drug dealing or an instant of, it can be theft
(18:41):
rings, it can be drug dealing, it can be anything that's criminal.
And it's being done like a business, like it's being ran like a legitimate business
would be run.
That gives the government the ability to file what's called Rico charges.
And those Rico charges can be a little bit, sometimes easier to prove, but they also typically
come with a significant more penalty being able to be lopped on top of whatever the underlying
(19:06):
charge may be too.
So Danny the Deacon gets hit with Rico charges, ends up dying in February of 2014, having
served out his time in prison.
The Pagans actually did a fairly large ceremony for him at the time he died.
Interrelated members of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, known by the name Anthony Rocky LaRocca
(19:32):
was the nephew to the former Pittsburgh mafia boss, John LaRocca, and acted as a liaison
for the Pagans and the LaRocca crime family.
In 1973, LaRocca and another member of the Pagans were charged with assaulting an ATF
vehicle, conspiracy, firearms, and possession of a silencer.
In 1990, LaRocca and Francis Rick Ferry were sentenced to life in prison for the murder
(19:58):
of John Heatherton.
While incarcerated, LaRocca continued to control his cocaine distribution network through family
contacts and organized crime members of the Motorcycle Club until he was indicted and
given an additional 20 years.
Yeah, so I wanted to add on to this, you kind of went a little bit ahead, but the Rico charges,
(20:23):
they actually started with the mafia.
They wanted to, they didn't have a way to prosecute someone who didn't actually have
their hands dirty.
And of course in the mafia, the top guys don't have their hands dirty.
They have the people do it for them.
So they wanted the way they could see the obviously charge it, the obviously link, but
they couldn't charge these top guys that were calling the shots and they were arresting
(20:46):
all these people and nothing was happening.
You know, so that's actually where Rico charges came in.
And Rico means Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act.
And so it was originally, it was a very rare charge that people would get when it first
came around.
And honestly, for a very long while, this, it came out in the 1970s specifically because
(21:09):
of stuff like this and it would only be in like drastic situations that people would
get hit with Rico charges.
I feel like now lately you've, people use it all the time, all the time.
Cause they know it will fuck people.
Become one of the kind of one of the harshest tools that can be utilized, but it's now,
I would say charged very, very frequently.
I mean, just, you know, in the terms of like when they came up with Rico, they were thinking
(21:35):
of a top dog who was collecting all this money, but wasn't getting his hands dirty.
Well, now it's kind of been interpreted as, as if you're working in a group, it's Rico.
Well, if say you're a weed dealer, you're working in a group regard, you can't sell
anything if you don't have a supplier and you don't have buyers.
You can't sell shit by yourself no matter what you're doing.
(21:57):
So that intrinsically makes you a criminal enterprise.
Exactly.
And in Indiana, they have a thing called Corrupt Business Influence.
It's like the state version of Rico charges.
So you see it on the state side, you see it in the federal side, both.
And it's, it's a tool that basically the legislatures have given the prosecutors to attack what
(22:18):
they can see, see like a corporate level of crime and it adds significant penalties.
And that's why, that's why you'll see them, I think being utilized more and more.
Last thing we're going to touch on base on the base with, with the pagan group is in
July 17th of 1994, there were at least eight members of the pagans that showed up at the
annual charity picnic fundraiser by another motorcycle club known by Tri County.
(22:41):
And this was in Hackettstown.
The pagans were there to intimidate the local motorcycle clubs into aligning with the pagans
so that they'd have a larger power base to prevent the Hells Angels from becoming established
in New Jersey.
A fight started and escalated from the fists to knives, from fists to knives and guns.
When it was over, pagans Glen Richie, Diego Vega had been shot dead, pagan Ron Locke and
(23:04):
the Tri County member William Johnson had gunshot wounds and Tri County member Rick
Hank Rigger had his throat cut.
It's made huge news back at the time when it happened because there was such a, it was
really a bloodbath.
And the part that was really, I found interesting was that these are biker gangs, but the pagans
showed up in a, in a van, popped out of a van and did the attack from a van.
(23:26):
Yeah, they were, they were ready to get shit popping.
This was all about, this was a coordinated event.
It wasn't like two biker gangs crossed ways and things went down.
This was about the pagans trying to reestablish or continue to establish their dominance in
the, in the Northeast.
And unfortunately this happened at an annual charity picnic fundraiser, you know, and
were they really trying to do good?
(23:48):
Yeah.
But you know, those worlds can collide so quick.
Well, and that's what gives the sort of that negative connotation.
It wasn't the group that was attacked that was doing the good was literally doing nothing
wrong at the moment, at the moment.
They meant they were, you know, worried about their territory and making sure that there
wasn't somebody that was going to develop or be somebody else that might line up with
the hell's angels.
(24:09):
We're going to move on to another motorcycle club known as the Warlocks.
The Warlocks were established by Tom who went by the Grubb or Grubb Freeland.
Interestingly he was an ex-U.S. Navy veteran from Orlando, Florida in 1967.
The mother chapter still to this day is located in Florida and the club's founder, Mr. Grubb
(24:33):
died in 2019.
The club's insignia is a harpy, which is a Greek in Roman mythology, a female monster
in the form of a bird with a human face.
Sounds very appropriate motorcycle club.
So if anybody knows what a harpy is in particular, it's supposed to be like very beautiful and
(24:58):
it's kind of the same as sirens.
If anybody knows what a siren is, it'd be like basically mermaids and they would chant
sailors and they'd sing beautiful songs and sailors would steer their boats towards them
and they would see these beautiful women in the water and they would jump into the water
to be with them and think that they were going to have sex and stuff and then they would
be eaten.
These were the same way but they were kind of bird-like instead.
(25:19):
So they'd be able to hide the rest of their body and they'd look like a beautiful woman
and then kill these people.
One of the things we love about producer Devon is he's full of random bullshit or at least
shit.
I love Greek and Roman mythology.
I think it's accurate but I have no idea.
So if anybody ever hears something that he's saying that's not true, hey, I will never
correct him.
(25:40):
Call me out.
I don't have any fucking clue.
I can throw links and citations towards my shit.
Their colors are red and white.
The club rapidly expanded at the end of the Vietnam War when thousands of soldiers returned
home to the United States, many of them to Pennsylvania and Florida.
The club is most prominent and has significant territory in the Delaware Valley including
(26:03):
Philadelphia, Delaware County, South Jersey and Wilmington though they also have a heavy
presence in nearby Lee Valley.
There are now chapters all throughout Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware as well as Ohio
with the mother chapter still residing in the state of Florida.
Rivals with the pagan MC club, they were founded in 1965.
(26:23):
They've established connections within the Philadelphia crime family and their dealings
are much more obscure and not as much information is known about them except for a few notable
crimes that we will now dive into a little bit.
On May 6th of 1995 and this is really a pretty sad story.
Police Sergeant on all the way around and we'll get into that.
(26:44):
Police Sergeant Ippolito Lee Gonzalez of the Franklin Township, Glaucaster County, New
Jersey.
It's pronounced Glauchester.
It's Glauchester County.
Is that Irish?
I think so.
Sounds Irish.
I think it's also a county or like a place in Scotland.
Scottish.
Sounds Ireland or Scottish.
Anyways, so we're going to get into the story.
It sounds Ireland or Scottish.
(27:06):
He had pulled over a couple warlock members and that was Robert Mudman Simon and Charles
Shovel Staples.
I wonder why he was called Shovel.
Mudman caused the problems.
Shovel buried them.
They were on a traffic stop moments after they had just committed a commercial burglary.
(27:27):
Simon, also known as the Mudman, immediately upon pulling him over, shot Gonzalez twice
in the head and neck and Gonzalez died instantly.
Simon was later said, Simon later said he shot Sergeant Gonzalez because he didn't
want to return back to prison.
He'd been in prison previously and maybe I think was even on parole time.
(27:48):
He was quickly apprehended and pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death.
At the time that Gonzalez's murder, Simon was barely three months out of jail and he
was on parole after a 1981 conviction of killing another woman.
It made a ton of news at the time because the public was outraged that somebody had
already done murder, was out again and within months, while still on parole, has now shot
(28:13):
and killed a cop.
So it made a ton of news at the time.
We still see shit like that in the news.
Absolutely.
Outrage, which granted, valid of course.
Yeah, one of the murder cases I did when I was a prosecutor, the victim was killed with
the claw side of a hammer to her head and the guy that killed her was one week out of
parole on a violent rape.
(28:33):
So it happens.
Terrible, terrible stuff.
At the times of he was out on parole, he was sentenced to death and he was stomped to death
by Ambrose Harris inside the prison, who was another death row inmate in New Jersey at
the Trenton State Prison.
He argued self-defense and his prison killing was, despite being on death row, acquitted
(28:58):
of that murder.
I'm curious, like why even give a fuck?
Yeah, I guess why not make the state do more work, I guess.
Maybe it was going to, well, maybe they, it would have sped up his execution.
The interesting part of this story is that, well, there's a lot out there about Charles
Mudman Simon's involvement in that.
(29:22):
Charles, Robert Mudman Simon, Charles shovel staples also got arrested and convicted of
murder as well.
He actually had no criminal history.
The, the burglary they had, the commercial burglary they had done was designed purposely
to be done at the time that the business was closed and there'd be nobody in it.
And he didn't want to hurt anybody.
He was really adamant to not be hurting him.
(29:43):
And he had nothing to do with the shooting of this sheriff deputy.
It was done spontaneously without his knowledge that it was going to occur.
And that resulted in him being convicted of murder.
And he was also a veteran, wasn't he?
He was a, he was a military veteran.
He had no history.
And he has some interesting things out there where he's, he's accepted his fate.
(30:04):
But there's a decent amount of people supportive of him to say that he's, you know, his punishment
was too harsh given that he had an otherwise pretty reputable life.
And, but he's also, he's actually the, the stuff out there about him, he's pretty humble
about it.
He's like, you know, I did, I did get engaged in something where I should have known it
could have gone wrong.
(30:25):
I didn't want it to go this way.
But I mean, when a cop dies, all shit hits the fan.
And that's what happened.
He, he was down on his dick and he needed money.
They robbed a commercial business and typically they'd go in guns blazing, but he didn't want
to hurt nobody.
So they went in after the fact that I'm not saying that excuses it, but that goes to show
that he wasn't wanting to have this cop be killed.
He had no idea that his, the guy with him was about to murder this cop.
(30:48):
Like, I can only imagine this guy was probably like literally, like not even figuratively,
literally shitting himself.
Yeah, I'm sure as soon as he saw it happen, he's like, Oh fuck.
I mean, what do we do now?
You know?
Yeah.
Terrible.
In October, the warlocks get tied into the drug, the drug industry too, just like most
of the criminal motorcycle clubs did.
(31:09):
In October, 2008, the Pennsylvania state attorney general, Tom Corbett, he alleged that the
warlocks motorcycle club was involved in the dealing and manufacturing of methamphetamine
operation based in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
There was a sting that they dubbed operation underground.
Corbett said the operation manufacturer manufactured and distributed $9 million worth of methamphetamine
(31:33):
throughout the southeastern part of Pennsylvania and possibly supplied to members of the warlocks
motorcycle club, which had allegedly been linked to organized crime and drug trafficking.
So they got tied into the drug industry as well.
There was a number of criminal charges and things of that nature that came out of it.
(31:53):
And you know, just added to the history of that organization.
We're going to next talk about what may be, and this will be our last club that we hit
up, but probably the, I don't know, wouldn't you say the most well known?
Oh yeah.
And the most infamous.
Yeah.
The hell's angels.
I think even those that aren't familiar with motorcycle clubs in general, I've heard are
(32:17):
the hell's angels.
They're huge and indie.
Yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
I've seen them.
Their jackets or whatever, however you call them, whatever they refer to them as, their
gear is all pretty recognizable.
Yeah.
And you've got many, many, many family members that were acquaintances or friends with many
(32:39):
people in hell's angels.
Hell's angels are worldwide outlaw motorcycle club, but was members typically ride Harley
Davidson motorcycles.
In fact, I think I've never seen one that didn't.
I think they would probably be belittled if they were riding something else.
Yeah.
You have, I'm almost certain that you have to have a Harley.
Perspected to have a Harley.
They're throughout the United States and Canada, they're incorporated as the hell's angels
(33:02):
motorcycle corporation.
So there's a lot of formality to them.
Common nicknames for the hell's angels for the, were HA, red and white, HAMC and 81.
They had a membership between 3,000 and 3,600 with 467 chapters in 59 countries.
So we're talking about a huge organization, one of the largest, most famous in the world.
(33:27):
So the number 81, it actually comes from think of where H is on the alphabet and where A
is on the alphabet.
A is the first letter, H is the eight.
That is where the 81 comes from.
I know it's-
You all may have remembered me talking about Devin Fuller with information.
Somehow he knows-
Hey, worthless, but interesting.
(33:49):
And as something so trivial as that, I think that was pretty cool.
That was good.
Yeah.
I had no idea where 81 came from.
Now I do.
That's why we like having Devin on the show.
Many police and international intelligence agencies, including the United States Department
of Justice and Europol, did I say that right?
Europol?
Europol.
Europol.
Consider the club an organized crime syndicate.
(34:10):
Now I want to add, this organization is so damn big that there's not like some freaking
grand master at the very top controlling these strings worldwide.
Now the leaders of all of these different subsections of Hell's Angels may talk to
each other, but based off what I was reading, sometimes Hell's Angels, different sects of
(34:35):
each other will even-
Battle amongst themselves.
Yeah, like bump heads and stuff.
Well, any time you're getting involved in territories and one has this part of town
or that part of town, easily can develop into that.
They originally got their start in Fontana, California back in 1948, and it was the merger
of several motorcycle clubs that led to what was the Hell's Angels.
(34:59):
Otto Friedle... Do that again.
Otto Friedle.
I think it's Otto Friedle.
Friedle.
Okay, we'll go with that.
A World War II veteran credited starting the club after breaking from the pissed off Bastards
Motorcycle Club over a feud with a rival gang.
If nothing else, perhaps Mr. Otto decided just the name pissed off Bastards was one
(35:25):
he couldn't live with anymore.
I don't know.
He was a World War II veteran.
I feel like he was a pretty pissed off bastard.
Could be.
Could be.
Hey, you got to admit, one, the similarities are all of these guys seem to be people you
would respect in everyday life, veterans, biochemists, and they're also very good at
making names.
It's a high level of creativity.
(35:48):
According to the club's website, the name was first suggested by Arvid Olsen, an associate
of the founders who had served the Hell's Angels squadron of the Flying Tigers in China
during World War II.
So exactly kind of what you're talking about.
A letter written to the Guinness Book of World Records by a member of the Hell's Angels,
it is instead stated that the club's name was taken from the Hell's Angels squadron
(36:09):
of the 30th, 303rd bombardment group, which was active in the European theater of World
War II.
It is at least clear that the name was inspired by the tradition from World War I and II,
whereby the Americans gave the squadrons fierce death defying titles as an example of the
lies in one of the three of this lies.
Oh, an example of that lies in one of the three P-40s squadrons of Flying Tigers fielded
(36:33):
in Burma and China, which was dubbed Hell's Angels.
So there's a lot of different varieties, I guess stories, if you will, of where the name
came from.
In 1930, Howard Hughes filmed Hell's Angels showcased extraordinary and dangerous feats
of aviation.
And it is believed that World War II groups that used the name based on that film.
(36:53):
According to the Hell's Angels website, they are aware that there is an apostrophe missing
in Hell's Angels, but it is you who will miss it.
We don't.
That's how they dealt with the name over the years.
I don't think there's an official this is where it came from.
Well, I mean, it's kind of like playing phone tag, you know what I mean?
Or like that telephone game where you all speak through a phone.
(37:16):
Stuff just kind of gets messed up over time.
Stories get changed and where maybe multiple people had similar experiences to where when
you told it to someone else, you know, their memory was different.
But for an outlaw motorcycle group to have a website, that seems pretty legit.
Yeah, I mean, especially in this day and age, the tie to military carries on and that they
(37:37):
have a system of patches that are very similar to military medals.
The specific meaning of each patch is not publicly known, but the patches are an identity
of each biker's specific or significant actions or belief.
The official colors of the Hell's Angels are red lettering displayed on a white background,
hence the clubs nicknamed the red and white.
The patches are worn on either leather or denim, jacks or vests.
(38:00):
The club is not officially a racially segregated organization.
In the U.S., at least one charter allegedly requires the candidate be a white male.
And Sonny Barger said in a 2000 BBC interview, the club as a whole is not racist, but we
probably have enough racist members that no black guy is going to get in.
(38:20):
So at the time, the club had no black members.
The Satan's Angels, MC in Vancouver, had a black member when it merged with the Hell's
Angels in 1983.
The San Francisco and Anchorage chapters threatened to have the Vancouver chapter expelled from
the club when they learned of the situation.
The matter was ultimately solved when the man changed his nationality to Hawaiian.
(38:43):
An unsuggested Hell's Angels chapter in Windsor, England was granted official status in 1985
shortly after its only black member, John Nicholson, had died in police custody.
That's pretty fucked, isn't it?
He changed his for black to Hawaiian?
Well, not even that.
One, I don't know how the hell that fixes anything.
And I don't know how.
He's still black.
Exactly.
And two, I mean, here, obviously this is still crime.
(39:05):
You know, there's no honor among thieves.
But this black member died in police custody, probably getting arrested doing something
on behalf of a Hell's Angels.
And the other chapters were basically excited that he was dead.
Like, that would just hurt so bad.
Thinking you have like a tribe.
Right.
(39:25):
Yeah, I know.
And I don't know.
Weird that they went from black to Hawaiian.
Yeah, where the fuck is that?
I don't understand that.
And the guy, like, maybe he was like really white.
Looked Hawaiian.
Like maybe he looked white.
Or white passing, maybe.
Or he wore a, what do they call it, a lei?
He had a layer on his neck.
(39:46):
Oh yeah, yeah.
A lei.
They're tied to criminal activity.
The members of the organization have always continuously asserted that they are the only
group of motorcycle enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together to organize special
events such as group road trips, fundraisers, parties, and motorcycle rallies.
And that any crimes are the responsibility of individuals not associated with the club
(40:09):
as a whole.
Which I think makes sense if they have a website.
I feel like that gives credence to that.
Because what criminal organization would have a goddamn website?
Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, you can look at any entity, any group, and if it's
large enough, there's going to be somebody that's committed crimes in it.
So it's not like they don't have some, you know, if there's, again, one percenters.
(40:30):
So if there's most of them are doing good things and doing this just to be a part of
a group of individuals that happen to enjoy the same hobby of riding motorcycles, then
yeah, I mean, that's a legit thing.
But yeah, despite this, various US law enforcement agencies classify the Hells Angels as one
of the quote unquote big four motorcycle gangs, along with the Pagans, as referenced earlier,
(40:52):
adult laws and bandidos and contend that members carry out widespread violent crime and organized
crime, including drug dealing, trafficking and stolen goods, extortion and prostitution
operations.
Members of the organization have continuously asserted that they are only a group of motorcycle
enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together to organize social events such as
group road trips, fundraisers, parties and motorcycle rallies, and that any crimes are
(41:15):
the responsibility of the people who carried them out, not the club as a whole.
So this is always like the same thing that they've said.
Like you just said that.
It's not it's not us.
It's a few of them.
Right.
And it did mention the bandidos that is I didn't bring up we were not bringing up the
bandidos because that is a whole podcast in and of itself.
They are the most cutthroat violent biker gang in the in the basically world, definitely
(41:37):
in America surpass the Hells Angels in terms of outright violence.
I'm not even sure if the bandidos have people in them who think that they're not committing
crimes.
I think that is just pure.
They're accepting of that.
Yeah, they are all crimes and they are very cutthroat and they are like the most brutal
murderous and drug fueled OMC that like exists.
(42:03):
And despite the claims of the Hells Angels, the federal government, knowing that this
is an international organization, has designated the or designated the bike group as a known
criminal organization and the Department of Homeland Security as a federal policy prohibiting
its foreign members from entering the country.
(42:23):
So they've put the Hells Angels that are international members on like the do not fly list into America.
They are stating or the federal government has stated the Hells Angels partaken drug
trafficking, gun running, extortion, money laundering, insurance fraud, kidnapping, robbery,
theft, counterfeiting, contraband smuggling, loan sharking, prostitution, trafficking and
(42:44):
stolen goods, motorcycle and motorcycle parts theft, assault, murder, bombings, arson, intimidation
and contract killing.
Those are all the things they've listed as reasons that they've banned members from coming
into the country.
The club's rule and narcotics trades involves the production, transportation and distribution
of marijuana and methamphetamine in addition to the transportation and distribution of
(43:06):
cocaine, hashish, heroin, LSD, MDMA, PCP and diverted pharmaceuticals.
This is all according to the FBI.
The Hells Angels may earn up to a billion dollars in drug sales annually.
So obviously the federal government.
I can hate these guys.
Yeah, they don't agree with the peace loving charity sort of tradition that they are.
(43:31):
That's what they put out.
Yeah.
What I'm really curious is I wonder if it's since all Hells Angels.
Well, I don't know if it's since Hells Angels are not allowed in the country.
I wonder if that includes people who haven't committed crimes and they're literally in
that as a hobby.
It's been designated as a member.
I think so.
Yeah.
Or they're just as a hobby.
I mean, I think it's like being on the known terrorist list.
I wonder how they like how you would even find out that like, would you fly to America
(43:55):
and then get arrested when you're here just because you.
Well, I think they wouldn't even let you pass through customs probably and through the passport
process.
You think they like arrest you or just turn you off, like turn you around?
As long as it's turning you away.
Oh.
Yeah, I mean, all because you you ride a motorcycle and wear a coat.
Even if you maybe didn't do anything wrong.
(44:16):
Yeah.
I mean, I can imagine how frustrating that would be for the people that know they don't
do anything wrong and especially the people that are doing like real charities and.
Well, a lot of that probably does go back to 9 11 where, you know, some very what looked
on their face to be completely normal people that end up being affiliated with the terrorist
(44:36):
group infiltrated the country just by coming here.
And then they spent years here before they did anything criminal or bad.
And obviously they did something horrific.
And so then that created the whole fly list and all these things that they try to be more
proactive as opposed to reactive to.
And so I'm sure that's where these international members of the Hells Angels have gotten caught
up in that same sort of governmental, I guess, watch list, if you will.
(45:00):
Kind of made the term like sleeper sleeper cell agents kind of like in the public eye
as well.
You know what that is, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And so it seems completely normal, but they can do what needs to be done at a blink of
an eye.
I mean, one of the 9 11 guys was like a flight school instructor.
Right.
And so that's how he learned to fly.
And that was all part of his cover that was really designed to teach him how else he could
(45:22):
fly a giant jet into buildings.
Yeah, that's just so you never know.
I mean, so you can kind of see where they're getting with that.
But it doesn't make any less unfair to the guys that are legit.
Yeah.
I mean, it would be tough to because I know that I feel like I wouldn't I wouldn't like
to come to terms with that.
No, and I've known I've known some people that are members of a bicycle group and have
(45:45):
bicycle.
I said I said it today.
Yeah, motorcycle group.
I don't know any bicycle groups.
You're going to get your ass beat walking out of here one time.
They're going to think this is a bicycle.
Right.
I've known some guys in motorcycle clubs that they weren't violent people and they didn't
want other people to be violent people.
But you can't control what everybody does.
In any organization.
(46:06):
Unfortunately, I also kind of feel like if you're treated as a criminal just because you're
part of this group that some of them do criminal activities and you're already being punished
for something you never did, it would enable you to be like, well, fuck it.
I'll commit crimes.
Right.
Right.
No.
Yeah.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to be a wrap on our coverage on bicycle by
some of the bigger biker gangs.
(46:27):
No, then I did it again.
Motorcycle man gangs in our clubs.
Wrapped leaving here.
Exactly.
And just to highlight sort of what that history is and why they have sort of the negative
connotations that have been attached to them.
Again, we thank you very much for listening to Pocket Law Talks.
(46:49):
And until next time, we will see you guys then.
Thank you.
Yeah.
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