Hells Angels MC criminal allegations and incidents

Members of the rival motorcycle gang, the Comancheros, and members of the Hells Angels were believed to be involved in a clash at Sydney Airport on Sunday, March 22, 2009. The clash resulted in one man, Hells Angels associate Anthony Zervas, being beaten to death. Police estimated as many as 15 men were involved in the violence. Documents released by NSW Police detail the brawl as a result of a Comanchero gang member and a Hells Angel being on the same flight from Melbourne. Four suspects were arrested as a result of the altercation. As a result of heightening violence, New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees announced the state police anti-gang squad would be boosted to 125 members from 50.[56]

On the night of March 29, 2009, Hells Angels member Peter Zervas, the brother of the man killed during the Sydney Airport Brawl a week earlier, was shot and injured in retaliation as he left his car outside his home.[57]

On July 20, 2011, a NSW judge dismissed a bid by the state's police commissioner to have the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club declared a criminal organization, under laws introduced to NSW parliament in 2009 allowing the court to declare criminal organizations as declared organizations.[58]

On 8 July 2013 Tyrone Lee Slemnik, 37, was standing guard outside the home of Hells Angels Sydney chapter president Suvat Sarimsaklioglu when he was gunned down as shots were fired from a passing car.[59] No one has been held responsible for his death and there have been no arrests as a result. Following the death of Slemnik, Sarimsaklioglu, the club president was charged with the possession of a military-style assault weapon, found in the boot of a taxi for which he was later acquitted of. His lawyer, Omar Juweinat told the court that the police were unable to prove that Sarimsaklioglu knew the firearm was present. Police feared that the weapon was to be used for retaliation.[60]

Following his acquittal for those matters, in April 2016 Sarimsaklioglu stood trial, with two others for abduction for which he was also found not guilty.[61] In November 2017, he was charged for the supply of a large commercial quantity of drugs. He was held in custody for over 18 months before his trial was derailed by the prosecution prompting lawyer, Omar Juweinat to complain that “civil liberties are quickly eroding”.[62]

Bruno and Nuno Da Silva, two Portuguese immigrant twin brothers and former Brisbane Hells Angels members, were arrested following a police surveillance operation and pleaded guilty to trafficking methylamphetamine from June 2012 to October 2013. The brothers operated from an East Brisbane locksmith business and passed a percentage of their drug earnings to the Hells Angels at weekly meetings, although they had left the club at the time of their arrest. In December 2015, Bruno was sentenced to nine years imprisonment, while Nuno was sentenced to seven years.[63][64]

In 2012, Peter Sidirourgos and Zeljko "Steve" Mitrovic, both senior Hells Angels members in Sydney, were granted Nomad status and spearheaded a push into the Gold Coast, founding a chapter in the suburb of Burleigh Heads.[65] Police stated in 2015 that the Hells Angels were now the most active club on the Gold Coast after anti-bikie laws weakened the rival Bandidos and Finks (a club later patched over to the Mongols), who had previously been more prominent in the area.[66]

The Hells Angels were one of 26 motorcycle clubs designated as criminal organizations in the state of Queensland under the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) Act, which was passed on October 16, 2013 and went into effect immediately.[67][68]

Similar to the case in Queensland, the Hells Angels were also declared a criminal organization in the state of South Australia along with nine other motorcycle clubs under legislation that came into force in August 2015. Under the laws, it is an offence for members of these organizations to gather in groups of three or more in public or wear gang colours and logos.[69][70] Five alleged Hells Angels members and prospects became the first to be charged under the laws after they were arrested in a series of raids across Adelaide on December 31, 2015.[71]

In 1980, Melbourne chapter founding members Peter Hill and Raymond Hamment flew to California to visit Oakland chapter president Kenny Walton in prison. Walton taught them how to manufacture amphetamines, paving the way for the drug's introduction into Australia, and in return, the Australians supplied the Oakland chapter with 300 litres of the chemical phenylacetone, enough to produce $50 million worth of amphetamines. Hill posted the phenylacetone in three-litre pineapple juice tins to his closest US contact, James Patton "Sleepy Jim" Brandes. The Hells Angels rented a farmhouse in Melbourne's northeast, near Hurstbridge, where they produced amphetamines in 50 pound (22.7 kilogram) batches worth $600,000. The drug lab was raided by the Special Operations Group on March 10, 1982, and Hill and three other Hells Angels were arrested. Eventually, investigators arrested 19 people and seized three kilograms of amphetamines, as well as cash, explosives, handguns and a machine-gun. This sparked an internal feud over the gang's operations that led to around 40 violent incidents. Hill and another member, Roger Biddlestone, cut their ties with the Hells Angels and cooperated with police, prompting the club to put a contract on their lives. Nine Hells Angels were charged with conspiring to murder Hill and Biddlestone, but Biddlestone refused to testify and the charges against his former club mates were dropped; he was subsequently convicted of contempt of court. Hill was convicted on drugs charges in 1987 and jailed alongside a number of others. During the investigation, codenamed Omega Two, the police tracked club members' movements ferociously, prompting Jim Brandes, the Melbourne Hells Angels' American contact, to try to assassinate Bob Armstrong, a detective on the case. Brandes, who had previously been acquitted of the 1978 attempted murder two police officers in the US, flew to Melbourne but was immediately deported.[72][73]

Anton Kenny, a former president of the Hells Angels' Australian Nomads chapter who was kicked out of the club in 1983 for cooperating with police, was killed after being shot five times with a .32 caliber pistol following an afternoon of drinking at the home of Melbourne drug dealer Dennis Allen on November 7, 1985. His body was disposed of by having its legs cut off with a chainsaw and stuffed inside a 44-gallon drum with concrete and lime, and was discovered in the Yarra River nearly four months later. According to a witness, Kenny was murdered by Allen because he called him a "rat". Allen died of heart failure less than two years later, having never been charged with the murder.[74]

Terrence Raymond "Terry" Tognolini, the president and enforcer in the Hells Angels Nomads, was involved in an apparent road rage incident with motorist Mustafa Yildirim in Campbellfield, Melbourne on December 22, 1995. Tognolini followed Yildirim to his workplace and the men traded blows until they were separated before Tognolini retrieved a gun from his car and fired several shots at Yildirim, all of which missed. Police raided Tognolini's home and found five cannabis plants in the backyard. He was charged with unlawful assault, assault with a weapon, making threats to kill, possessing cannabis and cultivating a narcotic plant. The case against him collapsed, however, when Yildirim refused to testify after being repeatedly harassed.[75]

Terrence Tognolini was later implicated in the murder of Vicki Joy Jacobs, a 37-year-old woman who was shot six times as she slept next to her six-year-old son in her apartment in Long Gully, Bendigo on June 12, 1999. The previous year, Jacobs had given evidence that helped convict her ex-husband Gerald David Preston for the August 1996 murders of drug dealer and mechanic Les Knowles and his employee Tim Richards in Adelaide, and her testimony implicated the Hells Angels in hiring Preston for the killings. The prosecution heard that Tognolini had contracted Preston to murder Knowles who was trying to expand into the Hells Angels' drug territory, and also sold him the Luger pistol that was used in the murders. Victoria Police bulldozed their way into the fortified Thomastown headquarters of the Nomads chapter in July 1999 as part of the investigation, seizing a sawn-off shotgun, bulletproof vest, bags of documents and three motorcycles.[76][77] Tognolini was overseas and Preston imprisoned at the time of Jacobs' murder and no one has been charged with the crime; however, a coronial inquest in 2004 declared that police believe she was killed on the orders of the Hells Angels as a payment for Preston remaining silent over the club's involvement in the Adelaide murders.[78][79]

Hells Angels members Raymond Joseph "Ray" Hamment, Jr. and Paul Peterson, and club associate Andrew Hinton, each pleaded guilty to charges of conduct endangering life, intentionally causing serious injury, false imprisonment and rioting after abducting Brendan Schievella from outside a bar and holding him captive for five hours in Ivanhoe, Melbourne on June 25, 2005. Schievella was found with a toe amputated but told police he could not recall how it happened and no motive has been established for the incident.[80][81]

In January 2007, Terrence Tognolini was expelled from the Hells Angels, had his tattoos removed, was savagely beaten and dumped on the street outside the Thomastown clubhouse after his fellow members learned that he was the subject of child sex allegations.[82] Police arrested him on blackmail and arson charges and for a series of sex offences six months later. He was found guilty of 18 counts of supplying a drug of dependence to a child, one count of an indecent act with a child under 16, and one count of attempting to pervert the course of justice and imprisoned for six-and-a-half years in 2009, and was further convicted of nine counts of blackmail, three of arson, two of intentionally causing injury and stalking and had 18 months added to his sentence in 2010. Many of Toglioni's crimes were part of an extortion racket he ran, using his former Hells Angels connections as well as threats and assaults to intimidate his victims.[83][84]

On June 18, 2007, Hells Angels member Christopher Wayne Hudson opened fire on two men and a woman during an argument in the Central Business District of Melbourne; after assaulting his girlfriend Kara Douglas, two male bystanders, Brendan Keilar and Paul de Waard attempted to assist Douglas. Hudson pulled a gun and shot all three, killing Keilar, on the corner of William Street and Flinders Lane.[85] Hudson fled from the scene and went into hiding for two days, before turning himself in to police on June 20, 2007 in Wallan, north of Melbourne.[86] In May 2008, Hudson pleaded guilty to the murder of Brendan Keilar[87] and was sentenced that September to life imprisonment with a minimum of 35 years before becoming eligible for parole.[88]

Hells Angels member Glyn David Dickman was found guilty of intentionally causing serious injury and threatening to kill, and acquitted of theft, while club hang-around Ali Chaouk was found guilty of recklessly causing serious injury, threat to kill and false imprisonment in October 2014 after the pair beat 18-year-old German tourist Faisal Aakbari with a baseball bat at the Hells Angels clubhouse in Thomastown in September 2009 when he falsely claimed to be a club member. Aakbari's injuries included bleeding between the skull and lining of the brain, a broken leg and lacerations to his scalp and face.[89]

Peter John "Skitzo" Hewat, sergeant-at-arms of the Hells Angels' East County chapter in Campbellfield, Melbourne, was arrested in March 2013 after striking a 64-year-old woman during a dispute over his dog, and was again arrested that October as part of a statewide raid targeting the Hells Angels in which thirteen people were arrested and weapons and drugs were seized.[90][91] Hewat was sentenced to 10 months in jail in January 2014 after he pleaded guilty to assault, weapons offences, handling stolen goods and operating a tow truck without the proper licence.[92]

The Bandidos reportedly declared war on the Hells Angels after an ambush on several Bandidos members outside the affiliated Diablos' clubhouse in Melton, Melbourne on March 1, 2013 in which over 30 shots were fired and two men, including Bandidos national sergeant-at-arms Toby Mitchell, were wounded.[93] The Hells Angels Nomads chapter were blamed for the attack and brothers Daniel and Ben Pegoraro, both members of Hells Angels puppet club the Red Devils, were questioned by police.[94] Within a week of the shooting, a clubhouse in Bendigo linked to the Hells Angels was burned down and the Pegoraro brothers' home in Epping, Melbourne was attacked in a drive-by shooting.[95] Although prolonged violence was expected, the feud seemingly ended after senior members of the two clubs held peace talks.[96][97]

Ray Hamment, Jr., the president of the Hells Angels Nomads, pleaded guilty to a charge of recklessly causing serious injury and was jailed three months after attacking a man who approached him in a McDonald's restaurant in Thomastown on June 7, 2013.[98]

The Hells Angels carried out drive-by shootings (using either AK-47s or M1 carbines) and attempted bombings on two properties, a tattoo parlour in Dandenong and a gym in Hallam, owned by Comancheros state president Michael "Mick" Murray in the early hours of September 30, 2013 after several Hells Angels were assaulted while trying to recover stolen motorcycles from the rival club. Within hours of the attacks, the clubhouse of the Hells Angels' Darkside chapter in Seaford, Melbourne was shot at in an apparent retaliation.[99] On October 13, 2013, Victoria police raided every Hells Angels property in the state in an attempt to curb bikie-related violence, seizing guns, ammunition, drugs and cash, and arresting 13 people, but failed to retrieve the assault rifles used in the shootings.[100] Dennis Basic, a prospective member of the Darkside chapter, was arrested for the attempted bombings of the properties and pleaded guilty to thirteen charges which also included firearm and drug possession; having been held in custody since his arrest until the time of his sentencing in December 2015, the judge ruled that the time he had served in jail was sufficient penalty but ordered he serve a 12-month community corrections order.[101]

The president of the Hells Angels' Darkside chapter, Mohammed "Sam" Khodr, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years for selling more than $220,000 worth of amphetamines to undercover police officers in January 2015. He had been targeted during an investigation code-named Operation Statin, part of a major crackdown on motorcycle gangs by Victoria Police, and sold 910 grams of the drug to officers in 11 separate transactions between October 2013 and February 2014. He also sold a Browning semi-automatic pistol with ammunition to the officers for $10,500.[102]

Investigations

In late 2004 to 2005, the culmination of investigations into the actions of the motorcycle club led to charges against 18 people, including members of the Hells Angels and other associates of the gang.[121]

Background

In July 2003, a man offered to give police information and became the police agent around whom much of the E-Pandora investigation ensued. Charges arose from project E-Pandora, an extensive police investigation, into the alleged criminal activities of the East End Charter of the Hells Angels (the "EEHA"). The evidence in this case included intercepted private communications including telephone and audio recordings, physical surveillance, and expert evidence. The case would eventually be dubbed the trial of R. v. Giles,[122] and would see three charged individuals appear before the Supreme Court of British Columbia (SCBC). 72 appearances would span from May 14, 2007 until February 20, 2008 and, by order of Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie, include a publication ban on related trials.[123]

Ruling

On March 27, 2008, the SCBC Justice MacKenzie ruled against prosecutors who had attempted to convict a Hells Angels member of possession for the benefit of a criminal organization. Although two associates of the Hells Angels, David Roger Revell, 43, and Richard Andrew Rempel, 24, were convicted of possession for the purpose of trafficking, Justice MacKenzie concluded that with the acquittal of the only Hells Angel member being tried, David Francis Giles, on a charge of possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, a second charge against him (count two) of possessing it for the benefit of a criminal organization had to fail as well.[124] In summary, Revell and Rempel were found guilty but Giles was found not guilty on either count. Also, Revell and Rempel were found not guilty on the charge of possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

In her acquittal of Giles, Justice MacKenzie said she found the evidence against him was "weak" and intercepted communications were "unreliable" because they were difficult to hear. She further stated that the Crown prosecutors had failed to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt the group was working to the "benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization, to wit: the East End charter of the Hells Angels".

Project Halo, a three-year investigation by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Team of the RCMP, into alleged criminal activity with the Nanaimo chapter. The investigation culminated in the search warrant being executed on December 12, 2003. On November 9, 2007 a seizure order was executed, under section 467.12(1) of the Criminal Code, on the clubhouse by dozens of heavily armed RCMP officers.[80]

The Hells Angels' expansion into Manitoba began with a relationship with Los Bravos, a local motorcycle club. In 2000 Los Bravos were "patched over," becoming a full-fledged Hells Angels chapter.[125] The following investigations over the last two years have been executed with the following charges.

On February 15, 2006 the Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force, along with over 150 police officers from the RCMP, Winnipeg Police Service and Brandon Police Service, made numerous arrests and conducted searches as part of the investigation of Project Defense.[126] Thirteen people were indicted on a variety of charges, including drug trafficking, extortion, proceeds of crime, and organized crime related offenses.

Project Defense was initiated in November 2004 and focused on high level members of drug trafficking cells in the province of Manitoba, including members of the Manitoba Hells Angels. During the investigation police made numerous seizures that totaled in excess of seven kilograms of cocaine and three kilograms of methamphetamine from drug traffickers within the Manitoba Hells Angels organization and other drug trafficking cells. Arrest warrants were issued for thirteen individuals and 12 search warrants were authorized for locations in Winnipeg and area.

This long-term covert investigation was initiated by the Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force, which was established in the spring of 2004 when an Agreement was signed between the Winnipeg Police Service, the RCMP, the Brandon Police Service and the Province of Manitoba. The mandate of the task force was to disrupt and dismantle organized crime in the province of Manitoba.

On December 12, 2007 Project Drill[127] came to an end, with Winnipeg Police raiding the Hells Angels clubhouse on Scotia Street. Project Drill started the previous evening with arrests in Thompson and continued throughout the night and early morning in Winnipeg and St. Pierre-Jolys. During the course of Project Drill, police seized vehicles, approximately $70,000 cash, firearms, marijuana, Hells Angel related documents/property and other offense related property. As of December 12, 14 people were in custody and four were still being sought.

Police said it was the second time the chapter president was the target in a police sting since the gang set up shop in the city in 2001. Hells Angels prospect member Al LeBras was also arrested at his Barber Street home in Wednesday's raids.

The recently amended Criminal Property Forfeiture Act gives the province the power to seize the proceeds of crime. Police have exercised similar authority against Hells Angels members in other Canadian cities.[128][129]

On December 2, 2009 Project Divide[130] culminated with 26 arrests, and 8 arrest warrants still outstanding after the year-long investigation. The investigation and arrests targeted alleged drug-trafficking and related activities of the Zig Zag Crew – a puppet club of the Hells Angels Winnipeg chapter.

Other joint investigations include:

• Project Develop,[131] a joint 18-month investigation with Ontario, New Brunswick, and British Columbia
• In January 2006, Project Husky,[132] a two-year investigation involving police forces in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, resulted in the arrest of twenty-seven suspects[133] including five full-patch Angels from across Eastern and Central Canada
• Project Koker,[134] 23-month investigation in Edmonton and Calgary
• Project Halo,[135] a three-year investigation by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Team of the RCMP, into alleged criminal activity with the Nanaimo chapter. The investigation culminated in the search warrant being executed on December 12, 2003. On November 9, 2007 a seizure order was executed, under section 467.12(1) of the Criminal Code, on the clubhouse by dozens of heavily armed RCMP officers.[136]

The Hells Angels London, Ontario chapter was dominated by two brothers, John and Jimmy Coates.[137] John Coates was a 6'7 man who weighted 300 pounds who worked for Angels' Sherbrooke chapter while his younger brother was not as massive as brother, but still described as being very intimidating.[138] In July 2001, Gerry Smith, owner of a car dealership in London was threatened by a Hell Angel, Douglas "Plug" Johnson who told him had to pay the Angels $70, 000 dollars at once.[139] The following week, Jimmy Coates, the president of the Angels' London chapter arrived to tell Smith: "We know where you live. We know you have a wife. We know you have a daughter".[139] Smith informed the police of the threat.[139] A week later, Coates, Johnson and another Angel, Thomas Walinshaw, knocked on the door of Johnson's house to tell him to pay the $70, 000 as Walinshaw maintained he "didn't want to see anyone get hurt".[140] After Smith paid the $70, 000, the police arrested all three men for extortion.[141] At their trial, the three men maintained that they had no weapons, but the Crown Attorney, Elizabeth Maguire, argued that the mere fact the men were wearing jackets with the Hells Angels patches when they went to Smith's house was a threat, saying: "The weapon of that was held to Mr. Smith's head, his wife's head, his daughter's head was the Hells Angels".[142] The three men pleaded guilty to lesser charges.[143] On 7 January 2002, four members of the Jackals, the Angels' puppet club in London, arrived at the house of Thomas Huges, the president of the Outlaws' London chapter, at 434 Egerton.[141] Hughes and another Outlaw, Marcus Cornelisse, opened fire, leading to a shoot-out that one Jackal, Eric Davignon, shot in the stomach.[141] The shoot-out ended with the Jackels fleeing in their car as Hughes and Cornelisse ran down the street shooting at them.[141]

In September 2004, two Angels, Steven "Tiger" Lindsay and Raymond Bonner, were convicted of extorting $75, 000 from a black-market satellite dealer in Barrie.[144] Both Angels had arrived at the man's house wearing their patches while a police bug recorded Lindsay as saying to pay the money or else deal with "five other guys that are fucking the same kind of motherfucker as I am".[145] Justice Micelle Fuerst also convicted the two men of gangsterism, saying "...they presented themselves not as individuals, but as members of a group with a reputation for violence and intimidation. They deliberately invoked their membership in the HAMC with the intent to inspire fear in the victim. They committed extortion with the intent to do so in association with a criminal organization, the HAMC to which they belonged".[145]

In September 2006, after an 18-month investigation conducted by numerous law enforcement agencies and dubbed "Project Tandem," 500 officers and 21 tactical teams raided property connected to the Hells Angels chapters in Ontario. At least 27 members were arrested of which 15 were members of the Hells Angels. Property seized was worth more than 1 million dollars and included $470,000 in cash, $300,000 in vehicles and $140,000 in motorcycles. During the raids, drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy were seized; the total street value of drugs seized was more than 3 million dollars.[146][147][148] Project Tandem was made possible by recruiting Steven Gault, the treasurer of the Angels' Oshawa chapter, to serve as an informer, who is believed to have been the first Canadian "full patch" Hells Angel to wear a wire for the police and who served as the star witness for the Crown in the subsequent trials.[149]

In April 2007, after another 18-month investigation, this one dubbed "Project Develop," 32 Club Houses were raided in Ontario, New Brunswick and British Columbia. The Hells Angels Clubhouse on 498 Eastern Avenue in Toronto was raided by the Biker Enforcement Unit of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and members of the Toronto Police Service on April 4, 2007, at least 15 members of the Hells Angels were detained and charged with drug and weapons offenses at the Eastern Avenue Clubhouse raid.[150][151][152] According to police, Project Develop seized some 500 litres of GHB worth an estimated $996,000, nine kilograms of cocaine, two kilograms of hashish and oxycodone and Viagra pills. Police also seized $21,000 in cash. Project Develop also seized 67 rifles, five handguns, three pairs of brass knuckles and a police baton.[151] Project Develop was made possible by recruiting David Atwell, the sergeant-at-arms of one of the Angels' Toronto chapters, to serve as an informer.[153]

On May 21, 2011, five of the accused arrested as part of Project Develop were convicted by a jury of various drug offenses including trafficking in cocaine and oxycodone, participating in a conspiracy to traffic GHB and possession of GHB for the purpose of trafficking. One of the accused was convicted of possessing a restricted firearm without a license. However, one accused, represented by defence lawyer Lenny Hochberg, was acquitted of two counts of trafficking handguns and possession of brass knuckles and another accused, Larry Pooler the Toronto chapter vice-president who represented himself, was acquitted of two counts of possessing unrestricted firearms without a license, two counts of trafficking oxycodone and one count of participating in a conspiracy to traffic GHB. Furthermore, all accused were acquitted of all charges of acting in association with, or for the benefit of, a criminal organization.[154][155][156]

The emergence of biker gangs in Quebec happened contemporaneously with the United States. Quebec's economic crisis of the 1920s saw many of Quebec's urban population heading for the rural communities in order to cultivate lands to provide for themselves and their families. The settlers' children, like many youth of this era, were rebellious and rejected their parents' values. While the American gangs were created by World War II veterans, in Quebec the formation of motorcycle clubs which was seen as an expression of this rebellion. The period from 1936 to 1960 is remembered by Québécois as the Grande Noirceur ("Great Darkness") when Quebec was for the most part ruled by the ultra-conservative Union Nationale party who imposed traditional Catholic values in a way now considered to be oppressive.[157] With the 1960 provincial election that resulted in the Union Nationale being defeated by the Quebec Liberals, which is considered to be the beginning of the Quiet Revolution that saw Quebec go during the course of a decade from being a very conservative to being a very liberal society.[157] As part of the reaction against the "medieval" Catholic values of the Grande Noirceur saw the emergence of a hedonist culture in Quebec with la belle province having, for example, a significantly higher rate of drug use and illegitimate births than English Canada. As part of the same backlash against the "suffocating" conformism of the Grande Noirceur, outlaw biker clubs became extremely popular in Quebec in the 1960s as many young French-Canadian men saw the outlaw biker culture as a way of expressing rebelliousness and machismo, and by 1968 Quebec had 350 outlaw biker clubs.[157]

By the 1960s, Quebec outlaw motorcycle clubs incorporated many of the same characteristics as American biker clubs, although they mainly operated in rural communities instead of in major cities. One result of having so many outlaw biker clubs in the same province was an especially brutal competition for the control of organized crime rackets in Quebec.[157] The crime journalist James Dubro stated about the distinctive outlaw biker sub-culture of Quebec: "There's always has been more violence in Quebec. In the biker world it's known as the Red Zone. I remember an Outlaws hit man telling me he was scared going to Montreal."[158] The expansion of these groups flourished during the 1970s, as a few popular gangs, notably the Hells Angels and the Outlaws, grew almost 45% due to Quebec's biker groups affiliating themselves with their American counterparts.

On 17 February 1978, Yves "Apache" Trudeau, the Hells Angels leading assassin, killed an Outlaw outside of a Montreal bar.[159] In the ensuring biker war between the two gangs, Trudeau confirmed his reputation as a "psychopathic killer" as he killed 18 out of the 23 Outlaws slain during the conflict.[159] The conflict ended in 1984 with the Hells Angels as the leading biker gang in Quebec and the Outlaws as the leading gang in Ontario.[160] In 1985, in the Lennoxville massacre, the Angels liquidated their chapter in Laval, which caused much them disorganization with many of their leaders being imprisoned and the national president of Hells Angels Canada, Michel "Sky" Langois, fleeing to Morocco to escape an arrest warrant for first degree murder.[160] The Quebec branch of the Hells Angels at its prime included various clubhouses across Quebec which housed many of the gang's puppet groups, who would often carry out the gang's criminal activity. Every Quebec region had its own puppet club: the Rockers in Montreal, the Rowdy Ones in Sorel, the Evil Ones in Drummondville, the Satan's Guard in the Saguenay region, and the Jokers in St-Jean, which includes Maurice Boucher's son, Francis, as a full-fledged member.

The Quebec Biker war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine began in 1994 and continued until late 2002 and claimed more than 162 lives, including innocent bystanders. Maurice (aka Mom) Boucher was the leader of the Quebec chapters and second-in-command of the Canadian Nomad chapter, a chapter with no fixed geographic base. On 13 September 2000, Michel Auger, the crime correspondent of Le Journal de Montréal was shot five times in the back while opening the trunk of his car in the parking lot of Le Journal de Montréal, and was almost killed.[161] In the aftermath of the attempting assassination of Auger, journalists demonstrated in Montreal demanding that the Canadian government pass an RICO type act that would see the Hells Angels declared a criminal organization.[161] In October 2000, a bar owner in the town of Terrebonne named Francis Laforest refused to permit the Rowdy Ones, a puppet club of the Hells Angels, to sell drugs in his bar.[162] As Laforest was walking his dog, he was attacked on the streets in the daylight by three masked men who beat him to death with baseball bats.[163] Led by Auger, a protest took place in Montreal to honor Laforest with Auger saying of Quebec's murderous outlaw bikers: "They believed that they are on the top of the world. The criminals had built up a system so sophisticated that they are above the law...We are the only country in the world where the gangs have a free ride".[164] In May 2002, Boucher received a life sentence, with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years, after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the killings of two Canadian prison guards, ambushed on their way home.[165]

On April 15, 2009, operation SharQc was conducted by the Sûreté du Québec.[166] The first specialized organized crime law enforcement task force in the province was composed of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), the Sûreté du Québec and the Montréal Police. Their goal was to investigate the Nomad chapter of the Hells Angels in the Montreal and Quebec City regions until it was dismantled two years later to make way for a bigger, province-wide Task force.

The Hells Angels threat in Quebec and Canada resulted in the first anti-gang law in Canadian legislation, as the Canadian government wished to build on the success of the American anti-racketeering legislation known as RICO. Furthermore, during the period the Canadian anti-gang legislation was created, many Montrealers were experiencing a high volume of violent acts which threatened civilians.

The tough shell of secrecy that protected the Hells Angels for years finally cracked during an investigation that has resulted in the arrests of almost every member of the gang in Quebec. On April 15, 2009, operation SharQc was conducted by the Sûreté du Québec. According to police, at the time it was the biggest strike at the HAMC in Canada's history and probably in all of HAMC's history. In all, 177 strikes were conducted by the police, 123 members were arrested, charged with for first-degree murder, attempted murder, gangsterism, or drug trafficking. The police seized $5 million in cash, dozens of kilograms of cocaine, marijuana and hashish, and thousands of pills. The operation was expected to lead to the closing of 22 unsolved murders. Operation SharQc involved a full-patch member of the gang turning informant, a very rare occurrence in Quebec.[166][167] In October 2015, Quebec Superior Court Judge James Brunton ruled that delay between the arrests in 2009 as part of Operation SharQc and 2015 violated the right to a speedy trial guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and dismissed all of the charges against the Hell's Angels arrested as part of Operation SharQc.[168]

In June 1971, members of the Hells Angels, Highway 61, the Mongrel Mob and the Polynesian Panthers were involved in a large-scale brawl in Auckland, which resulted in numerous arrests.[246][247]

Seven Hells Angels received prison sentences of up to ten years for their part in the murder of Bradley Earl Haora, a nineteen-year-old Highway 61 member killed with a shotgun in Mount Eden on December 29, 1975.[248][249]

Hells Angels sergeant-at-arms Andrew Sisson was convicted in 1993 of importing $200,000 of methamphetamine hidden inside a vehicle transmission. In 1999, Sisson and his wife, Vikki Thorne-George, were convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to supply methamphetamine.[244]

In early 1994, Hells Angels member Lucky Sylaides was arrested by police detectives after firing an unlicensed Uzi submachine gun into the air outside his tattoo parlour in Durban's central business district. Sylaides was arrested and charged with the prohibited possession of a machine gun, a charge that carries a five-year minimum prison sentence. Sylaides and the weapon were released into the custody of Piet Meyer, the head of the Durban police's organised crime unit, who claimed that Sylaides was a police agent. Charges against Sylaides were dismissed and the gun was never recovered.[260] In 1999, Meyer was charged with defeating the ends of justice and other crimes after an investigation revealed that Sylaides was neither an agent nor an informer as Meyer had claimed.[261] Meyer was sentenced to ten years in prison in December 2002 after being convicted of corruption, theft and making a false statement.[262]

On 8 November 2002, a Hells Angels member was shot dead at a café in Oakdene, allegedly by crime figures Nigel McGurk and Mikey Schultz, former members of the club. The biker was fatally shot in the chest after approaching two men and drawing an unlicensed firearm. Police recovered two revolvers and two pistols at the scene.[263] McGurk and Schultz were arrested and taken into custody at a Booysens police station on suspicion of the murder before being released.[264] The pair were later granted immunity from prosecution for a series of murders, including that of mining magnate Brett Kebble, in exchange for testifying against drug smuggler Glenn Agliotti.[265]

HAMC member Edward Jacobs was beaten with a baseball bat and robbed of watches and approximately R100,000 in cash by bouncer Gary Beuthin, his girlfriend Melanie van Niekerk and nightclub owner Warren Schertel after responding to an adult classified advertisement in Sandton, Johannesburg on November 17, 2007.[266] Beuthin, van Niekerk and Schertel were charged with attempted murder, armed robbery with aggravating circumstances, kidnapping, and possession of firearms and ammunition. On 10 February 2010, Beuthin was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to some of the charges, while van Niekerk and Schertel were acquitted on all charges.[267][268]

A Hells Angel was fatally shot and another wounded after four club members arrived at a motorcycle repair shop in Amanzimtoti and became involved in an altercation with the shop owner on 11 March 2020. The two other bikers fled the scene. Police subsequently arrested the owner and opened a murder/attempted murder investigation. Hells Angels members had previously assaulted an employee during a visit to the shop on 29 January.[269]

Andre Vogel, a hitman who pleaded guilty to the contract killing of bouncer Billy van Vuuren, testified in October 1999 that the Hells Angels were connected to a drug syndicate that hired him for the murder and that he was paid in cash afterwards directly by Kevin Brown, the club's Johannesburg chapter president. Brown also provided Vogel with a false passport, and another Hells Angel, Lucky Sylaides, provided him with ammunition.[260] Van Vuuren was fatally shot 32 times with a fully-automatic sniper rifle outside a Johannesburg nightclub on 14 February 1997 after setting up competition to the syndicate. Others implicated by Vogel, who was sentenced to 32 years in prison, included nightclub owners and members of the Durban police's organised crime unit.[270]

An international drug smuggling ring involving Hells Angels in South Africa and the United States was allegedly established in November 1999 and uncovered by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2001. Methamphetamine, hidden in stuffed toys, was speed-mailed from South Africa to Flagstaff, Arizona, from where it was distributed to other U.S. states. South Africans Peter Conway, vice-president of the Hells Angels nomads chapter, and Michael "Jethro" Hall, former president, and a number of American members were charged with the smuggling. American Hells Angel Greg Surdukan pleaded guilty to charges and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison by a Phoenix judge in June 2002. The U.S. authorities had less success prosecuting the South Africans; Hall was shot dead during a burglary at his Johannesburg home in May 2002,[271] and Conway emigrated to the United Kingdom before he could face charges, where he died on 24 November 2018, aged 52.[272]

Four members of the HAMC were arrested in Johannesburg on 8 November 2002 and charged with various crimes following an intelligence operation by the South African Police Service (SAPS) organised crime unit. Three of the bikers were arrested in Sandton on narcotics and firearms charges for allegedly operating a clandestine drug laboratory. The other was apprehended near Bedfordview after he was allegedly found in possession of three superbikes that were suspected to have been stolen. Police also seized an unlicensed shotgun, rifle, handguns, a silencer, a large quantity of unlicensed ammunition, methcathinone, dagga, cocaine, MDMA tablets and various chemicals and equipment used in the manufacture of methcathinone.[263] Those arrested included the club's Johannesburg chapter president, Edward Jacobs.[273]

Members of the Hells Angels in Gauteng – including Peter Conway, a senior member until he left the club in 2009 – were implicated after police raids on illegal drug laboratories in 2005 and 2009.[259] Charges against Conway relating to an investigation from 2005, when he was arrested on two occasions for allegedly selling MDMA tablets, were withdrawn at Meyerton Magistrate's Court on 31 August 2009.[274]

Hells Angels member Alexander Bely, a former Soviet citizen who immigrated to South Africa in the late 1980s, was arrested in 2006 before being extradited to Russia in February 2013, alleged to have organised the delivery of 224 kilograms of ephedrine to the country between 2003 and 2005 and laundering over ₽34.5 million (around $1.2 million). Bely, along with Andrei Bykov and Bykov's spouse, cousin, adopted daughter and her husband, allegedly obtained the drug from the Hells Angels in South Africa and delivered it to St. Petersburg, passing it off as bath salts. In May 2005, Bykov's wife fled to South Africa, seeking to avoid criminal prosecution. The group then began delivering ephedrine under the guise of detergent. In 2008, three accomplices of Bykov and Bely were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms. Andrei Bykov and his wife Yevgenia were extradited to Russia in 2009 and received fourteen- and eighteen-year sentences, respectively.[275][276]

The HAMC has established seventeen chapters in England, with membership based primarily around the London, Manchester, Liverpool, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Tyne and Wear areas.[297]

In November 1972, three Hells Angels were sentenced to prison for their part in the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl who was seized from the street and sexually assaulted in front of laughing teenagers in a local café in Winchester. Ian "Moose" Everest was convicted of raping the girl and sentenced to seven years, while Stephen "Boots" Ripley and Anthony "Chas" Mann were each given four years for aiding and abetting Everest.[298]

A group of up to thirty Hells Angels ambushed fifteen members of an unsanctioned Windsor "Hells Angels" chapter who were sleeping in a car park near Brockenhurst in April 1979. Richard Sharman, the leader of the Windsor chapter, survived being shot three times in the head, and another man received a shotgun wound to the buttocks.[299] 24 Hells Angels members were jailed or given suspended sentences for the attack in 1980.[300] The Windsor chapter officially became Hells Angels in 1985.[301]

Hells Angels member David Richards and his girlfriend were sentenced to a minimum of sixteen years' imprisonment in December 1984 for the murder of 16-year-old Michael Groves, who suffered 56 injuries in an attack with a hammer, a knife and a wrench at the couple's flat in West London.[302] After serving 21 years of his sentence, and months before his scheduled release, Richards absconded from the open prison at HMP Sudbury in May 2006, fleeing to Ireland, where he was jailed for three months for robbery without his status as a fugitive in the UK coming to the attention of Irish authorities.[303] He subsequently returned to England, settling in Wolverhampton. On 6 June 2014, Richards was apprehended at his home in Penn after the Metropolitan Police received a tip-off regarding his whereabouts, and he was sentenced to two-and-a-years in prison on 1 September 2014 after pleading guilty to escaping from custody.[304][305]

Members of the Hells Angels' Lea Valley chapter were involved in a mass brawl with a group from the Luton Town MIGs hooligan firm at the Blockers Arms public house in Luton in May 1990. The MIGs gained the upper hand, forcing the Hells Angels from the pub. With further violence seeming inevitable, undercover police officers were assigned to observe key figures on both sides. However, the MIGs decided to pay the Hells Angels £2,000 in compensation rather than face the continued threat of retaliation.[301]

The Hells Angels became involved in a dispute between a Dutch drug trafficker and a Liverpool crime family in late 1992. The Liverpudlian gang had made a significant down payment on a large shipment of cannabis from Amsterdam which was seized by British customs officials during a routine check of a Dutch-registered ship docking at Manchester. Under the terms of the agreement, the drugs were no longer the responsibility of the Dutchman once they had left Dutch waters but the Liverpool family refused to pay the £140,000 owed and so the trafficker, a former Hells Angel, contracted the club to collect the debt owed to him. Three Hells Angels – Wolverhampton chapter vice-president Michael "Long Mick" Rowledge, Andrew Trevis, also from Wolverhampton, and Windsor chapter member Stephen Pollock – travelled to Aintree on 7 October 1992 and agreed to meet the Liverpudlians outside a supermarket in the Old Roan area. While the Hells Angels waited in their car, a gunman approached and shot Rowledge four times in the chest, killing him, before escaping in a waiting vehicle.[301][306][307] In 1993, Delroy Davies was acquitted after a trial at Liverpool Crown Court and Thomas Dures was jailed for thirteen years for conspiracy to murder.[308]

Pierre Rodrigue and David Rouleau, two Canadian Hells Angels from the Sherbrooke chapter, were arrested by British police in London at the request of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in February 1995 before being extradited to Canada and sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment for conspiring to smuggle 558 kilograms of cocaine into the UK in a scheme also involving the Rizzuto crime family and the Cali Cartel.[309][310][311][312][313]

The Hells Angels waged a two-year turf war with the Outcasts MC, which is centred in London and East Anglia, during the late 1990s. The dispute between the two clubs is believed to have begun when the Outcasts tried to absorb a small Hertfordshire club, The Lost Tribe, in June 1997. Concerned that such a move would make the Outcasts their equal in numbers, the Hells Angels made The Lost Tribe honorary members. That November, two members of the Outcasts were arrested in possession of loaded shotguns, allegedly on their way to confront the Hells Angels.[314] On 31 January 1998, Outcasts members David Armstrong and Malcolm St Clair were killed in a clash with up to twenty Hells Angels at a concert in Battersea, London. Armstrong was dragged from his motorcycle and hacked to death with axes and knives; St Clair raced to his aid but was stabbed eight times. Ronald "Gut" Wait, president of the Hells Angels' Essex chapter, was convicted of conspiring to cause grievous bodily harm and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in relation to the incident.[315] The 18st (114 kg) Wait died in prison of a heart attack in 2001.[316] In March 1999, a fertilizer and petrol bomb was found at the clubhouse of the Hells Angels' Lea Valley chapter and there was an attempted arson attack on a motorcycle shop owned by the Angels. Two Outcasts were then shot close to their east London clubhouse. Both survived but refused to co-operate with police.[317]

The Outlaws, who have around 150 British members across fourteen chapters mainly based in the West Midlands, have since become the Hells Angels' main rivals in the UK since opening chapters in the country in 2000. On 12 August 2001, a Canadian Hells Angels member was shot three times in the leg and wounded after shots were fired from a dark-coloured saloon car on the M40 motorway as he left the Bulldog Bash, held at the Shakespeare County Raceway in Long Marston.[318] He refused to make a statement to the police and the shooting went unsolved.[319] In an identical incident on 12 August 2007, Hells Angels member Gerry Tobin was shot dead as he rode his motorcycle home to London, where he worked as a Harley-Davidson service manager, from the Bulldog Bash. Two bullets were fired from a Rover car which drove up alongside him as he sped down the M40 motorway, one hitting him in the head. Seven members of the Outlaws, the entire South Warwickshire chapter, were convicted over his murder and sentenced to a total of 191 years in prison.[320][321][322] It is believed that Tobin was killed due to the fact that the Hells Angels-run Bulldog Bash is held in Outlaws territory, and that the killing may have been sanctioned by Outlaws leadership in the United States.[323]

A brawl between up to thirty Hells Angels and Outlaws members took place at Birmingham International Airport on 20 January 2008 after the two groups had found themselves together on a flight from Alicante, Spain, with police recovering various weapons including knuckledusters, hammers, a machete and a meat cleaver.[324] Three Hells Angels and four Outlaws were convicted as a result.[325][326]

Hells Angels member David Wyeth, along with an accomplice, carried out an assault and attempted to steal the colours of a member of the Vikings MC in Maidstone on 7 May 2018. The victim suffered a fractured vertebrate. Wyeth pleaded guilty to affray and was given a twelve-week prison sentence in August 2019.[327]

Seven prospective members of the Hells Angels' Slough chapter and the affiliated Red Devils – Przemyslaw Korkus, Jimi Kidd, Bartosz Plesniak, Piotr Zamijewski, Ladislav Szalay, Tamas Tomacsek and David Jacobs – were convicted of multiple offences and each sentenced to fourteen years in prison in October 2019 for an attack on six members of the Vikings and their support group the Wargs Brotherhood who were meeting at the Wargs' clubhouse in Blindley Heath on 7 November 2018.[328] A total of thirteen men are believed to have been involved in the attack, using knives, baseball bats and other weapons, which left the six rival bikers wounded; several suffered head injuries, all except one were stabbed, and one was disemboweled. The conflict between the groups allegedly began when the Hells Angels sought to open a chapter in Surrey and tried to entice the Wargs into switching their allegiance from the Vikings to the Hells Angels. When it became clear that the Vikings would resist any attempt to persuade the Wargs to leave them, the Hells Angels decided to launch the attack.[329]

Hells Angels member Dennis Taskin was jailed for six years and nine months after admitting illegally possessing ammunition and five guns as well as cocaine, amphetamines and morphine. Police had found an Uzi, three revolvers and an antique pistol as well as dum-dum bullets and drugs when they raided a flat rented by Taskin in Hove on 26 December 2009.[330]

Stuart Manners, a member of the Hells Angels' Cadishead chapter, was jailed for twelve years after being convicted of selling a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun and 21 bullets to Liverpool criminal Darren Alcock and his associate Paul Estridge in Stockport in August 2012. Alcock and Estridge were both sentenced to 14 years.[331][332]

In January 2019, Matthew Barnes, president of the Sussex chapter of the Hells Angels, was formally cleared of allegedly assaulting Christopher "Swaggers" Harrison. Harrison alleged that he had been assaulted by Barnes and other Hells Angels members after refusing to join the club when he was found unconscious and with his eyes ruptured outside a pub in Hastings in February 2016.[333] Barnes' co-defendant Oliver Wilkinson was also acquitted following a trial in August 2018.[334]

A Hells Angels member allegedly assaulted a toilet attendant after being caught using cocaine in a pub in Maidstone on 18 May 2019. A group of six men believed to be Hells Angels were in the pub that night.[335]

49 people were arrested on suspicion of drug offences and possession of offensive weapons during a three-day event held to mark the 50th anniversary of the Hells Angels founding in the UK which took place in Surrey and Sussex from 30 May to 1 June 2019 and culminated in a mass ride of around 100 motorcyclists from Pease Pottage to Brighton. The majority of those arrested were either cautioned or released without charge; of the twelve people charged – five Germans, three Hungarians, one Swiss, one French, one Czech and one Greek man – at least seven were given suspended prison sentences.[336] 27 international members of the Hells Angels were also prevented from entering to UK to attend the event due to previous convictions.

On 22 August 2020, a car was driven through the wall of the Hells Angels' Manchester chapter clubhouse in Cadishead.[337]

The first Welsh Hells Angels chapter was formed in 1999.[338] The Hells Angels' West Wales chapter clubhouse in Haverfordwest was raided by police in September 2007, with the police finding a handgun fitted with a silencer loaded with a full magazine of bullets. Gary Young, a probationary club member, was charged with possessing the weapon; he denied the charge and was found not guilty. He was later granted a conditional discharge for two years after admitting possessing a firearm without a certificate, possessing an offensive weapon and possessing three amounts of cannabis, charges which stemmed from several further police raids on his home during the initial investigation. Young was expelled from the Hells Angels due to the club taking exception to him "naming names" about who was whom within the West Wales chapter.[339]

Neil Lake needed three metal plates inserted in his face after being attacked by a Hells Angel at a petrol station in Cardiff in October 2007. Lake took down the registration of his attacker's Harley-Davidson motorcycle which led police to Sean Timmins, the vice-president of the Wolverhampton chapter. Timmins denied inflicting grievous bodily harm on Lake and claimed that a fellow club member had been riding around with the same number plates as him; he told a judge he knew the identity of the actual attacker but explained that it would be against club rules for him to name him. Timmins was cleared of the charge in September 2008 after providing an alibi who said that he was working in his hometown on the day of the attack.[340][341] He would later be one of the three Hells Angels jailed for six years after the brawl with the Outlaws at Birmingham Airport.[342]

Hells Angels members Stephen Jones and Raymond Scaddan were cleared of violent behavior, while former member Andrew McCann was also found not guilty of violent disorder but convicted of using threatening, abusive, insulting words or behavior at Newport Crown Court on 1 November 2015. Jones and Scaddan maintained that they went to McCann's home in Newport on 24 January 2015 to collect money for a £2,000 gold necklace that had been given to him and that they had acted in self-defence after an alleged attack by McCann and his son. McCann, who left the club in 2014 after a dispute, claimed the two Hells Angels had come to extort £5,000 from him.[343][344]

HAMC chapters were established in Anchorage and Fairbanks in December 1982 following a merger with the Brothers MC.[349] The Brothers were formed in 1967,[350] and established an association with the Hells Angels in California's San Francisco Bay Area by 1977.[351] The club "patched over" to the HAMC during a ceremony in California attended by members of the Brothers' Fairbanks chapter.[352] The Alaskan Hells Angels are involved in methamphetamine trafficking.[353]

Anchorage Hells Angels chapter sergeant-at-arms Anthony John Tait volunteered to become a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1985, and he provided the government with detailed information on the club's organization and criminal activities – such as drugs and explosives trafficking – for two years.[354] During this period, Tait travelled the country at government expense to meet with various Hells Angels members, and he covertly recorded some of these meetings by wearing a wire.[355] As part of the investigation, the informant and undercover agents purchased approximately $1.6 million of cocaine and methamphetamine from the Hells Angels, in addition to more than twenty pounds of explosives, three automatic weapons and two silencers.[356] The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Operation CACUS culminated with 38 HAMC members in Alaska and four other states being arrested on narcotics, weapons, explosives and conspiracy charges on November 10, 1987.[9][357] Anchorage chapter president Edward Floyd Hubert and Fairbanks chapter president Dennis E. Pailing were among fourteen people taken into custody during raids by FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents on homes in Anchorage and a compound in Fairbanks.[358]

Ten Hells Angels from California and Alaska, including Hubert and Pailing, were extradited to Louisville, Kentucky to face charges of conspiring to transport firearms and explosives across state lines in order to kill members of the Outlaws in retaliation for the death of John Cleave Webb, the previous Anchorage Hells Angels president who was fatally shot by two Outlaws outside a saloon in Jefferson County, Kentucky on August 12, 1986.[359] On October 28, 1988, Anchorage chapter members Hubert, Lawrence Russell Hagel and Gerald G. Protzman were convicted of the misdemeanor charge of converting a government intelligence manual for their use, while Pailing and four other Alaskan Angels were acquitted.[360] Other members of the Alaska and California chapters were convicted on state drug and firearm charges either side of the federal trial.[9] The Hells Angels allegedly put a $1 million bounty on Tait's life.[361]

Four Alaskan Hells Angels – Montgomery David Elliott, Michael Hurn, Dale Leedom and William Spearman – were arrested by ATF agents on federal racketeering and firearms charges during raids at three homes in Anchorage and one in Two Rivers on December 3, 2003. HAMC clubhouses in Anchorage and North Pole were also searched.[362] The charges, filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, stemmed from the River Run riot – a conflict between the Hells Angels and the Mongols on April 27, 2002 which left three bikers dead in Laughlin, Nevada – and followed a twenty-month ATF investigation of the club.[363] The operation resulted in the arrests of a total of fifty-eight Hells Angels members and associates by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in Alaska and four other Western states for narcotics trafficking, firearms violations, possessing stolen explosives and various other crimes.[364] Leedom, the Fairbanks chapter president, was one of six Hells Angels convicted in the case after being extradited to Las Vegas, Nevada to face charges; he pleaded no contest to committing a violent crime in the aid of racketeering in October 2006 and was sentenced to two years in prison on February 13, 2007.[365] Thirty-six others had charges against them dismissed.[366]

Hells Angels member James William Leffel was convicted of first-degree assault for stabbing a man – Jens Schurig – in the thigh, opening his femoral artery, outside a bar in Anchorage after Schurig allegedly denigrated Leffel's motorcycle.[367]

On August 3, 2017, Michael "Steak Knife" Staton was kidnapped and taken to a duplex in Wasilla where he was tortured, beaten and killed by members of the 1488s – a white supremacist prison gang to which he belonged – after he was accused of stealing drugs and colors from Craig "Oakie" King, a Hells Angels member and 1488s associate.[368] King and five 1488s members were arrested on March 27, 2019 and charged with murder, kidnapping and racketeering crimes including drug trafficking.[369]

Hells Angels member Charles Denver "Pup" Phillips and his wife Lois Latrilla Phillips were arrested after an FBI drug task force discovered twelve pounds of methamphetamine and almost $25,000 in cash at their apartment and in a nearby shipping container in Anchorage on August 10, 2018. Investigators also found a ledger listing money and quantities, and a list of names of Hells Angels prospects throughout the state.[353] The couple were convicted of distributing and conspiring to distribute methamphetamine. On October 30, 2019, Charles Phillips was sentenced to eighteen years in federal prison, and his wife was sentenced to five years.[370]

The HAMC, which has approximately a hundred members in Arizona, is classified as a criminal street gang by the Arizona Department of Public Safety (AZDPS).[371] The Arizona Hells Angels produce methamphetamine – independently and in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels – and also distribute the drug at retail level.[372] The HAMC's predecessor in Arizona was the Dirty Dozen MC (DDMC), a statewide club originating in the 1960s. Infamous for their criminality and violence, the Dirty Dozen were the state's preeminent motorcycle gang for over thirty years and vanquished numerous other clubs, including the Vagos in the early 1990s, in a series of turf wars. The Dirty Dozen voted to merge with the Hells Angels in 1996 and, after enduring a fourteen-month probationary period, officially patched over during a meeting in Oakland, California in October 1997.[373] With the patch-over of the DDMC, the HAMC established six Arizona chapters, in Phoenix, Mesa, Tucson, Cave Creek and Flagstaff as well as a nomads chapter.[374] Sonny Barger, founder of the Oakland chapter and the Angels' reputed national leader, transferred to the Cave Creek chapter in 1998 before eventually rejoining the Oakland branch in August 2016.[375]

In June 2001, Greg "Snake" Surdukan and Chris "Porker" Baucum, president and vice-president of the Hells Angels' nomads chapter in Arizona, were arrested and charged with narcotics trafficking after the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) uncovered an international drug network involving the smuggling of methamphetamine into the United States from South Africa. The smuggling ring was allegedly established in November 1999 and involved South African Hells Angels members speed mailing methamphetamine hidden inside stuffed toys to their American counterparts in Flagstaff, from where it was distributed to other U.S. states.[271] On June 17, 2002, Surdukan and Baucum pleaded guilty to drug trafficking; Surdukan was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment.[376]

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) initiated an undercover investigation into the Arizona Hells Angels in September 2001 when Rudolph "Rudy" Kramer – a member of the Solo Angeles, a club based in Tijuana, Mexico with a small presence in southern California – agreed to become an informant and infiltrate other motorcycle gangs in exchange for the dismissal of charges against him after he was arrested by ATF agents for weapons violations. The investigation, known as Operation Black Biscuit, resulted in a twenty-one month infiltration of the club by a team of ATF agents, technicians and confidential informants.[377] Kramer made contacts throughout the state as a dealer of methamphetamine and firearms, and he began collaborating with the Hells Angels in narcotics and weapons smuggling after fabricating a story that he was arming the Solo Angeles in Mexico to combat a Mongols chapter there. He sought permission from the HAMC to form a Solo Angeles nomads chapter in Arizona, which the ATF used to make contact with the Hells Angels. Kramer began introducing ATF agents posing as Solo Angeles bikers to Hells Angels leaders statewide after a meeting with Mesa chapter president Robert "Bad Bob" Johnston Jr. in July 2002. The drug-addicted Kramer eventually became a liability to the operation, however, and was returned to prison after the firearm indictment against him was reinstated in September 2002. He was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty, and he later entered protective custody. Information on Kramer's role as an informant soon leaked, and Hells Angels leaders in Arizona also began hearing rumors from southern California that the Solo Angeles were imposters.[378] In an effort to ensure credibility, undercover ATF agent Jay Dobyns told the Hells Angels in June 2003 that he and another Solo Angeles biker would be travelling to Sonora to kill Mongols. The ATF then staged the murder of a Mongols member by photographing and videotaping a law enforcement officer posing as the rival biker laying in a shallow grave, splattered with lamb blood and brains.[379] Dobyns had bloodstained Mongols colors mailed to the Hells Angels from Mexico, and provided a videotape and pictures of the staged killing. The ruse proved successful and, according to Dobyns and the ATF, he was subsequently voted in as a member of the Hells Angels' Skull Valley chapter. Sonny Barger and the HAMC have vehemently denied that Dobyns was ever awarded membership.[380]

Operation Black Biscuit was ended prematurely because the ATF believed Robert "Chico" Mora, a senior member of the Hells Angels' Phoenix chapter, was plotting to murder the Solo Angeles. Mora did not know the Solo Angeles were undercover agents, but believed they were a potential rival encroaching on the Hells Angels' territory. He allegedly assembled a group of veteran Hells Angels enforcers to liquidate the Solo Angeles.[373] The operation culminated with a series of synchronized raids carried out across Arizona on July 8, 2003 and the arrests of fifty-two people; sixteen Hells Angels members and associates were indicted on charges including RICO Act violations, murder and drug trafficking.[381] Over 500 illegal weapons, including silencers, pipe bombs, sawed-off shotguns and machine guns, along with ammunition, $50,000 in cash and drugs were also seized.[382] During one of the raids, on a HAMC clubhouse in North Phoenix, club prospect Michael Wayne Coffelt was shot and wounded with a rifle by police officer Laura Beeler. He was subsequently charged with aggravated assault against Beeler, who reported that Coffelt fired first and was cleared of any wrongdoing in the shooting by county prosecutors.[378] The charges against Coffelt were dismissed in November 2004 when judge Michael Wilkinson of the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled that the police violated state search-and-seizure laws during the raid. Investigators determined that Coffelt never fired at Beeler.[383] Operation Black Biscuit was deemed a success by the ATF, but internal government disagreement ultimately led to the sixteen defendants escaping conviction on the key charges of racketeering and murder. Half of the defendants plea bargained to lesser offenses, and five others had federal charges dismissed. The plea agreements resulted in no more than five-year prison sentences.[377] In 2004, Mora was convicted of the federal charge of possessing body armor with intent to sell and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. The conviction was overturned the following year after an appeal.[373] The Skull Valley chapter disbanded as a result of the investigation.[371]

On October 27, 2001, full-patch Hells Angels members Kevin J. Augustiniak and Michael Christopher "Mesa Mike" Kramer, and prospective member Paul Merle Eischeid murdered Cynthia Yvonne Garcia, a forty-four year-old mother of six who verbally disrespected the club and its members while in an intoxicated state during a party at the Hells Angels' clubhouse in Mesa. After beating Garcia unconscious, the three bikers loaded her into the trunk of a car and drove her into the desert near the Salt River where they stabbed her twenty-seven times and attempted to decapitate her.[377] Garcia's body was discovered on October 31. Kramer contacted ATF agent John Ciccone the following month and, without disclosing his crime, offered to become an informant. After moving to Los Angeles, California and infiltrating the club's San Fernando Valley chapter by posing as an Arizona drug runner, Kramer offered the ATF information on Garcia's killing in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Fourteen months after becoming an informant, he signed a plea agreement to serve five years of probation for the murder.[378] Eischeid fled the country following his indictment for the killing in 2007 and was placed on the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was apprehended in the San Isidro district of Buenos Aires, Argentina on February 3, 2011 after being tracked by the USMS, Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), and Interpol.[384] Eischeid was extradited to Arizona in July 2018 after exhausting all of his appeals in the Argentine legal system.[385] Augustiniak pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in October 2011 and was sentenced to twenty-three years and six months' imprisonment on March 30, 2012.[386]

Joshua William Harber, a member of the Hells Angels chapter in Ventura, California, was shot in the face outside a bar in Cave Creek on June 8, 2002 and died later that day at John C. Lincoln Medical Center in Phoenix. Harber's unidentified killer fled the scene in a car after the shooting.[387] While Phoenix Police Department detectives investigated several motives for the murder, including the possibility of retaliation by the Mongols for the killing of a Mongol by the Hells Angels at the River Run riot in Laughlin, Nevada on April 27, 2002, the crime has become a cold case.[388]

Cave Creek Hells Angels chapter president Daniel Leroy "Hoover" Seybert was shot to death outside a bar in Phoenix on March 22, 2003. The autopsy report showed that Seybert was shot in the head at close range by a small caliber handgun which was located during the investigation in Seybert's back pocket. The homicide has never been solved and there have been various theories regarding the reason for Seybert's killing. It has been speculated that he was killed by the Mongols, by the Hells Angels as part of an internal conflict, or by the ATF in relation to Operation Black Biscuit.[389] Two days after Seybert's death, a Mongols member was stabbed in the back and wounded at a gas station in Reno, Nevada by a suspected Hells Angels member in a possible revenge attack.[390]

Seven Hells Angels – including the Tucson chapter president, the former Mesa chapter president and other leaders – were arrested in Arizona on various charges on December 3, 2003 following a two-year investigation of the club by the ATF.[391] Five of those were indicted at the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada on federal racketeering and firearms charges stemming from the River Run riot.[363] The raids in Arizona were carried out as part of a coordinated operation which led to the arrests of at least fifty-five Hells Angels members and associates in five Western states by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.[364] Two Arizona Angels – Rodney Cox and Calvin Schaefer – were among six HAMC members convicted in the case after being extradited to Las Vegas, Nevada to stand trial. Schaefer was sentenced to four years and three months in a federal prison on January 12, 2007 for committing a violent crime in the aid of racketeering.[365] Cox was sentenced to two years' imprisonment on February 23, 2007 after pleading guilty to the same charge.[392] Charges were dismissed against thirty-six others.[366]

Patrick Michael Eberhardt, treasurer of the Hells Angels' Cave Creek chapter, was shot dead and a club hangaround was wounded when a group of six Hells Angels were fired upon while riding their motorcycles in Phoenix on February 7, 2015.[393] Earlier that day, a group of unidentified bikers had fired shots at members of the Mongols nearby. A Mongols member is one of the two suspects in Eberhardt's unsolved murder.[394]

On August 17, 2016, Hells Angels Mesa chapter member Wayne Whitt opened fire outside a sports bar in Tempe, killing one Mongols member – Richard "AZ Slick" Garcia – and wounding another before fleeing on his motorcycle. The shooting followed a verbal altercation between the rival bikers inside the bar.[395] Three surviving Mongols – Frank Gardea, John Magana and Efren Ontiveros – were arrested, although the Tempe Police Department declined to press charges against Whitt as the shooting was deemed self-defense.[375]

Five Hells Angels and two members of the Desert Road Riders – a club founded in Bullhead City in 1993 that became a HAMC support club in 2002 – were arrested on December 2, 2009 by an AZDPS task force as part of Operation Quiet Riot, a six-month investigation into a turf war involving the Hells Angels, Desert Road Riders and Vagos in Mohave County.[396] On April 11, 2012, four Hells Angels members – Stephen Helland, Dale Hormut, Rudolfo "Rudy" Martinez and Gerald Smith – were acquitted of rioting and assisting in a criminal street gang. Another, George "Joby" Walters, took a plea deal and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. The charges stemmed from an alleged riot involving the rival clubs at a bar in Bullhead City on June 11, 2009.[397]

Members of the Hells Angels were allegedly involved in a shoot-out with Vagos members in Chino Valley on August 21, 2010; over fifty shots were fired and at least five people were wounded, although no life-threatening injuries were reported. After dozens of law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, twenty-seven people were arrested on charges ranging from attempted murder and aggravated assault to participation in a criminal street gang.[398] Charges against seven Hells Angels members – John Bernard, Kevin Christiansen, Kiley Hill, Robert Kittredge, Michael Koepke, Larry Scott, Jr. and Bruce Schweigert – were dismissed in June 2012 after it transpired that Alfred Acevedo, the only direct witness to the confrontation between the gangs immediately before the shooting, was a Vagos hangaround working as an informant for AZDPS detective John Morris, and who had previously tried to infiltrate the Hells Angels and was rebuked.[399]

Hells Angels member Nathaniel Barton Sample was convicted in September 2009 of aggravated assault and acting for the benefit of a street gang following an incident at a Scottsdale bar on March 28, 2008 in which he and another man, Jose Cano, attacked an unidentified third man who had accidentally bumped into them.[400] The case marked the first time the HAMC had been labelled a gang in the state of Arizona.[401]

Former Tucson Hells Angels chapter president William Gary "Tramp" Potter, who was expelled from the club due to his methamphetamine use and also because he was suspected of being a government informant, was arrested after deputies from the Pima County Sheriff's Department found the body of Randall Scott Pfeil buried in his yard on July 13, 2010.[402] Pfeil was the subject of a missing persons investigation and had been shot twice in the head.[403] Potter pleaded guilty in April 2012 to second-degree murder and two counts of possession of a deadly weapon by a prohibited possessor. On June 4, 2012, he was sentenced to nineteen years in prison.[404]

Hells Angels Yavapai County chapter treasurer Bruce Schweigert, Sr. was sentenced to eight years in prison on August 12, 2014 after being convicted of threatening and intimidating as a criminal street gang member, assault, disorderly conduct and felony misconduct involving weapons, charges stemming from an August 2013 bar fight in Cottonwood.[405]

With over 300 members statewide, the Hells Angels are the most significant motorcycle gang in California in terms of membership and criminal activity. The club has a significant role in the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, and in other illegal enterprises.[406] The West Coast faction of the HAMC has also been especially active in the infiltration of legitimate businesses, including motorcycle and automobile services, catering operations, bars, restaurants, and antique stores.[407]

The Hells Angels have three chapters in Colorado.[408] The club initiated its first chapter in the state on June 13, 2001 by amalgamating the Brothers Fast MC,[374] a club founded in Denver in 1963.[409] The HAMC inherited the Brothers Fast's methamphetamine distribution operations[410] and expanded into Colorado at a time when the Sons of Silence, historically the state's preeminent motorcycle gang, were severely weakened as a result of a federal investigation.[411]

On August 5, 1996, two members of the Hells Angels' San Fernando Valley, California chapter – Donald Dinehart and Larry Lajeunesse – were shot and wounded at the Iron Horse Inn in Steamboat Springs, which was hosting the club's annual rally.[412] Dinehart was airlifted to Denver Health Medical Center and underwent surgery for gunshot wounds to the arm, leg and chest, while Lajeunesse was treated at Routt Memorial Hospital after being shot in the hand.[413] A member of the Ventura, California chapter was suspected of the shooting,[414] which police believed was carried out as a punishment for a breach of club rules.[415] HAMC members reportedly blocked police from entering the motel where the incident took place until after evidence had been removed.[416] Over 200 Hells Angels attended the convention, and several beatings and a stabbing at local bars were also attributed to the bikers.[417] By the end of the four-day rally, 160 police officers from 27 agencies had been drafted into Steamboat Springs to assist the 24 officers on duty in the town.[418]

A group of Hells Angels were allegedly involved in a bar fight with other patrons at the Black Nugget Saloon in Carbondale on November 19, 2005. The bikers were reportedly attending a benefit concert featuring several area punk rock bands to raise money to pay the legal fees of a prospective club member when they were provoked by a group of locals, resulting in a brawl. Kevin Hilgeford suffered a broken jaw and two broken ribs, while Kurt Trede, another patron purported to have been injured in the melee, left the bar before an ambulance arrived. Both men declined to press charges.[419] Hilgeford denied being the instigator of the violence and claimed he was the victim of "a jumping".[420]

John Lockhart, a prospective member of the Hells Angels' LaSalle-based Colorado nomads chapter, was charged on June 19, 2017 with two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of vehicular eluding and illegal discharge of a firearm after a series of incidents in Weld County in which a gun was fired at two vehicles, including a police car. In the early hours of June 11, Lockhart shot from his Harley-Davidson motorcycle through the rear window of a sport utility vehicle driven by Faustino Garcia in a road rage incident in Greeley, before also firing at and hitting a pursuing police cruiser near Colorado State Highway 60 in Milliken. He was identified by investigators via surveillance video after being observed speeding in Greeley on June 13.[421] On March 22, 2019, Lockhart was convicted of vehicular eluding, and acquitted of attempted first-degree murder and illegal discharge of a firearm. A mistrial was initially declared on the charge of attempted first-degree murder of a peace officer,[422] although he was subsequently convicted on June 26 in a retrial.[423] On July 30, Lockhart was sentenced to 32 years' imprisonment for attempted murder, to run consecutively with a three-year sentence for the vehicular eluding conviction.[424]

Members of the Hells Angels and the Mongols engaged in a gun battle that started in the parking lot of the Jake's Roadhouse bar and restaurant in Arvada on July 11, 2020, leaving Hells Angels member William "Kelly" Henderson dead from a gunshot wound, and three others injured.[425][426] Dozens of shots were fired over a four-block area, and the suspects fled the scene before police arrived.[427] Among the wounded was Ryan McPhearson, a member of a band playing in the bar that night who was hospitalized in critical condition with a brain injury after he was hit in the back of the head by an unknown assailant as he attempted to assist an injured man.[428][429]

The Hells Angels' Denver chapter clubhouse, located in the city's Highlands neighborhood, was raided by the Denver Police Department (DPD) on July 31, 2001 and three club members were arrested. One was convicted of disobeying a lawful order, while charges were dismissed against the other two.[430] In July 2002, eleven plaintiffs – ten HAMC members and the owner of the building housing the club's headquarters – filed a federal lawsuit as a result of the warrantless search, alleging that police acted illegally and violated their constitutional rights.[431] The Denver City Council approved a $50,000 settlement in September 2003 with eighteen claimants – the original eleven petitioners in addition to seven other Hells Angels who were detained at a motorcycle swap meet in early 2003.[432] Denver police chief Gerry Whitman also wrote the club a letter of apology.[433]

Hells Angels members Shiloh Frazier and Todd Zahn were arrested for possession of handguns after eight club members were pulled over by police for allegedly speeding while riding their motorcycles in Denver on September 2, 2005. Zahn pleaded guilty to possession of weapon by a previous offender, and charges against Frazier were dismissed. According to a federal lawsuit filed by the group in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on August 31, 2007 alleging an unconstitutional traffic stop and search without probable cause, the bikers were held at gunpoint and handcuffed, while dozens of police officers, including a SWAT team, and a police helicopter arrived at the scene after the officer who made the traffic stop called for reinforcements.[434] On January 24, 2008, the police departments of Denver and adjacent Mountain View settled the lawsuit with a $14,000 payment, with Denver Manager of Safety Al LaCabe and Mountain View police chief Eric Gomez also signing apologies.[435][436]

HAMC member Anthony Mills filed a federal lawsuit in April 2020 against city of Greeley, the town of LaSalle and the Weld County Sheriff's Office, as well as individual officers from those jurisdictions and from the Kersey and Garden City police departments in response to an April 8, 2018 incident in which LaSalle police officer David Miller joked about shooting Mills in order to get "paid vacation" after he had pulled him over for speeding.[437] In September 2020, five police agencies paid $25,000 to Mills to settle the lawsuit. Miller issued an apology to Mills as part of the settlement, and resigned from the police department.[438][439]

Denver Hells Angels chapter member Dustin "Dusty" Ullerich filed a federal lawsuit on November 3, 2021 against Jefferson County, the cities of Golden, Aurora and Arvada, and sixteen individual police officers from four departments over injuries he suffered when police executed a no-knock warrant at his home in Golden on November 7, 2019 as part of an operation targeting fourteen bikers in an organized crime case. Ullerich was hospitalized and placed in a medically-induced coma after being hit by a projectile when Jefferson County Sheriff's Office deputy Anthony Brown discharged a short-barreled shotgun loaded with lock-breaking ammunition.[433] Brown was cleared of wrongdoing in 2020.[440]

Twelve people were taken into custody after Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents and police SWAT teams raided nineteen locations in the Denver metropolitan area, Colorado Springs and Weld County, including the Denver Hells Angels chapter clubhouse, two tattoo shops and an automobile business, on November 7, 2019.[441] Dozens of firearms, methamphetamine, cocaine, cash and passports were seized in the raids. Thirteen Hells Angels members and a fourteenth man affiliated with the Destroyers motorcycle gang were ultimately indicted on charges of assault, kidnapping, robbery, motor vehicle theft and chop shop activity in relation to a Denver-based organized crime ring.[442] The five-month investigation into the ring involved eleven state and federal law enforcement agencies, and began in July 2019 after former HAMC member Joshua O'Bryan began offering investigators details on the Denver chapter's alleged involvement with interstate drug trafficking, gunrunning, prostitution and money laundering.[443] O'Bryan allegedly survived an ambush by a group of Hells Angels at a stashhouse in Erie on June 28, 2019 after he was expelled from the club due to suspicions he was cooperating with law enforcement, which emerged when he was arrested on firearms charges following a police raid on his motorcycle shop in Lakewood. In another alleged incident, on July 12, 2019, O'Bryan was beaten and kidnapped before having his club tattoos covered up at a Hells Angels-owned tattoo parlor in Englewood.[444]

One defendant in the case, William "Kelly" Henderson, was killed in a shootout with a rival motorcycle gang on July 11, 2020 before he could stand trial. William "Curly" Whitney received a two-year deferred sentence after pleading guilty to possessing an explosive. Charges were dismissed against Michael Dire.[440]

Connecticut is home to three HAMC chapters, in Bridgeport, Hartford and Middletown.[445] The Bridgeport chapter was the first to be established, following a patch-over of the Grateful Dead Motorcycle Club in 1975.[446] The Connecticut Hells Angels have been recruited as enforcers and contract killers for the Mafia.[447][448]

On February 7, 1975, Bridgeport Police Department patrol officer John McGee issued a member of the Hells Angels' Bridgeport chapter with a citation for speeding on his motorcycle. While driving home at the end of his shift that evening, McGee observed a stalled vehicle and stopped to assist the occupants when he was attacked by three men and beaten with a baseball bat.[449] He suffered major head injuries and was hospitalized in critical condition.[450] A Hells Angels member was convicted of the assault and sentenced to a year in prison, while two others had charges against them dismissed.[447]

Police raided the Bridgeport Hells Angels chapter clubhouse on May 7, 1975 and arrested five members – John J. Miller, Frank Passalaqua, Robert L. Redmond, Nicholas Romano Jr. and Joseph "Crazy Joe" Whelan – on charges of first‐degree manslaughter in connection with the death of José Sosa, whom police determined was pulled from his automobile and beaten to death after being involved in a near collision with a vehicle operated by one of the bikers in the early hours of May 2, 1975.[451][452] Sosa died of multiple head and internal injuries, and his body was found in the back of his parked car by three passing youths the following afternoon.[453] Three other Hells Angels – Jack Forbes, Russell J. Kutzer and Carlos Pini – were later apprehended on the same charges.[454]

Bridgeport Hells Angels members Frank D'Amato and Salvatore Saffioti were killed and another, Donald "Big Red" Meredith, was left wounded in critical condition when they were shot with a .44 Magnum carbine by Donald E. Krosky after they forced their way into a hotel and bar in Sandy Hook, Newtown on July 31, 1975.[455] The three Hells Angels, armed with knives, had been contracted by the building's owner Charles Framularo to evict Krosky, who rented and managed the premises. Krosky, who was associated with the rival Huns Motorcycle Club, was charged with two counts of murder and one count of assault with intent to murder on November 10, 1975; he was freed on a $100,000 bail bond.[456] After receiving several anonymous death threats, Krosky was shot dead with a shotgun when another vehicle pulled up alongside his car while he was stopped at a traffic light in Trumbull on July 20, 1976.[457] A woman passenger, Jean Ann McDaid, was also hospitalized.[458] No one has ever been arrested for Krosky's murder,[459] although police believe the gunman was Meredith.[460]

Frank Passalaqua was one of four white inmates investigated over the homicide of Alfred Chisholm, a black inmate who was strangled to death at Northern Correctional Institution on November 10, 1977.[461]

Bridgeport Hells Angels chapter president Daniel Eugene "Diamond Dan" Bifield, along with Susan Corin Bouton, was arrested by local police officers in Milford on October 3, 1979, after being observed with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun in his vehicle. A .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun was also found in Bouton's possession.[462] Bifield was on probation for a 1975 assault on a policeman at the time. He was convicted of possession of a shotgun by a convicted felon in October 1980 and was sentenced to two years in prison on November 20, 1980.[463]

Joseph Whelan fatally stabbed bar patron John Matulionis after a verbal altercation in a Bridgeport barroom on February 24, 1980. He was sentenced to twenty-five-years-to-life in prison for the murder.[464]

Daniel Bifield and two Bridgeport Hells Angels associates, including Daniel's father Richard Bifield, were convicted of conspiring to make and collect extortionate loans, and Hobbs Act violations on August 4, 1981 for their involvement in a loansharking operation headed by Francis "Fat Franny" Curcio, a made member of the Genovese crime family.[465][466] As an inmate awaiting sentencing, Daniel Bifield and three others escaped from the Bridgeport Correctional Center on September 23, 1981. He became the subject of an international manhunt by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and, at one point, a body found in the East River in New York City was incorrectly identified as that of Bifield.[467] After spending several weeks in the United States, he fled to the Bahamas. Successfully managing to elude his pursuers, Bifield finally returned to the U.S. in late January 1982 and went to Denver, Colorado, where he was eventually apprehended by United States Marshals Service (USMS) and FBI agents on February 5, 1982. Bifield was sentenced two weeks after his capture to two consecutive twenty-year prison sentences on the extortion charge.[468][469] He was then found guilty on June 10, 1982 of escape from the custody of the United States Attorney General, and was sentenced to an additional five years' imprisonment to be served consecutively.[470]

Thirty-seven members and associates of the Bridgeport Hells Angels were arrested on racketeering and drug trafficking charges on May 2, 1985 in connection with a three-year FBI investigation of the club known as Operation Roughrider. The arrests took place in three cities across Connecticut. Among those indicted was an officer of the Bridgeport PD, Joseph Seamons.[471] Two law enforcement officers were injured during the raids; state trooper Angel Gonzalez was wounded when a suspect fired at him through the door of a house in Stratford, and a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official suffered a broken toe while using a sledgehammer to break through an armored clubhouse door in Bridgeport.[472] An undercover FBI agent, Kevin P. Bonner, infiltrated the club for over two years and made drug deals with various chapters during the investigation.[473] The operation involved around a thousand law enforcement personnel, and resulted in the arrests of a total of 133 Hells Angels members and associates during approximately fifty coordinated raids carried out in eleven states. The raids also led to the seizure of $2.6 million worth of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, hashish, PCP and LSD, as well as weapons including Uzi submachine guns and rocket launchers.[474] Thirty-five of those charged were convicted – including Roger "Bear" Mariani, Robert "Red Dog" Redmann and Joseph Whelan, who were each sentenced to fifteen years in prison.[475] One Hells Angel, Robert Banning, became a cooperating witness.[476] In 1986, detective Nicholas Barone of the Connecticut State Police received intelligence indicating that he and H. James Pickerstein, Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, were to be physically harmed by the HAMC in retaliation for their efforts in the investigation and subsequent prosecutions. These attempts at violence were to be funded by the Hells Angels' Oakland, California chapter. As a result, Barone was subject to intense security for an extended period of time.[450]

Hells Angels sergeant-at-arms Daniel "Dan" Klimas shot and killed Todd Festa, a rejected club prospect and state police informant, in Wallingford on January 7, 1998. Klimas pleaded guilty to murder and possession of a pistol without a permit, and was sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison on March 3, 2000.[477]

Roger Mariani, a senior member of the Hells Angels in Connecticut, was shot and killed while riding his motorcycle on the Connecticut Turnpike in West Haven on April 2, 2006.[478] The shooting happened after a group of over twenty motorcyclists was involved in an altercation with four men travelling in a sport utility vehicle. Another Hells Angels member, Paul Carrol, was also wounded when shots were fired from the car.[479] Within hours of Mariani's killing, two Hells Angels – Trevor Delaware and Jeffrey Richard – were arrested near the home of an Outlaws member in Enfield, in possession of weapons including knives and a loaded gun as well as pages from a classified state police manual that lists identities and addresses of gang members. The pair were charged with weapons possession and theft of a license plate.[480]

The Hells Angels are considered suspects in the murder of Joseph "HoJo" Ferraiolo, the president of the Outlaws' Waterbury chapter, who died from multiple gunshot wounds after being ambushed outside a tattoo parlor he owned in Hamden on February 9, 2010.[481] No one has ever been arrested in the case, which police consider an open investigation.[482]

Hells Angels associate Howard Hammer was contracted by loanshark James Broderick III to collect a $1,500 loan from a delinquent debtor in late December 2015. When the individual failed to pay the debt and falsely claimed to be the acting president of the New York Hells Angels chapter, he was stabbed eight times, beaten with a hammer and blinded in one eye in a New Milford hotel room on January 25, 2016. Broderick and Hammer were arrested on May 27, 2016. Hammer refused to identify those involved in the assault, although an investigation revealed that members of the Hells Angels' Bridgeport chapter had attacked the victim in connection with the extortion scheme.[483] Hammer pleaded guilty to conspiracy to participate in the collection and attempted collection of an extension of credit by extortionate means on December 2, 2016 and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years' imprisonment on June 1, 2017.[484] Broderick pleaded guilty to the same charge on December 7, 2016 and was sentenced to two years' on June 29, 2017.[485]

Four leading members of the Hells Angels in northern Illinois were arrested and charged with numerous crimes including violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in 2005, following a four-year federal investigation into the club. At least three were convicted; Melvin "Road" Chancey (president of the Chicago chapter from 1997 to 1999) was sentenced to nine years in prison, David G. "Pulley" Ohlendorf (president of the Spring Valley chapter from 2003) was sentenced to four years in prison and Richard A. Abrams (a former president of both the Rockford and Spring Valley chapters) was sentenced to three years in prison during trials in June and July 2006. Their group carried out the June 25, 1994 shooting of a rival club president in Cook County, threatened to bomb a rival gang's clubhouse in Kankakee in March 1995, and planned two murders in Peoria and Joliet, crimes they committed to protect sales of cocaine and methamphetamine with a street value of $624,000 from 1993 through 2002.[486]

In 2016, law enforcement received public backlash for heavily patrolling the area where the HAMC was holding a charity for educational programs for children with special needs. Citizens took issue with authorities summoning the Chicago area’s SWAT team and helicopter unit for the relatively small bike night, which attracted about eighty motorcycles to the small bar where the event was hosted. One HAMC member summed up the public’s feelings in an interview:

"As far as what we view as the excessive law enforcement build-up that's always present at our events, they've made it clear to us that they don't want motorcycle clubs in Porter County … We do understand the need for law enforcement in our society, however what happened Thursday night was a waste of their talents and a waste of our tax dollars."

The Angel then once again reaffirmed that the main purpose of his club was for men to ride motorcycles together and that this was a purely charitable event. He then spoke about how his chapter is working to support the communities that support his club.[487]

In October 1988, Ralph "Sonny" Barger, the Hells Angels' Oakland (California) chapter president and reputed national leader, and Michael Vincent "Irish" O'Farrell, the former Oakland president, were convicted of plotting to carry out bomb attacks in Louisville and elsewhere against members of the Outlaws. Three other club members were also found guilty on lesser charges, while five others were acquitted. The government contended the Hells Angels planned the attacks in revenge for the murder of John Cleve Webb, a member of Hells Angels' Anchorage (Alaska) chapter, who was shot outside a Jefferson County bar on August 12, 1986. A Louisville Outlaws member later pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in Webb's death.[488][489]

Pagans member Christopher J. Brennan shot and wounded three Hells Angels at a bar in Deale on May 30, 2002 when he fired shots from a van with a .32 caliber pistol. Brennan pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment and was sentenced to ninety days in jail in November 2002 after prosecutors dropped additional other charges, which included attempted first-degree and second-degree murder, due to "a distinct lack of witness cooperation".[490]

Three members of the North Beach Hells Angels chapter – chapter president John Anthony Beal, vice-president Lewis James Hall and Cornelius Wood Alexander, as well as Hall's wife Traecy Eugenia Hall – were indicted on federal drug and firearm charges, and were arrested by the ATF during a series of simultaneous raids on July 24, 2003. Federal agents uncovered seventeen firearms, over 270 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest and methamphetamine during the raids. According to affidavits filed in federal court, two undercover ATF agents who had infiltrated the Warlocks witnessed Beal sell cocaine to two Warlocks members at the Hells Angels' clubhouse on May 3, 2003.[491] The arrests followed a nationwide investigation into the Hells Angels which also resulted in operations against the club in five other east coast states.[492]

The HAMC has established chapters in Lowell, Lynn, Salem, Cape Cod (headquartered in Buzzards Bay) and Berkshire County (headquartered in Lee).[493] The "Bad Company" chapter in Lowell, founded in 1966,[494] was the club's first branch on the East Coast.[495] The Hells Angels are the most significant motorcycle gang involved in drug trafficking in Massachusetts,[493] and have also collaborated with the Boston faction of the Patriarca crime family in loansharking and narcotics distribution.[496][497]

Hells Angels members were among a group of twenty people – fifteen men and five women – charged with various offenses after a battle with police on Lowell's Andover Street on December 14, 1969. The violence erupted when police officers arrived at a house party in response to complaints from neighbors and were threatened with a rifle. Around forty-five officers, including reinforcements from neighboring towns, were required to arrest the group. Five police officers were injured and a patrol wagon was damaged in the incident. Several rifles and a sawed-off shotgun were seized along with clubs and daggers, as well as barbiturates.[498] Three Hells Angels – Alan J. "Big Al" Hogan, Philip W. Jones and Michael Maguire – were charged with assault with intent to murder.[499]

David A. Urban, a Hells Angels member from Buffalo, New York, was fatally shot in the heart after an unidentified gunman fired four rounds from a pistol into a bar in Lynn on April 23, 1974.[500] Mark W. Veherbon, a Menlo Park, California Hells Angel, was also wounded after being shot three times in the stomach and leg, while two other club members escaped unharmed.[501] Although the murder has been unsolved, Lynn police have speculated that the shooting stemmed from a conflict with a fledgling rival club, Lucifer's Henchmen, and an incident at a local café on April 7, in which the son of the café proprietor, Thomas Abernathy Jr., was allegedly stabbed by two Hells Angels. The HAMC reportedly emerged victorious in the feud, seizing the colors of ten or eleven Lucifer's Henchmen members. Another three rival bikers fled the state.[502] One of the Hells Angels charged with the non-fatal stabbing, "Whiskey" George Hartman, Jr., was murdered in Florida on April 30 before he could face trial.[503] A man sentenced in the café assault was released from prison days before Abernathy Jr. was seriously injured by a nail bomb left on the porch of his home on March 24, 1975. He was blinded, and lost his left arm and his right hand in the explosion.[504]

Hells Angels member Alan Hogan, along with Gilbert LaRocque and Joseph F. Quartarone, Jr., abducted Linda Condon outside a bar in Beverly in the early hours of August 9, 1975 and forcefully took the keys to her Newburyport apartment, which she shared with her husband Theodore Condon, a member or former member of the Hells Angels. While LaRocque held Linda Condon captive in the back seat of Quartarone's Cadillac, Hogan and Quartarone – a police officer in the city of Beverly – entered the apartment and beat Theodore Condon with clubs, inflicting severe injuries including fractures of the femur and of both tibiae, a severe contusion of the left side of his face, a through-and-through laceration of his left ear, a perforated left ear-drum, and a fractured skull. Linda Condon was then taken to a motel room in Peabody, where she escaped through a window and called for the police after LaRocque fell asleep. The trio were convicted of kidnapping, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, and mayhem.[505] The Massachusetts Appeals Court reversed all convictions because, in its view, the trial judge improperly forbade cross-examination of the Condons designed to show bias because criminal charges stemming from a 1971 drug indictment were pending against them at the time.[506]

Michele Gagnon, a member of the Quebec chapter of the Hells Angels, is believed to be a prime suspect in two unsolved murders that occurred in Lynn in 1979. Gagnon's girlfriend Susan Marie DeQuina, who reportedly wanted to break up with Gagnon because he and his friends were using her car to transport drugs, went missing on October 3, 1979. Shortly after her disappearance, DeQuina's car was found abandoned and burned in Saugus. Authorities believe she was murdered.[507] On November 4, 1979, the dismembered torso of Robert "Bino" Garbino, Gagnon's roommate and a Hells Angels prospect, was discovered by children playing in a dump near where DeQuina's car was found. He had been shot in the head, back and shoulder, and his severed head and hands were later found buried in the yard of his Lynn residence. Police suspect Garbino was killed by the Hells Angels over a drug rip-off, and began searching for Gagnon in relation to the murder.[508] He was found shot to death in an apartment in Bridgeport, Connecticut on November 25, 1979. His death was ruled a suicide, although some authorities believe he did not take his own life.[509]

Alan Hogan and Robert Montgomery, both members of the Hells Angels' Lynn chapter, and Thomas Apostolos, a member of the New Hampshire chapter, were imprisoned after police discovered a trailer home converted into a methamphetamine lab in Middleton on January 11, 1980. Two non-club members turned state's evidence and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program following the trial. Three murders in Canada – of a Hells Angel, his wife and his mother – were directly linked to the case.[465]

During the early hours of September 20, 1981, James Rich was stabbed numerous times in the legs after being attacked outside a bar in Revere Beach by four unidentified men – believed to be Hells Angels members – who accused him of being a member of the Devil's Disciples Motorcycle Club. The following evening, three friends of Rich – Robert L. Cobb, Arthur A. Corbett and Andrew J. Millyan – went to the bar seeking revenge on any Hells Angels present. Millyan shot bar patron Dana Hill in the head with a shotgun. Hill – who was not a member of any motorcycle gang, but had the appearance of a biker – died three days later. After discarding the murder weapon in a body of water, Cobb, Corbett and Millyan were arrested by police and indicted on first-degree murder charges on the theory of joint enterprise. On May 19, 1982, Corbett and Millyan were convicted of murder in the first degree; Cobb was convicted of murder in the second degree.[510] The trio were sentenced to life in prison.[511]

Hells Angels members Alan J. Cutler and Edward R. Simard, and another man – John L. Burke – were arrested on February 4, 1986 in connection with the murder of Vincent DeNino, a drug dealer who was found shot dead in the trunk of his car in a supermarket parking lot in Revere on February 29, 1984. According to police, DeNino refused to pay Simard approximately $10,000 owed over a cocaine deal and, after learning that the Hells Angels had put a contract out on his life, sought protection from the rival Trampers Motorcycle Club. With approval from both clubs, he was allegedly lured to Cutler's home and shot in the shoulder with a shotgun before being taken to his car and shot four times in the head.[512] A fourth suspect, Trampers associate and future Patriarca crime family soldier Darin F. "Nino" Bufalino, fled to Kingscourt, Ireland before being apprehended in Fuengirola, Spain, on June 11, 1987.[513][514] Charges of first-degree murder against Bufalino, Burke and Simard were dismissed on December 10, 1990 when a judge ruled Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wiretap evidence in the case to be inadmissible because there had been an eight-day delay in sealing the tapes.[515]

In September 1984, Salem Hells Angels chapter member Billy Leary and another motorcyclist were arrested by the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) for operating under the influence after leaving a nightclub in Revere. Leary was subsequently charged with three counts of assault and battery, and three counts of making threats after an incident occurred when officers attempted to strip search him at a Peabody police station. He was ultimately acquitted.[516]

Five Hells Angels members, including the vice-president of the club's East Coast faction, were arrested in the Greater Boston area on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine on May 2, 1985 in connection to the FBI's Operation Roughrider. Three of those taken into custody surrendered peacefully in a raid on a home in Lynn, where federal agents also confiscated a home computer system used to handle the Hells Angels' administrative and financial matters.[471] The three-year investigation, which involved undercover FBI agent Kevin P. Bonner infiltrating the club and making drug deals with numerous chapters across the country, culminated with a total of 133 Hells Angels members and associates being indicted on drug trafficking and racketeering charges after approximately fifty coordinated raids carried out in eleven states.[473] Authorities seized $2 million in cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, hashish, PCP and LSD, as well as weapons including Uzi submachine guns and rocket launchers during the operation.[474] Lynn chapter members Glenn "Hoppy" Main and Steve "Fee" Sullivan were sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted, and another – Linwood "Lee" Barrett III – was acquitted. Frank Briggs and Julio "Jules" Lucido of the Berkshire County chapter were sentenced to one year and four years in prison, respectively.[465]

Two Hells Angels members, a prospect and an associate were arrested on firearms charges in March 1986 as part of Operation One Percenter, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) investigation. Full-patch members George Harvey of Revere and Peter Lazarus Jr. of Lynn were convicted; Harvey was sentenced to serve a year in prison at FCI Danbury, while Lazarus was sentenced to probation.[465]

The Hells Angels took over ancillary activities of the Patriarca crime family's Boston faction, such as loansharking and drug dealing, from the East Boston-based Trampers, who had previously overseen operations under contract with the Mafia, circa 1986.[496][497] Hells Angels member Mark "Rebel" McKenna was one of eleven men indicted on charges of loansharking and racketeering on June 9, 1987 for operating the largest loansharking ring in United States history, which collected $3.5 million from approximately three-hundred-and-fifty victims. The indictments followed a two-year state and federal investigation of organized crime in Boston.[517]

Thirteen members and former members of the Lowell Hells Angels were indicted in September 1991 on charges of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine as part of a drug ring that operated in Massachusetts and New Hampshire between 1987 and 1991.[518] A further five Hells Angels were arrested on drug charges in connection with the case on June 1, 1992.[519] On January 12, 1993, chapter president Charles T. "Doc" Pasciuti and fourteen others were sentenced after earlier pleading guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and conspiracy. Sentences ranged from fifteen years' imprisonment for Pasciuti to three years' probation.[520] Several government witnesses in the case – including Crazy Eights Motorcycle Club president Gaylen Blake, Crazy Eights associates David and Larry Machado, Die Hards Motorcycle Club president Gordon Tardiff and HAMC associate Robin Golden – entered the Federal Witness Protection Program.[450]

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began an investigation of the Salem Hells Angels chapter in February 1995. As part of an undercover operation, DEA agent Phil Muollo infiltrated the club for eighteen months and purchased kilograms of drugs from Gregory "Greg" Domey, the chapter president as well as the Hells Angels' leader on the East Coast, and other members. The investigation was also aided by the use of an informant. On July 1, 1995, John R. "Johnny Bart" Bartolomeo and another Hells Angel chased Girard Giorgio – a member of the Devil's Disciples – down Route 3 as he rode his motorcycle and badly beat him and stripped him of his colors after catching up with him, leaving him in critical condition. Bartolomeo then killed another Devil's Disciples member, William "Cat" Michaels, on July 29, 1995. Michaels was riding his motorcycle on Route 18 in Weymouth when Bartolomeo accelerated an automobile into him.[521] The operation culminated with the arrests of sixteen Hells Angels members and associates during raids on ten locations, including the Salem chapter clubhouse, on September 5, 1996.[522] Quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine were also seized.[523] All sixteen people indicted were convicted.[524] Domey was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment in 1997 after pleading guilty to running a criminal enterprise that sold cocaine and methamphetamine.[525] Bartolomeo pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute, and conspiracy to distribute, cocaine and methamphetamine on May 21, 1998. State and federal authorities agreed not to charge him with the attacks on two Devil's Disciples members in conjunction with a plea agreement. He was sentenced to thirty-five years'.[526]

Two Hells Angels were accused of raping a woman at the Lynn chapter's clubhouse during the 1997 funeral of former chapter president Alan Hogan.[527]

Salem Hells Angels members James Costin and Thomas M. Duda were charged with assault and battery following an attack on off-duty police lieutenant Vernon "Skip" Coleman at a Lynn bar on November 24, 2004.[525] Coleman suffered a severe facial laceration after being punched and kicked.[528] Costin pleaded guilty on May 18, 2005 and was sentenced to two-to-four years in prison, with fifteen months to be served and the rest suspended for five years of probation.[529]

During a traffic stop on Route 107 on January 6, 2005, Hells Angels member Christopher Ranieri fled into a marsh after state trooper Daniel Crespi observed what he believed to be a gun under his jacket. Police eventually coaxed Ranieri out of the swamp and arrested him on several charges. He was given a ninety-day suspended sentence for assault on a police officer.[530]

A joint investigation of the Hells Angels' Boston and Salem chapters by the ATF, DEA, MSP and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that began in January 2007 resulted in the arrests of six club members on various charges during a series of raids on September 20, 2007.[531] Christopher Sweeney pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm and a silencer, and was sentenced to two years and four months' imprisonment on December 4, 2008.[532] Christopher Ranieri was sentenced to one year in prison and restitution to the U.S. Treasury in the amount of $33,438 on February 3, 2009 after pleading guilty to two counts of failure to file federal income tax returns.[533]

Eric Franco, the sergeant-at-arms of the Lynn Hells Angels chapter, was found to be in possession of a firearm and ammunition on May 3, 2011 when police were called to the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and her child after receiving a report that Franco had assaulted his girlfriend. Franco's criminal record in Massachusetts includes three convictions for assault and battery by a dangerous weapon, as well as convictions for indecent assault and battery, failure to register as a sex offender, breaking and entering at night with intent to commit a felony, and conspiracy to violate the controlled substances act. Franco was also convicted in Arkansas for battery in the second degree in a case in which he and five other Hells Angels assaulted and stabbed four Bandidos members. He was convicted in September 2012 of possessing a firearm and ammunition after receiving a felony conviction, and was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison on March 12, 2013.[534]

Berkshire County Hells Angels chapter sergeant-at-arms Adam Lee Hall, along with Caius Veiovis (born Roy Gutfinski Jr.)[535] and Aryan Brotherhood member David Chalue, kidnapped Robert Chadwell, Edward Frampton and David Glasser – Chalue's roommate – from Frampton's home in Pittsfield during the early hours of August 28, 2011 before fatally shooting them. Their bodies, dismembered with an electric circular saw, were discovered in Becket ten days later. Glasser was killed to prevent him testifying against Hall in an unrelated assault case, and Chadwell and Frampton were killed to eliminate witnesses.[6] Chalue, Hall and Veiovis were each convicted of three counts of murder, three of kidnapping, and three of intimidation of a witness during separate trials in 2014. They were each sentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison.[536]

Two members of the Hells Angels' Salem chapter – Marc Eliason and Sean Barr, the chapter president – were arrested on charges of kidnapping, mayhem and extortion on March 13, 2013, along with Nikolis Avelis and Brian Weymouth – two members of the Byfield chapter of the Red Devils, a Hells Angels support club.[537] Two others were also later apprehended. The charges related to the assault of a former Red Devils member, who was forced to resign from the club after failing to assault an expelled member of the Salem Hells Angels as ordered by superiors.[538] The victim was lured to the Red Devils' Byfield clubhouse on October 15, 2012, where he was interrogated before being knocked unconscious and having his hand broken with a ball-peen hammer, causing permanent injury. His motorcycle was also stolen. After being threatened by Red Devils members into delivering the title to the stolen motorcycle, he went into hiding and eventually contacted the FBI.[539] Barr, Eliason, Weymouth and another Hells Angel, Robert DeFronzo, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit violent crimes, maiming, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault resulting serious bodily injury and racketeering in February 2015.[540] Barr and Eliason were each sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, while DeFronzo and Weymouth were sentenced to four years'.[541]

Hells Angels members Michael J. Blair and Jake Doherty were arrested on June 19, 2016 and charged with beating two members of the Defiant Disciples Motorcycle Club with a flashlight outside a pub in Worcester on May 8, 2016. Witnesses said a total of seven men were involved in the assault.[542] Blair pleaded guilty on January 7, 2019 and was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.[543]

The first Hells Angels chapter outside of California was established in Omaha in 1966.[544] The Hells Angels are involved in retail-level methamphetamine distribution in Nebraska.[545]

Hells Angels member Orval Hinz, along with Ronald Eugene Kirby and Robert Walker, was charged with first-degree murder after Gilbert Arthur Batten, Jr. was shot in the head and killed at a house in Omaha on September 20, 1968. Kirby – who was in a dispute with Batten's acquaintance James Lynch over a woman named Judy Dunbar – testified that Hinz and Walker accompanied him as he went to Lynch's home armed with a .22 caliber survival rifle, and that Batten was killed when the rifle accidentally fired as the trio assaulted Batten and Lynch.[546] Kirby was convicted of Batten's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[547]

A group of ten Hells Angels were involved in a brawl with police who attempted to eject them from a bar in Omaha on August 12, 1969.[548] Hells Angels member Francis "Frank" Bayless was convicted of assault with intent to inflict great bodily injury after he attacked a police officer with a can opener. He was sentenced to a term of one-to-three years in prison.[549]

The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) set up a front operation dealing in narcotics, gambling and pornography in Omaha after infiltrating the Minneapolis, Minnesota chapter of the Hells Angels via identical means beginning in December 1969.[550] On April 21, 1970, Minneapolis Hells Angels member Steven Paul Liley obtained heroin from Roger Curtis Levell and Dale Ray "Corky" Haley – vice-president and secretary-treasurer of the Omaha Hells Angels chapter, respectively – in Omaha. The drugs had been furnished by Minneapolis chapter vice-president Roger Lee Sheehan, who purchased them from the Oakland, California chapter. One ounce of the heroin was sold by Liley in an Omaha motel to special agent Jack Walsh, who was posing as a bookie. Haley and Levell sold two ounces of heroin, and Omaha chapter president Gerald Franklin Smith sold methamphetamine, to special agent James McDowell on September 15, 1970. McDowell and Thomas Liley – a government informant and the brother of Steven Liley – made another drug deal with Haley, Levell and Smith on October 14, 1970, purchasing three ounces of heroin along with methamphetamine.[551] Haley, Levell and Smith were arrested on October 15, 1970 as part of a federal operation which also resulted in arrests of other Hells Angels in Minneapolis and San Francisco, California.[552] Haley was convicted of conspiring to sell narcotics, while Smith was convicted on four counts of unlawfully possessing and selling narcotics, and one count of conspiracy.[553] Levell failed to appear for trial in February 1971.[554]

Hells Angels member Louis Lundholm was charged with beating a man with a baseball bat and pushing a man in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs after an incident at a party in Omaha in November 1971.[554]

The North Omaha home of Nebraska State Liquor Commission inspector John Duprey was bombed on April 7, 1972. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discovered that the bomber used dynamite with a four-inch fuse. In August 1972, federal agents raided the home of Hells Angels member Roger Levell in East Omaha on suspicion of his connection to the explosion. While weapons and drugs were found, no related explosives were reported.[555]

Two bodies discovered west of the Elkhorn River in southwestern Douglas County in April 1973 were suspected to be those of Omaha Hells Angels members Louis Lundholm and John Peterson. One had been shot in the head and the other's skull had been fractured with a blunt instrument.[554]

Hells Angels member Thomas Edward "Red" Nesbitt killed Mary Kay Harmer at a drug party at his Omaha home during the early morning hours of November 30, 1975. With the help of Nesbitt's friend and neighbor Wayne Bieber, Harmer's body was dumped in a manhole in Carter Lake, Iowa after being stored in Bieber's garage for approximately thirty-six hours.[556] Authorities theorize that Harmer was lured to Nesbitt's home by two women seeking a sexual partner for two Hells Angels, and that she was murdered when she resisted their advances. Her remains were discovered by an engineering crew in April 1984. Forensic experts were unable to determine the cause of death. Nesbitt was arrested for Harmer's murder as well as for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine by Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents while living under an alias in New Carlisle, Indiana on October 26, 1984. His Brazilian girlfriend Anna DaSilva was also arrested on drug charges.[557] Nesbitt was convicted of murder in the first degree on March 7, 1986 and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment.[558][559]

Hells Angel Leslie Fitzgerald was shot and killed during a fight involving two couples outside a Hells Angels party in North Omaha on July 12, 1980.[560] Fitzgerald's killer was acquitted of second-degree murder by reason of self-defense.[561]

Ten members and associates of the Omaha Hells Angels, including chapter president Walter "Larry" Phillips and treasurer Lamont D. Kress, were indicted on February 18, 1981 for their role in a conspiracy that used intimidation, assault, torture and murder to establish a monopoly of the methamphetamine trade in the Omaha area.[560] The drug, manufactured in clandestine labs throughout the United States and obtained from other Hells Angels chapters in multipound quantities, was delivered to Omaha in motorcycles and motorcycle parts, cars and vans. The conspiracy began in December 1972 and is suspected in the unsolved murder of Joseph Sackett, who was found dead in a field after being shot execution-style in August 1979.[561] An eighteen-month investigation culminated in a series of raids on ten locations in Omaha, one in Council Bluffs, Iowa and another in Santa Rosa, California on February 28 in which around eighty officers from federal, state, county and municipal law enforcement agencies made six arrests and recovered a cache of rifles, shotguns and automatic weapons, as well as narcotics ranging from marijuana to cocaine.[562] Four Hells Angels – Gary D. Apker, James "Jim Bob" Cronin, Calvin Davenport and Raymond "Buzzard" Gearhart – and Janice Fitzgerald, the widow of slain Hells Angels member Leslie Fitzgerald, were convicted of felony firearms violations and drug possession on November 30, 1981.[563]

The Omaha Police Department (OPD) initiated a three-year undercover investigation targeting a cocaine distribution network in the Omaha metropolitan area. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) became involved in the investigation, called Operation Zookeeper, in July 1982.[564] A federal grand jury indicted forty-three individuals, many of them Hells Angels, in 1983. By the end of the year, fifteen members of the drug ring had pled guilty, and many of the others were later convicted.[565]

Arrests were made during a series of coordinated raids carried out in Omaha on May 2, 1985 as part of Operation Roughrider, an FBI investigation of the Hells Angels that commenced three years prior. An undercover FBI agent, Kevin P. Bonner, infiltrated the club for twenty-six months and made drug transactions with numerous chapters as part of the investigation, which resulted in the indictments of a total of 133 Hells Angels members and associates in eleven states on narcotics trafficking and racketeering charges.[473] The raids, involving approximately a thousand law enforcement personnel, also led to the seizure of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, hashish, PCP and LSD valued at $2 million, as well as weapons including submachine guns and anti-tank weaponry.[474]

Fifteen Hells Angels members and associates were arrested in the Omaha area on October 17, 1990 after being indicted on charges including interstate and foreign travel in support of racketeering enterprises, money laundering, manufacturing and distribution of a controlled substance, and felony possession of a firearm. The arrests, which came during a series of simultaneous raids on fourteen locations including the club's Omaha headquarters, were the culmination of a two-year investigation. The raids also resulted in confiscation of rifles, a .22 caliber automatic pistol, $800,000 worth of drugs, $200,000 in cash as well as Hells Angels paraphernalia.[566] Hells Angels members Dale Ray Haley and Lamont Kress, the club's former East Coast regional treasurer, along with associates Timothy S. Egan, Mary Lee and Rodney Rumsey were convicted on May 15, 1992 of drug trafficking, money laundering and illegal weapons possession. Haley was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment, Kress, Egan and Rumsey were sentenced to fifteen years and eight months', and Lee was sentenced to twelve years and three months'. Five others negotiated plea bargains, and another was acquitted.[567]

Jay Witt was sentenced to thirty-to-forty years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of manslaughter, use of a weapon and possession of a weapon by a prohibited person in connection with the death of Hells Angels member William "Willy" John Furlong, who died after being shot three times at the Omaha chapter's clubhouse on July 14, 2013.[568] Witt died at the Nebraska State Penitentiary on September 25, 2019, aged fifty-three.[569]

The River Run Riot occurred on April 27, 2002, at the Harrah's Casino & Hotel in Laughlin, Nevada. Members of the Hells Angels and the Mongols motorcycle clubs fought each other on the casino floor. As a result, Mongol Anthony Barrera, 43, was stabbed to death, and two Hells Angels, Jeramie Bell, 27, and Robert Tumelty, 50, were shot to death. On February 23, 2007 Hells Angels members James Hannigan and Rodney Cox were sentenced to two years in prison. Cox and Hannigan were captured on videotape confronting Mongols members inside the casino. A Hells Angel member can be clearly seen on the casino security videotape performing a front kick on a Mongol biker member, causing the ensuing melee.

However, prior to this altercation, several incidents of harassment and provocation were noted in the Clark County, Nevada Grand Jury hearings as having been perpetrated upon The Hells Angels. Members of the Mongols accosted a vendor's table selling Hells Angels trademarked items, had surrounded a Hells Angel and demanded he remove club clothing. In addition, nine witnesses claimed the fight began when a Mongol kicked a member of the Hells Angels. Regardless of which minor physical incident can be said to have "caused the melee", it is clear that The Hells Angels had come to confront the Mongols concerning their actions.

Attorneys for the Hells Angels claimed that the Hells Angels were defending themselves from an attack initiated by the Mongols.

Charges were dismissed against 36 other Hells Angels originally named in the indictment.[570]

Eleven members of the Hells Angels' Lowell, Massachusetts chapter were arrested on narcotics-related charges during a raid by twenty-six federal, state and local law enforcement officers on a dwelling in Nashua on September 9, 1969. A cache of heroin was also seized.[571] Chapter president Donald James "Skeets" Picard was convicted on two counts of heroin trafficking and sentenced to two concurrent twenty-year prison sentences.[572]

On June 12, 1972, Hells Angels members Robert Gardner and Kevin Gilroy were shot while riding their motorcycles on Interstate 93 in Londonderry by Dean Dayutis, a member of the Devil's Disciples Motorcycle Club who fired at the pair from a moving vehicle. Gardner was wounded and Gilroy was killed. Dayutis was arrested in Key West, Florida on November 2, 1982 and was repatriated to New Hampshire to face trial for Gilroy's killing in May 1983 after a five-month extradition process.[573] He was convicted of second-degree murder later that year and sentenced to eighteen-to-forty years of imprisonment.[574]

The Hells Angels formed their first chapter in New Hampshire when members from Massachusetts and Maine established a branch in Manchester in March 2000.[575]

An innocent bystander was wounded with a shotgun during a fight involving the Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Milford and Company Motorcycle Club outside a restaurant in Manchester on April 16, 2010.[576]

Hells Angels member James Cunningham was among four men arrested in June 2017 on federal drug trafficking charges following an investigation that spanned several years. Cunningham sold methamphetamine to an individual who was cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on four separate occasions in Manchester and Merrimack between May 23 and November 20, 2013.[577] He pleaded guilty to methamphetamine trafficking, and was sentenced to three years and three months in prison on May 10, 2018.[578]

During their war against the Breed in the 1970s, the Hells Angels carried out a grenade attack on the home of the Breed's national president in Plainfield.[579]

In 1983, two members of the Binghamton, New York Hells Angels chapter were charged with assault and attempted murder after a shootout with the New Jersey State Police (NJSP) in Hope Township.[580]

The Hells Angels established a presence in New Jersey in 2002 with the founding of a prospect chapter in Newark, which was sponsored by the HAMC chapters in New Rochelle, New York and New York City.[581] The Newark chapter was formed following a treaty between the Hells Angels and the Pagans in February 2002.[374] The New Jersey faction is small, but is backed by the New York City chapter – one of the club's largest.[582]

Three Hells Angels were beaten by a group of Pagans members and associates outside a bar in Woodland Township on January 1, 2005.[583] One Hells Angel, Vincent "Honcho" Heinrich, was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital with head injuries after being struck with a wooden board. No arrests were made.[584] The incident, which occurred during a time when the Hells Angels were actively recruiting from the Pagans stronghold of South Jersey, allegedly prompted the Hells Angels' East Coast leader John "The Baptist" LoFranco to declare war on the Pagans.[585]

Four Hells Angels members – Rocco P. Gullatta, Kerry K. Kester, Justin D. Morris and Joshua R. Woods – were indicted on charges of unlawful possession of weapons, possession of a prohibited weapon, certain persons not to possess a weapon, and unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance after law enforcement officials observed them loading large knives, machetes and other weapons into the trunk of a Chevrolet Malibu in a restaurant parking lot in Clinton Township on August 22, 2015.[586]

The United States Department of Justice has stated that the Hells Angels have links with New York's Gambino and Genovese crime families; the mafia is afforded security and transportation in narcotics deals in exchange for drugs and contract killings.[587]

Eight Hells Angels members, who were in New York City to attend the funeral of murdered club member Jeffrey "Groover" Coffey, were arrested on suspicion of the March 10, 1971 gang rape of a seventeen-year-old girl in a leather goods store in East Village, Manhattan. The bikers allegedly returned to the store, owned by Eugene Pritzert, to pick up goods they had ordered the day before. When Pritzert told them the goods were not ready, they began abusing him, waking Pritzert's girlfriend who was asleep in the rear of the store. While some members guarded the store owner, others took turns beating and raping the girl. After approximately six hours, Pritzert managed to escape and alerted police. The girl identified her alleged attackers in a police lineup.[588] The eight men – Robert Cardner, Robert Marshall and Car Paretta from Massachusetts, Thomas Fusco, Edward Robinson and Kevin Seymour from New York state, Kurt Groudle from Ohio, and James Ordfield from New York City – were charged with rape, sodomy, unlawful imprisonment and criminal trespassing.[589]

College student Bruce Meyer was shot five times in the head at point-blank range with a .22 caliber handgun fitted with a silencer in the parking lot of his apartment building in Brewster on December 14, 1975.[457] Law enforcement sources stated that Meyer was murdered by the former president of the Connecticut Hells Angels chapter in retaliation for him killing a Hells Angels member in a car crash on July 3, 1975.[447]

In September 1994, near Buffalo at the Lancaster Speedway drag races, there was a clash between the Hells Angels and a rival biker gang resulting in two deaths, and multiple injuries.

On January 28, 2007 a woman named Roberta Shalaby was found badly beaten on the sidewalk outside the Hells Angels' clubhouse at 77 East Third Street in the East Village, Manhattan. The resulting investigation by the NYPD has been criticized by the group for its intensity. The police were refused access to the Hells Angels clubhouse and responded by closing off the area, setting up sniper positions, and sending in an armored personnel carrier.[590] After obtaining a warrant, the police searched the clubhouse and arrested one Hells Angel who was later released. The group claims to have no connection with the beating of Shalaby. Five security cameras cover the entrance to the New York chapter's East 3rd Street club house, but the NY HAMC maintains nobody knows how Shalaby was beaten nearly to death at their front door. A club lawyer said they intended to sue the city of New York for false arrest and possible civil rights violations.[591]

A methamphetamine trafficking network run by members and associates of the Hells Angels' Rochester chapter operating in Western New York from 2002 through July 9, 2010 was dismantled after an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Genesee County Sheriff's Office, the New York State Police, the City of Batavia Police Department, and the Village of LeRoy Police Department. James Henry McAuley, Jr., the vice-president of the Rochester chapter and the leader of the drug ring, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in July 2016. Richard W. Mar, the former president of the club's Monterey (California) chapter, supplied the Rochester Hells Angels with methamphetamine and trafficked the drug to New York from California; he was sentenced to ten years in federal prison in August 2016.[592] Rochester Hells Angels members Richard E. Riedman and Jeffrey A. Tyler, and three associates – Donna Boon (McAuley's wife), Gordon Montgomery and Paul Griffin – pleaded guilty to drug trafficking offenses based on their roles in the conspiracy; Riedman was sentenced to thirty-seven months in prison, Tyler to eighteen months in prison, Boon to three years probation and twelve months of home incarceration, Montgomery to sixty months in prison, and Griffin to probation. Additionally, Rochester Hells Angels member Robert W. "Bugsy" Moran, Jr. was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and Gina Tata was sentenced to three years probation, while Timothy M. Stone was sentenced to twelve months in prison on charges related to the case.[593]

North Carolina's first Hells Angels chapter was founded in Durham on July 24, 1973. This was then followed by the Charlotte chapter, which was chartered on October 19, 1978 and was formed by Michael Franklin "Thunder" Finazzo – a member of the Hells Angels' elite "Filthy Few" from Omaha, Nebraska – and others. Charlotte was home to numerous motorcycle gangs at the time, including the Outlaws, but under Finazzo's leadership, the Hells Angels were able to take control of much of the city's criminal rackets and operated drug, prostitution and motorcycle theft rings throughout the state.[594] During the Hells Angels' international rally held at a private campground on Kerr Lake on July 4, 1981, journalists covering the event for The Charlotte Observer were assaulted by Hells Angels members. Staff reporters Robin Clark and Tex O'Neill were punched and photographer Mark Sluder was forced to turn over his film at knifepoint.[595] The attack was stopped when O'Neill alerted FBI agents who were also observing the rally.[596] Michael Finazzo and his lieutenant Tyler Duris "Yank" Frndak were found shot dead and stuffed in the trunk of an Oldsmobile 88 in Randolph County on September 26, 1981. At the time, Finazzo was considered by police to be among the ten most powerful members of the club. Although the murders remain unsolved,[597] police believe that the killings were related to a feud with the Outlaws[598] or a power struggle within the Hells Angels.[599] Club members from across the United States, as well as Canada, Denmark, England and the Netherlands, attended the burials of both men, which took place in Marshville on October 1, 1981. Finazzo's successor as chapter president, Fred Martin Scarnechia, and another Hells Angel, Thomas Lee Campbell, pistol-whipped undercover DEA agent John Landrum amidst a scuffle during a drug deal sting operation, in which Scarnechia was also stabbed, at Scarnechia's home in Fort Mill, South Carolina on July 27, 1982.[600] Authorities then obtained warrants to search a storage unit in nearby Rock Hill, South Carolina, where they uncovered a booby-trapped stockpile of weapons consisting of C-4 explosive, grenades, ammunition and two fully-automatic submachine guns equipped with silencers. The ATF was called in to investigate the seizure, and an explosive ordnance disposal unit from the Fort Jackson Army base was required to disarm the trap.[601] Scarnechia and Campbell were sentenced to five years in prison for assaulting the federal agent on January 6, 1983.[602] The Charlotte chapter was at one point the Hells Angels' largest on the east coast, with approximately a dozen members and numerous associates, but was disbanded after its position became precarious following the murders of Finazzo and Frndak, and the imprisonment of Scarnechia. The chapter clubhouse, known as "the Bunker", was burned down in a suspected arson attack on August 12, 1985. Investigators believe that the Hells Angels themselves destroyed the property before their departure.[603]

The United States Department of Justice has stated that the Hells Angels have been involved in contract killings and drug trafficking with the Cleveland crime family.[587]

The New York chapter of the Hells Angels was involved in a large-scale brawl with the Breed, in which knives, chains and clubs were brandished, at a motorcycle trade show in Cleveland on March 6, 1971.[604] The violence led to the deaths of five bikers; Breed members Bruce Emerick, Andrew Demeter, Amelio Gardull and Thomas A. Terry, and Hells Angels member Jeffrey "Groover" Coffey.[31] Twenty-three people were also injured, including three police officers. Eighty-four people were arrested at the scene. On March 9, forty-seven Breed members and ten Hells Angels were each charged with five counts of first-degree murder.[605] The feud between the two clubs reportedly began two years earlier after a fight in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[31] and continued during the following two decades.[579]

On February 27, 1988 David Hartlaub was murdered in his van at a bank parking lot near the Musicland record store that he managed as he was dropping off the nightly deposit. The deposit bag contained about $4000 in cash and was not taken. Three members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang; Steven Wayne Yee, Mark Verdi, and John Ray Bonds were carrying out a hit. The Cleveland Hells Angels were planning to retaliate against a Sandusky Outlaw gang member for the Joliet, IL shooting of a Hells Angels member the previous year, at which Bonds had been present. The Outlaw member drove a van almost identical to Hartlaub's. The trio mistook Hartlaub's van for their and shot and killed him by mistake. Both the gun and the van's carpet were spattered with blood, allowing police to use DNA evidence, and discovered that John Ray Bonds was the shooter who had hid inside Hartlaub's van and was waiting to kill him. He shot him with a MAC-11 9-mm semi-automatic pistol fitted with a homemade silencer. Bonds's DNA profile analyzed by the FBI matched the bloodstains found in Yee's car and based on this they were able to use it as key evidence. This was one of the first cases of DNA being used for criminal conviction. The trial and legal wrangling lasted nearly two years and ended in long prison terms for all three Hells Angels members, who remain in prison on sentences up to life. Mark Verdi was released in 2019.[606]

Police have stated that the Hells Angels have avoided Oregon since 1967, when the state was ceded to the Gypsy Jokers to quell a San Francisco, California-area drug war between the clubs.[607]

Hells Angels prospect Robert "Bugeye Bob" McClure was convicted of quadruple murder and sentenced to four consecutive life terms in July 1994 for the shootings of Margo Compton, her six-year-old twin daughters, Sylvia and Sandra, and Gary Seslar, the son of her boyfriend, in Gaston on August 7, 1977.[608] McClure's alleged accomplice in the killings, Hells Angels hangaround Benjamin "Psycho" Silva, was never charged in the case; prosecutors felt it wasn't worth the expense and effort as he was already on death row for the 1981 kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of two college students in Lassen County, California. Odis "Buck" Garrett, the Hells Angels Vallejo, California chapter president, ordered the killings of Compton and her daughters in retaliation for her testimony against several Hells Angels in a 1976 San Francisco prostitution trial. Garrett, a one-time millionaire methamphetamine dealer already serving a life term in California on a narcotics conviction, was found guilty on four counts of murder and sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in prison in July 1995.[609] Garrett died in prison aged seventy-four on February 12, 2017.[610]

An alliance between the Pagans and the Philadelphia crime family has historically prevented the Hells Angels from establishing a presence in the Philadelphia area.[40] In March 2002, a South Philadelphia tattoo parlor owned by a Pagans member who had been involved in a brawl with the Hells Angels on Long Island, New York the previous month was firebombed in what authorities suspect was a retaliatory attack by the Angels. A HAMC member was stabbed numerous times during a fight between the rival clubs in Northeast Philadelphia in November 2002.[581] The unattended clubhouse of the Sons of Satan, a Pagans support club, was destroyed by a pipe bomb explosion in Rapho Township on December 13, 2002. The case has yet to be officially solved, although authorities believe it to be the work of the Hells Angels.[43]

A HAMC chapter was formed in West Philadelphia in 2004 after four high-ranking Pagans members – Mark "Slow Poke" Mangano, Anthony "Mint-Condition" Mengine, Thomas "Thinker" Wood and James "Slim Jim" Wysong – patched over the year before.[585] On January 1, 2005, Hells Angels member Vincent "Honcho" Heinrich was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital after being assaulted by a group of Pagans outside a bar in Woodland Township, New Jersey,[584] allegedly prompting the Angels' New York-based East Coast leader John "The Baptist" Lo Franco to declare war on the Philadelphia Pagans chapter.[585] Wood, the Philadelphia Hells Angels vice-president, was shot dead while driving his GMC pickup truck on the Schuylkill Expressway after he and fellow HAMC member Byron "B&E" Evans departed a go-go bar in the early hours of January 15, 2005. Two men in a Chevrolet Suburban began firing at Evans, who was riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and Wood swerved in an attempt to shield Evans when he was fatally shot in the head.[584] Pagans members Robert "Go Fast" Gray and Steven "Gorilla" Mondevergine were questioned by police in relation to the murder, which has gone unsolved.[585] On October 31, 2005, Pagans members allegedly stole a sign standing in front of the Hells Angels' clubhouse, resulting in an exchange of gunfire. The Philadelphia Hells Angels chapter, consisting of twelve members and approximately five prospects, was disbanded during a meeting in New York on November 18, 2005. Law enforcement believe the demise of the chapter was a result of poor leadership by LoFranco, who ordered the outmatched Hells Angels to carry out a war against the better-established Pagans.[611]

The Hells Angels have established a working relationship with the Providence faction of the Patriarca crime family, acting as enforcers for the Mafia.[19]

Christian A. Rufino, a member of the "New Roc" (New York) chapter of the Hells Angels, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after being convicted on a federal firearms charge in April 2012. He was found to be in possession of cocaine, a loaded handgun and additional ammunition after a traffic stop in Cranston in December 2009.[612]

Hells Angels member Douglas Leedham was sentenced to seven years in prison in July 2019 after pleading guilty to trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was arrested in February that year when a court-authorized search of his North Providence home uncovered thirty-nine grams of methamphetamine, nineteen grams of cocaine, two handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun, body armor, dozens of knives and hatchets, brass knuckles, more than $6,000 in cash and material used in the packaging and distribution of drugs.[613]

The Hells Angels' first chapter in the Southern States was established in Charleston on February 7, 1976.[594]

Artie Ray Cherry, a founding member of the Charleston chapter and a Special Forces veteran of the Vietnam War, died from a gunshot wound to the head after being shot during a bar brawl in Rock Hill in the early hours of January 7, 1982.[614] Three other men were also injured during the melee, and Mack McClendon Teal – a man believed by police to have had a long association with gangs and nightclubs in the area – was charged with Cherry's murder. Cherry was killed in an apparent attempt to take over a bar from Teal.[615] At the time of his death, Cherry was wanted by police for the murder of Carl Billingham, who died five days after being stabbed in the groin during a fight with four men at a nightclub in Charleston County in October 1979.[616]

Fred Martin Scarnechia, the president of the Hells Angels' Charlotte, North Carolina chapter, and another club member, Thomas Lee Campbell, pistol-whipped and broke the nose of undercover DEA agent John Landrum when a sting operation drug deal went awry at Scarnechia's home in Fort Mill on July 27, 1982. Scarnechia was also stabbed during the skirmish.[600] Authorities then obtained warrants to search a storage unit in nearby Rock Hill, where they uncovered a booby-trapped stockpile of weapons consisting of C-4 explosive, grenades, ammunition and two fully-automatic submachine guns equipped with silencers. The ATF was called in to investigate the seizure, and an Army explosive ordnance disposal unit from Fort Jackson was required to disarm the trap.[601] On January 6, 1983, Scarnechia and Campbell were sentenced to five years in prison for assaulting Landrum.[602]

Sixteen members and associates of the Hells Angels' South Carolina Nomads chapter, which operated from clubhouses in Lexington and Rock Hill, were convicted of crimes related to the RICO Act following a two-year cooperative investigation by the FBI, ATF, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and four local police departments. The investigation revealed that the group engaged in drug dealing, money laundering, firearms trafficking, violent crimes, attempted armed robbery, arson, and other offenses. In excess of one hundred guns (including fully automatic machine guns, silencers, assault rifles with high-capacity magazines, pistols, and sawed-off shotguns) were trafficked by the group and recovered during the execution of search warrants, and members of the organization also supplied methamphetamine, cocaine, bath salts and prescription pain pills. The Hells Angels' leadership coordinated the criminal activity and received kickbacks from proceeds generated by members and associates of the chapter.[617][618] During the investigation, the chapter's leadership transitioned from long-time Hells Angels member "Diamond" Dan Bifield to recent inductee Mark "Lightning" Baker after Bifield was voted out as president. Law enforcement began the operation when Bifield made a drug deal with an informant in 2011 and arrested twenty people — sixteen men and four women — in a series of raids in June 2012. The last of the sixteen convicted were sentenced in June 2013; the group was sentenced to more than 100 years imprisonment collectively.[619][620]

Four New York metropolitan area Hells Angels members and one prospect were convicted of ambushing and wounding two southern Virginia-based Pagans members at a motel near Greenville on September 10, 2018. The attack happened as the rival gangs happened to be staying at the same motel while passing through the area, and led to one Pagan being shot and the other beaten with a hammer. Dominick J. Eadicicco and club prospect Anthony Milan pleaded guilty to malicious wounding by a mob and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and were sentenced to eight years in prison, while Nathaniel A. Villaman, Joseph Anthony Paturzo and Richard E. West all pleaded guilty to malicious wounding by a mob and were given four year sentences during the trials held in Staunton in January and February 2019.[621][622]

In 2001 Hells Angels Rodney Lee Rollness, a former Hells Angel, and Joshua Binder murdered Michael "Santa" Walsh, who had allegedly falsely claimed to be a member of the Hells Angels.[623] Paul Foster, hoping to join the Hells Angels, aided in the murder by luring Walsh to a party at his house and helping cover up the crime.[624] West Coast leader Richard "Smilin' Rick" Fabel, along with Rollness and Binder, were also convicted of various racketeering offenses.[625]