Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs
Read Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs Online
Authors: Tony Thompson
Tony Thompson is the bestselling author of
Gangland Britain
and
Gangs
, and is widely regarded as one of Britain’s top true-crime writers. He has twice been nominated for the prestigious Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, winning the coveted title in 2001 for his book
The Infiltrators
. He is the former crime correspondent for the
Observer
and appears regularly on both television and radio as an expert on matters of crime.
Inside the violent world of biker gangs
www.hodder.co.ukFirst published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © Tony Thompson 2011
The right of Tony Thompson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Epub ISBN: 9781444716634
Book ISBN: 9781444716610
Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
CONTENTS
This is a true story. However, in order to protect sources, many of who remain active members of the one percenter world, some names and identifying details have been changed.
God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t
A one percenter is the one of a hundred of us who has given up on society and the politician’s one-way law. This is why we look repulsive. We are saying we don’t want to be like you or look like you, so stay out of our face
.
Look at your brother standing next to you and ask yourself if you would give him half of what you have in your pocket or half of what you have to eat. If a citizen hits your brother will you be on him without asking him why? There is no why. Your brother isn’t always right but he is always your brother! It’s one in all in. If you don’t think this way then walk away because you are a citizen and don’t belong with us
.
We are Outlaws and members will follow the Outlaws way or get out. All members are your brothers and your family. You will not steal your brother’s possessions, money, woman, class or his humour. If you do, your brother will do you
.
PREFACE
In early April 2009, Daniel ‘Snake Dog’ Boone broke the code of silence he had honoured since his late teens and agreed to talk to me about his life in an outlaw motorcycle club.
To most people, such clubs are nothing more than an anachronistic throwback to the sixties, populated by paunchy, ageing men with cottony beards and grungy leather jackets, who love to ride their motorcycles and enjoy a good party. The code of silence says different, and members are left in little doubt about the penalties for breaching it. ‘Three can keep a secret if two are dead,’ is a common saying among the Hell’s Angels, while their rivals, the Outlaws, simply state: ‘Snitches are a dying breed.’
Eager to keep the general public in the dark about what really goes on, the major international clubs – the Angels, the Outlaws and the Bandidos – spend an extraordinary amount of time and energy cultivating a positive public image. They deliver toys to children at Christmas, raise money for worthy charities and complain that the police endlessly persecute them, simply because of their nonconformist lifestyle. Such harassment is, they insist, wholly undeserved.
Boone knew better. In the course of twenty-three years, he had seen the small back patch club he joined in
Leamington Spa at the age of nineteen evolve into something utterly unrecognisable. Slowly but surely, his club turned into a gang – becoming part of an international biker brand steeped in criminality, that put him on the front line of a vicious global conflict that has cost hundreds of lives in dozens of countries.
I had written about motorcycle clubs many times over the years and had always considered myself something of an expert. As Boone began to relate his story, it struck me that, in reality, I knew almost nothing. The sheer scale of his activities, the high level of complexity and rigid hierarchy of the networks involved, the depths of depravity and the backdrop of extraordinary violence around which his life revolved took my breath away.
I knew the bikers had started out as idealistic rebels, gotten involved in low-level drug dealing and prostitution and then expanded into mainstream criminality. I also knew that the pursuit of profit had ultimately led the clubs to declare war on one another, first in America then with new battlefronts in Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Turkey not to mention much of central Europe. One thing I hadn’t grasped was just how much those wars had changed everything.
In his early days with the club, Boone had loved to ride his motorcycle purely for the freedom of it, heading off whenever and wherever the mood took him. By the time he came to leave, it was simply too dangerous for him to ride anywhere unless he was part of a much larger group escorted by security cars at the front and rear.
Under orders to remain armed at all times – his black 9mm semi-automatic pistol was rarely out of reach – Boone
increasingly felt as though he were living in a military compound. Even if he was just popping out for cigarettes, he could never leave his fortified clubhouse without checking the CCTV cameras to make sure there was no ambush waiting or that his vehicle hadn’t been booby-trapped.
Depending on the alert status issued by the club’s high command, there were times when he was unable to contact his family for days or even weeks at a time. Regardless of the security situation, he was forbidden to speak to them about any of his club activities or duties, all of which had to take preference over family birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. Virtually every aspect of Boone’s life was governed by a code of conduct and a series of rules, the most crucial of which were printed in a compact booklet that commanded as much respect as the
Holy Bible
. Aside from a few minor variations, every club in the world operates under a similar set of rules.
For a long time, it was a life Boone would not have traded for anything. He snorted his way through a mountain of drugs and sank endless gallons of beer. He indulged in threesomes and foursomes and gangbangs by the score. He was shot, stabbed twice and came under fire more times than he could remember. He evaded numerous car bombs and snipers and samurai sword-wielding assassins and somehow lived to tell the tale.
What I liked most was that, throughout his time with the club, Boone seemed to have an extraordinary knack for getting to the heart of the action. Whether he was inadvertently setting off the Great Nordic Biker War during a visit to Denmark, under siege in Canada in the company of a gang enforcer with multiple murders to his name, visiting
the site of Australia’s most notorious massacre or nearly being shot at point-blank range in a Florida clubhouse after unwittingly insulting the club’s international president, Boone had seen it all.
Over the years, he personally traded vast quantities of narcotics, stole and fenced hundreds of motorcycles, bought and sold guns, set up elaborate frauds and even participated in regular armed expeditions that went out ‘hunting’ for members of the enemy.
Not all members of biker clubs are criminals, but those that are exert massive influence over the trade in cocaine, cannabis and methamphetamines, right from manufacture and importation down to street level sales. According to the FBI, Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs collect one billion dollars in illegal income every year. Having infiltrated major ports around the world, they are able to ease the passage of guns, drugs and other contraband into Europe and North America. They also dabble in extortion, prostitution, protection and fraud. In recent years, bikers in Australia have expanded their repertoire to include the illegal trade in exotic animals.
To put this domination into context, it is worth noting that the notorious Gambino family, once headed by ‘Dapper Don’ John Gotti and one of five New York-based syndicates that controls organised crime in the city and beyond, has at most 200 members. By contrast, the Hell’s Angels currently have around 3,600 members spread throughout thirty countries on six continents. Together, the Outlaws and the Bandidos have a further 4,000 members in at least sixteen countries. The bikers operate on a global scale most gangsters can only dream of.