Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (2 page)

It is a network that continues to grow and evolve. Some of the very newest clubs, like Australia’s Notorious and the German chapters of the Mongols, have dispensed with the motorbikes altogether and are out-and-out criminal organisations.

In the course of researching this book, I made an official approach to the Outlaws MC hoping to interview a former member in order to clarify some of the club’s history. The request was categorically denied. The club’s business, I was told, is no one’s business except for members of the club itself.

Boone saw things differently. He still feels enormous loyalty to his club and his many tattoos attest to the fact that it will always be a part of his life, yet he is willing to risk death-threats from his former comrades to reveal the inner workings of this hidden, secretive world. His motivation for speaking is his concern about the future of the biker movement that has been such a major part of his life.

His story starts in a small village in Warwickshire, England but it could have started anywhere. United by their love of biking, brawling and brotherhood and their desire to live as outsiders, it tells how young men all over the world evolve from social misfits to organised criminals and cold-blooded killers. This is the story of how bikers are born and made, and how and why they die.

Bikers can be found riding en masse in every city in every country across all four corners of the planet. Often they are drawn together because they are fans of a particular make or model of machine, or because they live in a certain area, but more often than not they bond simply through the sheer joy of riding. Many such clubs identify themselves with ‘patches’ or ‘colours’ sewn onto their jackets, but what untrained eyes see as random choices over positions and designs are actually the result of delicate and lengthy negotiations within the complex world of international biker politics.

The majority of organised bikers belong to MCCs (Motor Cycle Clubs) and wear their patches on the front or side of their jackets. Joining such a club is easy and requires little in the way of ongoing commitment. Patches are available for purchase by anyone who turns up to a rally or meeting and the main goal of the club is to enhance the social life of its members.

At the other end of the scale are the MCs (Motorcycle Clubs). The absence of that one letter makes a world of difference. An MC is about more than brotherhood, more than camaraderie; it is less a club, more a way of life. MC patches cannot be bought, only earned, a process that can take many years. To be accepted by an MC you have to be
prepared to give up everything and anything and make the good of the club your number one priority.

MC members wear a three-part, back patch, sometimes sewn directly onto a jacket but usually emblazoned on a leather or denim cut-off. The club name appears at the top on a curved bar known as a ‘rocker’. The club colours are in the centre while a bottom rocker will name the territory. Prospective members wear only the bottom rocker as a mark of their reduced status.

The major MCs also sport a diamond-shaped ‘1%’ patch on the front of their colours. This originates from the 1947 drag race meeting attended by thousands of bikers in the small town of Hollister, California – an event that descended into a massive, drunken riot. When the American Motorcycle Association defended the reputation of its members to the press, it insisted that ninety-nine per cent of bikers were well-behaved citizens, it was just that last ‘one per cent’ who were nothing more than ‘outlaws’. The term caught on and MC gangs have called themselves ‘one percenters’ ever since.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of a set of patches to an MC member. They are his most prized possession and the loss of them under almost any circumstances is an unbearable disgrace. Patches are absolutely sacred and it is no exaggeration to say that MC members consider them worth fighting for and, if necessary, dying for.

With painfully few exceptions – such as when two new clubs emerge from an unclaimed area at roughly the same time – no new MC will ever wear a bottom rocker laying claim to an occupied area, unless they are prepared to declare outright war on the current incumbents. (When the
Mongols MC launched in the early 1970s, their members wore a ‘California’ bottom rocker, much to the annoyance of the Hell’s Angels who not only dominated the West Coast state but also considered it sacred: the gang had been founded there in the aftermath of World War Two. The Angels warned the Mongols to remove the rocker. The Mongols, composed mostly of Hispanics who had been refused entry to the HA on account of their race, stood their ground. It took seventeen years and dozens of murders on both sides before the Angels eventually agreed to a compromise.)

The one percenter gangs not only control their territory but also, to some degree, oversee the activities of all other biker clubs within their area. Nothing happens without their say so and any potential threat to their superiority, no matter how small, is dealt with harshly. If you have any doubts that this is indeed the case, I suggest you try the following experiment: gather together a group of male friends (women are generally not allowed to join back patch clubs), equip yourselves with large motorcycles – ideally Harley Davidsons – and choose a club logo. Stitch your colours and a square MC patch to the back of a leather jacket with the name of your club above and the name of your county or state below.

Hold elections to appoint a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and sergeant-at-arms (responsible for club discipline) then go out riding as a group and get yourselves seen by as many people as possible. Within days, possibly within hours, you and your friends will be intercepted by the massed ranks of whichever MC is dominant in your area.

If you are lucky and show sufficient reverence – that is, if they feel you can drink and party and fight and fuck with the best of them – they will invite you to a meeting at their clubhouse, explain the error of your ways, request that you stop wearing your patches (or charge you a hefty weekly fee in return for permission to wear an altered version) and then lay out the rules for your future conduct.

Far more likely, however, is that you and your friends will be stomped and beaten and chain whipped to a pulp, your patches and possibly even your bikes will be confiscated. Your fingers or ankles will be broken (to prevent you from riding a bike in future) and you will be told in no uncertain terms that your little club no longer exists. Period. The seized patches will be burned or hung upside down behind the clubhouse bar and the bikes will be stripped down for spares or resold. And if you even consider going to the police, you’ll just make an enemy of every other MC in the world and instantly prove that you didn’t have what it takes to make it in the scene anyway.

This scenario becomes even more certain if the dominant club in your area is one of the big three, international gangs or if your patches feature a ‘protected’ colour combination: red on white for the Angels, black on white for the Outlaws, red on yellow for the Bandidos. Coming too close to the designs of one of the big gangs would bring even more trouble – all three are trademarked and protected by international copyright law.

The issue of showing appropriate respect to an MC applies even when it is crystal clear that there is no threat. In August 2010 a sixty-three-year-old bike-riding preacher from Altoona, Pennsylvania was beaten and robbed by
members of the Animals MC after failing to seek permission to wear a back patch which featured a red cross on a white background along with the words ‘Shield of Faith Ministries’.

In the UK, the Brothers of the Third Wheel (BTW) go to great pains to point out that they are an association for trike riders, rather than a club. They have many female members, revel in a family atmosphere and have never been involved in any form of conflict. Following careful negotiations, their members are allowed to wear a symbol on their backs because the one percenter clubs have designated it a badge, not a patch. Despite this the Hell’s Angels have forbidden BTW members from displaying their colours anywhere in the county of Kent.

Such rules exist because an MC has to be seen to be the dominant club in the area it controls and the best way to do this is to ensure that no other club ever wears their colours without permission. When clubs fail to follow this rule, wars start and all too quickly escalate out of control.

2nd April 2006, Connecticut, USA

By the time he saw the gun it was already too late.

Hell’s Angel Paul Carrol was midway between New York and Boston, cruising south down the I-95 with two dozen members of the notorious biker gang, black leather emblazoned with the winged death’s head logo, chrome gleaming from their heavily customised bikes.

Drivers on both sides of the freeway moved aside to let the bikers pass or slowed down to have a good long gape. As the group approached exit 42 near West Haven, a green SUV with Florida plates that had been coming up fast on the outside lane suddenly decelerated to match its speed with that of Club President Roger ‘Bear’ Mariani who was riding at the front of the pack. Carrol could only watch in horror as a semi-automatic pistol appeared in the nearside window and let off two shots. One struck him in the arm, it looked like the other missed its mark, and the car sped off into the distance.

Tough guys are two a penny in the biker world but Bear undoubtedly stood out from the crowd. A Vietnam veteran, he had not only been awarded the Purple Heart (a decoration given to soldiers wounded in combat) on
two
separate occasions but had also won a Bronze Star for heroism. At the age of sixty-one, he’d lost none of his youthful vigour. Pulling
over to the side of the freeway, he set his heavy Harley Davidson on its side stand and only then revealed that the second bullet had hit him square in the chest. He collapsed and bled to death on the spot in a matter of minutes.

Carrol was so traumatised by what he had seen that when the emergency services arrived, he forgot all about the code of silence that prohibits members of the Angels from discussing anything to do with the club with ‘citizens’ – non club members. With tears welling in his eyes at the sight of his fallen friend, he told the paramedics that the four men in the SUV had all been wearing jackets that identified them as members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club – the Angels’ long-standing rivals.

By 2006, the Hell’s Angels and the Outlaws had been in a bitter and increasingly violent feud with one another for over thirty years and both had suffered hundreds of casualties. Mariani’s death had been the direct result of a new edict issued by Jack Rosga, national president of the Outlaws, for members of his club to seek out and murder Hell’s Angels. It was a call that echoed around the world.

On 12th August 2007, London Hell’s Angel Gerry Tobin was shot dead in broad daylight as he drove down the M40 at around ninety miles an hour. In circumstances that were almost identical to the attack on Mariani, two shots were fired from a green car. The first bullet smashed through the metal mudguard at the back of Tobin’s Harley Davidson and skirted through his rear wheel; the second skimmed the base of the biker’s helmet and lodged in his skull, killing him instantly.

His assassins were quickly identified as members of the Outlaws and within weeks, seven members of the south
Warwickshire chapter had been charged with his murder. The men responsible had no personal animosity for Mr Tobin and had never met him. As prosecutor Timothy Raggatt QC told the jury, ‘this was a man who was targeted not because of who he was, but because of what he was. In one sense, Gerry Tobin was a random victim.’

So far as the general public were concerned, this was the first time the global conflict between the Outlaws MC and the Hell’s Angels had reached the UK. The reality was very different. And in truth, the seeds for Gerry Tobin’s death had been sewn some twenty-one years earlier …

14th May 1986

Daniel ‘Snake Dog’ Boone had been a full member of the Warwickshire-based Pagans MC for a little less than a month when he got his first opportunity to kill for the club. Brandishing a sawn-off Webley 12-gauge shotgun and hell-bent on taking the ultimate revenge, he joined a five-man, early morning raiding party that smashed its way into the home of a leading figure from a rival clan. The group stormed up the cluttered staircase and made their way to the master bedroom where they found their prey sound asleep, alongside his girlfriend.

The terrified woman was dragged off the mattress, thrown into a corner of the room, gagged and then covered with the quilt so she would not have to witness the events that were to follow. While three of the team immobilised their target against the bedstead, Boone forced the barrel of the gun deep into the man’s mouth and began to squeeze the trigger.

The trouble had started a week or so earlier when it emerged that a man living on the edge of the area the Pagans considered to be their own had become a prospect – probationary member – of their despised rivals, the Leicestershire-based
Ratae MC. Maintaining absolute control over territory is the first order of business for all motorcycle gangs, but also one of their greatest challenges. Each weekend and as often as possible during the week, the Pagans would gather together and try to get around as much of their turf as possible, partly to remind people that they were in charge but also to give potential recruits the opportunity to approach them.