Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (26 page)

He too pushed the idea that the Midland Outlaws would be welcome to prospect for the AOA. And once again the visitors had to explain, as tactfully as they possibly could, that they had not yet made up their mind about what to do in the future.

Boone and the others remained in Florida after Daytona finished, visiting other chapters up and down the coast and getting to know other key figures from the region. Although they were not members of the AOA and therefore unable to sit in on any of the church meetings, it soon became clear that the level of criminality going on around
them was far more intense than anything they had previously experienced.

Not only did the local Outlaws trade drugs, they also extorted money from various local businesses and held the whole place to ransom. They were considered by many to be public enemy number one and they were proud of it. Once upon a time this might have terrified the Midland club members. Now they found themselves fully embracing and even emulating that kind of behaviour. Running short of money one day, Boone and Link came up with a plan to rob a couple of drug dealers they had seen blatantly selling crack in downtown Orlando, using the guns they had been issued with the minute they set foot in the Daytona clubhouse.

The only way to party all night and drink all day was to consume increasing amounts of drugs. It was a philosophy that had worked well for Boone in the UK and one that he intended to stick to during his time in Florida. Although drugs were usually plentiful, every now and then the supply ran dry. When Boone discovered himself short on one occasion, he decided the best man to ask would be the guy in charge.

The next time he saw Taco in the clubhouse, he approached him, ‘Get us some coke will you?’

Taco smiled, ‘What do you think I am, a fucking drug dealer or something?’

‘Of course not. But get us some coke.’

As soon as Boone opened up the small package, he knew it wasn’t going to do it for him. Instead of the fine powder he had got used to there was a kind of damp sludge. Boone went straight back to Taco.

‘I need to have a word with you,’ said Boone.

‘What is it? I’m kind of busy, man.’

‘I need a word in private.’

‘No, man, whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of my brothers.’

Boone pulled out the drugs packet.

‘I don’t want this. I want my money back.’

Taco held his smile but strain started to show at the corners of his mouth.

‘What, man?’

‘I don’t know what this stuff is but I wanted coke. This isn’t any good to me. I want my money back.’

‘Are you trying to say I’m ripping you off? That’s coke. That’s what we have down here. Are you trying to embarrass me in front of my brothers?’

‘No, I just want my money back.’

Taco stared at Boone for a long while then burst into a chuckle, ‘Sure Dog, whatever, you can have your money back.’

It would be some time before Boone realised just what a lucky escape he’d had, and that Taco had had men killed for far less. Had Boone been a member of the AOA his attitude towards Taco would have got him killed on the spot, but because he was from England and part of a different club, not yet full members of the organisation, Taco decided he was happy to give him significantly more leeway than anyone else would have been entitled to. It didn’t last long.

One evening, a group of the Midland Outlaws were sitting in the clubhouse chatting, laughing and drinking away with the AOA boys when Taco came in looking even more stressed than usual. He sat down with a beer and
began talking to Daytona chapter president Stephen ‘DK’ Lemunyon, not really paying much attention to anyone else.

All of a sudden Taco leapt to his feet and began moving towards Boone. He threw a table to one side, fished his gun out of his trouser belt, pulled back on the slide to chamber a round, and then pointed the weapon directly at Boone’s face, his finger tight on the trigger.

‘That’s it man,’ he screamed. ‘You’re dead. You’re fucking dead. I don’t let anyone talk to me like that. You think you can come in here and disrespect me? You think you can come in here and verbally abuse me? This is my house! I don’t have a drugs problem. I haven’t fucked up my face you piece of shit. I’m gonna fucking kill you right now you limey sonofabitch!’

Most of the time Flyball moved as if he was in a bit of a daze, but this time he moved like greased lightning, racing over in a flash and putting himself right in the line of fire, directly between Taco and Boone.

‘Hey man, put the gun down.’

‘Out of the way soldier,’ barked Taco.

‘I can’t do that. I can’t let you shoot him. He’s a guest.’

‘You’re my fucking soldier and I’m telling you to get out of the way.’

‘I’m not moving. You’ll have to shoot me first. I’m not moving until you put that thing down.’

‘Out of the way right now or I’ll shoot you too.’

‘No, man. You ain’t shooting anyone today.’

The gun Boone had been issued when he arrived at the clubhouse was tucked into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. It had all happened so fast that he hadn’t
had time to reach for it, hadn’t expected to have to reach for it. And now here he was, sitting in a chair with the international president of the AOA pointing a gun at his heart. Even with Flyball in the way, there was every chance the bullet would pass right through and still kill him. And the worst part was that Boone had no idea what he had done, no idea at all what was going on.

Caz hadn’t moved quite as fast as Flyball but now he too came over to see if he could resolve the situation without bloodshed. The whole clubhouse had fallen silent.

‘Dog, what did you say about him?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘You must have said something.’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Think. Come on Dog, think.’

Boone screwed his eyes tight shut and racked his brain. ‘Dozer asked me what time we were going out to eat.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Is that what you said?’

‘Yeah. That was it. He asked me what time we were going out.’

‘And you said …’

‘Fuck knows.’

Taco took a half step forward, pushing Flyball to the side with a heavy sweep of his arm. ‘He said it again!’ he bellowed. ‘He’s disrespecting me. I told you. I’m gonna kill the fucker. I’m gonna put one in him. He’s saying I’ve got a fucked nose. He’s saying I’ve got a coke problem …’

It took nearly ten minutes to calm Taco down to the point where he was finally willing to put down the gun and
another ten minutes to explain that ‘fuck knows’ was a common English colloquial expression, not a sly insult.

‘If someone doesn’t know something, they say “fuck knows” – it’s just slang. It doesn’t mean anything,’ said Caz as slowly and calmly as possible.

‘Yeah? Well I haven’t got a fucked nose.’

‘No one is saying that you have.’

Taco thought about it all for a few moments then stuffed the gun back into his trouser belt. ‘I’ve had enough of this – I’m going,’ and with that he stormed off.

It turned out that Taco had been getting a lot of grief off of some of his senior officers who were concerned about his increasingly heavy drug habit. Taco insisted he was fully in control, but if anyone needed proof that his drug consumption was making him paranoid, the scene that had just been played out at the Orlando clubhouse was all the confirmation they needed.

Unbeknown to the Midland Outlaws, Taco was also feeling the stress of planning multiple campaigns against various enemies of the club – fulfilling his pledge to make the year the ‘rottenest’ on record.

In April 1994 he arranged for an Outlaw named Donald Fogg, who he suspected of snitching, to be murdered in such a way that it would look as though an enemy of the club did it. A few weeks later, Fogg’s body was found lying face down in the snow close to the Outlaws clubhouse. He had been shot in the head. He received a full Outlaws’ funeral at which a story circulated that he had been shot by a police officer who had been interested in his girlfriend.

Soon afterwards, Bowman decided it was time to take out the Warlocks. Flyball and DK began experimenting with different types of explosives they could use to attack the enemy clubhouse. They finally picked a five-gallon jerry can, which they filled with diesel and a large firework with a long fuse, which they stuffed into the mouth of the can.

One night in May the pair drove Flyball’s camper van past the nearest Warlock clubhouse, lit the fuse and tossed the makeshift device inside. The building – which purely by chance had been unoccupied at the time – exploded in a massive ball of flame and was totally destroyed. Several other Outlaws, including Hicks, watched the bombing from a safe vantage point and cheered as the building collapsed.

In September 1994, around forty Outlaws had a showdown with twenty-five Hell’s Angels at a public race track in Lancaster, New York. Earlier that year, someone had thrown a grenade into the home of Buffalo Wally, a mid-level Outlaws leader. Bowman called on Outlaws from around the area to congregate at the race track as a show of force and to avenge the bombing.

‘Good morning, brother,’ Hell’s Angels leader Mike Quale said to Buffalo Wally, as the two groups closed together.

‘You’re no brother of mine,’ Buffalo Wally replied.

With that, the fight was on. At first, fists flew then out came the knives and the guns. When it was over, both Buffalo Wally and Mike Quale were dead.

Buffalo Wally’s funeral was attended by a neutral MC known as the Fifth Chapter, a small club made up of recovering drug and alcohol addicts who sought to maintain good relations with all the major one percenter clubs. As a
mark of respect, the Fifth Chapter members turned their colours inside out during the service.

A few days later, the Fifth Chapter members attended the funeral of Mike Quale. This time they flew their colours proudly and one of the club members was pictured, in a local newspaper report of the event, embracing and consoling a Hell’s Angel. When Taco saw the photograph he hit the roof and immediately asked Hicks to shut the club down in Florida where the Fifth Chapter’s national president lived.

In December, DK Lemunyon invited members of the Fifth Chapter to the Outlaws clubhouse in Orlando, ostensibly for a party. Once inside, the members were seated at two picnic tables and surrounded by armed Outlaws. DK then announced that there was a problem and pulled out the article with the photograph of the Fifth Chapter man hugging the Angel. After a brief chat about loyalty, he pulled out a heavy flashlight and began beating the president of the Fifth Chapter with it.

The others were given a good thumping too – several had their legs or ankles broken – and leathers, patches and anything bearing the logo of their club were confiscated. Too injured to walk away, the bikers were hosed down, placed on top of their motorcycles and pushed off down the road. Unable to change gear or brake because of their broken ankles and legs, several had no choice but to keep going until they eventually crashed.

The level of violence being employed by the Outlaws was out of all proportion and one newly patched member, former dope dealer Mike Lynn, realised he had bitten off more than he could chew. The last straw was when an
Outlaw named Jimmy ‘the Pimp’ Kinsey, who had bought a house next door to the Orlando clubhouse, refused to give his property over to the club so that the complex could be expanded. Instead of accepting his decision, Hicks arranged to have Kinsey killed.

If the Outlaws were prepared to kill their own, Lynn figured that all the talk of brotherhood and friendship no longer meant anything. Realising that he knew too much to be allowed to leave of his own accord, and with no desire to spend the rest of his life behind bars, he decided to turn snitch. He trusted that the authorities would be able to protect him from the wrath of the club.

During the course of the next six months (just after the Midland Outlaws had left Daytona), Lynn secretly recorded much of what Flyball, DK and Hicks were saying during church meetings. ‘We’re getting ready. Next week the place is getting torched, you know,’ said Flyball a few days before the firebomb attack on the Warlocks clubhouse. ‘I’m fucking going in there next week come hell or high water. We got it pretty much figured out how we’re going to do it.’

A few days later, DK was recorded talking about his plans for a local business owner who was refusing to pay extortion moneys. ‘He’s going to feel like he just fucking saw God. I’m gonna fucking cut his fucking face off and all that shit, shut him down, blow his house up, kill all his employees and all that shit.’

Slowly but surely, Lynn was helping to build a case against the club that would ultimately strike a crippling blow.

Back in England, the Midland Outlaws kept in touch with their new-found Florida friends and listened with
interest to some of the stories of bombings and shootings and murders that were emerging from the region. But ultimately Boone and the others didn’t have much time to focus on what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. The reason was simple: there was a far bigger and far deadlier war going on much closer to home.