The Biker Wars

Bar Fights. Car Bombings and Cold-blooded Murder---It was a local but Brutal Conflict between the outlaws and the Hell's Angels

Date: November 22, 1994

From: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Washington, DC

To: All Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies

Subject: Officer Safety Advisory

"Since October 1993, a series of escalating violent acts and conflicts have taken place between Chicago-area Outlaws and Hell's Angels motorcycle clubs. This growing feud is the result of a territorial conflict involving the conversion of Hell's Henchmen Motorcycle Club to Hell's Angels. The Outlaws are vehemently opposed to the Hell's Angels' establishing a Midwest chapter and are aggressively protecting their territory. To date, as a result of this feud, there have been three documented homicides and six bombings in a three-state area. All law enforcement personnel should take extreme caution when stopping or encountering members of Outlaws or Hell's Angels motorcycle clubs."

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This fax may be the first document to recognize the range war between two of America's largest biker gangs, which seemed to take Washington by surprise. In 1987 the feds arrested archangel Ralph "Sonny" Barger and dozens of his associates on charges related to a plot to blow up the Chicago clubhouse of the Outlaws. (The plan had been concocted by an undercover provocateur.) News accounts had predicted that biker gangs would just fade away without leadership. The stories were wrong.

The incident credited with escalating the conflict occurred on June 25, 1994. Peter Rogers, a.k.a. Grease or Greased Lightning, was riding his Harley-Davidson on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. A van pulled up behind him, the occupants opened fire and the regional president of the Outlaws took a bullet in the leg and another in the gut before escaping up an exit ramp.

Word of the shooting spread throughout the Midwest. The next day, the Outlaws made their annual run to the Illiana Motor Speedway for the motorcycle drag races and a swap meet. Spokesmen for the gang warned a BATF agent on the scene that if the Invaders (a club associated with the Hell's Angels) showed up, there would be "dead bodies all around." No Invaders attended, but after the event, police pulled over the Outlaws' fortified war wagon---an armor-plated van with a gun port. Inside it were handguns, rifles, a submachine gun, bulletproof vests, smoke grenades, ammunition and walkie-talkies.

The day after that, June 27, David Wolf, a former member of the Insanity Motorcycle Club and a would-be Outlaw, saw an opportunity to prove himself. Kevin "Spike" O'Neill, president of the Wisconsin/Stateline chapter of the Outlaws, gave Wolf a map of Rockford, Illinois with a circle around a motorcycle shop owned by a Hell's Henchman. O'Neill wanted Wolf to check out LaMonte Mathias, a nationally known drag racer and leader of the Henchmen's weekly runs. According to Wolf, O'Neill was vague at first. "I'm not going to ask you to kill the guy. I'm not going to come right out and ask you. If the opportunity comes up, do what you can." Then the Outlaw indicated by a gesture that he wanted Wolf to cut the enemy's throat. If Mathias were there with his old lady, the instruction continued, kill them both.

Wolf traveled to Rockford with Harvey "RV" Powers, a former member of the Death Marauders, who was also a probationary Outlaw. Accompanying them was Alan "Big Al" McVay, a hang-around friend of the club. The trio partied in the car, did a few lines of coke, checked into a motel and then cruised the nudie bars.

The next morning the hit squad overslept. Because Wolf had no tattoos that might warn his intended victim, he volunteered to check out Mathias' motorcycle shop. He tucked his unruly hair under a baseball cap, entered the shop and bought some spark plugs from a man who matched the description of Mathias.

Wolf left the shop but returned a few moments later and asked to exchange the plugs. Sensing something, Mathias dove through a door to the back of the shop. Wolf opened fire with a .45. Three slugs tore into the target's shoulder, head and neck. Mathias was still alive, but Wolf then bludgeoned the biker with enough force to break off a section of the gun's butt. Wolf tried to (continued on page 167)Biker Wars(continued from page 82) flee out the back of the shop but found the door locked. He came out through the showroom and found Mathias alive and cursing. Wolf picked up a screwdriver and repeatedly stabbed Mathias in the throat. (A coroner would later characterize the lacerations as "frenzy wounds.")

After the attack, the hit squad drove to the farm of a biker friend and used an acetylene torch to melt down the murder weapon. They tossed the remaining blob of metal into a pond. Wolf then burned his blood-soaked clothes.

According to Wolf, Powers telephoned O'Neill. "The head gasket you wanted us to look at is blown," was the cryptic message. "It was leaking like a sieve when we left it."

Mathias was buried in full Angel colors. More than 300 Angels and members of affiliated clubs rode through Rockford, honoring him with the sound of rolling thunder.

For his enterprise and initiative, Wolf was made a full member of the Outlaws, given a belt buckle with the twin lightning bolts of the SS and treated to a weekend at the FantaSuite Hotel.

Cry Havoc

Three months later, Wolf would defend the colors a second time. On September 25, 1994 the Outlaws confronted Angels at the Lancaster Speedway, near Buffalo, New York.

Someone had tossed two grenades into the house of Walter "Big Wally" Posnjak, head of the Buffalo Outlaws. His wife and daughter, home at the time, escaped injury. Posnjak had called for support and carloads of Outlaws arrived from around the country.

Armed with bats, brass knuckles, ax handles, knives and handguns tucked into waistbands, between 20 and 50 Outlaws invaded the speedway. In the middle of the pit, they tangled with a small group of Hell's Angels. Wolf and a red-haired guy from Ohio pulled down an Angel, trying to cut the colors from his jacket. Don Fogg and Randy "Mad" Yager, two Outlaws from the Gary chapter, did the same to another Angel.

A third Angel fired one shot from a Charter Arms. 44-caliber automatic. The bullet lifted Big Wally off the ground and threw him backward several feet.

The melee evaporated with Outlaws and Angels running like characters in a Monty Python movie, climbing fences, throwing knives in garbage cans and guns under cars.

Michael Quale, a Hell's Angel, was rapidly bleeding to death from multiple knife wounds.

Police stopped a carload of Outlaws about 45 miles from the Speedway and retrieved a set of blood-stained colors. After taking names they let the bikers go. In all, police recovered 23 guns, none of which was traceable. Blood on a bowie knife and a folding knife matched the DNA of Quale but the weapons had no useful fingerprints.

Local papers covered the funerals and spoke of the Angels' winning the war over bragging rights. Almost 400 motorcycles and twice that many mourners turned out to honor Michael Quale. In contrast, only about 100 bikers turned out for Posnjak's funeral.

The rumble was too big to overlook. Police arrested Robert Herold, a member of the Rochester Angels. A pistol recovered from his house matched shell casings found at the speedway, but a senior firearms examiner cleaned the rusted gun with a brass brush before test firing, changing the ballistic markings. Herold was acquitted.

Don Fogg, the Outlaw found with the blood-soaked colors and a primary suspect in Quale's death, was less fortunate. In late January police found Fogg's body next to his truck, three bullet holes in his head. Was it retaliation, or was Fogg killed by his own club? During Herold's trial, a story circulated that Fogg was a police informant. Others suggest that Fogg was out of control, inviting heat by wearing an upside down death's head as a trophy of the Lancaster killing. In 1997, the government indicted Harry "Taco" Bowman, the Detroit-based president of the Outlaws, for the murder of one of his own.

The Tapes

The case against the Outlaws was the gift of Patricia Wolf. Outraged at her husband's flagrant womanizing, she'd come home from a bar one night in February 1994 and called the Crimestoppers' hotline. She described the car Wolf would be driving and told them he was carrying cocaine.

The next day, a Lake County Sheriff's Department investigator called. Patricia agreed to inform on her husband.

The night before LaMonte Mathias was killed, Patricia warned her police contact that David was going to Rockford "to surveil a Hell's Henchman for three to five days and then do him." The agents did not warn Mathias, and there are conflicting accounts as to whether the motorcycle shop was put under surveillance. According to one BATF agent, they were meeting for coffee and doughnuts when the biker was murdered.

Again, nine days before the Lancaster shootout, Patricia Wolf told her contact that her husband was going to the speedway to confront Hell's Angels. No preventive measures were taken.

Was the BATF willing to risk lives to gather information, to let the war rage on while it built a case? There is evidence that agents leaked the names and addresses of Outlaw members to Henchmen and Hell's Angels. O'Neill would later claim that a Chicago police detective passed along the names and addresses of local Hell's Angels to the Outlaws.

Members of the investigating team leaked details to a reporter for Indiana's Hammond Times. One "bike watcher" suggested that the only way for the Outlaws to avoid all-out war was to sacrifice (i.e., murder) the entire Stateline chapter. The tactic---incite, observe, arrest---is known as stirring the pot or tickling the wire.

Agents gave Patricia a lamp with a concealed transmitter to place in the Wolf residence, along with a bugged telephone. When Kevin O'Neill admired the lamp, Patricia gave him a similarly equipped lamp.

The listening devices were installed without a court order (the BATF would argue that the Outlaws bugged themselves). Eventually agents secured a Title III wiretap authorization and commenced the surveillance. During the next four months, the Trojan lamps and bugged phone captured hundreds of hours of conversation.

The lamps picked up not only hours of talk but sound bites of what was happening in the background. The tapes reveal the foot soldier's view of the war.

Tape C-23: As they're listening to what sounds like an Our Gang episode or the Cartoon Network, David Wolf, Harvey Powers and Robert Kruppstadt discuss a blood run, how best to carry weapons, how to poison guard dogs, how to kneecap a victim so he'll never ride a motorcycle again.

Powers: "If it's in the right spot, we're talking about clunking their kneecaps and shit. Spike says fuck that, if we're going to do that, why not just stick the guns in their fucking knees and fucking blow their kneecaps out with a gun, with a pistol? What would be the difference?"

Wolf: "Get before the judge, when it comes to that-----"

Powers: "Yeah, when it comes before the judge, you tried to cripple the man. It doesn't matter what you cripple him with."

Wolf: "You savagely beat him with a wrench, which makes things worse than popping them with one bullet."

In another tape, Wolf and Kruppstadt watch a TV news report on the Oklahoma City bombing.

Kruppstadt: "That's one devastating bomb. We need to learn more about these techniques."

Wolf: "You know, when they showed that building, you know, destroyed, but then they show the rescue workers how, like---shit, they look like ants on there---that's when you realize how much fucking rubble there was."

On tape, Outlaws joke about the high cost of the "prime fucking filets" used to knock out guard dogs, that the club is running out of nonfelons to use as gun-bearers, that they need better bombs, that they can't even burn down the Angels' clubhouse. They talk about killing Angels with Uzis, then cutting their heads off. Maybe even keeping the heads as trophies.

Kruppstadt: "If I get caught with it, what am I going to do?"

Powers: "You would have gotten away with it, friend, if you wouldn't have taken the head with you."

Wolf: [Laughing] "Son of a bitch, I'll remember next time not to do that."

The rec-room tapes capture Kevin O'Neill debriefing a fellow biker on April 9, 1995 about an Outlaw meeting in Tennessee, how presidents from other regions had expressed dismay at the escalating war in the Midwest: "I stood up, and I says, Hey, you know, I don't know if you think we started this war or what the deal is up there in Wisconsin. Them Angels were circling around us. LaMonte Mathias lied to us saying that them Angels weren't around, and I said, if things wouldn't have started when they did, there'd be double the amount of Hell's Angels in Chicago right now. So whoever did what, did it for a good fucking reason. I didn't admit to nothing you know. I said when we got in this club we were told that any chance we got at them fuckers coming through our fucking state to go for it. That's the way I was brought up."

On another tape, he dismisses the presidents of other clubs.

O"Neill: "Fucking ungrateful mother-fuckers."

Within a few days of the Mathias murder, the Outlaws heard that the police suspected two Outlaw probates. And, it was said, the wife of one of the probates was a snitch. It was against club rules to talk club business with "cunts." Wolf, who after each escapade would have sex with his wife and tell her everything, began to suspect that Patricia was the informant.

The Outlaws acquired a government training tape about how agents could get biker old ladies to turn on their guys.

Tape C-264: On March 12, 1995 Wolf put the training tape into his VCR and turned up the volume. The bugged lamp picked up the dispassionate voice of the narrator: "Stopping biker groups requires skill, planning." David Wolf and Harvey Powers scream at Patricia:

Wolf: "You are a stinking piece of shit, cunt. Maybe if you didn't spend so much fucking time worrying about other fucking shit that doesn't even concern you, you'd have time to remember this shit, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? Maybe if you didn't spend all your time thinking I was with some fucking cunt, you'd take care of business at home and I wouldn't even think about it."

Powers: "Property of Outlaws, shit. You keep fucking around you're going to find out real soon what fucking 'God forgives, Outlaws don't' really means, baby."

The two dragged Patricia out to the car. The agents in the command center, fearing for her life, intercepted the car and staged a mock arrest of Patricia on drug charges.

Seventeen days later, Patricia called Wolf, saying she had just spoken to the grand jury. The tape begins with her announcement that "they know a lot about that fucking murder in Rockford."

Patricia: "Listen to what I got to say. OK?"

Wolf: "On this phone?"

Patricia: "On this phone. I don't give a fuck."

Wolf: "I don't know nothing about that thing."

Patricia: "Well, fine. I don't give a shit what you're going to say right now. I told Spike."

Wolf: "You what?"

Patricia: "I told Spike. I told him I knew about that murder."

Wolf: "Why would you do that? I don't know nothing about it."

She tells Wolf that a prosecutor "offered me witness protection if I would testify. He gave me his pager number and I think you should consider calling this number."

Wolf: "I should?"

Patricia: "Yes."

Wolf: "Why?"

Patricia: "Just so you have an option. OK?"

Wolf: "Who, me?"

Patricia: "Yes, take the number."

Wolf: "Tricia, can't we talk in person, please?"

Patricia: "Take the number."

Wolf: "Please, Tricia."

Patricia: "Take the number."

Wolf: "Tricia, you're scaring me. What are you talking about?"

Patricia: "I'm not going to see you. Take the number. Get a pen."

Wolf: "Hold on. Tricia, no, don't do this, don't do this, Tricia. Oh God, Tricia, don't do this."

Patricia: "Take the number."

The tape catches the sounds of Wolf crying, screaming, sobbing, hyperventilating, then vomiting in fear.

The wire had captured multiple beatings and an unspecified number of blow jobs. Now the wiretap captured Patricia Wolf's revenge.

Within a month, Kevin O'Neill discovered the lamp bugs. Fearing reprisals from his own club, David Wolf turned himself in and began cooperating with the government, telling his stories to all who would listen.

Janet Reno's War

In 1994 Janet Reno declared war on violent crime, authorizing government agents to use all the tools at their disposal---the "federal weapons" of grand jury investigations, wiretaps, pretrial detention, mandatory minimums and racketeering statutes. In 1996, she announced her goal: to "dismantle" gangs. At the top of her list were the Hell's Angels and the Outlaws. They were, she would say, among the top 15 crime cartels in the U.S., evoking images of empires built on blood, bodies and illegal drugs.

The government launched investigations against the Sons of Silence in Denver, the Breed in Asbury Park, New Jersey, the Vagos in San Diego and southern Oregon, as well as the Outlaws in the Midwest, North Carolina and Florida.

The Outlaws would later claim that they were the victims of a BATF image crisis, that in the aftermath of Waco and Ruby Ridge, the government went looking for more-conspicuous bad guys. Indeed, during this period, the feds shifted from "one man, one gun" cases to crusades against criminal enterprises. Washington, like Hollywood, knows that before you can have a hero, you must create a villain.

Bikers are one of the most identifiable subcultures in America, the subject of movies, documentaries, magazines and gallery exhibits. American originals, they were pop culture figures in the Sixties, the brawny version of the Beats, the darlings of academics and journalists. Somewhere in the memory of every baby boomer are images of Angels tongue kissing, of Angels sporting chrome Kaiser Wilhelm helmets and Nazi regalia, riding in funeral processions to honor the fallen. Bikers were the guys who volunteered to go to Vietnam and kick butt. Out of prison, Sonny Barger, now 62, recently toured the country to promote his autobiography. Imagine, a biker doing book signings at Borders. As Barger's book rolled on to The New York Times best-seller list, his website hawked sculptures of Sonny Barger: An American Legend, as well as Sonny Barger's Kick-starting Hellfire Sauce.

Bikers made tattoos and black leather a national obsession. Harley-Davidson sells 200,000 motorcycles a year; in the same period, it sells millions of T-shirts, leather jackets, bandannas, boxer shorts, coffee mugs, chip and dip trays, desk clocks, playing cards and key fobs. Every March, some 500,000 middle-aged men take Harleys to Daytona to pretend to be bad. They bring home the official Harley-Davidson Barbie doll, a.k.a. "Biker" Barbie, for their daughters. The BATF wanted to strip bare the myth that bikers were harmless antiheroes. Among the lovable misfits, there were monsters.

Agents moved slowly, issuing indictments against 17 Outlaws on May 30, 1997. The investigation involved more than 25 law enforcement groups, with costs running into the millions of dollars. Almost three years later, on March 8, 2000---after compiling some 30,000 pages of documents, 750 tapes, 900 pieces of evidence and 141 witnesses---the government put the range war on display.

Show Trial

The federal courthouse in Milwaukee wasn't designed for a show trial. The 100-year-old gray stone building still has wall plaques directing citizens to the offices of steamship inspector, lighthouse inspector, inspector of locomotives and the oleomargarine department. Heavy oak doors open onto a vast terrazzo-floored atrium. The modern touches seem out of place: Passing through metal detectors and X-ray machines, one looks up to see five tiers of courtrooms and government offices, an iron-framed skylight, rose-colored columns, gold leaf everywhere. Beige plastic tarps shroud the third floor, where the trial of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club rumbles on. The defense team has objected to a cordon of black curtains in the hall outside the courtroom, saying it gives jurors "the impression that something sinister, evil or dangerous lies behind these curtains."

The judge tells the jury the tarps cut noise and distraction, that if they want a tour of the historical court building they should save it for after the trial. But the curtains serve an obvious purpose: They block lines of sight for those who might want to intimidate witnesses or jurors.

During opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Klumb takes two and a half hours to sketch the government's case: The Outlaws had waged war against the Hell's Henchmen and Hell's Angels. They had attacked Angels in bars, cutting the death's head patch or colors from their backs. They had set off car bombs outside of clubhouses, conducted "Angel hunts" or "blood runs" in war wagons filled with automatic weapons, looking for enemies to kill or count coup. They had taken lives with guns, knives and screwdrivers to the throat. They had assaulted the enemy with baseball bats, pool balls, gun butts, table lamps. They had committed robberies, dealt drugs and counterfeit money, stolen cars and motorcycles to fund their evil enterprise.

"They did it all for this," explains Klumb, throwing down a black motorcycle jacket with a red-and-white image of a Charlie, the teeth-bared-skull over crossed pistons, "the right to wear the colors of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club."

The court was not designed for multiple defendants or multiple lawyers. At the head table sit three members of the U.S. Attorney's Office joined by two agents from the BATF. The Outlaws sit with their own lawyers. At the front of the room sits Kevin O'Neill, the alleged mastermind of the Stateline chapter of the Outlaws, the man who stands accused of sanctioning or committing more than 20 criminal acts. A table set off to one side accommodates Randall "Madman" Miller, a club enforcer, charged with 14 acts of racketeering, including the murder of Donald "Domino" Wagner during a drug deal gone bad, and an elderly farm couple during a burglary. There are chapter presidents and vice presidents from Chicago and Gary, Indiana, whose only crimes seem to have consisted of showing up in the wrong address book or sporting the wrong tattoos. Some defendants have been Outlaws for more than a decade, a few had been members for a matter of months before being caught in the sweep. Of the original 17 indicted, six had pled guilty to lesser charges to avoid this moment. The Constitution prohibits guilt by association. As one defense attorney notes, "This courtroom almost assures it."

The court is awash in testosterone. Both the lawmen and the bikers sport goatees---they look like they're wearing merkins on their chins. These guys bulge. Maybe it's tension or their chewing gum, but their temples pulse, causing their sideburns and hair to move like gills. There is something inevitable about this dance. At the opening of the 1954 film The Wild One, two highway patrolmen watching bikers ride through town characterize the renegades this way: "Ten guys like that give people the idea everybody that drives a motorcycle is crazy. What are they trying to prove?"

"Beats me. Looking for somebody to push them around so they can get sore and show how tough they are." It still applies. Outside the courtroom, one of the lawyers had warmed up by doing head-high karate kicks.

Shrapnel

The first witness is Hell's Angel Roger Fiebrantz, a boulder of a man with shaggy beard and tattooed forearms. He hobbles into the courtroom, climbs into the witness box and, after coaching, leans toward the pencil-thin microphone. He bristles with hostility and reticence. He will not help the government against his alleged enemies---either from a standing attitude or because the clubs negotiated a truce after the indictments were handed down. Shown a picture of the charter members of the Hell's Henchmen, Fiebrantz can only recall the first names of men he had ridden with for years.

On November 13, 1990, he had found a wired-up fire extinguisher leaning against the door of the Hell's Henchmen clubhouse in Rockford. He'd called the police. The device exploded in the bomb squad's containment vehicle, sending a column of flame skyward and blowing out windows in the neighborhood. No, he had no idea who might have planted the bomb.

For Fiebrantz, the war would escalate dramatically in 1994. Klumb moves a pencil down a legal pad, checking off his questions, creating the story that the government wants told.

"Describe the events of October 12, 1994. Did anything particular happen on that day?"

"I started my truck. It ran for a couple minutes. Then it blew up. I put it in gear and it blew up."

Fiebrantz recalls seeing his leg on the dashboard, his wife, a towel wrapped around her head, screaming on the porch of their house. Nothing much after that.

Fiebrantz spent about four months in the hospital. By the time he got out, the Henchmen had patched over and become a Hell's Angels chapter. It was more than a year before he could walk. No, he had no idea who had planted the bomb. No, he'd never had a problem with any of the Outlaws.

Fiebrantz, currently serving a four-year sentence on a drug charge, isn't exactly a sympathetic victim. His wife, not bound by codes of silence, is more forthcoming. She tells the court that the blast had stripped the meat from the back of her husband's legs. The severed veins and arteries protruded like hose pipes and he had no blood pressure. As paramedics pumped plasma in one end, it came out the other. Fiebrantz died a couple of times in the ER but the doctors had brought him back.

Once Fiebrantz had been released, his wife had to change the dressings four times a day, reaching into a "hole up to here"---indicating midway up her forearm---to fill the space with gauze.

The prosecution calls a policeman who had been sent to the hospital to collect two Tupperware containers holding the bomb and truck fragments taken from the victim's body.

The jury passed the hard candy hand to hand, trying to imagine this shrapnel in their own lives.

Bombs were the weapon of choice in this range war, though few were successful. In law, as in love, it's the thought that counts. Each of the following was considered as a conspiracy to commit murder:

On or about October 30, 1993, Illinois Hell's Henchman Eddie Murphy found a bomb attached to his truck. Thinking it was a joke, he removed it and tossed it onto the side of the road.

On December 15, 1993, a bomb destroyed a truck owned by Patrick Matter, president of the Hell's Angels chapter in Minneapolis. Matter didn't cooperate with the police.

On July 12, 1994, two Outlaws took another try at intimidating or killing Eddie Murphy. After a night of drinking, they put together a Molotov cocktail out of a plastic milk jug and diesel fuel. The device burned a patch in the porch. A neighbor saw the bungled attempt and phoned the police, and the two Outlaws were arrested a few miles down the road. Murphy slept through the incident.

On November 7, 1994, Hell's Henchman Michael Coyne discovered a bomb attached to the underside of his truck. While attempting to disarm the device with a water cannon, the bomb squad set it off.

On the same day, surveillance cameras recorded the destruction of the Grand Avenue Hell's Henchmen clubhouse in Chicago. Still photos, taken at 15--second intervals, show a Taurus parked in front of a two-story brick building. A city bus is caught in one photo. A flash of light in another.

One BATF agent called it the most powerful bomb he'd ever seen; another source called it the third-largest blast in American history, behind the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings. The door of the clubhouse was blown clear through the building. The TV news that night began with this: "In scenes that look like Beirut. . . ." Intimidation comes in all sizes. One Outlaw tells of finding a rival's car and, not having a bomb handy, leaving a firecracker under the windshield wiper.

The indictment lists only those acts committed by Outlaws. Following the murder of LaMonte Mathias and the Lancaster rumble, Angels from around the country converged on Rockford for a war council. Among those spotted were Chuck Zito, a Hollywood stuntman, bodyguard and one of the stars of the TV series Oz. Police reports identified the Terror Squad---Angels designated to handle problems. An informant told police that two Angels were in town to bomb the Outlaws' clubhouse in Janesville, Wisconsin with C-4 or dynamite. The local paper ran an article warning neighbors of possible violence. A tattoo studio owned by a Milwaukee Outlaw was the target of a bombing. Shortly after the Lancaster incident, the Toronto, Ohio clubhouse of the Barbarians, a group affiliated with the Outlaws, was torched. Police caught two Angels on the southwest side of Chicago. A gym bag contained a pipe bomb made from PVC tubing and flash powder.

The war seems local, but it is part of a larger conflict that has raged for decades. On the first day of the trial, the defendants had passed around copies of Hell's Angels at War, a book by Canadian journalist Yves Lavigne that tracks the biker wars back to 1969. In Canada, the body count surpasses 140. In Scandinavia, bikers fire missiles stolen from a Swedish army base into rival clubhouses, or use grenade launchers to deliver presents to jailed enemies. In the Milwaukee courtroom, the Outlaws devour a photocopy of the chapter detailing their exploits.

Bar Fights and Bragging Rights

Bombs have been called a coward's weapon, but the Outlaws were not afraid of confrontation. The jury hears accounts of fights at J.R.'s Watering Hole in Calumet City, Illinois; Club 51 in Rockford, Illinois; Slick's Tavern in Janesville, Wisconsin. Witnesses tell of Outlaws wrapping green bandannas around their arms so they can distinguish brothers from bar trash, Outlaws pulling up on motorcycles with baseball bats tied to the handlebars to beat the hell out of rival bikers, of fights brought to order when someone pulls a gun and fires into the ceiling.

Some of the accounts are humorous. A story circulates about a 450-pound biker named Roadkill being too large to get through the door of a bar. How Big Don, poking at tires in the parking lot with a knife, cut off the tip of his thumb. The bar owner kept the thumb in a jar, and the feds tried (and failed) to subpoena the piece to lift its print.

The government argues that the bar fights are a pattern of racketeering, a means of establishing dominance over other biker clubs, of protecting turf. Bar fights are their bowling league. According to biker etiquette, a fight isn't serious until you lose an eye or break a bone. As a lawyer for the defense points out, bar fights are consensual combat: When a biker puts on colors he adopts a code of honor. It is a mark of great shame to have your colors taken by a rival.

Outlaws and Angels live by a code---at least until they find themselves facing serious time.

Snitches are a Dying Breed

The witness list describes Houston Murphy as a former Outlaw. Murphy, a regional president from Florida, is in jail because he had been the wheel man on the murder of a member of a rival gang. He is testifying as part of a deal: The government will overlook hundreds of assaults, extortions, machine gun charges, drug dealings, the time he threw a guy off a motel fire escape---and shorten by years his time behind bars.

Murphy, the "turncoat Outlaw," is a professional snitch who goes from trial to trial describing biker hierarchy: "If you were a problem child, bodily harm could be visited upon you. You became subject to sanctions." On the other hand, if life was good, you got free drinks, parts and service for your bike, free time with the girls at the rub houses.

He tells of Outlaws' management techniques. He'd once invited a rival gang leader to the Outlaws' clubhouse. "As soon as he walked in I broke his nose. Then I explained why I had broken his nose." Apparently, the gang wore vests too similar to Outlaws' colors.

Murphy is an odd witness, but he sets a pattern for those who follow. The witness box is just another barstool. He flexes, preens, exudes bravado and bullshit, then obediently slides into betrayal. The government uses Murphy to describe an interstate hierarchy, a black leather menace, the specter of organized crime. He talks of war wagons, of tool or toy boxes---the containers of artillery and machine guns Outlaws keep handy for security. He explains the meaning of certain tattoos, patches and belt buckles. The twin lightning bolts of the SS mean that the wearer has killed for the club or taken care of business. AHMD means All Hell's Angels Must Die. GFOD means God Forgives, Outlaws Don't.

Q: "And the slogan, Snitches Are a Dying Breed?"

A: "It means my life is in danger for being here."

He is there to prove that the Outlaws are the baddest of the bad, an interstate cartel that meets the RICO definition of criminal enterprise, a group that exists to dominate the biker world. But when asked how many members of the Outlaws there were when he became southern chapter president, he says "two." The number he'd presided over was anywhere from six to 19. Nationally, there were maybe 300 to 400 Outlaws.

He tells the court that in 1993, national president Harry "Taco" Bowman had called for an uprising of the Outlaws nation. Still, he acts surprised that the range war had broken out in the Midwest. Chicago Outlaws had gone from being the mother chapter to a relic. Chicago was a lot of talk, no action, the Windy City braggarts, bikers who "spent more time at poetry readings than taking care of business." They were known as the "sissy crew."

The Drive-By

In stark contrast to the bikers are the citizen witnesses caught up in the conflict. Randall Downs, a slight man with the sad face of a basset hound, tells the court of Jack Castle's last day on earth. Castle was a friend, a co-worker, a newly patched-over Hell's Angel. They'd met as they had every day for five years, for coffee at a diner on the northwest side of Chicago. They then drove in separate cars to Ignoffo Trucking. Downs had gone ahead to open the garage door.

"I put the key in the door, then heard something like the Fourth of July. I turned around. It was all over."

He saw the windows of Jack's Lincoln shattered, his friend slumped over.

"I reached in and shook him a little. He was a mess. He was tore up, his face, his neck. There was a few bullet holes in the door. The glass was shattered. There was blood on the windshield."

The detective on the scene adds detail: "Basically, the side of his face was shot away. There was brain matter on the windshield, the dashboard. On the sidewalk there were parts of bone---the jaw of the victim."

The jury views images of the crime scene. Castle is still clutching a Styrofoam cup of coffee, his Hell's Angels T-shirt soaking through with blood.

Dr. Nancy Jones, a forensic pathologist, describes the state of the body. Tattoos on the left forearm include multiple tombstones with different names. There were 11 entry wounds, no exit wounds. The bullets had begun to tumble after passing through glass. The marked destruction of the body and the broken bones were the result of high-velocity bullets fragmenting and scattering throughout the body.

It's called the snowstorm effect. On an X ray, the shattered bullet fragments show up like snowflakes in a snowstorm, so small they cannot be recovered.

"The victim," Dr. Jones says, reducing the horror to a line on a report, "died of multiple gunshot wounds." No one in the courtroom is accused of pulling the trigger. Some had arranged surveillance, or had helped dispose of the murder car; the killers had parked it a few blocks away in a handicapped parking zone.

According to the government, the range war ended with Jack Castle's death. On April 26, 1995, the Outlaws discovered the lamp bugs and realized they were under investigation.

The defense counters that the war ended because rogue Outlaw David Wolf was in custody.

The investigation was only beginning. The government had another informant among the Outlaws.

Tickling the Wire

Mark "Crash" Quinn takes the stand. Of all the cooperating witnesses, he is the most enthusiastic, betraying his brothers with a booming voice.

He admits he is a liar, that he has committed perjury, and has in the past played games with law enforcement. During cross examination he tells of getting drunk one night and shooting himself in the hand as he tried to pull a loaded gun from his leather jacket. He told police he had been jumped by two guys. He admits he has told people he was responsible for the bombs, and claimed that he did Castle. But that, Quinn says, was bullshit. Now, in return for immunity, he is working for the government.

Quinn is a drug addict who in prison burned his retina with welding equipment in order to get a prescription for painkillers. In 1995, alone in a cell and 48 hours into withdrawal, he called the feds and offered to cooperate---anything to get into a methadone program.

For almost two years, he wore a wire and participated in controlled buys for drugs from fellow Outlaws. The jury hears a new set of tapes, the soundtrack of bikers counting money in the rest room of the Lone Star Cafe, while a jukebox plays Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous.

The jury hears a BATF agent order Quinn to try to lead another Outlaw into incriminating statements, "even if you have to put your hands around his throat"---and listens as Quinn recites his version of a pregame prayer. They hear the bikers discuss the finer points of motorcycle theft. On tape, Randall "Madman" Miller boasts there's no physical evidence to tie him to a murder, that the gun used was melted down to something the size of a quarter. On another tape Quinn brings up the elimination of Don Fogg. His brother Outlaw dismisses the incident: "Yeah, Big Don did have some problems though, I know that. He was pussy-whipped big time, you know."

The tapes capture Outlaws talking about betrayal, about who knows what and who is talking to the government. There are echoes of evil in the courtroom. No single version of a crime exists, and in the whisper stream, you can hear stories change.

After his arrest in 1997 Outlaw James "Preacher" Schneider began to talk to police. Like Wolf, he confessed to a murder and offered to testify in hope of a reduced sentence.

Schneider tells the court that in 1993, he was told that O'Neill wanted him to stake out Eddie Murphy's house, to slash the Hell's Henchman's throat and shove the biker's patch into the wound as a message.

Schneider never carried out that crime, but knives were wielded on or about April 8, 1993. The crime was not part of a turf war, just simple robbery. Morris Gauger, 74, ran a vintage motorcycle shop on his farm just east of Richmond, Illinois. His wife, Ruth, 70, sold ethnic and tribal rugs from a trailer on the property. They dealt in cash and were known to keep large sums of money in paper bags.

Schneider at first told police that Madman Miller killed both Gaugers during an early morning robbery. Then Schneider admitted he had killed Ruth, saying Miller had killed Morris. They had bludgeoned the elderly couple with pistols, then slashed their throats repeatedly. Mrs. Gauger was almost decapitated. They'd taken $15, tossed the knives into Lake Como and gone for breakfast. Schneider had been able to drink a glass of chocolate milk, barely. Miller had ordered a big breakfast and for months joked about being able to kill someone and then devour a huge plate of spaghetti "with lots of red sauce," and it wouldn't bother him.

On tape, Miller describes the crime to Mark Quinn, how the blood had poured out as if from a five-gallon bucket.

Miller: "Preacher goes over there and goes, 'Oh come on, hurry up and die, you old fucker.' He's crying about that. At the restaurant, I says, 'You hungry?' 'No.' Well, I said, 'I'll have some, ah, French toast, bacon, a couple of eggs. Large milk, too. Cup of coffee.' He goes 'I'll just have a chocolate milk.' I said, 'You're not hungry?'"

Quinn: "How long did it take him to become normal again?"

Miller: "Huh?"

Quinn: "How long did it take him to become normal?"

Miller: "Never."

When Quinn testifies, he says Miller told him he could see what Morris Gauger had for dinner, that he could see the spaghetti in his victim's throat.

The Gauger killings are not part of the range war. Jurors wept at the crime-scene photos. The emotional impact taints every other act. This was not bikers killing one another; the Gaugers were innocent citizens.

Members of the Gauger family sit in the courtroom. For them this is just one episode in a long-running nightmare. There is no closure: When police arrived at the crime scene they interrogated Gary Gauger, the victims' son, for almost 20 hours. They told him he had killed his parents in an alcoholic blackout, that there was physical evidence linking him to the crime. Gauger "confessed," was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was in prison when Quinn reported to his case officer that two Outlaws had committed the murders. A year passed before Gauger was released.

The Defense

For three days the defense attorneys try to undo three months of testimony. They argue that no physical evidence connects individual Outlaws to any of the crimes. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, no ballistics, nothing. Heinous crimes were committed, but the perpetrators were in the witness box working for the government. The witnesses were "admitted perjurors, pathological liars, cold-blooded killers and paid informants who spoke their lines well." The BATF's case, said the lawyers, was itself a conspiracy. Agents were accused of "misconduct," their testimony a shameful travesty. They put names in the mouths of witnesses and made deals with the devil. Assistant U.S. Attorney Klumb admits the witnesses are not perfect. If Klumb had his way he would call his high school English teacher, a priest, his colleague's mother. "But English teachers, priests and mothers don't know the inner workings of organized crime."

The biker war, in the end, comes down to the power of storytelling. The Outlaws who had bragged "we got another Angel" found themselves trapped by that "we." Share the bravado and the bullshit and you become part of a criminal enterprise, branded by consequence.

On June 14, 2000, after 40 hours of deliberation, the jury found the defendants guilty of RICO conspiracy. (The sentencing was scheduled for October.)

The prosecution announced that the trial---the longest federal criminal trial in Milwaukee history---had sent a message to Outlaws.

Stop doing this.

"The most important thing to note," said a press release from the prosecutor's office, "is that in the aftermath of the investigation and prosecution of this case, the killings, bombings and the war between members of the Outlaws and the Hell's Angels motorcycle gangs appear to have stopped."

Perhaps. But in the summer of 1999, an Outlaw in a Chicago suburb was found dead on his porch, the victim of multiple gunshot wounds. A visit to the Outlaws' website reveals a controversy over the death of another Outlaw, Robert "Honest Bob" McGillis. He was killed during an altercation with two men (identified as John Doe and James Roe) in the parking lot of the Brat Stop near Kenosha. The DA report says the death was justifiable homicide. "McGillis grabbed Doe's finger, placed it in McGillis' mouth and then tried (in Doe's estimation) to bite Doe's finger completely off. Doe tried in many different ways to extricate his finger from McGillis' mouth to no avail. Finally, Doe commenced strangling McGillis until Doe was able to remove his finger from McGillis' mouth. It appears, in retrospect, that the reason McGillis stopped biting Doe's finger was that he was dead." The range war may be over, but the violence evidently is not.