Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs

by Thompson, Tony

  When they were six feet apart, Luttman pulled a sawn-off shotgun out of the folds of his jacket and fired. Howson was hit in the stomach by more than 150 pellets, blowing him backwards through the air and ripping his guts to shreds.

  Pandemonium broke out. The remaining Angels and the Rats flew at one another and dozens more bikers were injured in the vicious fighting that followed. The Angels came off far worse and to add to their humiliation, two visiting members from the newly appointed Zurich chapter had their patches taken during the melee. The Swiss complained directly to Sonny Barger who immediately despatched two of his top men to London to see whether the group’s charter should be withdrawn on the grounds that they were unable to control their territory.

  The London Angels were allowed to continue only after, under the direction of their visitors from California, they made two valiant attempts to retrieve the patches, which were by then hanging upside down behind the bar of the Road Rats clubhouse. Shots were fired on both occasions but no one was hit. During one attack, one of the Angels was kidnapped and repeatedly kicked in the head, ending up with a fractured skull and permanent hearing loss. The Angels have had a healthy fear of the north London gang ever since.

  The gang cemented its reputation for violence in 1983 at a party in the quiet village of Cookham, Berkshire in an incident that made front-page headlines and that Boone remembered reading about all too well. A queue of bikers had formed to have sex (possibly consensual, probably not) with a young brunette who had been partly undressed and then staked out Red Indian style on the ground inside a tent. Fighting broke out when someone started taking pictures of the proceedings. The ensuing battle, chiefly between six members of the Road Rats and twenty-four members of the Satan’s Slaves, involved axes, knives, guns and chains.

  Two Road Rats were killed early on – both stabbed in the heart – but the remaining four fought on for another half hour, slashing and beating the Slaves back and eventually forcing around twenty to barricade themselves in a nearby cottage. The Rats had just managed to set the building alight when members of the Windsor Hell’s Angels, who were hosting the event, intervened, wanting to know what was being done for the dead and wounded.

  The Pagans had been to parties attended by the Road Rats every now and then but had never really had much to do with them. The Rats were notorious for falling out with pretty much every other club in the country at one time or another and Boone couldn’t help feel a little uncomfortable as he realised who was standing beside him. Boone was a big man but the Rat towered above him and was almost as wide as Boone was tall. Seeing the rising tension in Boone’s eyes, the man raised an open palm to reassure him.

  ‘No need to stress mate, I know exactly who you are. I just had to check. You’re Boone from the Pagans, right? I’m Mick. Just keep your head down. You’re fine and your bike is safe.’

  ‘What’s going on? Am I in trouble?’ Boone’s first concern was that somehow he was being accused of bringing trouble into the territory of the Rats, something they were unlikely to welcome.

  ‘Nah mate, you’re fine. You just need to keep your head down. You’re going about this the right way. Don’t talk to too many people, don’t tell them where you are. Do you have somewhere to stay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got a friend with a place near here.’

  ‘Good. Once you’re inside, don’t leave for any reason. Stay indoors the whole time. We know exactly what’s happened. The world and his wife are out looking for you guys at the moment. You need to stay off the radar.’

  An hour or so later, Boone made his way to the home of the club associate who had agreed to put him up. He received a warm welcome from the man himself but his girlfriend was clearly unhappy with the situation. Though she didn’t say anything directly to Boone’s face, it was clear from her body language and general demeanour every time she laid eyes on him that she wanted him gone as soon as possible.

  Unable to leave the property, the sheer boredom of life as a fugitive set in far quicker than Boone could ever have imagined. Reports were coming in from around the country about various members of the gang being rounded up, and now only a handful was left. Boone had no long-term plan and knew full well that the police would not cease looking for him. The hopelessness of the situation soon started to get to him and after only a few days he began to sink into deep depression.

  The flat had a large balcony that provided a panoramic view across London as well as a close-up look at the streets and houses on the other side of the main road. The flat’s owner had a mild obsession with military equipment and had filled an entire wall with an impressive display of replica swords, pistols and machine guns. Early one morning, while the owner and his girlfriend were arguing in the kitchen about how much longer Boone would be staying, he pulled a long-barrelled pistol from the living room wall and went out on the balcony to get some air. He saw a postman down below going about his rounds and suddenly the world in front of him turned into an ultra-realistic video game. Boone held the weapon between both hands, lined up the postie in the sights and gently squeezed the trigger.

  The report of the gun was as loud as thunder and a jet of bright yellow flame shot out from the end of the barrel. The postman’s body slammed to the ground just behind a parked car as the sound of the blast echoed into the distance. ‘Holy shit,’ gasped Boone. ‘I’ve fucking killed him.’

  The owner of the flat came running out onto the balcony, half undressed. ‘That’s it. You’ve got to go. You’ve got to go right now. What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘I’ve killed the fucking postman!’

  ‘You what?’

  Boone nodded towards the street and both men gingerly looked over the balcony, just in time to see the terrified postman on his knees, cautiously peering up over the bonnet of the parked car, trying to work out where the shot had come from.

  Boone was overcome with relief. The man had dived for cover like a pro and Boone was convinced he’d hit him. It was a fairly rough area though – perhaps postal workers received combat training. He turned back to his reluctant host. ‘What the fuck are you doing with a loaded gun on your wall? You’re just asking for trouble.’

  ‘It’s a replica. It’s only got blanks in it. They all have.’

  ‘You’re fucking insane!’

  ‘I’m insane? You’ve got to go. You’ve got to get out of here right now.’

  The postman was back on his feet now and had been joined by a few other bystanders. They were looking upwards and pointing in the general direction of the tower block.

  Boone grabbed his things and rushed out of the flat, his heart pounding like a timpani. He hesitated for a few moments, unsure whether he should take the lift or the stairs and eventually decided on the latter. By the time he reached the bottom, breathing heavily, a small patrol car was just arriving on the scene. He made a run for it but he had no chance. He was soon overpowered, arrested and on his way back to Warwickshire.

  Link seemed to have fared better. He had headed down to Cornwall to hide out with members of another club, the Scorpio MC. Over the years the Pagans had made good friends with many groups of bikers across the country but none more so than the Scorpios who were based in the popular tourist town of St Austell.

  The two clubs first got to know each other when a Pagan called Sparky was serving time in Exmoor prison and found himself sharing a cell with the then Scorpio president, Mark ‘Snoopy’ Dyce. The two men got on well and stayed in touch once they had been released. Invitations to party with each other’s clubs were accepted and soon extended to other members. Within the space of a few months, the Scorpio and the Pagans had become like sister clubs, making regular runs to see one another, exchanging bikes and tokens and getting completely trashed during weekend-long drink and drug-fuelled benders.

  It seemed almost fated to be – both clubs had chosen blue on white as the colour combination for their patches. Personal friendships blossomed, both between the men and the old ladies in both groups. They
became, in essence, one club: de facto chapters of the same gang, but for the distance between them and the fact that they operated under two different names.

  During one trip to Warwickshire, the Scorpios even assisted the Pagans in shutting down a small MC that was threatening the Pagans turf, joining the vicious attack on the smaller club and helping to snatch away the patches of its members.

  With the benefit of hindsight though, hiding out with the Scorpios wasn’t all it was cracked up to be – in fact, Link would later conclude, he could not have picked a worse place to be or a worse time to be there.

  As soon as he arrived, Link was taken out to see Snoopy who lived in a static mobile home out on the moors. The Scorpio president could immediately see just how stressed he was and came up with a novel solution to help him relax. He handed Link two pump-action shotguns and a bag of ammo and told him to go out and enjoy himself.

  ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere out here but there are loads of old abandoned cars and fridges and other bits that people have dumped. Go out and de-stress yourself. Just don’t shoot anything that has a face.’

  Link went out with the two guns at his hips and shot everything and anything he could see. He had a whale of a time and before he knew it had already gone through half a box of shells. By the time he returned to the caravan, he felt much more relaxed for having had the experience.

  For Link and the rest of the Pagans, one of the best things about the Scorpio gang was the widespread availability of top-quality drugs among virtually all its members. All bikers love to party and drugs that give you a lift and allow you to party harder for longer are firm favourites. Because of this, virtually every one percenter MC has a member or two with the ability to ‘sort out’ any one who needs a few party favours.

  When deals take place among club members, they are done as close to cost price as possible. Although some trading might go on with outsiders, this is usually just a way of subsidising the cost of drug use within the club. But the Scorpio had taken things to the next level. The Pagans knew the Scorpio were increasingly selling speed and cannabis to people outside the club and doing a brisk business in LSD and cocaine, but none of the Warwickshire gang could ever have imagined the true scale of the operation that the Cornwall gang had put in place.

  In less than a year, the Scorpio had managed to corner the entire market for cannabis, amphetamines and LSD in the West Country, particularly Plymouth, using strong-arm tactics to drive other suppliers out of business, and earning themselves more than £1million in the process. The gang made casual use of extreme violence both to ‘persuade’ those who failed to pay their drug debts and also those who dared to purchase their supplies from elsewhere. Potential witnesses were intimidated into keeping quiet. Way beyond occasional party favours, the gang had moved into the drug trade on a transcontinental scale.

  Under the guidance of Snoopy and vice-president Gary Mills, gang associates purchased large quantities of amphetamine powder and cannabis resin in Amsterdam, paying for them using money orders from Thomas Cook. Packets of the drug were then concealed in false compartments in a fleet of specially adapted Ford cars and driven through customs.

  From a safe house in Rainham, Essex (far away from the gang’s home territory), the drugs were then parcelled up in brown paper, labelled ‘motorcycle parts’, and shipped around the country using British Rail’s Red Star service. Although the Scorpios were running the entire scheme, the gang employed a number of non-members to run the safe house and courier the drugs around – thus distancing themselves from potential prosecution.

  The network had been operating successfully for almost eighteen months and would have carried on, had it not been for a single incident that finally brought it to the attention of the police. Shortly before Christmas 1985, Snoopy, former Royal Marine Commando Michael Harley, who was the club’s sergeant-at-arms, and club associate William Burgess smashed their way into a flat in Stonehouse, Plymouth, in order to carry out a vicious assault on a certain Stephen Graddon who they believed had attempted to rip them off.

  All three were dressed in full combat gear and wore masks, but they had failed to do their homework properly – Graddon was out. More to the point, the man they found, Andrew Rotton, knew nothing of their drugs empire. When what Rotton would later describe as ‘three masked Hell’s Angel’s’ broke into his home and threatened to blow him in half with a sawn-off shotgun, he did what any normal person would do: ‘I ran straight to the phone and called the police.’

  The revelation came as something of a shock. So far as local detectives were concerned, Plymouth’s drug problem centred on persistent offender Eddie Szuluk, a big-time operator who sold millions of pounds worth of drugs from a fortified council flat. But as they began to investigate, they started receiving veiled complaints that another mob had taken over. One addict/dealer told how he had been ordered to leave town or face certain death after it was found that he had been buying from a rival source.

  Once the scale of the enterprise became apparent, the officer in charge, Detective Superintendent Malcolm Quick, realised that attempting to get any of the victims of violence into court would be a waste of time. The chances were that, under pressure from Scorpio associates, they would retract and the case would fall apart. Instead, he selected twenty-four officers, fifteen of them experts in surveillance, and launched Operation Enmesh to try to infiltrate the gang.

  It was an uphill struggle. In line with the ‘good practice’ code of biker crime, the Scorpios only ever dealt with those on an approved list of customers. New business was by introduction only and gaining the confidence of the gang’s associates would be a slow, expensive and dangerous process.

  Had it not been for a string of lucky breaks, the job might never have been completed. The first came when a few of the gang members found themselves arrested after clashing with some Hell’s Angels in Falmouth. The remaining Scorpios stepped up dealing to establish a ‘fighting fund’ and began to relax a few of their rules. The major breakthrough, however, came from a completely unexpected source.

  Helen White was the least likely member of the Scorpio entourage. Stunningly attractive, well educated and the daughter of a highly successful businessman, she had trained as a ballet dancer and was expected to have a glittering career before her. But the break-up of her marriage sent her into a spin. She became fascinated with the biker scene and began modelling for numerous motorbike magazines. She picked up a minor drugs conviction, allowed her blonde hair to become matted and tousled and finally had an eagle and FTW (Fuck The World) tattooed on her left shoulder. Then she fell in love with Snoopy.

  Beauty and the beast were not destined to live happily ever after. Helen rapidly developed a cocaine habit, which Snoopy readily agreed to support, provided she started working as a courier. The pair began living together and she was slowly taken more and more into the gang’s confidence, being entrusted with large sums of money and huge quantities of drugs, which she hand-delivered around the country.

  But as Helen became increasingly disturbed by the levels of violence being employed, and sickened by her own role in the business, she moved out of Snoopy’s flat to live on her own. She had also become fed up with Snoopy who continued to see other women during their relationship.

  Quick to exploit a chink in the chain, the police arranged to meet with Helen and asked her to play a dangerous game. In return for immunity from prosecution, they wanted her to continue as a courier and feed them information about drug supply lines. She agreed and for the next six months lived a double life. She remained friendly with Dyce, and sometimes slept with him, but all the while she was making a note of times, dates and drop-off points for shipments, helping detectives to build up a picture of the international network.

  During this time, the Scorpios became even more successful. Having cornered the amphetamine market, they expanded, dealing in LSD, shipping in vast amounts of cannabis resin from North Africa, and liaising with Colombian cartel representatives to re
ceive cocaine direct from South America. But in line with the policies of most biker gangs, they refused to deal heroin.

  When it was time to strike, Det Supt Quick opted for a softly-softly approach at first to avoid arousing suspicion. One courier, known to be carrying £50,000 worth of cannabis resin in a hired car, was picked up in what was made out to be a regular traffic stop. As the man made his way along the motorway, a standard patrol car pulled him over on the pretext that he had been driving too close to the car in front. The nervous driver apologised profusely and the officers were just about to wave him on when one, making full use of his amateur dramatics skills, remarked that there seemed to be a ‘funny smell’ coming from the vehicle, which quickly led to the discovery of the stash.

  Operation Enmesh had been scheduled to reach its climax sometime in late June, but then the surveillance team keeping an eye on the bikers saw Link turn up. Warwickshire police were hot on their heels and threatening to come down to Cornwall to raid the Scorpio clubhouse themselves. Months of work were at risk. The Det Supt had no choice but to bring the operation forward and move in as quickly as possible.

  Teams of heavily armed police from five forces carried out a series of coordinated dawn swoops, arresting thirty-six in the West Country, fourteen in London, two in Manchester and one in Humberside. Copious amounts of cash and numerous weapons including guns, crossbows, machetes, a spiked ball and chain and Chinese throwing stars were recovered, along with bullet-proof vests and cocaine worth £100,000.

  Documents seized at the Scorpio clubhouse revealed that the gang had kept accurate records of their success and were every bit as tough and uncompromising with members who stepped out of line as the Angels. Minutes of the meetings showed that one member was subjected to a punishment beating for ‘drinking too much’ while others were fined for being absent or late without having a good excuse. Ever conscious of possible police surveillance, drug deals were never spoken about during meetings but were instead negotiated through a form of sign language, or written on paper, which was eaten or burned at the end of meetings (some clubs use chalkboards).