Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs

by Thompson, Tony

  As the bikers left the hospital, the conversation quickly turned to figuring out who might have been responsible for the hit. There was only ever going to be one set of suspects: the Hell’s Angels.

  The Angels were still reeling from the murder of a senior member of their Wolverhampton Chapter some months earlier. Back in early October 1992, three Hell’s Angels – Andrew Trevis, Stephen Pollock and vice-president Michael ‘Long Mick’ Rowledge – were sitting in a car outside a shopping centre in Aintree, Liverpool when, out of nowhere, a young black man ran over, reached in through the open window and, at point blank range, pumped four bullets from a handgun into Rowledge’s chest.

  The assassin wore no mask and made no attempt to disguise his identity – he escaped by jumping into the passenger seat of a black XR3i Cabriolet, which sped off to the south. Shocked and traumatised by what they had witnessed, Pollock and Trevis fled the scene.

  Rowledge, a father of two, had been a high-profile target for any hit. Knives and coshes were found in the back of the car so it seemed clear that the trio had been expecting trouble, only to find they had bitten off more than they could chew.

  Throughout the MC world, the motive for the shooting seemed obvious, as did those behind it: the Midland Outlaws, the only MC in the country that had at least two black members. In the hours that followed, confusion reigned and even the Midland Outlaws wondered if the execution had been carried out by members of a rogue chapter within their club, acting without authorisation. An emergency meeting was called to find out what was going on and members were told to observe strict security protocols in case of reprisals.

  The assumption was that Rowledge’s assassination was revenge for the shooting in Albert Road where three Cycle Tramps had been injured six months earlier. Nine Hell’s Angels had been arrested, and after a lengthy police investigation, one of the Wolverhampton Angels had just been charged with four counts of attempted murder. Almost as fast as the revenge theory was formed, however, it fell apart. For one thing, it would be highly unusual for a pre-arranged battle to take place in Liverpool – at that time, neutral turf. And while Rowledge and Trevis were both from Wolverhampton, Pollock was a member of the Windsor chapter.

  As detectives discovered, the shooting had nothing to do with inter-gang rivalries, and everything to do with a violently disputed drug deal. The Angels had been called in to collect a £140,000 debt from one of Liverpool’s top family firms who had purchased cannabis from a veteran Dutch trafficker (and old Hell’s Angel) named Lars.

  Threatening phone calls, leaning on associates, unannounced visits to offices – the standard debt collectors’ fare was meted out, but to no avail. Further warnings passed between the two groups for a few days before the Angels arranged to drive up to Merseyside for a surprise visit and show that they meant business. Witnesses at the shopping centre reported seeing a carload of ‘biker types’ on one side of the street having an animated argument with a group of men parked opposite, before both cars drove off. The next time the Angels saw any of the Liverpool gang was the moment that Rowledge was shot.

  Once confirmation came that the murder was nothing to do with the biker world, Boone and his comrades found themselves amused at much of the press coverage that followed. One article in particular implied that the Cycle Tramps – who in any case no longer existed – wanted nothing more than to join their rivals. ‘Though they yearn for membership of a Hell’s Angel chapter, their behaviour is deemed not up to scratch,’ it said.

  ‘I think they might have that a bit wrong there,’ laughed Caz.

  But the Angels were not laughing. As if the formation of the Midland Outlaws hadn’t made them look bad enough, the murder of Rowledge had further dented their reputation in the UK. The time had come for them to strike back.

  ‘I think I know who might have shot Switch’ said Link. ‘The bike that he described, it sounds like it belongs to this Angel who was doing time when I was. He and his brother are in the 81, and they’re a couple of psychos. This is just the sort of thing they’d get up to.’

  The next topic up for discussion was exactly what the Midland Outlaws were going to do about it, but that would have to wait for the next church meeting. What was clear was that the club wouldn’t take this lying down. They were going to fight fire with fire. As Boone rode home from the hospital, the chorus line from a Sex Pistols song kept running through his head: ‘Oh you silly thing, you’ve really gone and done it now.’

  The idea was to plan a revenge attack, but as it happened the club barely had time to catch its breath before the next strike came. Link was on his way to the Rock and Blues festival, driving a Range Rover and towing a large caravan full of supplies for the show, when a couple of Hell’s Angels jumped out on him from around the blind corner of a country lane.

  They had chosen their ambush spot well. The only place for Link to go was straight up the steep hill towards the town of Ripley, but with his non-turbo vehicle and its heavy load, he struggled to build up any speed, even with his foot flat to the floor.

  He could only bob back and forth, urging the car to go faster, and watch in horror as one of the rival bikers produced what appeared to be a semi-automatic assault rifle, took aim and sent a stream of hot lead flying towards him. Glass shattered and metal ripped as the neat line of bullet holes appeared along the side of both the car and the caravan. It was a miracle Link avoided being hit. He breached the hill and drove straight into the campsite, eager to tell his fellow club members what had just taken place.

  It didn’t end there. Members of the Midland Outlaws found themselves being ambushed at petrol stations by teams of Angels who would leap out and pound them with pick axe handles. Others were jumped on their way to or from their clubhouses and a few ended up with serious stab or even axe wounds. By now, Boone and his comrades had started hitting back, giving as good as they got in many cases by arranging similar ambushes and attacks at places they knew that the Hell’s Angels would be. These included petrol stations, approach roads to clubhouses and, on at least one occasion, one of the exit routes from the Bulldog Bash.

  The Angels made no secret of the fact that they were trying to scare the new gang out of existence, but their tactics had the opposite effect, making them stronger and more determined to survive. Still, the Midland Outlaws were very much hampered by a lack of effective weaponry and because of that felt constantly on the defensive. What they really needed were some guns.

  The Hell’s Angels had firearms by the bucket load, but they had been around far longer and had made far greater inroads into the criminal underworld, partly as a result of their drug dealing networks and extra-curricular work as debt collectors and security guards. When it came to getting their hands on hardware, they were long-toothed veterans.

  The Midland Outlaws were, by comparison, infants learning to walk. Theirs was a club of working types who were into their bikes, but it was becoming increasingly clear that if they were going to survive at all, that would have to change.

  Members in the know were asked to get their hands on as many guns as they possibly could. They were begged, borrowed and stolen from every possible source. Even then, with the full weight of the club behind the task, certain weapons remained in very short supply. Shotguns were relatively plentiful and always have been, but the only handguns the club could get hold of were old World War One and Two relics or deactivated display models that had been restored to enable them to fire once more.

  All the weapons gathered were designated property of the club and anyone who spent his own money could be reimbursed out of central funds. The problem with the vast majority of the weapons they accumulated, though, was that you had no idea what they might have been used for. It was one thing to risk being caught with a gun, quite another to find that same weapon had been used in a murder. No one wanted to take the rap for someone else’s crime.

  In a bid to address this problem, Boone and a couple of others travelled to France where brand new shotguns can be bought
over the counter simply on production of a driving licence. They smuggled back a couple of models along with a hefty quantity of ammunition, hiding the contraband from the customs officials in a load of discount booze. This still left the club with a chronic lack of handguns – just one per chapter – nowhere near enough to mount any kind of offensive action, let alone fight a full-scale war.

  By now the ongoing hostilities were starting to have a serious effect on the day-to-day lives of the members. Because of the constant threat of attack, church meetings of the Warwickshire chapter were rapidly becoming a more sombre and serious affair than anything that had taken place during the time of the Pagans. Increasingly paranoid about security, the room would be swept for bugs and every member would be ordered to take the batteries out of their mobile phones or leave them outside.

  The stress was starting to threaten the most fundamental aspects of the club itself. Everyone accepted that Switch was lucky to be alive but no one wanted to be next. The Midland Outlaws soon found itself in the unique position of being a biker club full of guys who felt distinctly unsafe on two wheels.

  There were strict rules in place – in common with most MCs – that members could only have their bikes off the road for a certain amount of time before being fined or busted down to a three-quarter patch or lower. During church, Caz would be forced to listen through ever more elaborate and ridiculous excuses from increasing numbers of members about why their particular bikes were not available. Parts were stuck in the post, essential components had buckled or broken, essential maintenance was still being completed … some members even claimed their bikes had been stolen, simply to get out of riding them. Only those with reasons considered genuine and legitimate were given any period of grace, the rest were told to get their acts together as quickly as possible. It was a harsh approach, but the only way to stop the club from completely falling apart.

  Having joined forces, the Midland Outlaws were far stronger than the seven founding clubs had been individually, but they had come together with the intention of preventing a war, not starting one. Now that war was upon them and the club had little idea of how best to fight it. If they were going to survive this encounter they needed more than just strength of numbers, they needed a way of gaining experience fast.

  Although the Midlands club had no affiliation to or connection with their American namesakes, the amalgamation had not gone unnoticed by the AOA. In the same way that the Hell’s Angels of the 1980s had sought out every club using their name and sought to bring them under some form of central control, so the Outlaws of the nineties had begun to do the same with a view to expanding their empire overseas.

  The initial approach had been made a year or so earlier when the Wolf Outlaws were still a separate entity. A couple of members had become friendly with a man named Rainer, the sergeant-at-arms for an Ontario-based chapter of the club who also served as an enforcer for chapters across the entire province.

  A formidable figure, Rainer had even come over to visit with the club and had extended an open invitation first for the Wolf Outlaws and then for the Midland Outlaws to visit him in Canada. It could be just the break they were looking for. If there was one thing that Rainer knew, the men of the Cheltenham chapter explained, it was about fighting a war with the Hell’s Angels. After all, he had killed at least half a dozen of them, and lived to tell the tale.

  PART THREE

  WORLD TRAVELLERS

  13

  IN THE LINE OF FIRE

  The cult of the one percenter MC was born and bred in the United States, but when it comes to the other end of the life cycle, Canada has always been king.

  More bikers have been killed in its provinces than anywhere else in the world. At the time of writing, the body count is well in excess of 400 and there is every indication that this will continue to rise. The figure includes two particularly grisly incidents of mass murder: five Hell’s Angels from Laval in rural Quebec were executed in March 1985, while in June 2006, eight members of the Bandidos from Shedden, Ontario, suffered the same fate. Both groups died at the hands of their fellow club members in a process the gangs like to call ‘cleaning house’.

  Long before the American biker gangs arrived, Montreal, the largest city in Quebec, was home to a thriving native MC scene led by the Satan’s Choice in the west (with additional chapters throughout the province) and the Popeyes in Laval, a little way to the north. Although relatively small, the Popeyes had a reputation for being extremely violent. When Jean-Marie Viel made the mistake of stealing a motorcycle from the gang, one of its members, Yves ‘Apache’ Trudeau, tracked him down and shot him dead. It was the first time that Trudeau, just five foot six and little more than nine stone, had killed anyone. It would not be the last.

  By contrast the Satan’s Choice, who had been around since the mid-sixties, could row if they needed to but they were far better known for their wild social events. In 1968, a reporter from The Globe and Mail infiltrated a party hosted by the club and watched in horror as they played a game in which a live chicken was set loose for the bikers to tear apart with their bare hands. The winner was the one who came away with the largest piece of flesh.

  During the seventies, the Montreal underworld came to be dominated by Sicilian and Irish American crime dynasties and these mafia groups formed alliances with the bikers. The one percenters sold drugs, smuggled guns, collected debts and worked as bodyguards for the mob bosses, who paid them handsomely for their services.

  By 1973, the Satan’s Choice was so large and powerful that the Hell’s Angels sent an emissary from California to discuss their patching over. A brief meeting took place at Toronto Airport but the Canadian bikers made it clear that they would far rather remain independent, and the Angel never even left the terminal.

  In fact, the Choice had already been courted by the Outlaws and an agreement had been signed for the two clubs to recognise one another’s members as equals and to shelter fugitives from the other side of their respective borders. The clubs produced a special mini-brotherhood patch that combined elements of both their logos to symbolise the new arrangement.

  When the Satan’s Choice founder and national president was caught red-handed with millions of dollars worth of PCP, a powerful hallucinogen that goes by the street name of angel dust, his replacement decided to embrace the Americans still further. In the summer of 1977, four chapters of the Satan’s Choice patched over to become Outlaws. Not all the members went along with the move but those who did – which included most of the Montreal chapter – had the date of the change inscribed alongside their existing club tattoos, together with the inscription ‘RIP Satan’s Choice’.

  The monopoly lasted only a few months. On 5th December that same year, twenty-five members of the Popeyes in Montreal (the remainder were judged not to have made the grade) dumped their colours and became Hell’s Angels. The scene was now set for the bloodiest biker war ever to hit North America to begin.

  On 15th February 1978, Robert Cote was drinking with a friend at Montreal’s Brasserie Joey at the corner of Saint-Hubert and Castelnau in the city’s Villeray neighbourhood. Both men had recently joined the Outlaws and were proudly displaying their colours, unaware that the bar they were sitting in was a Hell’s Angels’ stronghold. When supporters from the rival gang turned up, an argument began and Cote was kicked out. He made it only a short way down the street before a volley of shots were fired from a passing car. Cote was hit in the head and died in hospital five days later.

  The hit was carried out by none other than Yves ‘Apache’ Trudeau. He became the first Canadian Angel to be awarded the ‘Filthy Few’ patch, given out to those who have rid the club of one of its enemies.

  The following month Gilles Cadorette, the twenty-seven-year-old president of the Montreal chapter of the Outlaws, fell victim to a car bomb planted by Trudeau. The Outlaw had been drinking in a bar on Bordeaux Street with his friend Donald McLean when the two of them climbed into Cadorette’s customised Camaro, parked
nearby. As he twisted the key in the ignition, a bomb wired to the circuit exploded and killed Cadorette instantly, leaving McLean seriously injured.

  Four weeks later, two Angels knocked on the door of the Outlaws clubhouse at 144 rue Saint-Ferdinand. They told the startled bikers that they wanted to sit down and discuss an end to the killings. Initially cautious, the Outlaws eventually let them in. After a few moments, both the Angels pulled out automatic pistols and began firing wildly. Miraculously one pistol jammed and the other gunman failed to hit anyone, despite emptying an entire magazine. The Outlaws were too shocked to chase after the gunman and both escaped.

  The following day Athanase ‘Tom Thumb’ Markopoulos left the Outlaws clubhouse at eleven pm to buy cigarettes. The store was closed so he began hammering on the door to summon the owner. She approached just in time to see two men walk up behind the biker and pump six shots into his back.

  The shop was just fifty feet from the clubhouse and at the sound of gunshots, the remaining Outlaws fled, fearing they were under attack or being raided by the police. It took several hours before they learned what happened to Markopoulos.

  The next night Outlaw Francois Poliseno took his girlfriend out for a drink at a bar on rue Notre-Dame. Soon after the pair sat down, a masked man burst in and sprayed them both with bullets. Both were seriously injured. Police later determined that the gun used to shoot Poliseno was the same one used to shoot up the Outlaws clubhouse. The Angels learned from their mistake and began disposing of their weapons at the scene of their crimes to prevent police from linking their hits.

  The Outlaws attempted to strike back on 12th May. Four bullets were fired at Hell’s Angel Rene Hebert as he stepped out of his clubhouse. Three missed their target while the fourth only lightly grazed him. It was clear that when it came to gunmanship, the Outlaws were no match for the Angels. If they wanted to survive, they were going to need some help.