Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs

by Thompson, Tony

  On 12th October, a group of Angels were drinking in a Rosemont bar, Le Tourbillon, when two casually dressed men walked in and ordered drinks. The bikers had seen the pair before – they seemed to have been following them around for the past few days – and were sure that they were undercover cops, trying to infiltrate the club.

  The Angels were even more convinced that the men were not Outlaws. For one thing, they knew the faces of all their enemies, having gotten to know them when the clubs were still Satan’s Choice and Popeyes. The other thing was that these men didn’t looked like bikers. They had clean-shaven faces, short haircuts and no visible tattoos. They were so obviously police officers that they might just as well have turned up in uniform.

  The two strangers finished their drinks then walked over to the booth where the Angels were sitting. One of the bikers, Louis Lapierre, got up to confront them but before he could speak the man pulled out a handgun and shot him in the chest at point blank range. The other man produced a sawn-off shotgun and fired volley after volley into the booth until he was sure all the bikers were dead. The pair then dropped their weapons and ran.

  The men had been Outlaws all along and – one from Detroit, the other from Miami – had flown in especially to carry out the job. Two of their targets died instantly, another died in hospital a few days later. Lapierre survived, while his friend, the diminutive Walter ‘Nurgent’ Stadnick, came away completely unscathed, having slipped his five foot four inch frame under the table in the nick of time.

  The Angels hit back on 10th November, sending Apache Trudeau after former Outlaws President Brian Powers. Trudeau tracked him down to his home and knocked on the door. As Powers answered, Trudeau shot him in the head nine times, dumped the gun and made good his escape.

  Trudeau had finally found his calling in life and was now the point man for all Angel hits on Canadian soil. He received payment of up to $20,000 a time for each murder he committed. On 8th December while walking round the West End of Montreal he spotted a man who appeared to be Outlaw Roland ‘Roxy’ Dutemple. Trudeau walked up to him and asked in French: ‘Are you Roxy?’ He didn’t wait for a reply before shooting him in the head.

  The victim turned out to be William Weichold, an ordinary Joe unlucky enough to bear a strong resemblance to Dutemple. Trudeau laughed at his mistake and argued that he should have been paid for the hit regardless. He righted his wrong the following March by planting a bomb under Dutemple’s car, blowing him to pieces. And five days later, he murdered Robert Labelle, the twenty-five-year-old president of a biker gang called the Huns who were rumoured to be patching over to the Outlaws. Trudeau knocked on Labelle’s door and shot him twice in the face the moment he appeared.

  A month later, Trudeau took a second turn at Donald McClean (injured in the car bomb that killed Cadorette), attaching another explosive device to McClean’s customised Harley. As he and his girlfriend Carmen Piche climbed aboard, it exploded, killing them both instantly.

  Even fellow Hell’s Angels were not safe. Trudeau killed Charlie Hachez, a member of the north chapter, because he had a heavy drug problem and owed a notorious drug dealer $150,000. Hachez was lured to a meeting, killed, and his body dumped in the St Lawrence River. And when the dealer himself was murdered, Trudeau was hired to exact revenge. He delivered a television set stuffed with explosives to the apartment where the alleged killers were holed up. The explosion killed four people and injured eight, and knocked a huge hole in the apartment building in downtown Montreal.

  Despite the occasional bit of infighting, the war was not going well for the Outlaws. The Angels in general and Apache Trudeau in particular were picking them off as easily as fish in a barrel. They were going down at the rate of one a week. If they were going to save themselves from extinction, the Outlaws needed to find a Trudeau of their own. That man was Rainer.

  Rainer made a name for himself around the time the Hell’s Angels started killing old ladies. The girlfriend of one of the Outlaws was killed when a bomb exploded in her face – it had been intended for her boyfriend – and so far as the Outlaws were concerned, this was overstepping the boundaries. With the Angels targeting their enemies at home, as well as on club business, the war was threatening to spiral out of control. Rainer volunteered to raise the issue in a way that the HA simply couldn’t ignore.

  He acquired his own bomb and planted it on a vehicle belonging to the old lady of a senior Hell’s Angel. The woman died instantly when she turned the ignition and completed the circuit. The Angels initially swore revenge but Rainer convinced them to talk.

  He wasn’t after peace – far from it. So far as he was concerned, the Angels were scum and he wouldn’t rest until every last one of them was dead. But if they were going to fight, there needed to be ground rules. From that point on, it was agreed that only bikers wearing back patches would be legitimate targets. There would be no house calls, no more attacks on family members or attacks at times or in places where club members were clearly involved with personal affairs.

  On the flip side, this meant that every time a club member put on their patches, they might just as well have been pinning a target to their backs. But every club member knew the risks they faced and accepted them. It seemed only right that their families should be kept out of it.

  Rainer was soon hailed as a hero and made a member of the SS, the Outlaws’ equivalent of the Filthy Few (and similarly made up of members who have killed for the club). Like other SS members, Rainer had the letters tattooed on the inside of his upper left arm. And as the fighting continued, he took collections for a ‘war fund’ from club members each month. This money would be used to purchase weapons, handguns, dynamite and hand grenades – whatever was needed.

  Rainer swiftly became the point man for any offensive action that needed to be taken against the enemy, notching up at least half a dozen kills in the space of five years. Every bit as cold-blooded and ruthless as Trudeau, he helped put the Outlaws back in the driving seat and show that they could give as good as they got. Although they have their suspicions, to this day the police have been unable to put any cases against him.

  At the same time he began to take advantage of his influence within the club to build up his personal power base, reaching out to clubs across the globe that had ‘Outlaw’ in their name and inviting them to join forces with the AOA.

  The cheapest last-minute deal the Midland Outlaws could find was with Air India, the second leg of a packed flight from Mumbai, which stopped off in London for refuelling before heading on to Toronto. The bikers were among only a handful of new passengers to board at Heathrow and the scene that greeted them was more reminiscent of India’s notorious railway networks than anything to do with flying. Every conceivable inch of space had been taken up with suitcases and oddly shaped bundles of clothing. All the overhead storage bins were full and the plane was so packed that Boone and the others half expected to find additional passengers squished in-between the bags of duty free.

  The one percenters began drinking heavily almost as soon as the plane reached cruising height, knocking back beers with whiskey chasers just as fast as the cabin crew could serve them, but Rocky insisted on taking things further. He began swigging down champagne and then, on the basis that ‘everyone in India smokes weed’ he rolled a big fat joint and began puffing away on it.

  All the Midland Outlaws were sitting in the smoking section (Air India did not introduce a ban until 1999) and Rocky was probably not the only one indulging, but his behaviour became increasingly erratic and of growing concern to the staff. His fellow club members were also worried and decided to try to ignore him so that they would not all get into trouble over his antics.

  Well aware that they could face a hard time getting through immigration, they were travelling incognito with their patches hidden beneath their jackets and planned to pass through customs one at a time, hoping to slip through inconspicuously. The last thing they wanted to do was attract undue attention to themselves.

 
Rocky was having trouble grasping that concept and by the time they landed in Toronto he had evolved into a full-blown pain in the arse. While Boone and the others did their best to keep their distance, he stood in the queue for passport control spinning one of the metal poles used to hold the rope barriers and lighting up another spliff.

  It was as if he somehow believed that the law no longer applied to him. He was wrong. Much to the relief of those around him, the security staff came along, shackled his hands and feet and dragged him away. He looked over at Boone and the others, wondering why they were doing nothing to help him. They did their best not to meet his gaze. It was pretty clear that Rocky wasn’t going to make it into Canada. Unless they were extremely careful, none of them would.

  Boone was first in line at the border control desk. The stern-faced woman in the booth eyed him up and down carefully. ‘Before you say anything, I want you to be clear that it is an offence to lie to a public official,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Booth.

  ‘Do you have a criminal record?’

  ‘Does a parking ticket count?’

  The woman shuffled forward and angled her computer even closer towards her to ensure that no one else could read the screen. ‘The information I have in front of me includes every detail about your life so I ask you once again. Do you have a criminal record.’

  Boone cocked his head to one side. ‘If you’ve got all that there, then you already know whether I’ve got a criminal record or not.’

  The woman scowled then tried a different tack. ‘Are you a member of a biker club?’ Boone racked his brain. He had to find a way to answer the question without lying. It was like a weird version of the Yes! No! game.

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  ‘Are you a Hell’s Angel?’

  At last Boone could be completely honest. ‘No I am not! How dare you. I am most certainly not a Hell’s Angel.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the official, stamping his passport. ‘Through you go.’

  The rest of the Midland Outlaws made it through and gathered together outside the terminal where they slipped on their patches. The mood was buoyant. Many were still buzzing from the combined effects of huge alcohol consumption at high altitude. None of them realised that they were stepping into a war zone.

  * * *

  The Canadians turned out to be gracious and clearly wealthy hosts. As soon as they had dropped off their bags they insisted on taking their British brothers out to a lap-dancing bar. By then, having checked in ahead of time, crossed the Atlantic, waited in line for immigration and then driven across 300 miles of Canadian wilderness, most of the Brits had been up for thirty hours straight and were starting to feel a little worse for wear.

  A lap-dancing club was the last place any of them wanted to be and as one of the scantily clad women began gyrating between the legs of one of the Birmingham lads, he pushed her away. ‘Leave it out love,’ he said, ‘I’m really not up for this.’

  Their Canadian hosts were horrified. ‘Hey man, are you guys gay or something?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Do you guys like women?’

  ‘Oh yeah, we’re just a bit washed out. We’ve been up all night and we haven’t had anything to keep us going. No coke, no speed, nothing. We just can’t do it.’

  Rainer breathed a big sigh of relief. ‘Oh thank God for that. We’ll get you back and let you get your heads down.’

  Once they had returned to the clubhouse, a few of the Midland Outlaws crashed out right away while Boone and a few others, feeling too wired and too worried about what might be happening to Rocky, stayed up drinking and trying to relax.

  As Boone sat in a corner, his mind buzzing with anxiety, he noticed the club’s sergeant-at-arms staring at him strangely. It made him feel uncomfortable and he averted his own gaze elsewhere. But every time he checked, the club’s enforcer was still staring directly at him.

  Eventually the man came over to him, lifted the front of his jacket to reveal the gun stuffed into his belt, pulled the weapon out and slammed it down on the table next to where Boone was sitting.

  ‘Take it,’ said the sergeant.

  Boone didn’t know much about the rules and regulations that governed the American Outlaws but he imagined that, rather like his own group’s rules, there were certain restrictions about who was allowed to be in possession of weapons at any time. There were almost certainly also rules about when you are allowed to attack a fellow club member. Boone knew that the instant he picked up the gun, he would technically be armed. That wasn’t something he wanted to be, so he remained perfectly still. He didn’t want to give the man any justification to shoot him.

  ‘I said pick it up.’

  ‘No,’ said Boone. ‘I’m all right. I don’t need it.’

  ‘But I want you to have it.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘It’s yours. Keep it. I’ll get it off you when you leave.’

  ‘Really, I don’t need it. I feel safe here.’

  ‘But you’re not safe.’

  A shiver went down Boone’s spine. Maybe the whole thing was a ruse. Perhaps the Midland Outlaws had been lured to Canada not to bond with the AOA but as a way of getting rid of them. Perhaps the Outlaws were about to clean house.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Boone.

  ‘Come with me.’

  The sergeant tucked the gun back into his belt and then he and Boone made their way to the front door of the clubhouse. The sergeant first checked the CCTV cameras that monitored the entrance to make sure the coast was clear, then swung open the heavy reinforced door. He pointed directly ahead, at a cluster of buildings around half a mile away.

  ‘You see that big white building there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s the clubhouse of the Hell’s Angels. That’s how close they are. They already know you lot are in Canada and they have already been trying to get to you. We’ve had a couple of drive-by shootings, people taking pot shots, but so far no one has been hurt. Because you’re over here, you’re our guests and we’re responsible for your safety. If they can kill one of you, it will embarrass us and it obviously won’t do you guys any good either.

  ‘Now we haven’t been hit yet, but it’s only a matter of time. We don’t know what they might do so we have to be prepared for everything and anything. I know you already know how to use a gun. I want you to take this. That way, if we do get hit, you might be able to keep some of us alive.’

  Boone felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

  ‘I’m sorry. I think I took it the wrong way.’

  ‘I guess you did. Here, take it.’

  Boone took the gun and tucked it into his belt. He made sure that while he was in the clubhouse, it was always within reach.

  Rainer arrived on the third day of their stay. The minute he arrived in the clubhouse it was as though a Hollywood film star had landed. Boone saw people point and whisper in hushed tones. Those members of the AOA who had not met him before gingerly shook his hand and asked if they could have their photographs taken with him. They would stand beside him and smile for the camera then make themselves scarce as quickly as possible. It was obvious that, although they were grateful for the work that he did, most people were absolutely terrified of the man.

  Despite knowing what he was capable of, Boone almost felt sorry for him and made a special effort to get to know him. The first time he got close, he realised that Rainer was even bigger than he appeared from a distance. Heavily muscled and as solid as a tree trunk, he was clearly a man who spent a great deal of time down the gym. He greeted Boone warmly and the pair began to chat. Boone found him surprisingly deep thinking, concerned about the future of the club, the quality of its prospects and the continued loss of good friends through killings and accidents.

  ‘We’re supposed to be part of the AOA up here,’ he told Boone, ‘but they don’t give us any support. People are dying – our numbers are down. They w
ant us to hold on to the town but to do that we need more people. We’ve been asking for months for them to send additional resources up here, but we haven’t heard anything from them. I’m hoping that by bringing you lot here, it will set a cat among the pigeons and we’ll finally see some action.’

  It certainly had the desired effect. Fearful that Rainer was attempting to build an empire of his own, some of the AOA top brass made the trip to Montreal to see why the Brits had travelled there first rather than to the mother chapter. When the AOA bosses arrived at the Montreal clubhouse, they saw a large ‘N’ had been painted above the AOA logo on the wall.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ asked one of the Americans.

  ‘It’s what we are. The North American Outlaws Association.’

  ‘You can’t have that!’

  ‘Are you saying we’re part of the AOA then?’ asked Rainer. ‘Because I was starting to feel as if we were all on our own.’

  The AOA immediately agreed to send up teams of bikers from chapters across America to support the Canadians. Rainer got one of the prospects to paint out the ‘N’ and returned the logo to its original state. He had accomplished his mission and, though Boone suspected that he and the other Midland Outlaws had been somewhat used in the process, he could see that Rainer was a powerful ally and that whatever happened, it was far better to have him as a friend than as an enemy.

  The Midland Outlaws had travelled to Canada partly to find out what benefits joining the AOA might provide but more importantly, they wanted to learn what it was like to live day to day in a war zone and pick up tips for improving their own security.

  The first rule seemed to be that no one was allowed to go anywhere alone. Officers in particular had to have a team of bodyguards and lookouts with them wherever they went. Even if someone simply wanted to pop into a bar for a quick drink, they needed to have a full security detail with them. As well as armed guards, a full detail for anyone travelling by bike included four security cars, two at the front and two at the rear, to look out for snipers and frustrate any attempts at blocking roads or isolating club members travelling on two wheels.