Charlie and the Angels. The Outlaws, the Hells Angels and the Sixty Years War

227 Pages·2012·1.84 MB·English

by  Alex Caine

ALSO BY ALEX CAINE
Befriend and Betray: Infiltrating the Hells Angels, Bandidos
and Other Criminal Brotherhoods
The Fat Mexican: The Bloody Rise of the Bandidos
Motorcycle Club

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA
Copyright © 2012 Alex Caine
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in 2012 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
This page is a continuation of this copyright page.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Caine, Alex
Charlie and the Angels: the Outlaws, the Hells Angels and the sixty years war / Alex Caine.
eISBN: 978-0-30735896-7
1. Outlaws (Gang)—History. 2. Hell’s Angels—History. I. Title.
HV6486.C348 2012 364.106’6 C2012-901430-8
Cover image: © BORIS ROESSLER/epa/Corbis
v3.1
To Tom and Elizabeth
who are my “amazing grace”
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
In the Beginning
CHAPTER TWO
The Great White North
CHAPTER THREE
Under New Management
CHAPTER FOUR
Blood in the Hammer
CHAPTER FIVE
Rats, Pigeons and Singing Canaries
CHAPTER SIX
The Netherlands, Germany and the Triumph of Will
Photo Insert
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Tale of Two Countries
CHAPTER EIGHT
The British Invasion
CHAPTER NINE
The Wizards of Oz
CHAPTER TEN
The Gateway to the West
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Backs against the Water
Epilogue
Appendix One: Where the Outlaws Are
Appendix Two: Colleagues and Competition
Source Notes
Image Credits
About the Author
PROLOGUE
February 2002
I can just picture how it went down.
Larry Pooler, a former Para-Dice Rider and now a full-patch member
of the London, Ontario, motorcycle club Hells Angels, leaned against the
counter anxiously tapping the straw from his Coke on the wooden top.
As head of 2-4 The Show Productions, he was the promoter of the bike
show taking shape around him. There was the hustle and bustle of tables
going up and vendors setting out their wares for the day ahead. He
thought about heading over to the Hells Angels’ display to grab his body
armour, but it was early still. He was like a kid waiting to take a girl on
a first date—all ready to go and jittery but with hours left to kill.
Everywhere he looked, Pooler saw other Angels wandering through
the London arena, stopping to look at displays or greeting each other,
hands clasped and arms thrown around shoulders.
These were brothers. And the strength of that brotherhood was soon to
be tested.
Members of the Jackals street gang scurried around the displays, on
errands for their Hells Angels masters. These guys made Pooler the most
nervous. The puppet club wanted badly to prove its worth. After a
botched shootout the month before, they had a score to settle with the
Outlaws. They’d gone after a former Outlaws chapter president, Thomas
Hughes, a diehard who had refused to turn colours in the Angels’ recent
push to absorb or eliminate the local Outlaws. But the street crew had
underestimated their target and Hughes had rewarded one of them with
a bullet in the gut.
The sense of anger and embarrassment the young gangsters were still
feeling, coupled with their inexperience, could lead them to jump the
gun today. And Pooler knew that timing would be everything. The
Angels wanted all of their rivals, including “the Wop,” in the building
before the shit hit the fan. As Pooler fidgeted and watched, he wondered
how many Outlaws would show.
Back at their downtown Toronto clubhouse, a two-hour drive northeast
of here, the Angels had decided that today would be their decisive
confrontation with the Ontario Outlaws. A winner-take-all showdown.
The two clubs and their supporters would have at most fifteen minutes
of free-for-all before enough police reinforcements arrived to break it up.
Until then, security would be negligible, mostly rent-a-cops and some
Toronto biker-unit detectives hovering and taking pictures. A few local
cops with nothing else to do would probably be there as well, maybe
hoping for a minor dust-up or two so they could get some licks in.
The order of the day: maximum damage in minimum time.
The Outlaws prospect drove the van and trailer through the fairgrounds
and into the vendors’ entrance of the arena. It was his job to set up the
Outlaws table and put a couple of freshly chopped bikes on display. As
he pulled up to their spot on the arena floor he saw all the biking
paraphernalia a rider could want: helmets, chrome crank covers, high-
polish exhaust pipes. In the aisles around him, people were busily
hanging Harley-Davidson T-shirts and belts and every other kind of
clothing they figured they could sell to the expected crowd. Looking up
and down the arena floor, he realized something. It was thick with
Angels and their supporters.
He told the other prospects with him to leave their patches in the van.
Something was very wrong.
While they got out and started setting up, the driver stayed in the van
and picked up his cell phone. Call in when you arrive, he’d been told,
once you’ve had a good look at who’s at the show. He dialled and asked
to talk to the Wop.
After the nervous prospect said his piece, the man on the other end took
the news in stride. He had already dispatched three Outlaws vehicles
southwest to Windsor, where they were to pick up some “friends”
coming across the border from Detroit. His troops should be back in
town by now, or very close to it. The Wop’s Outlaws would enter the
arena en masse. And the Bandidos would be right beside them.
At Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) headquarters in London, a small
group of squad leaders gathered to discuss the storm brewing at the
fairground arena. They had some decisions to make. The cops knew the
Outlaws would want to show the Bandidos that they were ready to spill
as much Hells Angels blood as necessary to defend their turf—and then
some—just to prove to the Americans that the beaten-down Ontario
Outlaws were worthy of their alliance.
That the Outlaws were lining up at a bike show against members and
supporters of the Hells Angels, and were doing so with their numbers
bolstered by the Bandidos, was no coincidence. Yes, gang members fight
over disputed territory all the time. But two hundred of them at once?
That was unheard of in Canada. But a few of those cops were old enough
to remember something similar happening only about 150 kilometres
south of here. It had been almost a carbon copy of the scene taking
shape at the bike show. And those who weren’t old enough to remember
it sure knew how it had ended.
In March 1971, police had gotten word that the Breed MC were
planning to confront the Hells Angels at a bike show in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Breed were a two hundred–strong biker gang from the New Jersey
area. Cops weren’t sure what their beef was on this occasion, but sensing
disaster they contacted the Angels and advised them not to show. Some
out-of-town Angels were already on their way and never got word, and
twenty-seven of them arrived at the show. Fortunately for them, many of
the Angels’ friends and small support clubs had come too. Still, that left
them badly undermanned. Some 160 Breed members stepped up to
about 70 Angels and friends, one yelled “Now!” and the east-coasters
attacked. A large number of police arrived minutes after it started, but
the carnage was well underway. The day’s final count was one dead
Angel, four dead Breed and two dead Angel supporters. All died of stab