By Tom Leonard
Waco, Texas - The fight started in the restaurant toilet, reportedly over a parking space.
It was shortly after noon on Sunday, with many residents returning home from church. A restaurant called Twin Peaks, however, was packed with 200 burly bikers, many armed to the teeth.
Members of the Bandidos and their rivals, the Cossacks - their insignia emblazoned on their leather vests - initially traded punches, but as the fight spilled into the bar, knives were drawn.
Defying pleas from police, the seedy “breastaurant” – which promises “scenic views” of its scantily-clad, busty waitresses - had refused to cancel its weekly “biker nights” despite growing signs that the gangs were itching for a fight. As gunfire erupted, the handful of terrified non-biker customers cowered behind chairs and tables before joining the staff in the restaurant’s freezer room.
“Cut one, we all bleed,” is the Bandidos’ motto, while the Cossacks say “We take care of our own”. The restaurant wasn’t big enough to contain the vicious fighting.
Outside in the car park, bikers pulled out guns, hunting knives, clubs and motorcycle chains, attacking each other with the savagery of a prison riot. The police were ready, having had a heavily armed SWAT team on standby for a confrontation they had suspected was inevitable. Finding themselves being shot at, they returned fire, killing at least one biker.
WAR ZONE
By the time the carnage was over, bodies were scattered across the tarmac in what one witness described as a war zone. Nine bikers were dead and 18 wounded, some critically. Police surrounded the rest and arrested 170, who face organised-crime charges. There were claims on Mondday night that one gang was ambushed by the other to settle a turf war over who becomes the king of the roads in Texas.
As local police braced themselves on Tuesday for more bloodshed, America was reeling from a bloody reminder of the astonishing capacity of its notorious motorcycle gangs for murder.
Most people will know of the Hells Angels, the first and still largest gang, and they may have seen the hit US TV show Sons of Anarchy, about a biker gang involved in gun-running. The image of a bunch of overweight, balding, middle-aged white men cruising around on Harley-Davidsons has become a cliché. The gangs not only ride en masse, proudly displaying their club insignia, they have websites and colourful clubhouses. In Manhattan, the East Village chapter house of the Hells Angels is a popular tourist destination. The Bandidos even take part in charity fun runs.
And yet, say police and organised-crime experts, the image of the gangs as a bunch of harmless motorcycle enthusiasts trying to break the monotony of modern life is dangerously misleading. It hides a far more sinister reality of vicious, ruthless and murderous criminals who have carried out some of America’s most gruesome killings in their battle for control of the illegal guns and drugs markets.
As Sunday’s shoot-out illustrated, the gangs will resort to extreme violence at a moment’s notice.
‘DOMESTIC TERRORISTS’
Steve Cook is a Kansas City policeman who has worked undercover with gangs affiliated with the Bandidos.
“These guys are organised crime but they are also domestic terrorists,” he said. “These guys are heavily involved in methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, motorcycle theft. These are all primary businesses for them.”
According to Cook, the bikers themselves go to great lengths to cultivate their public image as hard-drinking and rebellious but essentially law-abiding motorcycle nuts. Even fellow police, he says, are taken in by the freedom-loving romanticism of the man who wants only to live for the open road. The truth is very different.
America’s biker gangs stretch as far back as the end of the Second World War when thousands of young men returned home traumatised by the fighting but also deeply bored by civilian life. In biker gangs they found an outlet for their aggression and their need - as former servicemen - to belong to a group with its own rules and fierce camaraderie.
In 1947, 4000 bikers descended on the small Californian town of Hollister, terrorising the locals and inspiring the classic biker film The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando. Afterwards, an appalled American Motorcycle Association official insisted 99 percent of bikers were decent, law-abiding citizens. Bike gang members leapt on the remark and have proudly called themselves ‘One Percenters’ ever since.
The Hells Angels were founded in 1948 and scores more followed over the years. Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson wrote in 1965: “They ride, rape and raid like marauding cavalry - and they boast that no police force can break up their criminal motorcycle fraternity.”
An Angel boasted to him: “We’re the one percenters, man, the ones who don’t fit and don’t care. So don’t talk to me about your doctor bills and your traffic warrants - you get your woman and your bike and your banjo and you’re on your way.”
SPREADING WORLDWIDE
Sadly, their accessories didn’t stop at banjos. The Bandidos, the second biggest gang and the Angels’ arch-enemies, were formed in 1966 by Vietnam veteran Donald Chambers. He was inspired by Mexican bandits and members wear patches showing a man in a sombrero with a machete and pistol. The slogan usually reads: “We are the people our parents warned us about.”
Chambers was arrested in 1972 after he and two other gang members killed two drug dealers in El Paso, Texas. Police said they made the pair dig their own graves before they were shot and set on fire.
The gangs have spread overseas, with the Angels and Bandidos killing each other as far afield as Australia and Scandinavia. The so-called Quebec Biker War that began in the late 1990s between the two gangs in Canada resulted in 160 deaths. The Hells Angels boast 2500 members in 13 countries, including the United Kingdom, closely followed by the Bandidos with 2400, spread across 22 countries, including chapters in Kent and Hereford.
British Hells Angel member Gerry Tobin was shot dead as he left a biker festival in Warwickshire in 2007. Seven members of the Outlaws gang were jailed for life for a murder that was apparently carried out because Tobin - a stranger to them - entered what they saw as their territory. The following year, three Outlaws were attacked by a gang of Hells Angels with machetes at Birmingham airport in front of passengers and children.
Predictably, experts see the hand of the Hells Angels behind Sunday’s Waco bloodbath. They say the Angels have been encouraging the Cossacks to challenge the Bandidos’ control of Texas. On Sunday, the Cossacks were helped by another gang, the Scimitars.
Many of these men may be tubby and grey-haired, but we ignore at our peril the truth - that the gangs which roar across America’s highways are dangerous and ruthless criminals.