#333 George Christie - Surviving 40 Years in the Hells Angels

George Christie is the former longtime president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's Ventura, California chapter, where he spent decades leading one of the country's most well-known outlaw motorcycle clubs. After leaving the club, he became an author, speaker, and commentator, sharing insights on leadership, loyalty, the justice system, and personal accountability. His memoir, Exile on Front Street: My Life as a Hells Angel—and Beyond, chronicles his experiences inside the Hells Angels and his life after leaving the outlaw world. Privacy Isn't Paranoia. It's Protection. Download Glacier - https://srs.site/glacierapp Website - https://theglacierapp.com Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Start your new morning ritual and get up to 43% off your MUDWTR with code SRS at https://mudwtr.com/SRS! #mudwtrpod Go right now to https://sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50 and get 50% off your first order. Or, you can use code SRS50 at checkout. Upgrade your eyewear for summer at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide at checkout. Go to https://moinkbox.com/SRS to get free chicken wings in every box for a year as long as you're a paying customer. Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at https://bubsnaturals.com/srs George Christie Links: Official Site - https://www.georgechristie.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/p/George-Christie-100063588966258 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgeGusChristie Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/georgechristiejr Book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982109516 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:01Speaker 02

  So at what point did you realize you wanted to be a Navy SEAL and pursue?

• 1:09Shawn Ryan?

  Probably around sophomore, junior, high school.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Was it like a particular event?

• 1:15Shawn Ryan?

  No, just, well, let's see. How did it's? I mean, I was just always into the military. Grew up playing with G.I. Joes and carbon spears and shit like that out in the woods. But to be, and then I lost sight of it. But to be honest, I was just a fucking turd. You know, in high school, I didn't really have anything going for me.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  No direction?

• 1:38Shawn Ryan?

  Uh-uh. And other than booze and trying to get some chicks, which I wasn't very successful with.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Well, who is in high school?

• 1:45Shawn Ryan?

  Right?

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Right? Everybody's lying.

• 1:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And, and my dad was, we just butted heads. And one day, fucking kicked my ass around. And, and as he, you know, and said, I'm not paying for your fucking school. I'm not doing, you know, basically like you're on your own. Like, fuck you. And I was like, cool. I already joined the Navy anyways. So, well, I didn't already join, but I was like, yeah, I'm already talking to a recruiter anyways. I'm going to be a SEAL.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  And how did he respond to that?

• 2:17Shawn Ryan?

  Totally like changed everything. It was like, you did what? And?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Proud or concerned or nervous or both?

• 2:25Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, probably all three.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  And what year was this?

• 2:30Shawn Ryan?

  That I joined or?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that you did this when you told your dad, this is what I'm going to do. I guess what I'm, I'm trying to.

• 2:37Shawn Ryan?

  Probably like.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Put in my mind what was going on in the world at the time as a parent. You know?

• 2:42Shawn Ryan?

  Pre 9/11, so probably like 99, 2000.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, okay. Well, shit was kind of getting kind of.

• 2:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. But I mean, I don't know what the hell was going on. I was in high school.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:53Shawn Ryan?

  The George Bush election. But yeah, that's kind of it.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, for me, probably 1955, 1956. I don't know what year, probably nine, eight or nine, maybe. I saw my first outlaw biker. It was in San Fernando Valley. Standing around the corner with my dad. He's talking to this Italian restaurant. He has a restaurant as well. My dad was in the restaurant business. And they're discussing the restaurant business. And I'm just, you know, just a goofy kid. And I hear this noise coming. And I look up the street and you see this guy coming. And he gets to the stop sign, stops. And he does a series of things. He pushes his glasses up on his head.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  And he's like messing with something to his left side over here, which I've learned later, it's a jockey shifter. You know, it's a hand shifter. And I hear this distinctive rattling. And what they are is, I've learned later, it's the bearings in the clutch basket. It's, you know, he's engaged the clutch and it's spinning. It's not engaged, it's spinning. And these bell bearings are making this whirling sound that's very distinct. They don't do it anymore because, you know, they're, it's a whole different motorcycle nowadays. But, so I'm just watching this guy. He's got a Levi vest cut off. And everybody's tripping on this guy. And, you know, he's not paying attention to anybody. And the light changes.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  He dumps it in gear, pops his glasses down, and he just shoots across the intersection. And I'm like, what the hell was that? You know? And I look at the Italian guy and he looks at me. And he goes, that's your America? And he spit on the ground. And I thought to myself, that's my America. And, you know, metaphorically, I jumped on the back of that bike. It was another 10 years. And I didn't get a bike till 1966 because I, you know, I was a kid.

• 4:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  But that pushed me into the direction I wanted to go. It was just so profound and so, it was just something else.

• 5:07Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it's just like that one event for me probably changed my life.

• 5:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  You know, if I hadn't gone down to LA that day and saw that guy, you know?

• 5:17Shawn Ryan?

  Who knows how?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:18Shawn Ryan?

  It would have all turned out.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Maybe I've been a cop.

• 5:22Shawn Ryan?

  That would have been a change of events. But I got a hot question for you, actually.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:28Shawn Ryan?

  There are a handful of patches on biker vests that everyone recognizes and a few that people whisper about because they're considered notorious. For someone who doesn't know the culture, can you break down what the main patches mean? What they represent inside the club? And generally, how a guy earns the right to wear each one?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Well, the, the Hell's Angel patch, the top rocker, the center patch, which is called the death head. Then you have your MC Motorcycle Club patch below that. And then you have a bottom rocker that identifies what state you're from or what area you're claiming to basically kind of control. And, you know, the big dogs run the state rockers. And, you know, the smaller, you know, they're subservient to the bigger clubs. They might have, you know, Topanga Canyon or a town in Des Moines or whatever. But each club is pretty much structured.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Like the Outlaws, they have a piston. Have you ever seen the outlaw patch? It's a piston double, it's a skull with two pist- cross pistons. Almost kind of looks like it could be mistaken for a pirate type patch. It's a really distinctive, very iconic, like the death head itself. And they were kind of like the number two in the world of outlaw bike clubs. And on the front, you've got these various patches that some of them are very esoteric. Nobody knows what they mean. Certainly over the years, things are getting out.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  You know, people become informants and they debrief and they tell the police, well, that's what this means. And that's what that means. But the problem is with the gentleman doing that, they, they embellish sometimes. They have their own agenda.

• 7:31Shawn Ryan?

  No way.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. They have their own agenda. So, you know, they want to seem informed. They want to engage these cops because they're trying to extract themselves from a problem. So a patch that, and I'm going to use this, I'm leading up to something. The Filthy Few is, in the outlaw bike world, morphed into an urban legend. And what it means is you have killed on the behest of the club, if you will.

• 8:02Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  And that entitles you to wear a Filthy Few patch.

• 8:05Shawn Ryan?

  Would that be one of the highest patches?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. That, and there's another patch called the De Quelo patch. This is Hell's Angels stuff I'm speaking of. They have the De Quelo patch, which means you're willing to fight law enforcement for what you believe in. You know, like maybe a cop will say, you know, it happens. I'll go, take that patch off. We don't allow that patch in the town. And then, of course, the exchange starts. Well, I'm not taking it off. Oh, you're going to take it off. And then next thing you know, they're fighting. If somebody did that and he physically engaged a cop in combat, hand to hand combat or whatever you want to call it,

• 8:50Speaker 02

  he would have the right to wear the De Quelo patch. The Filthy Few started out with.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  The first to arrive and the last to leave, they were like a crew of guys that their whole life was just about partying, you know, riding motorcycles, partying. They were the first guys to come, the last guys to leave. They started calling themselves the Filthy Few, and they were from the Bay Area, San Francisco, all the area up in that Northern California. The Southern California guys, in response to the Filthy Few, started an organization, uh, themselves called the Raggedy Wranglers. And they were, that was the competition, uh, between the two. Now, I recently, uh,

• 9:35Shawn Ryan?

  There's competition between?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  The clubs, with the inner conflict.

• 9:40Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So the Hells Angels North Cal, Hells Angels South Cal, they fucking don't like each other.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Well, not that they don't like each other, it's like,

• 9:49Shawn Ryan?

  It's like a healthy rivalry?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you want to be a real Hells Angel, you ought to come up here with us.

• 9:54Shawn Ryan?

  It's like East Coast, West Coast SEAL teams.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's where I was heading with this.

• 9:59Shawn Ryan?

  We'll fight you, bud. If it comes down to it, we'll also fight together.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll fight each other, and uh,

• 10:05Shawn Ryan?

  You got your back.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  When the chips are down, I'm right there with you, brother. I'm going down with you, even though I may have kicked you a couple of weeks ago, uh, in that bar fight. But, so, I work as an expert witness sometimes for the defense, which is kind of something new. Uh, in the past, the prosecution always brought in, brought in their gang expert, uh, and then, you know, he goes through, uh, you know, for four years I did this, and I was undercover here, and I did that. They bring me in there, and I, you know, I tell the, the judge, "Well, Your Honor, I've, you know, I was in the Hells Angels for forty years. Prior to that, I was an independent in the outlaw bike world for ten years." And then the judge says, "Okay," he's an expert, uh, and they allow you to testify. Uh, there's

• 10:49Speaker 02

  a big controversy in law enforcement. They say that anybody with a Filthy Few patch on has killed somebody at the behest of the club. And, uh, I got a big argument with the prosecutor, and, you know, the judge finally, uh, kind of settled the thing. I explained to the jury, like I just did, uh, to you, that initially it was guys first to come, the last to leave. And it sort of morphed into this urban legend that if you weren't a Filthy Few patch, you killed somebody. The problem with that theory, and you know what? I'm sure some of the guys wearing the Filthy Few patch, you know, have, uh, committed

• 11:33Speaker 02

  crimes, uh, up, uh, you know, to murder. I don't know, you know, I'm not speaking for everybody. But my point was, everybody in the Hells Angels now wears a Filthy Few patch. I mean, you go somewhere and you see twenty guys in a charger with a Filthy Few patch on, or talking in a circle. And my argument was, "Where are the bodies?" You know, I mean, these people are getting these patches because, uh, you're professing that they killed somebody. Well, you know, where's the indictments? Where's the bodies? Where's the cases? Uh, so, it's become an urban legend or not. You know, I told the jury at the

• 12:14Speaker 02

  end, I said, you know, "Who am I to, uh, interrupt an urban legend?" You know, let it be what it's gonna be. You have, as a juror, you're gonna have to determine whether he did that crime or not, not whether he's wearing a particular patch or not. That's what it really boils down to. You know, of course, I got accused of perjury, and, you know, "We're gonna indict you, you're lying under oath." I said, "Well, prove it," you know, I mean.

• 12:38Shawn Ryan?

  So are you saying they, they may have flooded the club with the patch?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Would they do that to?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Not intentionally.

• 12:44Shawn Ryan?

  They would not do it intentionally? They wouldn't do it as like a psy-op to other clubs? It makes them?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of like, "Hey, I'm willing to do this, uh,"

• 12:53Shawn Ryan?

  Or I've done it.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, or I've done it. And that's for you to determine by how I conduct myself. I'm sure, and I don't mean any disrespect to, uh, anybody in the military, but I'm sure, you know, you run across somebody else that's a SEAL, you're gonna size them up, you know? You want to make sure, "Is this guy gonna have my back? Is this guy, did he take his training seriously? And how committed is he?" You know, I would assume most SEALs are committed a hundred percent. But, you know, you would have to tell me yes or no, George.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, most of them.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:27Shawn Ryan?

  There's always, uh, there's always one turd in a lunch bowl, right?

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I, I understand completely. You know, it's always the guy, when you, you got a new guy coming around the club. In the beginning, I was like, "Oh, this is great. I'm embracing this guy, and, uh, you know, just so happy to see him." You know, ten years down the road, I'm thinking, "Is this guy gonna flip?"

• 13:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  What's he made of? Is, what kind of metal is he really? Uh, you know, how do we test this guy to find out he's gonna hold up?

• 13:58Shawn Ryan?

  What is, what is, if you don't want to name names, I get it, but what is one of the most rarest patches that nobody knows about?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Well, you know,

• 14:12Shawn Ryan?

  And?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  They have the Bastard Brigade, uh, was, you know, I get people write me all the time, uh, "What is the, uh, Bastard Brigade?" Uh, you know, this is a small group of individuals. I mean, I, I guess you could describe it as a small cartel within the organization. And really, maybe only those guys know what, what it, what it is, what it's about, and what it entails to become one of them. I know that you go back east, you've got bad, you got a group of guys that call themselves Bad Company. I mean, you know, guys back east are, there's some badasses back there. You know, you, if you look at your history,

• 14:52Speaker 02

  uh, with the New York guys, the Cleveland guys, the Lowell guys, I mean, uh, look at the history of Cleveland. I mean, these guys worked for Danny Green. Are you familiar with Danny Green?

• 15:03Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Danny Green was an Irish mobster in the seventies.

• 15:07Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, they made a movie about that.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, Kill the Irishman.

• 15:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, the Teamsters.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:11Shawn Ryan?

  He was up against the Teamsters.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  The Teamsters and the mob. Well, the Hells Angels worked for the Italians, and they worked for Danny Green, and, uh, they worked both sides of the fence, you know, because they didn't support Danny Green, or they didn't support the Italians as an organization. But people within the organization were hiring out. You know, Danny Green would say, "I need, I can't get in this area, I need somebody to do something." And, uh, you know, somebody'd take the job, you know?

• 15:39Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Uh, did they create, uh, little patches? Sure, they did, and they, they were distinctive to that.

• 15:50Shawn Ryan?

  Specific.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Specific group of guys, perhaps specific acts, uh, you know? In the early days, those patches initially were, and I, I'm sure you're aware of this, uh, everybody would wear wings, and they had to do with, uh, sexual acts. And, uh, you know, the red wings, the black wings, the, uh, broken wings, whatever they may be. We had an individual in the club called Terry the Tramp, you know, he had a whole array of, of, of wings. And if you, do you ever see Hells Angels sixty-nine?

• 16:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Terry was in that. He was the, uh, kind of stole the show. He was the guy with the big gauntlets and long hair and, uh, red motorcycle. Created a, that movie created a conflict between him and Sonny.

• 16:42Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Because he seemed to be getting a lot more attention than Sonny wanted him to get.

• 16:52Shawn Ryan?

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• 18:22Shawn Ryan?

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• 19:07Shawn Ryan?

  privacy isn't paranoia, it's protection.

• 19:16Shawn Ryan?

  What was, so what would happen if somebody was wearing patches or a color that they didn't earn? What would happen?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  I would say anything from a stern lecture to, you know, a hole in the desert, you know?

• 19:33Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. Gotcha.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just depends on the circumstances. But I, I think maybe this is something you could relate to. I think a lot of it has to do with how people explain themselves or conduct themselves, why they're explaining the situation. You know, you, you, you start, I'll use the word interrogation, you start sounding somebody about something. He's gonna drive how the end process is because if you had an intention to hurt this guy, you wouldn't be talking to him. You know, somebody'd walk up behind him and shoot him in the head or something. But if you're negotiating with somebody, it's because you're trying to avoid something or you're trying to achieve something.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  And if you're talking, you know, figure as long as you're talking, you're not fighting.

• 20:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So you guys are looking for ownership, somebody that owns their fucking shit?

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:30Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  And, you know, is it still that way? You know, I don't know. You know, I, I left the club in 2011. I got disillusioned. I was disappointed in the direction things were heading. You know, I walked into that world in, you know, 1966, immediately started running around with the question marks, which were endorsed as a 1% club by the Hells Angels, the Saint Slaves again. These are the guys I ran around with. Ultimately, met the Hells Angels up on Kern River, met a guy named Old Man John. You know, this is in the mid 70s, early 70s. He was already old back then. You know, he was, he was an old man. But former Navy, I don't know if he was

• 21:15Speaker 02

  a CB or Navy. He had been on, in the Pacific Theater, you know, I don't know specifically where. But, you know, like a lot of the guys, you're familiar with how the club started, you know? They were from returning vets from the European and Pacific Theaters.

• 21:32Shawn Ryan?

  World War II, right?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:34Shawn Ryan?

  Let's get into that in a minute.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:36Shawn Ryan?

  Let me give you an introduction here.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  All right.

• 21:38Shawn Ryan?

  George Christie became a full patched Hells Angel in the Los Angeles Charter in 1976. And six months later, became president of that charter before founding the Ventura Charter in 1978. Your tenure as president was, was longest in clubs' history, spanning seven US presidential terms, beginning with Gerald Ford and ending with Barack Obama. Survived RICO indictments, ATF stings, internal rats and murder contracts, and time in prison. Since you've resigned in 2011, you've written books, starred in documentaries, and consulted on other projects. You launched felony prison consultants and worked with defense attorneys

• 22:20Shawn Ryan?

  to analyze their cases and prepare strong legal, strong legal defenses. You work with defendants to assist them in coming to terms with their situation and prepare for the complexities, of course, as well as, as well as protocol of prison life. I forgot to mention, you're also a US Marine. And so-

• 22:40Speaker 02

  I had eight years with the Department of Defense, too.

• 22:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:45Shawn Ryan?

  I do, I do have that in the outline. What, real quick, though, just one, what is the, I know what it is, but it may be diluted from my days of research. What does a 1%er mean?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Okay, when these small groups of veterans started teaming up together, you had the pissed off bastards, you had the galloping goose, you had the yellow jackets, the booze fighters, 13 rebels, you had these small-

• 23:15Shawn Ryan?

  The booze fighters was one of the original, uh, clubs?

• 23:18Speaker 02

  They were, they were at Hollister and, and I, I use Hollister, whether fairly or unfairly, as a starting point for the West Coast, uh, birth of the outlaw biker. They went to Hollister in 1948. Uh, there were, uh, hill climbs and races and I don't know what else they had going there. Uh, they went up there. In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle sent a, got wind of this new phenomenon of these bike clubs. They sent a reporter to Hollister. A reporter went there, they brought a camera guy, they were snapping shots, they were interviewing

• 24:00Speaker 02

  people. And they came back and wrote this, what became a salacious story about how these marauding veterans rode into the small town of Hollister and were raping and pillaging. You know, they took over the town. And the reporter asked the American Motorcycle Association, "So what's, what's with these rowdy bikers?" And they said, their actual comment was, "It's only 1% that ruin it for us wholesome riders." And these guys, these club guys, now I'm just,

• 24:39Speaker 02

  you know, a baby or a little kid then, they get this term 1%er and they embrace it and they become the 1% that ruin it for the wholesome riders.

• 24:51Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  And they're still continuing to ruin it to this day. So that's how that started. And they didn't start wearing the badges. Uh, and I'm gonna, I have a challenge coin I want to give you along with my book. And you'll, you'll look on the front of that.

• 25:11Shawn Ryan?

  1%er.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  1%er. And then, you know, you'll see the, uh, that's me standing in front of the clubhouse.

• 25:18Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, I figured you'd appreciate it and you'd understand it, you know?

• 25:24Shawn Ryan?

  I get it.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, I, uh, you know, I traced the challenge coin back to the Roman Legions.

• 25:31Shawn Ryan?

  They go back that far?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  They go back to the Roman Legions. The, uh, they carry, anybody that did a specific bravery in a battle or fought in a really hard fought battle, they would give them a challenge coin that was also valuable. It had, you know, had a monetary value. But in addition to that, it identified you secretly as being part of a legion.

• 25:56Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  As you, you know, and if you got caught carrying it and you weren't part of the legion, you know, you can imagine back then what the consequences would be.

• 26:03Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  So, uh, maybe things haven't changed that much, you know? But anyways, uh, so everybody embraced that title in, in the late 50s, early 60s. Nobody seems to know for sure. I initially thought they started doing it right away. And then I myself, as I'm creating this historical record of all this outlaw lifestyle, I find out that it didn't really happen with the 1%er badges, uh, till the late 50s, uh, you know, early 60s. And, you know, there used to be 1%er meetings. Or on the California West Coast, you had the, uh, Hells Angels

• 26:43Speaker 02

  in the Bay Area. In Monterey, you had a club called The Losers. And in Ventura County, you had a club called The Question Marks. And then in San Fernando Valley, you had a club, uh, called The Saint Slaves. Uh, and then, uh, the galloping goose and the booze fighters, these guys were all part of this 1%er coalition. And, you know, they have meetings, but, you know, there really were reasons to get together and party.

• 27:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  They weren't really meetings, you know? Uh, you know, it'd be, "Anybody got any business? No, let's drink." You know? Uh, but-

• 27:22Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting. I thought about doing this.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Did you really?

• 27:25Shawn Ryan?

  I did. I, uh-

• 27:26Speaker 02

  And when, at what point in your life?

• 27:29Shawn Ryan?

  I was contracting for the agency.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:31Shawn Ryan?

  And I'd left the SEAL teams, tried, uh, tried to, tried to do some real estate stuff. I fucking hated it. I could not stand being with civilians, uh, at the time. And that, and I was getting in fights all the time. It was just all I did was drink and fight.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:49Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and then I-

• 27:53Shawn Ryan?

  So that's where I kinda started to think about it, cuz I just could not fit in. And um.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Did you, did you hang around anybody or?

• 28:00Shawn Ryan?

  Nope.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Interact?

• 28:01Shawn Ryan?

  I, I bought, well.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Where were you from?

• 28:03Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't have any money.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  You didn't need any money, man. So where, where, where were you at?

• 28:09Shawn Ryan?

  St. Louis. Oh, well, uh, St. Louis at that time.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  St. Louis. That probably would have been the, perhaps the El Fosteros or the Outlaws or?

• 28:18Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I was just reading and then, uh, and then I wound up contracting for CIA. And it turns out there was a bunch of guys, uh, that I was contracting with that had all thought about the same thing. And, um.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Kinda goes along with the.

• 28:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, and so my, when I, in my readings, I, I, in my research, I was just, I realized. It sounded like everybody was coming back from World War II. Nobody could fit in. So media related to it. And, um, and, uh, yeah, that's, that's, so I was drawn to it. I was, I was like, oh, so this is how all these places started.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:55Shawn Ryan?

  And then it's, and then, uh, talking to other friends that were also looking into it. Um, it kinda sounded like maybe the clubs had been diluted a lot by this point. There probably weren't very many veterans.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  What years is she think?

• 29:10Shawn Ryan?

  Probably around, probably about the time you were leaving, 2011.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:14Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and, uh, and then I, I had heard, one of them told me that, uh, they were like, yeah, I wanted to do it. Cuz I fucking love motorcycles and he goes, I went to a bike shop where a bunch of them were working and I realized they were all stealing each other's bikes. He was like, uh, I'll, I just think it's stupid that a motorcycle enthusiast would steal another man's fucking bike.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, in fact, we had a, uh, moratorium in Ventura. We ruled, as Hells Angels Ventura, we ruled Ventura with an iron hand. And that was one of the things that was not allowed in that county, or not the county so much, but the town. It's hard to control the whole county, but in the city of Ventura, there was no bike thief, no bike thief, you know, all. Nobody even locked their bike. In fact, if you came to our bar and locked your bike, we would ask you to unlock it. Uh, because we took it as an insult. I go.

• 30:08Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  I go, man, you, you know, I go, are you inferring that we're a bunch of bike thieves? I go, because you need to unlock it. And if you don't wanna unlock it, I understand that, but you gotta leave. You gotta unlock it and you gotta leave and we're not gonna warn you again. So make your choice. What do you wanna do? And, you know, most of the people would always unlock it and go, well, I, I didn't know, you know, and, and whatnot. And, you know, the police knew that was a policy in town. Uh, we had one guy, uh, got caught stealing bikes. And, uh, he spent the weekend in the clubhouse. Uh, it was funny, the cops knew he was in there.

• 30:44Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  The word spread all over the street and, uh, the sergeant, uh, Skye, known for since 1978. Uh, pulled up and they said, hey, he's out there, man. So I, I went out there. I go, what's up? And he goes, he goes, I know you got the guy in there. He goes, scare the shit out of him, but don't hurt him. He's, we don't wanna do no reports, man. And, uh, you know, we kept him in there all weekend, made him assemble the bike. He had taken the bike apart. We made him reassemble the bike. And then we made him go pick dog shit up in the backyard. We had two big rottweilers.

• 31:19Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  That didn't like anybody. So we told him, go out there and, uh, we didn't even cage the dog. We go, we're not caging them up, man. You just go out there and deal with the dogs and, you know, they were just like watching his ass, but. The word spread fast and, you know, there, no more bike thefts.

• 31:36Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we got a couple of things that crank out here real quick before we get too in the weeds. So one, I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 31:45Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, they're the reason that I get to sit here with you today. Um, so I offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is from Brian. In hindsight, would you have prioritized keeping the DOD career that you had after military service rather than pursuing life as a Hells Angel? Follow on. What obstacles did you encounter when transitioning from military service to the civilian world and how did you address them?

• 32:12Speaker 02

  So is that two-part question?

• 32:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Well.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  I didn't like taking orders from people I didn't respect. That was a real problem for me and I, I wound up.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I was in a Marine Reserve unit and the, I was in it for over four years. And, uh, oh, three, eleven was a rifle unit. We had a new gunery sergeant, uh, come. And, uh, he

• 32:43Speaker 02

  was very disrespectful and he had, you know, old school guy, you know. Now, I felt we, the unit, the company was tight.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  But we were reserve, we were a reserve unit, you know, so people were living their civilian life and blending the military life together. And the platoon I happened to be in, man, we were taking psychedelics and, you know, we were getting high, smoking pot. And he knew that, he thought he was gonna come there and change everything. And, uh, him and I wound up getting in a beef and, uh, we were on a rifle range and, uh, I was kinda fucking around. I didn't think he'd do anything, but I, we were, you know, standing, firing and told, there was four or five guys between us. He was down the range talking shit to me, you know, like he always did. He just rode me.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  And, uh, so I told everybody to get off the range and I put my rifle to my side and I told him, draw. And he ran off the range, went and ratted me out, uh, got court martialed.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  At the court martial, it, it kind of drifted into

• 34:03Speaker 02

  perhaps you'd fit in better, uh, working by yourself. And I wound up getting, uh, you know, I, I, I went out under a general discharge. Uh, in, under honorable conditions, wound up going to work for the Department of Defense. Uh, at Point Magoo, I was in communication trouble, a shooter.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  There was a submarine surveillance, this is the middle of the Cold War with the Russians, uh, in the late seventies. Took care of the, uh, RCA building. It was a submarine surveillance system. They had one in Santa Cruz. It's all declassified now. They had one on Santa Cruz Island. Then they had one on, on island in Northern California and they watched all the Russian subs, uh, you know, didn't let them get too close. And, uh, that was my job. And

• 34:57Speaker 02

  they found out I was leader of the Los Angeles Hells Angels. Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  So I got called in the office.

• 35:04Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet you did.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And they said, they go, we need to ask you something. We know this rumor's been floating around. We thought it was a joke. But are you really leader of the Los Angeles Hells Angels? And I said, I am.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  They just looked at me and, you know, I, my, my boss was a cool dude, you know, and they just go, Jesus Christ, Christie. And he goes, we're gonna pull your security clearance. You can't, you can't be with those guys and be with us. And, uh, he said, you gotta make a choice. And I made my choice. I, I walked away, you know, uh. Do I reflect back sometimes now? I, uh,

• 35:48Speaker 02

  when, when I walked away from the club and everybody turned their back on me after forty years of service, uh, I had my feelings hurt. I was mad. And, you know, I, I look at, at you, I look around this room, I look at, uh, the things that, uh, were presented to you and

• 36:11Speaker 02

  you know, you, you, you guys, military guys, you guys risk your ass every day now. I used to risk my ass every day too, but it was for ourselves. It wasn't for our country, you know? Uh, the Hells Angels are a self-serving organization, but it was a, a fun-loving organization at one time, at least I thought it was. It was a live and let live world. Uh, but I, you know, I look around the room here, I look at you, uh, I think, yeah, I wonder what would have happened, but it's a hypothetical question and, you know, you never get a concrete answer for it. Uh, you know, I, uh,

• 36:50Speaker 02

  What rank would I have made, uh, uh, what would I have accomplished? Uh, you know, I have a a great story. When did the SEAL start? They started in what sixty-five, sixty-six?

• 37:01Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, I'm gonna get killed for not knowing this.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you. I think that's, that's about when, and I'll tell you why. I, uh, had got hit in the head. I got in a fight with another Marine and he clipped me with his rifle, you know, uh, went to sick call, had my head stitched, wouldn't tell him what happened, told him I hit my head on the rack, uh, which really upped my bar with all the old school Marine sergeants, you know? And, uh, there was a guy in there that had broke his shoulder, like, and collarbone. He was a, he was trying out for something new, and he said he was gonna be a Navy SEAL.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  And he had, he had jumped out of a plane and the parrot, did you guys jump?

• 37:51Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he had, he had hit his shoulder when he landed. He didn't land right. And, uh, he couldn't wait to get back, uh, to where they, you know, they took him out and, you know, I don't know the structure or how it works.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  You know, you listen to a guy like that and, uh, you think, wow. Now, another story is of, when I'm getting, I'm in the reserve unit, I get activated when I, when I challenge that gun resource, and they've got me down at Camp Pendleton. And I'm walking, I can't remember, you know how the little camp, you've been at Camp Pendleton?

• 38:27Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  You know, all the little pink, they got all these little satellite camps everywhere.

• 38:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  And, uh, I'm walking down the road and across the street is, uh, a guy I was in boot camp with, and he stepped on a fucking mine. And, you know, he looked like he was, you know, we're all nineteen, twenty years old at the time. I don't know how old I was, but, you know, just in my early, early twenties at the most. And he looked like he was sixty years old, man, you know, the way he was walking and, uh, he was walking then like I'm walking now with my two hip replacements, but, you know,

• 39:04Speaker 02

  just, there was a higher power, I feel, that generates all these moves and, you know, you have to assist them in the, uh,

• 39:15Speaker 02

  in the journey, but, uh, I don't know, I don't know if I even answered the question, but I

• 39:20Shawn Ryan?

  I think you did.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I, I, I mean, who knows, man?

• 39:26Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I got you a gift too, not a challenge coin, but, so. Big ones, Lee, Gummy Bears, made the USA legal in all fifty states.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Really? In all fifty states?

• 39:41Shawn Ryan?

  That means there's no, uh, funny business in those, but, um, yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 39:48Shawn Ryan?

  I go to

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Appreciate that. Thank you.

• 39:50Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure. Could you give us a history lesson on the Hells Angels, how they started, when they came about?

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Well, you know, there was, they were originally the pissed off bastards.

• 40:01Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  And, uh,

• 40:05Speaker 02

  couple of the guys

• 40:08Speaker 02

  started two leaders, you know, two leaders in one squad don't, doesn't work sometimes, and, uh,

• 40:19Speaker 02

  they split, and the part of the pissed off bastards became the Hells Angels, and, uh, in the little town, Bloomington, down there by San Bernardino Riverside, there was a gentleman who in nineteen seventy-eight, seventy-nine claims that he started the Hells Angels. His name was Dick White. Uh, you know, there's, nobody kept any records back then. There was, it was just unwritten rules, uh, uh, if you didn't make it or you didn't stand up for yourself, you know, usually wind up getting beat up in a runoff and, uh,

• 41:01Speaker 02

  somebody'd wind up with your motorcycle and your jacket, and it was a pretty tough world and, uh,

• 41:09Speaker 02

  we started in San Bernardino.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  In nineteen fifty-seven, uh, well, nineteen, I'm gonna back up, nineteen fifty-six, Sonny Barger joined the army, and he was sixteen, and they found out he was, uh, not a legal age, and they discharged him honorably.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  He started the Oakland Hells Angels with another gentleman named, uh, Boots. I don't know Boots' real name, I just know him by Boots. A lot of monikers in the Hells Angels, you know, uh, the power base that was in Southern California made a transition. Sonny Barger was a kind of a natural leader, a very charismatic, uh, guy. And he pulled the power to the Bay Area, and probably by the early sixties and then into the mid-sixties, he became the, uh, voice and the face of the Hells Angels.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  And he was very, uh, adamant that it was his club. Him and I used to argue all the time. I was kind of ten years behind him in the, uh, pecking order. And his attitude was the club belonged to him. My attitude was we all belonged to the club. But, uh, that's a brief history lesson. Uh, we, uh, started a tug of war, and we mentioned this earlier, between the North and the South, and it was, it was a healthy, uh, rivalry, but sometimes it, it turned unhealthy and deadly. Uh, I know that Sonny,

• 43:00Speaker 02

  initially, if people look on the internet, the Deathhead was called the Bumblebee Deathhead. It was very small, and it was kind of at a forty-five degree angle, and you could see both wings. And Sonny met, there were two Hells Angels charters in Southern California. There was a SoCal Hells Angels that had nothing to do with the Berdue Hells Angels. It was two separate clubs with the same name. And Sonny basically said, we're gonna, you're either gonna join with us or you're gonna get pushed out. And in the process, he liked the patch better that

• 43:41Speaker 02

  gentleman named Vic Bettenhardt created. It was the side view Deathhead. Basically, the Deathhead you see nowadays, uh, uh, in the patch. And he took that style, had him rewrite it, and then sent twelve patches to San Bernardino, thirteen patches, I don't know how many people were in the club at that time down there, and said, this is the new patches, put these on, or the next time we see you guys, we're gonna fight. And so, of course, San Bernardino being San Bernardino Hells Angels, uh, shot the patches full of holes, put them back in the box and, uh, sent them to, uh,

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Oakland, and then, this is about nineteen sixty-five. I was told, I wasn't there, I was told it was nineteen sixty-five.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  I was still in high school, and the North and the South met at Bass Lake that year. And, uh, they fought it out, and that war went on for about, you know, inner conflict, if you want to call it, three or four years. Nobody was killed over that patch, but there was a lot of people beat up. I know that, uh, Sonny pistol whipped Grubby Glenn, uh, at Bass Lake that year. Cause Grubby said, I'm never putting that patch on, and I'm never not being a Hells Angel. And, uh, this is kind of a side story, backstory of twenty-five, thirty years later, I can't remember what Sonny gave Grubby Glenn the pistol as a gift he pistol whipped him with.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Had a big party in, at the San Bernardino clubhouse. So, you know, you got that weird rivalry. I, I think the military people would relate to something like that, you know, citizens are like, oh my God, what the hell, you know, you guys are crazy. Uh, yeah, perhaps, but, uh, uh, that's just all part of the, the game, you know?

• 45:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  But I, I remember being at that party and, uh, Glenn opening that gift up, and, uh, Glenn looked at it and Sonny said, that's the pistol I pistol whipped you with at Bass Lake in nineteen sixty-five.

• 45:50Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  And, uh, it just, you know.

• 45:52Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of pistol?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  And they're both felons.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  I, it was some revolver, I think.

• 45:58Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, right on.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Nothing special.

• 46:00Shawn Ryan?

  So, let's talk about you then. So how, well, actually, what is, so when it comes to the, do the clubs recruit?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Well,

• 46:12Shawn Ryan?

  Are they looking for people?

• 46:13Speaker 02

  There's two, there's

• 46:14Shawn Ryan?

  How does it work?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Two ways to build a, a club. One way is to push out the weak links, if you will. The other, uh, philosophy is

• 46:28Shawn Ryan?

  How do you do that?

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Uh, you just start, uh, pushing and shoving, kind of, you know, you know what it's like. I mean, uh, I'm, I'm sure you guys, if you don't think somebody's, uh,

• 46:40Shawn Ryan?

  I know how we do it. I'm curious how you do it.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Well, we start kicking people's ass and, uh, uh, putting them through tests, uh, uh,

• 46:49Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of tests?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Well, put them in a situation, perhaps, uh, with, go to a bar, you know, there's gonna be a problem, uh, what are these guys made of? How are they gonna conduct it? Maybe ask them to do something that, uh, a felony favor? And, uh, will they do it? Will they not do it? How important is getting in the Hells Angels or any club to that particular individual? Uh,

• 47:16Shawn Ryan?

  I thought, I'm sorry, I thought you meant pushing out the weak from

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Well,

• 47:20Shawn Ryan?

  that are already in.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Well, no, that, this is people coming in, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna address that in a second. The second way to do things is, you wanna take over a club, you, you just take them over, bring everybody in, put a, uh, your patch on them, and then start weeding them out.

• 47:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Okay, the end result is the same. You're gonna lose fifty percent of the guys, uh, you're gonna lose fifty percent, uh, In the old school guys, they don't ever want those individuals to say, well, I used to be a Hell's Angel, you know? Even though it was a three month span, they don't want, you know, you got guys like Doug the Thug running around and Moldy Marvin, you know, they didn't want these guys having the ability to say that. Like up in Canada, uh, I don't know if you know anything about Canada, very serious guys up there in Canada with the Hell's Angels. They had a complete country patch over. Uh, I can't remember what year it was.

• 48:20Shawn Ryan?

  A country patch over?

• 48:21Speaker 02

  They just took over all these clubs and, uh, uh, put Hell's Angel patches on them. And, uh, they used the second, uh, uh, you know, way to, to weed things out. They put the patches on them and they weeded them out. And, uh, you know, but what they did was they probably stopped a lot of law enforcement investigations, uh, uh, prior. I mean, I'm sure the investigation started once the people put that new patch on, but you kind of go around the investigation, get in front of it, if you will. It's probably like invading, uh, if you guys are gonna do an operation, uh, uh, you know,

• 49:01Speaker 02

  you just go there and do it like, you know, they took that, uh, uh, Venezuela president, you know?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  They just went down there and, and got him, you know, brought him back, uh, whether, you know, right, wrong, or indifferent, uh, uh.

• 49:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Pussyfoot around, you know?

• 49:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I would think a lot of these guys would fight to the death over switching, switching teams.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Well.

• 49:29Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe not.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  I, well, I, I think that there's a pecking order in the outlaw bike world. You've got what they called the big four at one time. It was the Hell's Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos, uh, uh, and, and the pagans. Now you've got some additional clubs. You've got the Mongols who really earned their place in that, uh, uh, culture. Uh, you know, we fought them in Southern California. Uh, we're still fighting them. We started in 1977 and it's still going on. I mean, a lot of lives lost, uh, you know, both sides. Uh, they're a real contender in the outlaw bike world. You've got the Sons of Silence. Uh, you've got the pagans now making this big move, I'm told, uh, all over the United States. They're going into places they never went before.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  But you would hope that someone would, uh, uh, fight to the death, you know? Uh, I'm sure that, uh, you know, you hear about, uh, things that these different, uh, elite military groups do, you know, these guys are there. They, I don't think they want to surrender.

• 50:35Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  You know?

• 50:37Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'm answering the question.

• 50:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you are. And so with the recruiting, is it, I mean,

• 50:45Shawn Ryan?

  are you, I, I guess, are you, is there outreach or is it just intake?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Well,

• 50:52Speaker 02

  but again, there's two philosophies, you know, you, you, you, if you start petitioning people to get in the club, uh, how on board are they? You know, it's better, I think, uh, I think it's better to have them come to you and want to, want to be in the, be in the organization, be part of it. Uh, they want it so bad they can taste it. I don't know. I'm sure you know that feeling, man. You want it so bad you can taste it. And, uh, those are the hungry guys. Those are the guys I always, uh, uh, looked at. I never went and recruited anybody. We had a, uh, situation in Ventura when the phenomena of,

• 51:31Speaker 02

  of street gang violence started where this, these specific little street gangs were, uh, shooting at each other. We brought all the street gang leaders into the Ventura clubhouse and basically had a moratorium on the violence. You know, you guys aren't gonna shoot at each other in Ventura. We don't want the heat, man. It wasn't because we were being selfish about it. We didn't want to endanger the commu- the community, of course. We wouldn't want to see anybody get hurt, but it was really self-serving, you know? We, we didn't want the heat. We didn't want the government grants, uh, coming to town. I don't know if you know how much, uh, uh, federal government, man. You got a Hell's Angel charter in your town. You can apply for government grants. You can get a, uh, uh,

• 52:14Speaker 02

  attached to a, a federal agency, uh, create a task force. There's a lot of things that can transpire. And when we stopped that moratorium on the violence, uh, some of these clubs, these street gangs are not clubs or street gangs. We call ourselves a club, but I mean, these guys call themselves street gangs.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  We started having some of the members gravitate, uh, from these street gangs. We wound up probably getting one to two or three new members in the mid nineties from every street gang that we had, uh, uh, approached and said, you're not gonna be shooting at anybody. And we never petitioned them. They came on their own free will. A lot of people accused me of going out and, uh, uh, you know, poaching these guys in these street gangs. That never happened. These were guys that saw what was going on, saw the writing.

• 53:11Shawn Ryan?

  If it did.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 53:13Shawn Ryan?

  What if it did?

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:14Shawn Ryan?

  What if you did recruit them from?

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, who cares? Yeah, but you know, there's, look, I left the club on good terms. And then soon as Sonny, Sonny and I were like fighting like, you know, unbelievably, uh, before I got, uh,

• 53:32Speaker 02

  in the, before I made the decision to leave.

• 53:35Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:36Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get there.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 53:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's stay with recruiting.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Okay, so.

• 53:39Shawn Ryan?

  So are you guys, I mean, I'm just curious, do you intake anybody that wants it bad? Or are you looking for specific skills?

• 53:46Speaker 02

  You know, and, you know, I guess I've been asked this question a lot. I'm just gonna address it and maybe you'll stop me if it's something that, uh, uh, you're gonna get into later, but it's usually

• 54:01Speaker 02

  white, young guys. It's not because we're racist. Uh, there's Mexicans in the club. There's Filipinos in the club. But for years, there were no blacks in the club because we adopted the West Coast prison guidelines. And that is very strict. I don't know if you guys are aware of it, maybe not in the military so much as the prison culture, but you don't, the whites hang out with the whites, the Mexicans hang out with the Mexicans. Uh, uh, the blacks hang out with the blacks. You've got three factions, uh, in the penal system in California. You've got the Aryan Brotherhood.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  This is the original, uh, prison gangs. You've got the Black Guerrilla Family and you've got the Mexican Mafia. And when you go to prison, the first thing they ask you is, and they use this term just like this. They'll say, hey, what car are you in? And you say, well, I'm in the, uh, black car. If you're identifying with the blacks or I'm in the, uh, uh, white car, I'm in the Mexican car. So the people that, that was.

• 55:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wouldn't that be pretty self-explanatory?

• 55:11Speaker 02

  You'd think so.

• 55:11Shawn Ryan?

  Just go to fucking prison?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know, there's a lot of people, I've, I've gone on, uh, uh, shows in the past and not only podcasts, but television shows, and we're accused of being racist, you know? And, you know, it, it's, it's just not true, you know, the, uh, the East Coast Dragons are, uh, uh, the East Bay Dragons are a black club up in the Bay Area. They don't allow white guys in it, you know? It's, it's an all-black club. You know, you could say the same thing about them. It's not about race, you know? It's just about the guys you were hanging out with.

• 55:45Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  And, uh, uh, the culture of, uh, that prison mentality.

• 55:52Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you go to prison though, and it's all based on race, why would they ask you what car you're driving?

• 55:58Speaker 02

  They just, they just do. It's just kind of a, like, uh, look, and, and let me tell you, in the old days, I tell you, I went to prison in Texas in 2011. It was a completely different ballgame. You know, I had gone to prison in eighty-six the first time, uh, so now it's twenty eleven, twenty thirteen, when, when I get to prison in Texas. And they're still doing, what car are you riding in? You know, uh, nobody asked me because everybody knew who I was. But they, the average inmate, they say, what, what car are you riding in? And, uh, you tell them and then they say, what's your crime?

• 56:34Speaker 02

  And you tell them. Now, in the old days, there were particular things that weren't acceptable. Child molester, uh, you know, uh, whatnot. Now they ask you, well, what's your crime? And they, they go, okay, what's your name? And they go, let's go over to the phone. They go over to the phone and they, they call home and go, hey, look this guy up. It's, everything's on the computer.

• 56:57Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  And they know immediately if this guy says he's a, a bank robber, but in fact he's a child molester or he's there for, uh, uh, you know, some sort of pedophile type crime. Uh, I mean, these guys, uh, aren't accepted on the yard, you know?

• 57:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  It's very difficult for them, but I, uh,

• 57:20Speaker 02

  these guys came and the club started growing, you know? The club got like a shot in the arm. The interesting thing is some of the old guys didn't like the way the young guys dressed. I don't know if this happened in the military at all. They didn't like the music they listened to. Uh, they didn't like the, the philosophy was different than the, the old his, you know, history of, and tradition of the old guys. It was a whole new ballgame for a lot of these guys.

• 57:53Shawn Ryan?

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• 58:36Shawn Ryan?

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• 59:17Shawn Ryan?

  How has the, what would I, how have the core values of the Hells Angels changed from its inception to what it is today?

• 59:31Speaker 02

  I think the breakdown would be in the Brotherhood. There's breakdown in the Brotherhood.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  I think, and I'm gonna use, I'm just gonna pick a date out of thin air. In the early seventies, late sixties, if you didn't build your motorcycle from the ground up, and you rode it into some party or some camp to party with everybody, people would know and you would not be accepted. You'd probably get asked to leave if, you know, not getting a physical confrontation. Back then, you have to understand, there was no warehouses where you can mail order all your parts. Hey, I wanna chrome this. Hey, I want a special clutch lever. I want, everybody was making that stuff by hand.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  And I'll, you know, admit that there were a few people leading the way, like Dean Lonzer,

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Dick Woods, these different bike builders up and down the coast. And you could tell, you know, geographically, you could tell where somebody was from. It was like an accent. You look at somebody's bike and you go, this guy's from San Fernando Valley. This guy's from the Bay Area. You know, this guy's a San Diego guy. Because they, they had a, a particular accent to them. And it's, it's been diluted now. You can go in the shop and if you got $30,000, you can buy a Harley Davidson and, you know, you can be a biker.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  I had lunch with the Davidson family once and I, I was serious, but I was, I was giving them a hard time, kinda joking. I said, you know, and this is a true story. In the old days, you go into the Harley shop and you were an outlaw biker, you know, they didn't want your business. They didn't even want you in there. And I was telling, I was actually telling Willie Davidson and his son, I can't think of his son names, he was head of marketing at the time, that they should give me a bike. Because they were now selling cutoff vests, they were selling leather pants, they were selling bandanas, they were selling things now that when we were dressing like that

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  in the sixties and seventies, they were condemning, you know? And it just made this huge transition. So that the, we had a name for them and as things progressed from the seventies into the eighties, and by the end of the eighties, we called them Rubs. Have you ever heard that term? Rich Urban Bikers.

• 1:02:11Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. This is another thing that drove, so.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Rich Urban Bikers, man, anybody can buy a bike.

• 1:02:18Shawn Ryan?

  This is embarrassing. I wanna tell you this story about, well, hold on, I gotta cut out the quote just over random. What's your favorite bike of all time?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  FXR.

• 1:02:26Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit, right on.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  What about you?

• 1:02:29Shawn Ryan?

  I bought this fucking Big Bear Athena Chopper when I was, I had never ridden a motor, so yeah, what did you call him?

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Rub.

• 1:02:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I was a rub. So, so I told, I was, I was really, I was really interested in this stuff. And then I started contracting for, in which I'd never made that kinda money before. So I come home after the first contract and I'm like, I'm gonna buy a fucking bike now. And so I went to the Cutting Edge Cycles in St. Charles, Missouri.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  You know who, who ran it?

• 1:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  Man, his name was Mark, but I can't remember his last name by this time. But he had the, he had, so I went in there, ordered a bike, got the Big Bear Athena Chopper with the 300 rear tire, had never ridden a fucking motorcycle. I haven't even, I've ridden a dirt bike once, about killed myself. So it finally comes in, I go on another point when I come back and I'm like, oh yeah, it's in the box. He breaks the fucking box up, wheels it out. I'm like, give him the money, cash, about 35 grand.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Expensive.

• 1:03:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And my first bike, and I go, I looked at him and I go, how do you start this fucking thing anyways? And he just looked at me, goes, you just bought a $35,000 bike and you don't know how to fucking start it? And I said, well, do you want me to return it?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  And I don't think he did.

• 1:03:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, he goes, alright, here you go. Tried to get it out of the parking lot, put the kickstand down. I was like, you might wanna deliver this one? Well, he did. And then got home, took off right to the bar. And there was a biker bar right down the road from where I lived. Went in there and that's what I, I was, I went in there, everybody had their fucking chains and their vests and their bandanas and all that shit. And I'm like, aren't you my fucking dentist? You know, and then the other guy's an attorney. And I'm like, this is like the shittiest bar in St. Louis and it's full of fucking dentists, doctors and lawyers. I'm outta here. This is like a costume party.

• 1:04:37Shawn Ryan?

  So I went home.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  So did you sell it?

• 1:04:40Shawn Ryan?

  What's that?

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  You sell it?

• 1:04:41Shawn Ryan?

  I kept it. I moved down to Florida. I went to Bike Toberfest and about killed myself doing that.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Did you ever go down on it?

• 1:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  What's that?

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Did you ever go down?

• 1:04:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, at three o'clock in the morning with a chick on the back. But, and I didn't get arrested for whatever reason, probably because it was Bike Toberfest. But.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  And the cops came and?

• 1:05:01Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Did you get hurt?

• 1:05:03Shawn Ryan?

  Nope.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  How about her?

• 1:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  Nope. No helmets.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Really? No helmets?

• 1:05:09Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Have you been, had you been drinking?

• 1:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  It was three o'clock in the morning at Bike Toberfest.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't wanna, I don't wanna start an inquisition here.

• 1:05:18Shawn Ryan?

  So, oh man, yeah, it was a wild time.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  And how long did you keep it after that?

• 1:05:27Shawn Ryan?

  I probably had it for, I don't know, maybe, maybe three years.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  You know, I'll tell you, if you would've gotten a bike, well, I'm gonna, I always push the FXRs because I've had them all in the Harleys. And the FXR was probably the best handling, the most reliable bike Harley Davidson perhaps ever made in my expectations.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  The FXR sport, it had, you know, two discs on the front, disc brake on the back. And there was a gentleman that worked for Harley named Jerry Branch in Long Beach and he had this ported and polished heads and a carburation and he had a whole like little kit you could have them put on at the Harley shop. And I became good friends with this Monty from Ventura Harley Davidson. And so I got one of the first FXRs in Ventura. Called me and said, hey man, you gotta come down there. This motor's unbelievable. They made so many changes in the motor. Like I was looking at the motor over there.

• 1:06:34Shawn Ryan?

  For my friend?

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that motor was the prelude. The next motor was the Evolution and it was all rubber mounted and, you know, it was just, it was just like a whole new motorcycle. And people are gonna call bullshit, but it's the truth. I swear, I changed the lifters and the valves, I mean, the lifters and the cam, the followers and, and I don't even think I changed the pistons, man. I had like 300,000 miles on it. It was just incredible motorcycle. Just rode it everywhere.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  I've got some, I got a cool picture, a couple of cool pictures, I'll get to you. But the, before that, built a bike, I won a bike in a dice game from the Satan Slaves. This is in 1978. Bill Reed and I, Bill Reed was the Satan Slave, I was a Hells Angel. We were like, you know, real close, man. I was, I spent so much time with the Satan Slaves, the gang intelligence cops down in Los Angeles said I was a member of the Satan Slaves. They didn't even realize I was a Hells Angel. I'd spent so much time with these guys. I was always with them.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  And we got a dice game going and he had got a bike from somebody, decided didn't want it. And, you know, so we started this dice game and I wound up with the bike. I've got this picture, it's almost like a prelude to the next bike Harley Davidson made. Now, people will say, ah bullshit, Harley Davidson and the cop him. Yeah, Harley Davidson copied this. Monty was right around the corner and the Ventura Harley shop was on one street and then on the back street was the Ventura Hells Angels clubhouse. And Monty told us he would come over there to see what we were doing.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  I had a guy, David Ortega, like my closest brother. We were either loving on each other or fighting, you know, we were, that's one of them deals. And I would do all the mechanical work and he would do all the fabrication. And we came up with this bike and he came up with a paint. He's the first and I said, David, I want an all black bike. And he came up with this paint, painted the heads, the front end, the cam cover, the primary cover, the whole bike was black and it was just highlighted with a little bit of chrome.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Probably three years, two years later, Harley came out with what they called the Night Train. They had, they had copied it, uh, but.

• 1:09:25Shawn Ryan?

  I remember that.

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  You remember the Night Train?

• 1:09:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, a bunch of guys on the SEAL teams bought a Night Train.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they were, they, that was a bike that David Ortega and I created. And every once in a while, I'll, I'll put that bike up on social media and people will, will, they'll go, that's the bike that started the, uh, trend for black stuff. And, you know, it was a combination, David and I did it together, but, uh, it was just incredible bike. Uh, that's a picture I'll send you. It's a really cool picture.

• 1:09:56Shawn Ryan?

  We'll put it up.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I got, I, I wound up getting rid of it because I could not, I could, I could just never find anybody to ride with.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, but you know what? I bet you if you would have got, and I'd lost, and I got to telling the story and I, I, I got lost direction. If you would have got an FXR, uh, really good handling bike, uh, you, maybe you still be riding today.

• 1:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I've been thinking about getting another one.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Well, I'm telling you FXR, uh, a lot of the, uh, they've got some new stuff out. I like the FXR, which you should do, you should go to the Harley shop and say, look, man, uh, I want a bike comparable to a FXR. I want ha, I want this all about handling and performance and, you know, they come now with big motors in them, you know, a hundred and one inches. This is stuff of like, the first time I built a big, uh, hot rod motor in a bike of, and nobody would share nothing with you, you know, you'd have to learn trial and error, trial and error. And, uh, you know, I put the bike together, uh, I didn't shave the, uh, the valve skirts and the,

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  they're, they're hitting, you know, and I've got this noise and they're just clipping each other and they're not enough to hurt anything. Perhaps over a period of time, it would have been, I'm like, what the hell is that? So I take it apart, start inspecting everything. I see the scuff marks on the pistons, you know, the skirts. Okay, I gotta shave this. I gotta cut this out. Then it's oiling and, and, uh, what I didn't do was there's inside oilers on the motors back then. I, I should have plugged the holes and you put outside oilers to the heads, uh, to get the oil up there in the heads and, you know, I didn't know the trick and I finally,

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  I said to some old man, I go, maybe I didn't plug the goddamn, uh, oil passages on the barrels. And he got this big smile on his face. He goes bingo, you know, and it, he, he wouldn't tell me. He could have told me, but he wouldn't. He wanted me to find out for myself. And I think that's part of the thing that's wrong with this country today. Nobody's like thinking for themselves, man, you know?

• 1:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  I think that's a big part of what's wrong with this country.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Shawn Ryan?

  I got another random question for you that just popped in my head. I'm just curious. Uh, you're, you are out by now. Do you remember a couple of years ago when Harley Davidson went woke?

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Shawn Ryan?

  What was, I mean, what is a guy like you or just the, or the Hells Angels or any biker gang in general? I mean, what, what happened there? Would people were throwing, the people were blowing their motorcycles up?

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I mean, I, you know, I think the whole world, I was in Spain, uh, you know, I, I went to Spain. I come back from prison, uh, of my second marriage is in a, a, you know, it's crashing and burning, you know? Trying to keep it together for my son, uh, I have a young son, he's 22 now. And, uh, it just ain't working. So I have this, I, I put out my second book, Marked, and it's a fictional novel about my life. And, uh, so I, I get this message from this production company, you know, we want to option your book, you know? And, uh, so I, my daughter's my lawyer, so I put my daughter on him and, uh,

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  all expenses paid, you know, uh, I'm going to, to Spain. I'm living in a luxury apartment, the whole nine yards. So I, I go over to Spain and I'm looking at the United States now from a distance and it's just like, everything just, it was like I walked into a different, uh, uh, country when I came back. And I'll tell you the other time I had an experience like that, I'm in, it's 2002. I'm fighting a 59 count state racketeering case, uh, uh, you know? Anything you can think of, they alleged I had something to do with it. And the Twin Towers gets bombed, attacked.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  And I'm in solitary confinement. We, there's a rumbling around the jail that something's going on. The guard, the daytime guard's a complete asshole, you know? I said, hey, what's going on? He goes, you don't need to worry about what's going on. You need to worry about what's going on in here. I said, yeah, but you know, my family's out there. I go, is there a war? What are we doing, you know? And, uh, in February, that's nine, you know, nine 11 September, in February of the following year, I finally get out. You know, the case just collapses. Uh, the lawyers are just tearing it apart. It collapses. They let me out and they offer me time served, you know? And the Tony Serra, very famous lawyer in San Francisco, he says, you gotta take the deal, George.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  He goes, uh, you know, we fight this case, you're gonna be fighting it another three or four years. So I take the deal, but I walk out of that jail and you, you asked me earlier about the brotherhood, you know? And I, I have a stage play that I do. I wrote a two hour stage play. And in the stage play, I talk about walking out of that solitary confinement. You got sensory deprivation and, uh, the sunlight's like, you know, haven't been in the natural sun in a year, over a year. And not only had the Twin Towers fall, had, they had fell, they were attacked. But the brotherhood in the club, uh, was affected. It was like the whole world, it was like the whole world shifted.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  And I walked into a different world and I could feel it, you know? And it's like, you know, cancel culture. I mean, all this shit's starting to go on and, you know, like you say, Harley goes woke. I mean, who would, I mean, who would have thought?

• 1:15:52Shawn Ryan?

  Never would I have thought that.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  Now, who would have thought that, you know? Uh, I don't know, man, you know, I, I look back, I'm, you know, pushing 80, man. I'm gonna hit 80 here pretty quick.

• 1:16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Have they redeemed themselves?

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  I don't know, you know, I go to the Harley shop now, I, you know, I still ride. I don't work on bikes anymore. I, I don't like it, man. I don't, I don't like bending over for more than 20 minutes. Uh, you know, uh, they're trying, uh, but I bought my first bike for 200 bucks, man, 250 bucks. I can't even remember what I paid for. You can't even get an oil. And last time I went in to get the oil changed, I thought the bill was like 400 bucks or something. You know, uh, it's just a completely different world, you know? Will it ever shift back? I don't, I don't think things shift back. Uh, I think we have to adapt. I think there has to be, uh,

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  awareness here with, you know, people in the country, I, I'll, I'll give you a, for example, my wife and I have a Jack Russell dog. Fonzie's his name. He's 12 years old. I mean, you know what it's like having a dog, man? And, you know, he's everything to us. He gets diagnosed with, uh, uh, his paw has cancer in it. So he has a toe removed, you know, we get everything done. Uh, we're out of state. We have an appointment set up for him. We have a person to pick him up, take him and, you know? The doctor changes the appointment and we get upset.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  You know, I said, look, we've got this whole thing shifted. We're in 3,000 miles away and we made an appointment. And she goes, well, I called and left a message and I go, did you get a confirmation? And, uh, she winds up telling my wife, Beverly, I don't like the way you're talking to me. I mean, you know, fucking, you know, man up a little bit, toughen up, you know? You don't like the way somebody's talking to you? I mean, you're there, uh, accommodating people. That's what you're doing. And Beverly wasn't out of line. I was right there when I, when I heard what was going on and I just, I'm like, the degree of anger, you know, is like rising, man. And I mean, how, how do you deal with people like that?

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  And how do you straighten it out? Will it ever be straightened out? I don't know, you know?

• 1:18:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Is that how cultures collapse? Is that how societies, uh, uh, come to, to an end? You know, you know, uh, this is an appropriate time for me to talk about my speech. But when I left the club, but I'm gonna wait because I know you probably want to talk about that, but it's, did Harley redeem themselves? I don't know, you know? There's a lot of things going on in this country that need redemption.

• 1:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  And it's not happening.

• 1:18:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's get back to you.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:18:58Shawn Ryan?

  So we know that, we know it caught your interest in motorcycles and, and, and, and clubs. How did you get in? How did it all start?

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's interesting. So I'm running around with the question marks and, uh, Dick Woods is the founder and leader of the question marks. And got some serious guys in the question marks. And Dick, the Hessians steal one of the Saint and Slaves bikes. They bring it up to the Ventura area. So the Saint and Slaves were part of that. Now, the Hessians aren't in that one percenter coalition at this time. The Saint and Slaves say, hey, we're coming up to Ventura, man. Hessians stole one of our bikes. We're coming up to get it, you know, we want you to know. So question marks, you know? We all go down to the Sinner's Palace and, uh,

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Recover the bike, you know, a few people get lumped up, some hurt feelings. Dick Woods comes in there, uh, after everybody's left. He thinks the event's still going on, we're, uh, dealing with these guys. Walks in the back door and somebody that holds a position of hang around with the Hessians, stabs Dick in the back. Dick becomes, uh, partially paralyzed, uh, never the same. The question marks slowly begin to unravel. Start hanging out with the Satan slaves.

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  Uh, we go up on the Kern River, uh, doing a lot of runs. The Hells Angels show up up there and in that group of Hells Angels that show up, there's a gentleman named Old Man John and, uh, he's an old man. Like I'm 20, you know, mid twenties, early, probably mid twenties by now, 24 maybe. And I mean, he looks like an antique to me, you know? I think he looks pretty good now that I think back, but at that time I'm thinking, man, this guy's old, you know, and he's riding his bike. And he knows, it seemed that you're living in this very small community of outlaw bikers.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  And the Satan slaves had been talking about me and Old Man John got word. And Satan slaves had a different posture for recruitment than the Hells Angels. We talked about this a little bit earlier. The Satan slaves, you had to ask to join. I didn't know, I didn't know any of the rules. I'm just some kid hanging out with these guys. I want to be like them. Old Man John sees me, takes an interest in me. The Hells Angels have a different posture in Los Angeles. They would say, you have any interest in the club? And that's what Old Man John said to me. He said, do you have any interest in the club? And I just, you know, I have an interest in the whole lifestyle, John. And he gives me a card and says, come to the clubhouse and, uh, visit me.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  And that's basically how it all started for me with the Hells Angels. Started hanging out with them. Uh, you know, the interesting thing is everybody wants to know about what happens, uh, when you're a prospect, you know? What do you do when you're a prospect? You basically do whatever they ask you to do, you know? And it's a shit job. Uh, it, uh, a lot of menial, meaningless jobs, you know? Just get me a hamburger, you know? Make sure the beer is cold, uh, things of that nature. The real learning experience and what really defines your tenure in the Hells Angels is what you do after you make member.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  You know, a lot of people would just assume, go sit on the couch and, and not do anything. But if you want to make a name for yourself, you gotta engage, you gotta get involved. And, uh, one of the first things I had to do, I mentioned the war with the Mongols earlier. I walked, uh, into a room and there was four or five guys on there. We were having a beef with the Mongols and, uh, they were talking about blowing up their, uh, clubhouse bike shop. And I immediately, uh, heard it was happening and I, you know, I told the guys, I go, look, man. I don't know if you've ever thought about collateral damage.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  I go, you want to put a bomb in a public, uh, business? I go, I don't think that's a very good idea. I go, I don't want nothing to do with it. I'm out of here. And I was a Hells Angel at the time. So they went ahead and put the bomb in there.

• 1:23:43Shawn Ryan?

  The Hells Angels put the bomb in?

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  In the Mongols club, uh, bike shop. It's called a frame up, but it was kind of a clubhouse bike shop place.

• 1:23:51Shawn Ryan?

  And this is while you were a prospect?

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  No, I'm a member now.

• 1:23:54Shawn Ryan?

  You're a member?

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  1977. And put the bomb there. I don't know what the trigger mechanism is or whatever. It didn't go off. So John comes to me and goes, so you walked in with those guys and you walked out? And I, I go, yeah. He goes, well, you know, they don't think you're committed. And he goes, so I'll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to go get the bomb. And I want you to retrieve it. And then we had a place downtown that we called the Armory. Wasn't a real armory, it was a storage place, a garage. And in the storage place, we had 2,000 pounds of dynamite.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  We had, uh, a British, uh, anti-tank weapon. It stood on a big, you know, I don't know what size shell it was, but it was on a big tripod. It was big as a car. And, uh, we had machine guns in there, uh, handguns, had a lathe to make silencers. John sent me to retrieve, uh, the bomb. Myself and another guy, Jesse, we went and got it. And John said, just bring it back, drop it off. I'll have the guys that made it dismantle it, you know? Cause I, I kind of said, look, man, I'm getting, getting involved. And I don't know what the hell's going on here. These guys.

• 1:25:15Shawn Ryan?

  You hope me to go get some unexploded ordnance?

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's somebody that didn't know what he was doing.

• 1:25:20Shawn Ryan?

  Bring it into the building with all of our fucking weapons and ammo?

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I just.

• 1:25:24Shawn Ryan?

  Just to go off.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  I go, whatever, man. So this is the thing, when you, you know, you start getting deeper and deeper. Now, what happened was, uh, John got fed up. We were fighting with Oakland at the time. Uh, John got fed up, stepped down. A new guy took over the club, this guy Ray Glor. And, uh, Ray had somebody come in that knew how to make a bomb. And what they did is they took a tire, they stuffed it full of dynamite around the tire. And they took the valve, uh, and they used it as a, a pressure release trigger.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  You, as you pull it out and the, the stem comes up and then the contacts hit. And then, you know, uh, it goes. They take it in and the bomb goes off. They go to change a tire and Mongol gets killed. His 15-year-old cousin gets killed. And now the war is just, you know, it's full-on war, man, uh, with these Mongols. And so I, I guess the point I'm trying to make is, you know, people think, well, you know, you, you're a prospect and then you get in the club and, uh, it's drinking and partying and that's the way it was supposed to be. But the, the dynamics of the problem with the Mongols, it changed the whole structure

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  in Southern California. And it's not something I'm proud of. I mean, I was, I was there when the whole thing was, uh, it turned an abrupt, uh, you know, reverse or whatever you want to call it, wherever it went. Uh, it was now, you know, it was basically urban warfare, jingles and, uh, you got a guy, jingles and, uh, red beard, they get shot off their bike.

• 1:27:15Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:27:16Speaker 02

  They get killed by Guy Castellano. Uh, Guy, uh, is the president of the Senate, Guy's dead now. Uh, you know, a lot of people make claims, oh, you know, you're telling this and you're telling that. Hey, everybody's dead but me. There's a couple of guys left and, and Guy's gone, uh, who's going to jail? Nobody. So I, you know, I tell these stories, but.

• 1:27:42Shawn Ryan?

  What was the beef over?

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  The beef started. Chester Green was a Hells Angel from the Bay Area. There was another guy, Whispering Bill Pfeiffer. Uh, he was a Hells Angel from the Bay Area. These two guys rode in, I can't remember if they came from Georgia or Texas. And they wanted to become Hells Angels. And so they ride, uh, from Cali- into California, up in the Bay Area. And they're petitioning people, hey, we want to come around, we're cool guys and whatnot. Well, we had a little thing we used to do back then, uh, we called the acid test.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  You give people LSD and, uh, sometimes you gave them too much, uh, sometimes by design, sometimes by accident. And one of the guys flipped out. They were trying to restrain him and he died. He's a come to what, whatever they hogtied him or whatever, trying to, uh, keep him restrained. So somebody in the upper echelon, I can only speculate who. They make a call and they say, this guy died. Uh, we got a witness, his partner's still here and he's alive. So somebody says, he's got to go, man. And they decide to kill that guy. So they killed both these guys.

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  They take them up to a, uh, a well, uh, abandoned well in Northern California. Former member named George Wetheren. They dump him in the well and Whispering Bill is dying of cancer. And somehow he gets tied into this and picks up a beef. He becomes an informant, uh, tells them there's bodies buried up at, uh, this ranch, on George Wetheren's ranch. And Whispering Bill, George Wetheren and Chester Green all become informants.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  And they're testifying against the other people that were involved in, uh, that crime. Uh,

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  Chester Green refuses to go in the witness protection program. Whitmer and Bill goes into witness protection. George Weatheran goes into witness protection program. Chester Green decides he's gonna hide in plain sight. He goes to Southern California and joins the Mongols. So, if you, if you read what law enforcement says, they always say the fight started over the California bottom rocker. It's not really what the fight started over. The fight started over Chester Green becoming a Mongol and him being an informant. And, you know, Chester Green apparently convinced the Mongols he was not an informant.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  I, you know, I don't know how, or how, or why, or, you know, why they didn't check up with us. Nevertheless, he was now a Mongol.

• 1:30:59Shawn Ryan?

  Would they, I mean, would that have been? I would imagine that would not be a welcoming call. Hey, we got your guy here that wants to join the Mongols, but we would just wanna check and make sure he's not an informant.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, you'd think they'd do you some follow-up, but, you know, and perhaps they knew what the consequence was, that these guys would've said, "Oh yeah, hold him in the back room, we'll be down there in six hours."

• 1:31:20Shawn Ryan?

  So that actually would've been a friendly call between clubs?

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:31:24Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  And, but it didn't work out that way.

• 1:31:28Shawn Ryan?

  You guys hated each other? Or you didn't hate each other at that time?

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  No, we didn't at that time.

• 1:31:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  They were, they were this, their own little motorcycle club, uh, and at that particular time, you know, the Mongols were a new obscure club. And at that particular time, the Hells Angels were, they were royalty, man, you know? It was our world, you know? We were the number one club and no other clubs. We go, ah, we were just as good, and perhaps they were just as good, but in California, we ruled California. It was our, it was our state, wherever we went. So, we all decided to go to a swap meet. So, you gotta pay attention to this convoluted story. So, we all decided to go to the swap meet. Swap meets are new.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  It's 1977, they got this new deal they do where people bring motorcycle parts and they put them on the floor and people walk around and they, you know, they bid on stuff. I'll give you 200 for that, or whatever. They sell alcohol in there. They have loud music, was probably not a good combination, uh, in that particular environment. So, we're in there, there's nine Hells Angels in there, and there's probably 40 to 60 Mongols in there. Now, there's two people in there, their worlds are about to collide. One of them is a Hells Angel, one of them is a Mongol.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  You've got a Hells Angel that's, wife ran off with a Mongol. And they walk in there and they see each other. And the Hells Angel, and him and I are best friends still to this day, we talk, he's an ex-Hells Angel now, uh, he doesn't say a word to anybody, he just pulls back and clocks this guy, and the fight's on. Now, how do I know specifically how many people were there? Because in the nine, the group of nine Hells Angels, there's a police informant in the group. And the, if you read Chain of Evidence, it's, it's a book written by the police officer

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  that was, uh, his handling him. So they, the cops have a crisis of conscience. Do they jump in and stop this conflict? Or do they don't wanna blow his undercover work? And let him continue fighting? They decide to let him continue fighting. So there's, we have specific numbers, it's, you know, you get that book, it's in that book. So you've got nine Hells Angels fighting all these Mongols. And, uh, one cop comes in there and he's got a revolver, all he's got is a revolver, man.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  It's, you know, 1977, he, he, he doesn't look like he's 10 very much, I mean, he's just very young looking. And I remember the gun looking, I had two thoughts, the gun looked that big, but I also looked at the cylinder and I go, he's only got six shots. There's like 60 of us in here fighting. Uh, but ballsy guy, he stopped the fight. Uh, the Mongols broke and they ran, they didn't break because they were afraid, they just, they broke first. And I think probably part of, part of the reason was, we were surrounded by the Mongols, we couldn't go anywhere, we were fighting them, we were all back-to-back fighting these guys.

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  And they broke, then we broke, and, uh, we had a, uh, short moratorium on the violence. We said, "Let's not let this escalate." Old man John went and, uh, negotiated with them later that night, which I thought was a bad idea. I, I was kinda coming up in the club, I remember telling John, I go, "Look, negotiating, man." I go, "Let's let them broil on it for two or three days, let them consider what's gonna be the consequence for fighting with the Hells Angels." And then I said, "Then we can go negotiate." And then, and, you know, John was just an old-school, upfront kinda guy, and, you know, he said, "Go in the goddamn clubhouse, oh, you know, you're a new guy." I said, "You know, this is my call." And I said, "Okay, whatever, man."

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  So, sat in the clubhouse all night, he came back in the morning when the sun was coming up, said, "Okay, you know, everything's cool, we're not gonna fight." John said, "I've had enough." You know, he stepped down as president. New guy Ray Glor takes over. The, uh, shooting with Guy Castellano takes place, kill Redbird and Jingle, Redbeard and Jingles. The bombing takes place shortly after that on Ray's orders. And, uh, probably within, you know, six months, there's six murders in Southern California. And one of them is Los Angeles Hells Angels new leader.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  Uh, he had sent people over to the garage. He had got busted, and then he said he wanted to empty the garage, but what he did is he sent people over to the garage and the, the police were waiting there. That's where the dynamite and everything was. And later that night, somebody went back, shot Ray, killed him.

• 1:37:03Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  But the, the, the interesting thing was, so you've got 2,000 pounds of dynamite. I, I don't know if the anti-tank gun was still there at that time, but you've got machine guns, you've got silencers, and... They got out of the, they got, they beat the case, basically. And how do you think, how do you think they beat the case? It, it, it seems very convoluted, but then when you, one of these young lawyers comes up with the idea, and he tells the prosecutor, he goes, "You're not gonna win this case." And the prosecutor goes, "Why not? It's, you guys are dead to right." He goes, "Well, let me ask you this."

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  He goes, "Was there any dynamite in the garage when they got there?" And he goes, "No." He goes, "Was there any guns in there?" He said, "No." They had emptied the garage for community and public safety. They'd taken all the dynamite.

• 1:38:02Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  So there was, there was nothing in there. So in essence, they went to an empty garage and this young hotshot lawyer tells them, "How are you gonna prove what their state of mind was? Did they think it was empty, or did they think it was full? You don't know." And he goes, "I'm not putting them on the stand, you're never gonna know." And he goes, "You can't win this case." And basically what they did is, they dropped the charges on two of the guys, and one guy pled guilty to possession of a machine gun without a license. And he, he got like probation, you know, time served in probation, he just did a few days in jail. So, people think, "Oh, you get voted in the club and it's, it's all over with."

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Well, perhaps it's just beginning.

• 1:38:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:51Speaker 02

  Can we take a little break?

• 1:38:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, let's take a break. Look, I am really picky when it comes to gear. If I'm gonna use something every single day, it has to actually perform and do what it says it's gonna do. It can't just look good in a product photo, it has to be light, durable, comfortable, and it has to do what it's supposed to do. And that's why I like Roka. Roka was born in Austin, Texas, and American-designed with zero shortcuts. Their eyewear is built for people who are outside, active, training, traveling, working, or podcasting, and actually using what they buy. The first thing you're gonna notice is the fit.

• 1:39:34Shawn Ryan?

  They're lightweight, they stay in place, and they're comfortable enough to wear all day long. The optics are razor-sharp, there's no glare, and they don't have that cheap sunglasses feel where you're constantly adjusting them. And I like that Roka doesn't look overbuilt. It's performance eyewear, but it still looks clean enough to wear every day. They also offer prescription sunglasses and eyeglasses. And if you're outfitting a law enforcement unit, military team, or looking for corporate gifts that your team will actually like, Roka has wholesale partnerships too. I've been wearing Roka for a while now, and let me tell you, they are the real deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear for summer?

• 1:40:16Shawn Ryan?

  Check them out for yourself at roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off site-wide at checkout. That's R-O-K-A dot com, code SRS. Looking for another way to support the Sean Ryan Show? Head to SeanRyanShow.com and check out the latest drops from Vigilance Elite. We just released new gear, including this beautiful Moisture Wicking VE Performance Hat, and SRS Campfire Mugs, and you guessed it, Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears. Oh shit! Every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you independent

• 1:41:00Shawn Ryan?

  conversations without compromise. Visit SeanRyanShow.com and grab yours today. Well, what you were just talking about was pretty interesting. You were talking about the, the 70s for the Hells Angels was a rough time.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, uh...

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  In the, as, as the seventies approached,

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  the, uh, body count started mount, mounting up. And when I say body count,

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  talking about the, uh,

• 1:41:40Speaker 02

  what the police described as in-house murders or killings.

• 1:41:49Speaker 02

  The rumor was

• 1:41:52Speaker 02

  somebody had stole something from, uh,

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  Sonny had broken his house and stole something. I don't know if it's true or not. Uh, ultimately, uh, he, you know, he paid for that with his life. And there was a gentleman named Stork that, uh, one of the early informants, you know, prior to that time, nobody had ever flipped on the Hells Angels. Uh, had a pretty solid record. And then, uh, Stork, uh,

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  was going to testify for the prosecution in a case he wound up shot. If I recall, side of the road, unsolved murder. Then you had Terry the Tramp, who was in Hells Angels sixty-nine.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  Sonny took exception to his popularity and under, underneath everything, Sonny and him were in business together. And there was some money owed, uh, and they were waiting for a big amount of money to come in and, uh,

• 1:43:05Shawn Ryan?

  What was the money for?

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  LSD.

• 1:43:07Shawn Ryan?

  LSD?

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:09Shawn Ryan?

  What are the primary sources of revenue for the?

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  I, I think, in, you know, this is interesting. Like, I've always contended, and I still do, even though I'm not a member, I don't have to defend the Hells Angels. I like to tell it like it is.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  The Hells Angels is not a criminal organization, John. It's an organization with criminals in it. And people, uh, see opportunities and they seize them, if you will. And I think that

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  there was a lot of stuff going on. There was a gentleman named Ozzy. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. Uh, he was kind of the premier LSD maker in the Bay Area. And then for the West Coast, he made, uh, I knew him. Uh, he made drugs for the Grateful Dead, uh, and that just kind of, you know, tentacled out from there. Uh, was a lot of, a lot of money in it. Uh,

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  you know, there's

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  allegations of, you know, CIA stuff and, uh, whatnot, uh, that it always seems.

• 1:44:21Shawn Ryan?

  Like MKUltra type stuff?

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it always seems that.

• 1:44:25Shawn Ryan?

  Was there any validity to that?

• 1:44:27Speaker 02

  I don't know, you know?

• 1:44:28Shawn Ryan?

  And MKUltra is a real thing?

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I don't know, you know, it, it, you know, you had Timothy Leary floating around in there. Do you remember Timothy Leary, the, uh, LSD guru?

• 1:44:41Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Tune in, turn on, and drop out. You know, you, you had, you had these things and, you know, we're coming out of the sixties.

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  Kennedy's assassinated. The Kennedy brothers assassinated, Martin Luther King. I mean, you have all these, these things happening that really create, uh, an air of paranoia, if you will.

• 1:45:05Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of like today?

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  Absolutely, you know? And, uh, look,

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  how do I say this? I guess I just say it is how I say it. Uh,

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  you've seen things that probably the average person, they, they're suspect when you tell them. I don't think it's quite that way anymore. It's like, I've seen things, I used to tell people for years, uh, uh, that, well, you don't know what the government really does. Uh, and, you know, people kind of, you know, things I said in the early eighties.

• 1:45:46Shawn Ryan?

  You were ahead of your time.

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  Well, they made me ahead of my time because they made a believer out of me. You know, when, when investigations taking place, we got off track, but I'll, I'll swing back around. When, when investigation is taking place and these guys start going out of the guidelines of investigative, uh, of things that, uh, are acceptable or legal or however you want to describe them, you

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  you, you have, like having an awakening. You're going, wow, they're, they're really doing this? And, uh, you learn real fast.

• 1:46:32Speaker 02

  I had a conversation with a guy one time. They said that I had ordered a murder and I had nineteen conversations with the guy. Well, the tape recorder only worked on two of the conversations. I mean, it's very suspect, uh, you know, the, uh, uh, listening, uh, device or recorder, whatever they were using, didn't work the other, uh, you know, seventeen times.

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  I think that getting back on that, that subject, uh, Sonny

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  had some real hard feelings for Terry the Tramp. Terry the Tramp was in that movie. You said you remembered the movie, you remember the character. The club was going through a transition. We had decided that you could not shoot drugs anymore interveniously. Uh, we're trying to kind of clean up some things. If you've ever been around any junkies, you know what they're like. I mean, uh, they'll do anything to get that, uh, fix. Uh, Terry kind of got pushed out of the club. That was the main reason. But shortly after Terry was out of the club, uh, he got given a hot shot. You know, you know what a hot shot is? I don't know if you're, uh,

• 1:47:49Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know what a hot shot is.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  You do or don't?

• 1:47:51Shawn Ryan?

  I do not.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  Okay, uh, uh, hot shot is a mixture of narcotics that, uh, will makes you unable to breathe. I mean, you O, OD, you, your body OD's and you shoot it intervenously and you succumb to the narcotics and, uh,

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  I was told by a high-ranking guy in the, uh, Hells Angels. I write about it in my book, Outlaw Writing Through the Storm, that he was ordered to go over there and give Terry a hot shot. And he did. And, uh, that's another murder. Then you've got Gary Robles, another strong-minded Hells Angel. He winds up dead. You've got, uh, uh, Harry the Horse out of San Francisco, he winds up dead. And you, you've got this trail of, of people through the seventies that, uh, are casualties of a political agenda going on. And I'm not sure why.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  It just basically happens that the whole thing seems to end in nineteen eighty with the murder of my vice president, uh, Craig Kuhn, Jesse, that was his name, so we knew him by. Uh, his, you know, all these murders are unsolved. So when people talk about tough times, the seventies were a real tough time. You've got probably, Rolling Stone did an article about it, uh, you know, a decade of murders that remain unsolved by the, you know, in-house cleaning is how law enforcement describes it, you know?

• 1:49:31Shawn Ryan?

  Was it house cleaning?

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  I, I think some of it probably was, you know? I mean, some of it we don't know, some of it I think was personal.

• 1:49:38Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how high, how is this? I mean, you're the head of the Ventura chapter.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:49:44Shawn Ryan?

  So where, where do these hits come from? I mean, your, your VP gets killed.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:49:49Shawn Ryan?

  Murder, assassinated.

• 1:49:50Speaker 02

  Well, I, here you've got a situation, and I'm speculating, here you've got a situation that

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  just, you got a group of guys that come out of Los Angeles. You've got murders down there, uh, through bombings, uh, through, uh, you know, pistol assassination or however you want to describe it. And

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  they move up to Ventura. Uh, my speculation is somebody got suspicious. Jesse picked up another, uh, Jesse's the guy that got the, remember I described the machine gun case? He, he got a beef, uh, he was on probation for, uh, possessing a machine gun without a license. He picked up a, are you familiar with the term mayhem?

• 1:50:42Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  Mayhem is if you and I get in a physical altercation, that's, you know, that's like an assault and battery. If you were to bite my ear and take part of my ear off, then it becomes mayhem. And that's a much more serious, uh, degree of felony, uh, uh,

• 1:51:04Speaker 02

  you know, a company assault. Yeah, so Jesse got in a fight with a bouncer. Jesse was kind of an unassuming guy, but he was one of the toughest guys I'd run into in a long time. He goes to this bar by himself, the bouncer, he got his Hells Angels stuff on, the bouncer starts insulting him. They wind up getting in a fight. Uh, the bouncer's kind of a big guy, uh, bigger than Jesse. Jesse beats him up and bites the tip of his ear off, uh, just for good measure. Gets a mayhem beef. Somebody becomes suspect, uh, that, you know, what if Jesse wants to make a deal? So obviously Jesse was involved in something in Los Angeles that has made somebody nervous.

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  And, uh, basically it's, you know, they're going to eliminate, uh, the weak link. Whether Jesse was a weak link or not, uh, no one will ever know. He's gone. I don't believe he was a weak link, but somebody did. And, uh, you know, people think that all these things are structured like I'm going to make.

• 1:52:07Shawn Ryan?

  Military in it.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it, it, sometimes people take things, you know, upon themselves. I don't know, you've probably been in combat situations.

• 1:52:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, hold on, so it's not structured like that? So is there, is there, is there?

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  It's a structure, but if, if, look, murder is a serious offense with no statute of limitations. And you.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  Don't want to get involved in a conspiracy like, you know, people will come up and talk to me about let's do this or let's do that. My first thought was, is this guy on the level? Or is this guy recording me and trying to set me up? I, I got arrested in nineteen eighty-six. Because the Mexican mafia said they were gonna kill a former associate of ours. And I got in this dialogue with this Mexican mafia member who actually had become a FBI informant. So he's got me acknowledging that they're gonna kill this guy.

• 1:53:16Speaker 02

  And I wind up getting a beef. I beat the case because the jury said, well, you know, Christie had no interest in killing this guy. You guys had an interest in killing him, but it was a hoax. I don't know if that makes any sense.

• 1:53:30Shawn Ryan?

  It does. What I'm asking, I want to know, how is the, how is the organization? How is the organization broken down? What is its hierarchy? So is, is the Ventura chapter of seniority over a, over the

• 1:53:46Speaker 02

  Each charter, each charter is autonomous to itself. That's why the federal government has never been successful. Trying to throw a racketeering charge. Are you familiar with the RICO?

• 1:53:59Shawn Ryan?

  A little bit.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, RICO is a specific crime.

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  Where you can take people's underlings.

• 1:54:10Speaker 02

  And take the crimes they've committed and say they were directed by the hierarchy. So it becomes a racketeering influenced corrupt organization, RICO. And so if they get two or three guys. And you get say a group of ten guys that they say are part of the established hierarchy in the Hells Angels and you get these guys saying, yeah, I killed this guy. And I did this here and I sold drugs there and I did it all at the behest of this guy, this guy and this guy. It came down from the top. The order came from them. It came down from the top. I completed the criminal act.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  They, uh,

• 1:54:56Speaker 02

  they become the informants and the hierarchy, the guys in the structure get popped. We didn't structure the Hells Angels like that. Each charter is autonomous to itself. I don't know if that makes sense.

• 1:55:09Shawn Ryan?

  It does make sense, but what I want to know then is who approves? Who approves a new charter? So when you started the charter in Ventura, who approves that?

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm, I'm laughing because I just grabbed the guys and moved up there and started it. Because my philosophy was if you're a real Hells Angel, you don't take orders from anybody. You, you do what you want to do. And that kind of goes back to when I got in trouble in the military, you know, I take it upon myself to do something, but getting back to your question, that's the way I did it. Was it appropriate? No, but it was effective because I got my charter and it lasted, uh, you know, it's still going today. I'm no longer involved, but it's a vote, you know, uh, if, like when we got ready to vote. The, uh, Dirty Dozen, have you ever heard of that club? Dirty, you have?

• 1:56:06Shawn Ryan?

  I think so.

• 1:56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Dirty Dozen was a club in Arizona, a very strong club. They ran the whole state. And in the mid to late nineties, we voted them in

• 1:56:21Speaker 02

  as Hells Angels. And the vote was across the United States. Every charter in the United States had to vote on it and they got a unanimous vote and they, uh, they became a Hells Angel charter, uh, but

• 1:56:40Speaker 02

  it's kind of complex because we're independent, yet we're structured as an organization, but we don't take, like, somebody from another charter can't come and say,

• 1:56:53Speaker 02

  I'm the international leader and this is what you guys are gonna do. Somebody comes to Ventura and says, this is what, uh, I want you guys to do. You say, well, hey, this is Ventura. This is our, uh, community. Don't come to town and tell us what you think we should do within our community. We know what's best for us as an organization, you know, get out of here. But it makes for a good argument in, in a courtroom, uh, you know, we get in the courtroom. Let's go back or ahead or wherever we're at to nineteen seventy-nine, seventy-eight. The, uh, Hells Angels in the San Francisco area get indicted for racketeering. Are, are you familiar with this case?

• 1:57:37Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:57:38Speaker 02

  No. Okay. So nineteen seventy-nine, they get indicted for racketeering. They have one trial. And it's a mistrial. Uh, they have another trial. And it's a mistrial. So you've got two big trials that is very expensive.

• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  They're not successful. And you're gonna, uh, identify with this. You know who the prosecutor was in that case? You don't because you don't know about the case, but Robert Mueller was a young prosecutor in San Francisco. And he prosecuted the Hells Angels not once, but twice. And, uh,

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  Judge Conti was really down on the Hells Angels. He thought that, you know, we should have all been found guilty. Robert Mueller realized that the way the Hells Angels was structured and the way we were presenting things to the jury, that they were never gonna get a RICO charge. I mean, the case was a catastrophe. They bring in one of the, uh, paid witnesses. And this guy became a government informant to extract himself out of his own problem, plus to receive some financial, uh,

• 1:58:56Speaker 02

  money, uh, for his testimony.

• 1:59:00Speaker 02

  And he comes into the courtroom and the defense attorneys start questioning him and they said, you did business with this guy, right? And, uh, they said, yes, we did.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  How many times, you know, he goes, it's testimony and they said, we'd like, uh, is he in the courtroom today? He says, yes, he is. We'd like you to point him out. The paid informant identifies Tony Sarah. Now, Tony Sarah is not a Hells Angel. Tony Sarah is one of our defense attorneys. But what he doesn't know about Tony's, Tony Sarah is a guy with really long hair. Looks kind of like a, he could be a hippie or a biker. And he identifies Tony Sarah as the guy he's been doing business with, uh, for the last three or four days. The courtroom erupts and everybody goes crazy and then the guy admits,

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  I've never done business with the Hells Angels. The government offered me money and they said they, I could get out of jail if I testified. So you had situations like that happening, uh, these, these guys, they become so zealot in their quest to find the Hells Angels guilty or anybody for that matter, that they, they become blinded, uh, you know, justice does not get served and, uh, you know, I, I just and maybe it's unfair for me. I keep thinking, you know, I think about you as a SEAL. I think about you, uh, what I know about your past.

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  You understand these things, that things like this happen, you know, uh, it's, it's not, uh, what, what is, uh, what's his name saying in that movie? It's, uh, not what you know, it's what you can prove, you know?

• 2:00:58Shawn Ryan?

  We didn't have these problems. We did not have these problems in the SEAL teams.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  You did not.

• 2:01:04Shawn Ryan?

  People killing each other?

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. No.

• 2:01:07Shawn Ryan?

  Not, I can't say never, but not often.

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:12Shawn Ryan?

  There's been some incidents, but I mean, is the leader, is the president of the Ventura, I mean, how many people are under you? How many people are in that chapter?

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's twenty-five.

• 2:01:25Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty-five.

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  Twenty-five members at its peak, but what you have to understand, you know, you got twenty-five members, like, a lot of people go, twenty-five members, that's not very big. Well, that's pretty big for a Hells Angel charter. And what you have to understand, each guy that, uh, is in the club probably has five to ten people that follow him, uh, and will do anything for him because he, he holds that position of prestige in that where a lot of people go, well, that's not prestige. Well, in the outlaw bike world, you know, being a Hells Angel is a very prestigious position.

• 2:01:59Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. And so I'm just curious, is, is the president of that club? And you have all this, this inner, I don't know what to call it. I guess it's not inner club, but Hells Angel on Hells Angel killing.

• 2:02:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:02:15Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what is going through your head? What, what are you telling your guys? I would imagine that would be mass confusion that

• 2:02:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's paranoia.

• 2:02:22Shawn Ryan?

  It's friendly, it's friendlies killing friendlies.

• 2:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what you do

• 2:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  You have no fucking friends.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  No, and, and it becomes, and that's, this is, I think, how the outlaw bike culture made a one hundred and eighty degree turn, you know, uh, it

• 2:02:44Speaker 02

  You sit in a room with somebody and do you know who Jay Dobbins is?

• 2:02:49Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  Jay Dobbins, uh, if Jay Dobbins was here, like, you know, I like Jay. He's a ATF. He infiltrated the Hells Angels.

• 2:02:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, I know who this guy is. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:01Speaker 02

  Now, Jay Dobbins was sitting here. He would say, everything I've said, he would say is bullshit. But that doesn't mean I don't like Jay. I like Jay. He just have a different perception of the Hells Angels. Uh, I think that guys like Jay Dobbins were amazingly effective because, and I don't know if the government realized it at the time. They didn't get a lot of convictions. They didn't get long sentences. But what they did to the Hells Angels and to people in the outlaw bike world and that in that culture that are in the one percenter type clubs. They put doubt and confusion uh into the room.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  Cause you're sitting in that meeting room and you're looking around, you're going, and I think I said this earlier. You're gonna go, who's gonna roll next? Who's gonna uh uh make a deal? Uh, who here is actually working with the cops? And who is actually working for the Hells Angels? You know, it becomes, it becomes confusing. I

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  Do you know who Anthony Tate is? Tony Tate? Tony Tate was a uh Hells Angel in Alaska. And he became an FBI informant uh for no reason. He didn't, he didn't get busted. He just decided uh uh he wanted to infiltrate the Hells Angels and he he went to the cops and goes, I think I can do this. And I think the cops kind of laughed at him at first and then he started, you know, making some uh progress. And the FBI, this was with the local cops in Alaska, and then the FBI came in it and uh they basically uh uh

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  promoted him as a Hells Angel, helped him rise up in the ranks. He became a West Coast Secretary.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  Uh, no, not West Coast Secretary, West Coast Chairman. Well, him and I sat in a meeting one time.

• 2:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  What's the West Coast Chairman?

• 2:05:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm not West Coast Chairman. He became the Sergeant at Arms. I was the West Coast Chairman. I was the guy that kind of uh uh officiated the meetings uh kept.

• 2:05:17Shawn Ryan?

  Of all of the West Coast?

• 2:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:18Shawn Ryan?

  So then there is some type of a hierarchy.

• 2:05:21Speaker 02

  Well, it's an, it's, it is, but it's an unofficial, in an unofficial capacity.

• 2:05:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  You know, it's not like, it doesn't give me any power to, okay, you're gonna do this.

• 2:05:32Shawn Ryan?

  You're an organizer.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Yes. You know, I'm facilitating the meeting. I'm keeping the meeting uh on, on point. And trying to keep any discussion of anything illegal, illegal out of the room. Because despite what people think, you start talking about illegal activities in an official Hells Angel meeting. You're gonna be uh asked to stop or escorted out of the room. So Tony Tate's sitting next to me. Anybody that wants to uh look this stuff up, they can look up Anthony Tony Tate. Uh, he was a FBI informant. Uh, he was a Hells Angel. Uh, pretty effective uh uh as a uh informant. He's sitting next to me in a meeting.

• 2:06:18Speaker 02

  On his left arm, he's got a cast. And I look at the cast and it's brand spanking new. It's white, white. You know what a brand new cast looks like? Well, imagine you're an outlaw biker and you've got a cast on your arm and it's, it's just pristine white. I mean, made me very suspicious. I never liked Tony to begin with, but I, and it made me very suspicious. Looking at the cast. Well, inside the cast was a bug. And he was trying to lead me into a conversation. He wanted to blow up the outlaws in Kentucky. And he basically brought his request to a meeting.

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  And I, you know, there was like probably 12 Hells Angel Presidents from the West Coast into this meeting. And if, you know, we would have got engaged in a uh uh a conversation to killing these guys, it would have been a conspiracy beef. Uh, you know, I had enough insight and intuitive feeling that the guy was no good that I steered the conversation off. Uh, confronted him about his cast, uh uh why he didn't have any road rash. Uh, he left the meeting.

• 2:07:30Speaker 02

  Went to Sonny's house. They had got suspicious going, this cast isn't gonna work. They knocked his cast off. And they put the bug inside a new device that was just kind of coming up on the scene. And you're gonna laugh when I say it. It's called a pager. And so this gives you a timeframe. So Tony goes to Sonny's house and uh he's got this pager on and uh he's got a uh bug in it. And the ironic thing is, he's at Sonny's house and he gets a page and it's his handler. And this isn't stuff I'm just making up. The stuff you can research and stuff. It's all out there on the computers.

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  Uh, it all became part of a case in Kentucky, a conspiracy case, um murder case in Kentucky.

• 2:08:22Speaker 02

  Uh, he's asked Sonny, he goes, oh, I'm gonna call for work. I, I gotta, just let me call in real quick. And Sonny says, yeah, go ahead. This is, stuff's all recorded. He calls the uh uh feds and they say, you gotta get him to say this. And he hangs up the phone, takes the conversation and guides it into this uh of, I'm gonna blow these guys up. Uh, I wanna make sure it's okay with you. There's gonna be a lot of collateral damage of saying things of that nature, very cavalier comments. And you know, Sonny winds up getting a uh conspiracy to commit murder beef.

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  Uh, the trial was in Kentucky. Uh, he did just about four years for that. And uh, I think while Sonny was away in uh prison, he was in federal prison. The club went through a lot of changes, you know, and uh when he got back in uh the mid nineties, I don't think he liked the, the direction the club was heading. And you know, I kind of skipped here and I skipped there and passed it in, but you have to understand Sonny

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  got that cancer call. Uh, he relinquished his power. After he had done that, a couple of years later, he had this revelation that he wasn't gonna die. And he wanted to take his power back. I don't know if you've experienced that in, in any of the SEAL teams, but if somebody's a leader, then they relinquish their power. Kind of tough to get it back. I know you guys are structured more where somebody has a rank. And in that rank is probably a, a description of, you know, what uh uh they can and can't do, what they can and shouldn't do. But you know, in the Hells Angels, it's kind of a dog eat dog world. It's the strong survive.

• 2:10:17Speaker 02

  And I think that by the time Sonny came back uh uh from his last stay in prison, that was the last time he went to prison for any length of time. His, his power was very diminished.

• 2:10:29Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. You'd think they would have more respect for him.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think he was respected, but you have to understand uh

• 2:10:40Speaker 02

  Sonny was taking the position that Tony Tate was the Hells Angel of the future. And that's how he was introducing him to people. Uh, he was referring to him as the Hells Angel of the future. And uh, he, he really was uh somebody that created chaos in uh

• 2:11:00Speaker 02

  not good.

• 2:11:01Shawn Ryan?

  How so? How would he do that?

• 2:11:02Speaker 02

  Well, he, he set up uh, Sonny went to prison, Irish O'Farrell.

• 2:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  He's the one that did it.

• 2:11:09Speaker 02

  He's the one that did it.

• 2:11:10Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  And he was, he was introducing him as the Hells Angel of the future.

• 2:11:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:11:14Speaker 02

  It was a misjudgment. So you know, what happens is people look at him as a leader and go.

• 2:11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I see.

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  Maybe slipping a little bit. I'm sure you've been in situations where you've got somebody in a leadership position. Maybe making a questionable call. You, you guys probably gotta look at each other and go, hmm, just right or wrong.

• 2:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:33Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't, I can't imagine you guys following somebody blindly.

• 2:11:37Shawn Ryan?

  No, no, I, I know what you mean.

• 2:11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Wow. How did you become? You know, one thing that we didn't cover is how you became the president so fast. What was it about you that you think the guys respected?

• 2:11:52Speaker 02

  I, you know what I think it was? I think a lot of it had to do with uh the structure in my life and I attribute that to the Marines, uh to the Department of Defense. Uh, I, my martial arts training, uh, I was, you know, really disciplined. Uh, I'd like to party, but I was strictly a recreational drug user. I, I'd never had a drug problem. I could walk away from uh the party on Sunday morning and uh not uh worry about partying again till the next party showed up. I didn't go looking for the party. If I came upon a party and I wanted to participate, I did. But uh, that's a real luxury when you live in that world. Uh, I don't know what was going on uh

• 2:12:37Speaker 02

  in the military, but I, I think there was a point in time narcotics were becoming a problem. Yeah, true or not?

• 2:12:45Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think narcotics are always a problem.

• 2:12:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  Um, yeah, I think.

• 2:12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and it became a problem in the Hells Angels. I think that probably one of the worst things that ever uh happened to the Hells Angels and the outlaw bike culture was uh meth. I mean, it's just, it's a mind altering, physical and emotional uh uh drug. It uh uh, you know, people think they have this unlimited power and control. And the reality is uh it chips away at you.

• 2:13:20Shawn Ryan?

  This actually does not sound very similar to the military at all, to be honest.

• 2:13:24Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I, I don't, I don't know. I, I mean.

• 2:13:29Shawn Ryan?

  What are, I mean, so what are the revenue streams?

• 2:13:32Speaker 02

  Revenue streams are personal, private little cartels that

• 2:13:40Speaker 02

  people set up themselves, you know? Tony Tate.

• 2:13:46Speaker 02

  The FBI professed that Tony Tate was very, very successful in infiltrating the Hells Angels and setting Hells Angels up. The reality is, uh, he had access to people in Canada, uh, people in Europe, uh, people across the United States. And after like a three-year investigation, I think he, he busted with serious offenses, maybe 10, 13 guys. I mean, that's not a lot of people that if their contention is you're controlling the methamphetamine market and you, uh, uh, are living off this. You can only get 13 guys. I think the people that were making the big money, they didn't want to share it with anybody.

• 2:14:30Speaker 02

  They, that's why I, my contention has always been, we're not a criminal organization. It's an organization saturated with criminals, uh, independent from the structure of the club. This structure of the club is about brotherhood, motorcycles and, uh, writing, but it certainly

• 2:14:49Speaker 02

  taken its toll. It's, it's eroding, uh, uh, you know, it was eroding. That's one of the reasons I left.

• 2:14:56Shawn Ryan?

  So you, I, if I'm understanding you correctly, then revenue streams. So you have your club members.

• 2:15:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:15:02Shawn Ryan?

  The club needs money, but maybe the club doesn't necessarily know where the money's coming from. So then you have all the members of the club running their own ex extracurricular businesses.

• 2:15:14Speaker 02

  The ones that want to participate, a lot of the guys work, you know? Uh, you know, you gotta be fair about that. A lot of the guys work, they're construction guys, they're truck drivers, uh, uh, but there's a lot of them that are hustlers.

• 2:15:27Shawn Ryan?

  So what, how does the club make money? Do they take a percentage of each members?

• 2:15:32Speaker 02

  Uh, it's, it's dues. It, uh, uh, you know?

• 2:15:38Speaker 02

  The government makes allegations, the club is worth billions and millions. Well, perhaps there's that kind of money running through a particular group of individuals, but the club is a nonprofit organization. It's registered with the United States government as a nonprofit organization. They don't make money off their trademark. So it's, it's very complex issues, you know? And, you know, it.

• 2:16:05Speaker 02

  The club was very simple at one time, you know? You got a motorcycle.

• 2:16:10Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:16:11Speaker 02

  You came to the bar, you went to the Kern River, you went to Bass Lake, you hung out at the fire. You had a beef with somebody, uh, you got it off your chest. Perhaps maybe you threw blows, you know? Nobody went and got a gun, nobody went and got a knife, nobody went and got bullets. The worst thing was you gotta buy breakfast, man. You, you know, you lost the tussle and it, you know, it's.

• 2:16:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's how it was when you went in?

• 2:16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's, it's made this, it's made this transition that, uh, nobody trusts anybody. Uh, uh, look, Sean, you're sitting in a room with a bunch of guys. Imagine being in a room with some guys.

• 2:16:53Speaker 02

  It's like, probably like going out on a mission.

• 2:16:55Shawn Ryan?

  I used to work for the CIA.

• 2:16:56Speaker 02

  I know you do.

• 2:16:58Shawn Ryan?

  So I get being in a room full of people you don't fucking trust.

• 2:17:02Speaker 02

  And, and, and, but, and this is, but this is the thing. And maybe, maybe this is the proper way to explain it.

• 2:17:12Speaker 02

  You go from a group of SEALs. You're on a mission with, you love these guys, you believe in these guys, you know, you can count on these guys. You may not agree with all of them all the time, but you know, they're there, uh, uh, when the shit comes down. And then you make a transition. You're trying to accomplish the same thing, but now you're in a room of people, you're not sure where they're coming from.

• 2:17:38Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:17:39Speaker 02

  And it's a slippery slope. Uh,

• 2:17:46Speaker 02

  like the end for me, it was a, a two years, man.

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• 2:21:19Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back to right before the break. We were talking about how do the clubs make money? Okay. You had mentioned nonprofit. I'm curious, why were the clubs set up to be nonprofits? Were that, were all the chapters nonprofits?

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  Well, the, the

• 2:21:37Speaker 02

  the club.

• 2:21:41Speaker 02

  The Hells Angels name, the logo is people claim this, and I, I, I think there's a lot of merit to it.

• 2:21:53Speaker 02

  That the Hells Angels brand is one of the most powerful and recognized brands of in existence. Whether that's true or not, you know, I guess that's up for debate. When we established in the late seventies, we thought we got to establish a trademark board. We've got to protect our trademark. Uh, I was on the board, uh, a gentleman I do not get along with, uh, to this day. Uh, Flash was on the board, done a lot for the club, did a lot for the trademark. I'm not going to take that away from Irish was on the, uh, trademark board. You know, you know, Irish was murdered, uh, uh,

• 2:22:35Speaker 02

  different individuals, uh, was, I think there might've been seven or eight of us on the, initially on the board. We used Limbach, Limbach and Sutton. Some very powerful trademark attorneys on the West Coast. They were located up in the Bay Area and they handled, I may have some of these wrong, but I don't, I don't think so. They handled Levi Strauss, I know that one for sure. Coca-Cola.

• 2:23:04Speaker 02

  Perhaps Pepsi-Cola, MasterCard. The rest of them I couldn't really remember. They weren't significant to me. And the Hells Angels. So you had these trademark lawyers, uh, representing these powerful trademarks, recognizable trademarks. You know, Levi trademark, the MasterCard, uh, whatever it may be. I get a phone call from, uh, Mr. Sutton. He says, George, I'd like to talk to you. And I said, well, you know, I'm in Southern California. I got it. He goes, it's very important you come up here. I want to, I want no misunderstandings. I want to tell you something. So, you know, I'm, I'm going, this is not going to be good. So I, I, I go up there.

• 2:23:49Speaker 02

  This is back, like I say, in early eighties of, you could fly to San Francisco for 30 bucks. There's a plane every 45 minutes, you know, there and then one back. So I jump out of a plane, I go up there and Mr. Sutton says that the other trademark brands have discovered they're also representing the Hells Angels. And

• 2:24:13Speaker 02

  he said, they don't want their trademark brushing up against yours because it's not a good image. The Hells Angels don't have a good image. And I mean, you know, how can you argue with them? You can't really, uh, and I, I understood, but.

• 2:24:30Speaker 02

  They helped us set it up. So it was a nonprofit organization. And the idea really was it was about protecting the trademark. Because what happens is when you have a powerful trademark and you don't use it, people will start doing like what they consider fair use. And then ultimately, they'll claim you've abandoned your trademark because you're not using it. Well, you know, the American government set up as capitalists. You're not using it in a monetary manner. And they'll try to take your trademark over. It's very complicated. I don't understand it all. But I know.

• 2:25:10Speaker 02

  Mr. Sutton is the guy I dealt with most of the time, and he taught me several things about trademark. And so you got to control the narrative. You know, what does your trademark stand for? And what does it mean? You got to control the narrative. You have to protect it from people infringing on it. And if you don't do that, that's, that's how you lose control of your trademark. It's just like. Are you familiar with the J K D Jeet Kune Do? Bruce Lee's martial art thing?

• 2:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  What about it?

• 2:25:46Speaker 02

  Well, he, uh, their family didn't protect the trademark. And they lost control of the, the logo. Uh, and the J K D thing, it's, it's, people can use it. Uh, it's fair use is what they call it. And that's what we were trying to avoid with the Hells Angels. We were trying to make sure that the trademark was protected. Uh, it was set up as a nonprofit organization of, I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. In the mid eighties. Marvel Comics made a Hells Angel cartoon book. We immediately, uh, uh, got it shut down. And.

• 2:26:31Speaker 02

  We protected our trademark. We sued them. They settled out of court for, I think, $60,000. We gave the money to Ronald McDonald House, Cancer for Children, because we're a nonprofit. We couldn't profit from our logo. But we could protect our logo.

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  But if we, if we received any money, we, we had to give it away. Another thing, did you know who Roger Corman was? Roger Corman was, remember all the B movies in the sixties and seventies? Well, you're too young.

• 2:27:06Shawn Ryan?

  Eighty-two.

• 2:27:07Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 2:27:08Shawn Ryan?

  Tats.

• 2:27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm thinking about that. Roger Corman, uh, uh, did all the, uh, B movies with, these were upcoming stars like. One of his directors was Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, uh, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper. These are guys that all starred in his films. He made a movie called Nom Angels. And, uh, he used our logo. We sued him and beat him in court. And like, they paid us, but we had to use the money.

• 2:27:45Speaker 02

  Not in a profitable way. We had to, we gave some of it away. I can't remember what we did. Uh, I remember he gave us $60,000 for infringing on our trademark. And these are the kind of things you have to do to protect your trademark.

• 2:28:00Speaker 02

  But that has nothing to do, I know what, what you're thinking about, which your question is. What type of money are you bringing in as a club? Are you talking about street money? Uh, illicit money?

• 2:28:14Shawn Ryan?

  I'm talking about money, money. Where do you get the money for the building? Where do you get the money to throw parties? Where do you get the money to have a warehouse full of guns? Dynamite and bombs and machine?

• 2:28:25Speaker 02

  And the dynamite was stolen.

• 2:28:28Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:28:29Speaker 02

  Uh, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm being a smartass, but I'm being serious. The dynamite was stolen. Uh, uh, but.

• 2:28:39Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll give you an example. Uh, we started doing, uh, benefit. Like dances and parties and whatnot at the Ventura clubhouse. And we, the capacity of that place, including the yard, probably get 500 people there. And we would charge five bucks an entry fee. And then we would raffle off, uh, uh, things. We would, uh, you know, buy raffle tickets and, you know, you get a drawing, you win, uh, a leather coat or you, you win, uh, you know, case of oil, whatever it may be.

• 2:29:21Speaker 02

  You sell shots of, uh, liquor, uh, behind the bar. Uh, you sell, uh, hamburgers, hot dogs, whatever it may be. And, you know, we made a lot of money that way. Uh, I've personally felt like by the mid eighties. After all these guys got arrested, uh, by Tony Tate, that dealing drugs, man, it was just, it was a kind of a dead end, you know, everybody's going to get busted. And so in Ventura, I suggested, there was a few busts in Ventura, but they weren't real successful. They came after me, uh, in 2001, but I mean, uh,

• 2:30:04Speaker 02

  the case collapsed, you know, they couldn't prove anything. Were there people in the, uh, club selling drugs? Yeah. They were selling Vicodin. They were getting Vicodin from an airman named, uh, Joshua Adams. Uh, he was, my son was involved in that, Georgie. Uh, Joshua Adams, Georgie, Julio Batillo was another guy. He was in a gang called Avenue Gangsters, uh, and a couple of Ventura Hells Angels. But out of 25 guys, you had two Hells Angels. And, you know, the rest were just associate guys getting involved. And I think it, I think it adds substance to my argument that

• 2:30:47Speaker 02

  people do illegal things, but they, they, they confine it to themselves. They, because they want to keep the money. They don't want to bring, they don't want to risk their freedom and their ass and make, uh, uh, a hundred thousand dollars and then, uh,

• 2:31:03Speaker 02

  bring it in and, and turn it over to the club, you know, and have to share it with, uh, people that didn't. I mean, it's, it's just greed. It's greed is what it is.

• 2:31:12Shawn Ryan?

  You know, so if money was not an issue and the, the club is a nonprofit. I mean, where does the power struggle come in? Where does the, because that's obvious. I mean, it has to be.

• 2:31:23Speaker 02

  Well, I think it.

• 2:31:24Shawn Ryan?

  When you're talking about the seventies and all the, all the, all the inner club murders and assassinations and all this shit that's happening, what's motivating that? Because there's not, it's, it can't, it's, it's, there's no money then.

• 2:31:37Speaker 02

  I think it's money, but you know, look.

• 2:31:43Speaker 02

  I never got deep enough into the, uh, uh, military to understand of jealousies and personality, uh, conflicts. It was, you know, my attitude of the military was, you know, you have an MOS. Uh, you fulfill that job, uh, you take your orders, uh, some of them I didn't like. Uh, but.

• 2:32:07Speaker 02

  In a, an outlaw type structure, I mean, you've got people making moves, trying to, uh, control power, trying to control areas. You've got the dynamics and you got the dynamics of, uh, who has more power than me or him? It's kind of like, you know, whose dick's bigger? It's, it's kind of that male mentality, I think. And I think that.

• 2:32:32Shawn Ryan?

  So it's very primitive thinking.

• 2:32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's a primitive culture. It's a primitive culture.

• 2:32:40Shawn Ryan?

  Because I mean, I don't, I don't even understand how you would take over a territory if you do not have the funds to get what you need to do to, to, to enable that.

• 2:32:51Speaker 02

  Well, when you say take over a territory, are, are you talking about narcotics trade? Are you talking about, uh, perceived power? Are you talking about real power?

• 2:33:00Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know. I mean, whatever you're talking.

• 2:33:02Speaker 02

  Well, you know.

• 2:33:05Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you're saying that the guy, a lot of the guys in the clubs had had regular jobs.

• 2:33:11Speaker 02

  They did.

• 2:33:11Shawn Ryan?

  And then we're, and then we're talking about taking over a territory. When I think about taking over a territory, I think it's a, I think of gang wars, some type of.

• 2:33:20Speaker 02

  Well, you're thinking of military takeover, are you?

• 2:33:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but I mean, I mean, maybe you could do it psychologically. You could do it brute force. Um, but.

• 2:33:31Speaker 02

  Perhaps a combination of.

• 2:33:32Shawn Ryan?

  But it would take, it would take money, right? I mean, even if you'd have to pay your guy, I would think that would be a full time. A full time thing. Hey, we're gonna take this fucking territory. You guys are gonna have to take off work. Well, then how are they gonna make a living?

• 2:33:46Speaker 02

  Well, it doesn't work that way, but you know, that's certainly a

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  legitimate question, uh, you know.

• 2:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  You're just, you're gonna need guns. You're gonna need logistics.

• 2:33:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:33:58Shawn Ryan?

  Logistics costs money.

• 2:34:00Speaker 02

  Right, that's true. Uh, but if you're living in a small town, uh, we lived in the town of Ventura. There's, we come into the town of Ventura, there's eight bike clubs there. There's, let me see, let's count them. There's the Molochs, the Mongols, the Carnalas, the Syndicate, the, uh, question marks who I'm friends with at the time.

• 2:34:25Speaker 02

  And the orphans, uh, so that that's seven clubs there and

• 2:34:30Speaker 02

  you just slowly run everybody out of town. I mean, you know, that that's basically what we did. And it wasn't for, to control the narcotics, it was to control what was gonna transpire in that town, who was gonna come in that town, who was gonna be allowed in that town. And it's, it sounds like uh, perhaps a lot of bullshit, but it's not. I mean, you know, the, you mentioned the term primitive. I think the outlaw bike culture is very primitive. And, and there's a lot of, uh, instincts going on. It's like in nineteen eighty seven, when I came back from prison, I learned something that was really unique and it just resonated with me.

• 2:35:14Speaker 02

  The day I got to prison, I mentioned Guy Cassidy alone earlier, that he'd killed, uh, Redbeard and Jingles, remember the Mongols?

• 2:35:25Speaker 02

  So I, I go down to prison, guys are there, Terminal Island Prison. This is before they had the, uh, holding centers. You, if you got a beef and the feds, you went right to the prison in, uh, Terminal Island. And then you went back and forth between court and the, uh, prison until your case was resolved. And then they send you off to a particular location. But when I got there, I asked Guy, I said, hey, Guy, uh, who do we have a problem with in here? And Guy said, we don't fight with anybody in here. Now, this is, the war with the Mongols was going. Uh, we had a problem with, uh, outlaws back east. Uh, we had on and off problems with the Bandidos. Uh, constant problem with the pagans.

• 2:36:11Speaker 02

  But when I asked him that question, he kind of startled me and said, well, we don't fight in prison. And I'd never been to prison before. And I said, what do you mean, we don't fight in prison? He goes, we don't fight in prison. And so what there was, was a, a unwritten rule of, uh, uh, you know, nonviolence, uh. So when I came home from prison, I wanted to apply that on the street. I thought, well, if we're fighting

• 2:36:42Speaker 02

  on the street, but we're not fighting in prison, it would make more sense to me that we would be able to interact with each other if we're on the street with all the luxuries of everything we have, our bikes, our women, uh, uh, the, the drugs that people want, uh, the alcohol, uh, the party scene or whatever. Uh, why couldn't we apply that, uh, to the everyday lifestyle of the outlaw biker? And I started petitioning people, you know, set up a meeting with the outlaws. Uh, set up a meeting with the Bandidos, set up a meeting with the Mongols. Eventually got an amnesty on the violence with everybody that lasted till two thousand two, uh. And it just, it kind of all unraveled. But

• 2:37:28Speaker 02

  that position is not popular in the outlaw bike culture. They see it as a position of weakness. Uh, to me,

• 2:37:39Speaker 02

  to petition people in the Hells Angels and the outlaws and these other organizations to not be violent, it takes more nerve than the act of violence. It's, you know, your, your manhood's getting questioned, uh, your, uh, loyalty is getting questioned. You've got all these things going on. And, uh, I had some really interesting, uh, dialogue with the leader of the Bandidos, a guy, Harry Bowman. Uh, George Weggers, International Leader of the Bandidos, uh. I mean, these were people that wanted to hold on to their power. These, these are guys now, you talk about structure. These are clubs that hold absolute power, the leaders do.

• 2:38:24Speaker 02

  And both leaders, uh, uh, of these clubs, you know, one of them's in jail doing life, the other guy, Taco died in jail. Uh, because the racketeering law worked on them because of the way they were structured.

• 2:38:38Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 2:38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, so

• 2:38:45Speaker 02

  I think

• 2:38:47Speaker 02

  the bike culture at large is very primitive in its thinking, you know, it's very primal, uh.

• 2:38:56Speaker 02

  And you start fighting. It's pretty easy to get along with people in the sixties. You see another guy on a outlaw type look with his bike and uh, even if he might be in a club, you kind of want to hang out with him. You kind of want to stop, talk to him. Uh, hey, you broke down, you need anything? Uh, that was kind of the essence of the lifestyle. Then the seventies come, uh, you know, it gets a little bit tense. Uh, the war with the outlaws breaks out back east, uh, by nineteen seventy seven, the war with the Mongols breaks out in the West.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  And you can't, uh,

• 2:39:38Speaker 02

  you can feel the shift, uh, you ever feel the shift in something, uh? Yeah, you feel the shift and you go, you know, what's going on here? And it just ultimately changes and changes and changes and unravels until nineteen eighty six, I go, when are we gonna end these wars? Why are we fighting all these battles? Uh, not only are they not productive, they're endless. And, you know, you as a military man,

• 2:40:09Speaker 02

  when you guys go into someplace, you have an objective, right? You're trying to achieve something. And I used to ask people, I go, this is like these wars that we're involved with, they're like a train with no destination.

• 2:40:23Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I was just gonna ask you that.

• 2:40:25Speaker 02

  There's, there's no destination. And I'm, I'm trying to, uh, reason with people. So I'm in a dialogue with Sonny.

• 2:40:34Speaker 02

  I've worked something out with the Bandidos, uh, on territory. We'll stay in these areas. They'll stay in their, uh, uh, area. There'll be no, uh, uh, issues, no pushing and pulling. And

• 2:40:51Speaker 02

  you know, I go to Sonny and, and this is an open meeting with, you know, twelve, uh, fifteen, uh, leaders in there from different charters. And I say, look, I want to meet with the Bandidos. And I said, I want to take you with me. I said, if you, if Sonny Barger shows up at this meeting, they'll know I'm in earnest. And I go, we'll be able to negotiate and get whatever we want. Uh, because I got the man with me, Sonny Barger. And he wouldn't go. And I, you know, I said, well, at least give me a reason why you won't do it. And he said, because I just don't fucking like them. And I think what it really was about, uh, he just maybe liked the violence. I don't know.

• 2:41:35Speaker 02

  It, it's, I mean, how do you explain something like that? It's, it's, it's, it's very primitive, uh.

• 2:41:41Shawn Ryan?

  It's ego.

• 2:41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of ego.

• 2:41:43Shawn Ryan?

  It's the inability to change your fucking mind.

• 2:41:47Speaker 02

  And why is that?

• 2:41:48Shawn Ryan?

  Because you're worried about what everybody else thinks.

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, it's, it's absolutely, and it's

• 2:41:55Speaker 02

  is, is that like the guy that, you know, discovers the other, uh, uh, tribe with a cave? And of, you know, going, that looks a lot more comfortable than standing out in the rain. And so what do they do? They, you know, they decide, you know, we're gonna get Joe and Harry and Bill. We're gonna go over and, uh, maybe we'll act like we're gonna be friends with them and, you know, we'll beat them with our clubs that they've never seen before because they've never seen weapons. I mean, I, you know, I don't know. I'm only, I can only speculate how this stuff happens. And, you know, I find it fascinating because I've been in the middle of it and I, I watch people and I know how they think and

• 2:42:36Speaker 02

  sometimes people are just unpredictable. Yeah. You think you've figured them out.

• 2:42:43Speaker 02

  And then something happens and they go sideways and you don't know.

• 2:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, uh, total

• 2:42:50Shawn Ryan?

  just popped in my head, I'm

• 2:42:53Shawn Ryan?

  you're in this through Vietnam, you know, and I'm, and I think a, I mean, I don't know about today, but

• 2:43:02Shawn Ryan?

  there was a lot of draw. There was a lot of interest in biker clubs from

• 2:43:11Shawn Ryan?

  my generation, coming home from war, a lot of interest. Vietnam sounds like there was even more interest.

• 2:43:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:43:20Shawn Ryan?

  And I think those are some of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet, the guys that served in Vietnam.

• 2:43:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:43:27Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have a lot of those guys coming in?

• 2:43:29Speaker 02

  We had some, uh, not a lot. I think by then.

• 2:43:32Shawn Ryan?

  Do, do they have a?

• 2:43:35Speaker 02

  They had their own club.

• 2:43:36Shawn Ryan?

  They did?

• 2:43:37Speaker 02

  The Vietnam vets. They started their own club and, uh, uh, we were never at odds with them, but we, you know, we never got close to them. But, you know, you know, I used to argue with Sonny all the time about certain things, but Sonny sometimes would say the most profound things and when

• 2:44:01Speaker 02

  kind of had free rein, and I mentioned that earlier, we were kind of the kings, the Hells Angels, man. You know, everybody knew who the Hells Angels were. The Hells Angels were in the paper all the time. Hells Angels had movies made about them. Uh, Hells Angel this, Hells Angel that. And.

• 2:44:19Speaker 02

  Perception perceived, perception achieved, if you will. I don't know if you understand what I'm saying. Sometimes people think you're tough.

• 2:44:26Shawn Ryan?

  Perception, perception is reality.

• 2:44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they think you're tough, uh, because that's what they read in the paper and that's how it's perceived, uh, on a movie. But you've got these guys coming back from Vietnam and they're going, fuck those guys, man. I'm not gonna do what they say. And I, I, Sonny and I got in a big dialogue about it one time. We were both on the same page. We weren't arguing. He goes, you know, fucking Vietnam changed everything. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, what do you, what are you laughing?

• 2:44:57Shawn Ryan?

  I just, I'm looking forward to hearing where you go with this.

• 2:45:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I said, uh, wh- what do you mean? And he goes, you know, he goes, before the war, he goes,

• 2:45:10Speaker 02

  we told people to do shit, they just did it. He goes, now they're, oh yeah, get off your fat ass and, uh, uh, make us. Uh, and that was basically it. There was a lot of people that got military training. And, you know, we talked about our roots were within the military, but it became diluted over a period of time. Now you've got a bunch of guys that, uh, uh, have gone off to war. Sonny was smart enough to know all that. Do you remember when Sonny Barger, uh, uh, announced to, uh, President Johnson? He wanted to send a squad of Hells Angels, uh, you know, he wanted them to be trained and all that stuff. Look, Sonny's smart enough to know that was never gonna happen, but god damn, it was great publicity.

• 2:45:55Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, it was all over the news and, uh, uh, you know, talk about controlling the narrative. I mean, Sonny knew how to control the narrative, you know, he, it wasn't real sophisticated. Uh, but some of the stuff he came up with, you know, it, you know, it was short of brilliant, you know, but I think the Vietnam War changed a lot of things, uh, in this country. As far as people doing something, then you have to understand. And I'm speaking from experience as an old man, okay? I'm almost eighty. I'm gonna be eighty here, in a year, less, a little over a year.

• 2:46:34Speaker 02

  People come back from Vietnam. It was a very unpopular war. Now you're a military man, so you know and you respect all those people that were in country.

• 2:46:48Speaker 02

  But there were a lot of people in the United States that didn't find them very attractive, didn't find them very heroic, and it was wrong. But you guys came back from the United States getting attacked

• 2:47:03Speaker 02

  at nine eleven, and it was, it's a whole different ballgame, man. I mean, you had the, I, it was almost like the country was unified and it's

• 2:47:13Shawn Ryan?

  At the beginning.

• 2:47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the beginning, uh, uh, and, but it gets, it all gets diluted.

• 2:47:18Shawn Ryan?

  But it never got as bad as Vietnam, coming home. Not even fucking close, but it did get, it did.

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I

• 2:47:25Shawn Ryan?

  Very underappreci- underappreciated.

• 2:47:27Speaker 02

  Let, let me, can I ask you a question?

• 2:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:47:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:47:32Speaker 02

  Before you guys go into combat, I don't know if this is true. I have a couple of friends that are SEALs, ex-SEALs actually. Uh, did they used to give you guys a psychological evaluation?

• 2:47:44Shawn Ryan?

  Every time?

• 2:47:45Speaker 02

  Before you went into combat?

• 2:47:47Shawn Ryan?

  No, no.

• 2:47:49Speaker 02

  No. And initially?

• 2:47:51Shawn Ryan?

  Initially to get into the teams there.

• 2:47:53Speaker 02

  And did they give you one after your missions?

• 2:47:56Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:47:56Speaker 02

  When you came back? That, that's the thing that kind of alarmed me, uh, that they put you guys in these

• 2:48:05Speaker 02

  precarious awkward positions and you come back and it's like, I mean, what do they, what do they do for you? And, and, you know, my daughter goes to

• 2:48:15Shawn Ryan?

  They don't do anything.

• 2:48:16Speaker 02

  My daughter goes to milit- my daughter's a lawyer and she takes advantage of, uh, military, uh, I, I can't remember, Veterans Court or it's a special court, it's criminal court, but it's civilian. What's that?

• 2:48:29Shawn Ryan?

  Veterans Court.

• 2:48:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and she's used it several times and, uh, uh, it's beneficial for the, for the veterans. But it, it appears that

• 2:48:42Speaker 02

  bring these people back and just kind of turn them loose and, uh,

• 2:48:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna take a chance here and, and equate this together. I'm, I'm sure some people out there are gonna go, that's some bullshit. But I'll tell you, when I came back from prison and, so in two thousand and seven, there was a firebombing, two firebombings at tattoo shops in Ventura.

• 2:49:10Speaker 02

  Of course, they said I was responsible. I, I gave the order. I didn't, certainly didn't do it, but I gave the order. Uh,

• 2:49:20Speaker 02

  by two thousand and eleven, uh, I get indicted. Twenty thirteen, we start going to trial. Uh, the case starts collapsing. Uh, my daughter's like hammering away at stuff with another lawyer. They offer a sweet deal. I take the deal because I'm on count six, seven, and eight. I'm looking at mandatory minimums of life. And you know what that sentence is? You know, you get found guilty in one of those counts, you go to prison for life. It's just a mandatory, uh, sentence. So

• 2:49:55Speaker 02

  it's, I now come back, it's twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. And I stay on parole or probation, whatever you want to call it. Feds changed that they don't call it parole anymore. They call it probation. Stay on, uh, probation till twenty eighteen. So that's eleven years. You've got the investigation going on. You know, the cops are crawling around, they're investigating you, they're asking questions. Then you get the beef. Then you've got the pending trial. Then you do your sentence and then you come home and do your, uh, uh,

• 2:50:34Speaker 02

  probation, parole, whatever you want to call it. Not once, not once did they ever ask me how my re-entry into society was. All they wanted to do and all their interest was, they thought I had a bunch of money hidden somewhere. They were looking for the money. And they wanted their fair share of any money I had, uh, any money I made. I did a show, uh, Outlaw Chronicles, uh, they wanted to take all my money. They said I wasn't, uh, I shouldn't, uh, profit off my criminal past, uh, you know, you can imagine what they were saying.

• 2:51:12Shawn Ryan?

  Who is this? Who is they?

• 2:51:14Speaker 02

  United States Probation Office.

• 2:51:18Speaker 02

  So they never once asked me, and I, I guess the point I'm trying to make is, you know,

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  I don't know what the count is now. What is it? Over a quarter million doll- a quarter million people incarcerated in the United States?

• 2:51:32Shawn Ryan?

  I, I actually

• 2:51:33Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a big business, you know, and what's interesting is everybody and each family, it always, it seems at one time people didn't talk about a family member going to prison. It was kind of embarrassing. It's now, it seems like every family's at least got one family member that went to prison for something because it's become such a big business. I guess I'm just, uh, using this platform to complain that, uh, uh, you know, they put people in a position, they put you guys in a position, like I said, you come back, uh,

• 2:52:10Speaker 02

  I mean, you just went over there, you engaged some people, you know, I don't know what you did or didn't do. How does that affect you guys, uh?

• 2:52:18Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it sets out, it's horrible. I mean,

• 2:52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:21Shawn Ryan?

  It is the, it's the, it's, I mean, suicide is, the suicide rate is insane, the divorce rate is insane, the addiction rate is fucking insane. I mean, the, the, but I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think that

• 2:52:36Speaker 02

  No, it's not a conspiracy.

• 2:52:37Shawn Ryan?

  The country literally just doesn't give a fuck about veterans and they've proven that over and over and over since fucking World War Two. They just don't, the country doesn't give a fuck, the government doesn't give a fuck, the people don't give a fuck.

• 2:52:48Speaker 02

  So

• 2:52:48Shawn Ryan?

  If they did, it wouldn't be this way.

• 2:52:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so

• 2:52:53Speaker 02

  we've got a ninety-eight percent conviction rate with the feds. And I'm, I don't want to insult anybody. I'm not, not comparing, uh, ex-convicts to military or whatever. Trying to make a, you know, uh, uh, I'm trying to make a comparison here, but not that in the same manner that some people may have misinterpreted. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying. Uh, the

• 2:53:25Speaker 02

  conviction rate is ninety-eight percent. That's pretty goddamn high. And you know, the feds, there's a lot of veterans in federal prison, uh, uh, for just various things. A lot of people said they've been put in, in, uh, scams like, uh, selling them weapons, uh, doing this, doing that. I was in Texas, there was a couple of Navy SEALs down there. I don't, I don't, I didn't get close to them. I don't know what they were there for. Didn't ask, you don't ask people what they're, what they're doing. But why are the prisons so full? And I think a lot of it is, in nineteen eighty-six,

• 2:54:04Speaker 02

  I fought my case. I pled not guilty and I fought my case and I beat it. I proved that the government framed me. Uh, the jury came back and said they want to send a message to Washington to knock this shit off.

• 2:54:21Speaker 02

  And two thousand and thirteen, my, my daughter and I, you know, we talked it over. She didn't think she could win the case. She goes, I think because of the publicity. I think because the outlaw bike movement has gotten so big and it's a worldwide phenomenon. She goes, I don't think you're gonna get a fair trial. And she goes, we gotta hammer at these guys, chip them away to where they offer you a deal. And I think that's why the prisons are so full. And, you know, what point am I trying to make? I guess I'm just getting on a soapbox here a little bit and, uh,

• 2:54:56Shawn Ryan?

  I know it's something you're very passionate about.

• 2:54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it's, you know, people don't get it, you know, I had a prison, I'm, I'm an expert witness in trials for the defense, something that defense lawyers never had in the outlaw bike cases. Uh, I also had a prison consulting business and, you know, I would try to help people come to terms with

• 2:55:18Speaker 02

  what was going on in their life. And, you know, I have this story I tell.

• 2:55:27Speaker 02

  I had a guy call me one day. He was a client of mine and I tried to touch base with him, you know, two or three times a week. And every time he went to court and when he got done with court, if I wasn't in court with him, sometimes it wasn't good for me to appear in court with him because in California, I'm very recognizable and especially law enforcement, it's not appropriate.

• 2:55:52Speaker 02

  And he was really down and I said, what's the problem? He goes, well, you know, George, they're treating me like a criminal. And I said, you are a criminal. And I think sometimes people just can't come to terms with the situations they put themselves in. Now, I don't know what it is for vets. I tell you, if I had all the money in the world, that's probably what I would focus on vets and dogs because I love my animals. But, I mean, I had to make this guy understand, you know, they're treating him like a criminal because he embezzled a bunch of money from a movie company. And

• 2:56:40Speaker 02

  I, I don't know,

• 2:56:44Speaker 02

  I just don't know where we're heading as a country, that's all. I guess I'm just venting a little bit.

• 2:56:50Shawn Ryan?

  I think a lot of people are wondering where we're heading as a country. And I think they've been thinking that for a long damn time.

• 2:56:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:56Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 2:56:56Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's like

• 2:57:00Speaker 02

  I

• 2:57:02Speaker 02

  was successful for about a decade

• 2:57:06Speaker 02

  in having an amnesty, you know, got along with the outlaws, got along with the banditos. It was a war and are you familiar with the Nordic bike war?

• 2:57:16Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:57:17Speaker 02

  It was just a hellacious war between the Hells Angels and Banditos in Europe. I was instrumental in along with George Wiggers, the international president of the Banditos in stopping that. The Scandinavian governments, the Danish government, specifically petitioned the United States government. They wanted two felons to be allowed permission to enter the United States. So George Wiggers and I could sit with him and try to negotiate a peace and

• 2:57:57Speaker 02

  the Hells Angel representative, his name was Blondie. I don't know his real name. I can't remember it. He was a convicted double murder.

• 2:58:08Speaker 02

  The Scandinavian government convinced the American government to let him enter into the United States and come to this meeting. The Bandito representative was a guy named Jim Tinian, I think. He was the international leader of the Banditos in Europe.

• 2:58:26Speaker 02

  So we had George Wiggers, myself, Blondie and Jim. And we had a special number that if anybody in law enforcement interfered, we were to hand them the piece of paper and there was a, I don't know who it was in Washington, but they would tell them to stand down and let us finish doing what we were doing. They had a, I don't know how long the visa was for. They had a special visa to get into the country, negotiate. They did, then they went back.

• 2:58:54Speaker 02

  They went back and

• 2:58:58Speaker 02

  settled the war. They publicly met with politicians and a lawyer and it was crazy. They announced it over Danish TV that the war between the Hells Angel of Banditos was now over. It, wow, it was, it was quite a scene.

• 2:59:18Speaker 02

  But

• 2:59:20Speaker 02

  everything seemed to be going. It was very unsteady, very, I was constantly negotiating with people, trying to go to Europe. I went to Europe one time. I went to Amsterdam. I refused to entry. They had a five day hold on me. I was meeting with the Banditos and Hells Angels over there, tried to put the lid, there were some fires and we're trying to put them out.

• 2:59:44Speaker 02

  Refused the entry, put me on a plane to send me back. Just by chance, I wound up in Texas, wound up meeting with the Banditos anyways. I met with them in Texas instead of Europe. I wanted to go to Europe because I thought it would be more effective. But so we had a amnesty on the violence with the outlaws, the Banditos, the Mongols. I was trying to negotiate with the pagans, but I never really got anywhere with them. They just had no interest in

• 3:00:17Speaker 02

  negotiating. And everything was shaky.

• 3:00:21Shawn Ryan?

  How would you negotiate?

• 3:00:23Speaker 02

  How would I negotiate?

• 3:00:24Shawn Ryan?

  What are you negotiating? Peace?

• 3:00:26Speaker 02

  Peace.

• 3:00:28Speaker 02

  Stop the violence. When I ride through Chicago, is it really necessary to shoot at me? I'm on my bike, I'm riding from point A to point B. I'm not there. I'm not trying to set up a town charter. I'm not interfering in anything you guys got going. Just trying to get from one point to the other. And I was successful.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  But the bottom line is, you know, we said earlier, it's just, it's primal. That whole outlaw culture is very primal. And people just they just didn't want to be perceived as being weak. And I, you know, just before the arrangement with the outlaws was suspended, the peace talks were called off. You know, I talked to Taco one day about it and he said, you know, George, he goes, I don't know how much longer I can do this. He goes, I'm, my position is threatened. There was an up and coming guy named Spike that basically told Taco that he was

• 3:01:40Speaker 02

  being perceived as weak by the club. And Spike must have been very convincing because if you look up on the internet, United States of America versus Harry Bowman, you'll see that he put a murder contract on me. They actually came to Ventura, not once, but twice. I think the first time was just surveillance. The second time they came there, you know, to shoot me, whatever reason they didn't.

• 3:02:09Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think they wanted to kill you?

• 3:02:11Speaker 02

  I think that Spike was an ex Ranger, Army Ranger, very aggressive guy. And I think he had his eye on Taco's job as international leader. And I think that he felt that this would solidify him at least to put him up at the same level as Taco. Taco was a ruthless guy.

• 3:02:41Speaker 02

  Him and I negotiated for probably three years, met with him twice in person.

• 3:02:48Speaker 02

  I lost count of the phone calls I had with him. But

• 3:02:54Speaker 02

  Taco died of cancer in prison. He, they wouldn't even give him a compassionate leave to come home and die in his own bed. I mean, they let him die in prison. That sounds much they disliked him. And Spike, I don't know if you want to call him, describe him as top lieutenant, he's doing life for racketeering.

• 3:03:15Speaker 02

  It just these guys just don't want to be perceived as weak. And, you know, Taco said that to me and I said, you know, Taco's not a popular position, the world we live in. But I said, I think it's a necessary position. You know, my, my thought is that every time we shoot at each other or we get a case and somebody goes to prison or somebody gets killed. I mean, we don't win anything, you know? I think the government wins. I think that, like I said, you know, you talk to Jay Dobbins,

• 3:03:52Speaker 02

  he has a particular thought of what we're all about. He thinks we're all about crime and criminal activity, thinks the club does it as a whole. You know, I interviewed Jay myself and I, you know, I mean, we had a cordial conversation, but you know, I don't agree with anything he says.

• 3:04:11Speaker 02

  I can't get him to concede that it's not the club, it's individuals in the club. The club wasn't established for that reason. The club was about riding and brotherhood and building motorcycles. And probably why I walked away because we lost sight somewhere along the way.

• 3:04:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it definitely attracts a certain culture.

• 3:04:36Speaker 02

  It does.

• 3:04:39Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:05:23Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:06:09Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:06:49Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:07:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:07:12Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you... what was it that made you walk away?

• 3:07:18Speaker 02

  Uh, Sonny and I continually were fighting about the protocol, uh, rules. He was bending the rules. Uh, I, uh, every time I confronted him, it would turn into a big chaotic scene.

• 3:07:37Speaker 02

  In 2002, had a member named Josh, uh, Harbor. He went to Cave Creek to party and have fun.

• 3:07:53Speaker 02

  And somebody killed him. And he was a Ventura Hells Angel. And word on the street through law enforcement was that he...

• 3:08:04Speaker 02

  That was a message to me, from Sonny. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. Sonny and I never had that conversation. But subsequently, six months later, four months later, uh, Sonny's, one of Sonny's guys got murdered. And law enforcement said that was my answer. I think that was kind of the beginning of the end. It still took me like another eight years, if you will. But I just felt like we were losing the sight of what we were trying to head, you know? It's like, and when you're a leader, you know, you want to reach a goal, you want to try to achieve something, and you have a vision, and if the people around you aren't sharing the vision anymore, you know, maybe you're not an effective leader

• 3:08:48Speaker 02

  anymore, you know? I think Sonny, I have a saying, you know, "Don't make yourself bigger than the position you hold." And I think Sonny did that. I think he lost a concept. He made himself very large.

• 3:09:02Shawn Ryan?

  Don't fall for your own bullshit.

• 3:09:04Speaker 02

  Sonny had, uh,

• 3:09:09Speaker 02

  done several things that I didn't think was appropriate. You know, I confronted him. Uh, the club seemed to be divided. The, uh, there's a lot of speculation from law enforcement, who was really running the club? Was it me? Was it Sonny?

• 3:09:26Shawn Ryan?

  Were you guys both in Ventura?

• 3:09:28Speaker 02

  No, he's in, he was in Oakland, then he went to Arizona, then he returned to Oakland.

• 3:09:39Speaker 02

  Uh, he

• 3:09:45Speaker 02

  pretty much did what he wanted.

• 3:09:46Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 3:09:47Speaker 02

  That was Sonny Barger, you know? And love it, hate it, or condemn it. I mean, it just was what it was. And you knew he was gonna do that.

• 3:09:55Shawn Ryan?

  True outlaw.

• 3:09:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, you know? And I, I respected him for it, and I hated him for it at times, because he didn't do what was best for the club. I felt like he did what was best for him. He was a type of guy, I'm sure you've ran into this in the military, you run into guys that will not reverse themselves. You know, you can show them in black and white it's wrong, they will not accept responsibility. Uh, probably around 2008, 2009, can't remember exactly where, uh,

• 3:10:38Speaker 02

  I started thinking about, maybe it's time, you know, to move on, you know? And

• 3:10:48Speaker 02

  there was one thing that kept stopping me. It was my ego. Did I want to be the guy that used to be George Christie in a really difficult, uh, uh, time?

• 3:11:05Speaker 02

  I did it kind of on the, without telling anybody, didn't even discuss it with, uh, my son, discuss it with nobody. I went to the meeting, explained what I was doing. They, first of all, they misunderstood. They thought I was stepping down as president. And I said, "No, this is it for me. I've, you know, I've give you 40 years. It's time for me to move on."

• 3:11:31Speaker 02

  And I, I, I gave what I thought was a, kind of a passionate speech, you know? I said, "We're fighting with the banditos again, fighting with the Mongols, we're fighting with the outlaws, uh, fighting with the pagans. And now, you guys want to fight the Vagos." This was a bike club we had gotten along with since the mid-sixties. And they wanted to fight these guys. And my position with them was, when I get phone calls from another club and says, "Hey, what's the problem, George? You know, we've always gotten along, why, why is there an issue now? And we can't find a way to resolve the issues?"

• 3:12:17Speaker 02

  That, that kind of makes me feel like we're being bullies. When you, when you pick on somebody, whether you win or lose, when you pick on somebody, you're, you're being a bully, you know? Uh, so I just basically said, "Look, we're fighting wars on four fronts. Now we're gonna have a fifth front with the Vagos." And I said, "Don't forget law enforcement." Uh, and I said, "Look, uh, if you look at your history, when societies or cultures run out of people to fight, they turn inward." And I said, "I don't want to be here for that." And, uh, I said, "I think I'm played out. I give you guys 40 years. I'm gonna move on." I took my patch off, I folded it up, I put it on the edge of the

• 3:13:02Speaker 02

  table by my chair where I sat, had a chair at the, kind of head of the room. And I remember I said, "Look, we've turned into the people we rebelled against." I go, "We're not outlaws anymore." And I said, "I want to get back to the roots, and this is what I'm gonna do." But I said, "I want you to keep in mind that you guys need to do something, because there's gonna be a problem in the future." About six weeks later, four weeks later, uh, something transpired up in Reno, Nevada. Jethro, who was president of San Jose, who was a good friend of mine, got in an argument

• 3:13:45Speaker 02

  with one of the Vagos, and they shot him and killed him. So, Jethro was now murdered by the Vagos, so it's a full-on war. At the funeral in San Jose, uh,

• 3:14:05Speaker 02

  Steve, uh, I think it was Ruiz, he was a Hells Angel, and, uh, Steve Tossen, another Hells Angel, who had a reputation of, of just being fierce as a fighter. And he started picking on Ruiz, telling Ruiz it was he was responsible for Jeff Pettigrew's murder, that he should have protected him better. He was the president. They started arguing, and, uh, Steve Tossen's reputation caught up with him. He punched, uh, Steve Ruiz,

• 3:14:46Speaker 02

  and Steve responded by shooting him three times. So you've got a, a funeral, five to 7,000 spectators, you got Hells Angels being, Hells Angel being buried, uh, had been murdered, and you've got two Hells Angels now fighting who's responsible, and one of them gets murdered. It was just a chaotic scene. I wasn't there, but I'm told it was a chaotic scene. Uh, Ruiz snuck out of there somehow. They couldn't locate him. The police thought that perhaps Ruiz had got thrown in Jeff Pettigrew's gravesite, and they exhumed Jeff's body a couple of days

• 3:15:30Speaker 02

  later. They didn't open the casket, but they, they pulled the, uh, casket out, looked underneath it to make sure Ruiz wasn't there. Eventually, they arrested him three months later. Uh,

• 3:15:43Speaker 02

  so what I predicted basically came true, you know? Was I happy about it? No, not happy at all, you know? Jeff was dead, Jeff Pettigrew, Jethro was dead, Steve was dead, uh, Ruiz was gonna go to prison for three years. Uh, he put on a defense, because Steve Tossen, I said, "He had a fierce reputation." He had killed somebody with his bare hands before by punching him. He had hit a guy, uh, at a bar. He was a security guard at a bar. He hit a guy, and the guy died from the punch. So,

• 3:16:21Speaker 02

  I I left, I left in good standing. Within a couple of weeks, Sonny changed my status to out bad. Wouldn't allow anybody to communicate with me. And basically tried to cut off any influence he thought I still might have. And he attacked my character and things slowly started unraveling for me. Made a deal, went to prison, pled guilty to one, what was it, a count of interfering? You're gonna love this, interfering in interstate commerce.

• 3:17:05Speaker 02

  You know, by firebombing, they said I ordered the firebombing. By firebombing the tattoo shops, I interfered in their ability to make money. So it's interfering in interstate commerce. It's a federal crime. I mean, it's kind of one of those. What's that?

• 3:17:24Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 3:17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of one of those racketeering crimes, but you know, you're not recode. It's a, it's a federal crime. I went to jail, I came back. Sonny got word that the History Channel had approached me about doing a six-episode series. Told me I couldn't do it. I did it, told me I couldn't write a book. I did it, he threatened to sue St. Martin, the book publisher I did the book with, my first book, Exile. Just was real careful, you know, what we put in the book, what was said, what, you know, wasn't said.

• 3:18:09Speaker 02

  You know, the book was, was successful, Outlaw Chronicles was successful. I wrote a second book. Like I stated earlier, I, I wound up going to Spain, the book was optioned. And spent three years in Spain, I came back. I was single now, I married a girl that I'd known since I was 12. We're lifelong friends and kind of started over. And I.

• 3:18:42Shawn Ryan?

  Want to ask you something?

• 3:18:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:18:44Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think happens when you die?

• 3:18:46Speaker 02

  What do I think happens when you die? In all honesty, I do not know. I believe in a higher power. I, you know, I like to microdose and I, I contemplate on where I'm going and what I'm doing. I think perhaps hell is here on earth. Or perhaps if you leave this planet and you're not satisfied with how you conducted yourself.

• 3:19:30Speaker 02

  I mean, even bad people have to have that little voice in their head telling them, hey, man, you're fucking up. You know, I just, I, I just truly believe that. And I, the reason I believe that is interacting with all these men for decades, some of them very dangerous and I think their biggest enemy most of the time was themselves. I don't know, what do you think?

• 3:20:03Shawn Ryan?

  What do I think?

• 3:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:05Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm a Christian.

• 3:20:06Speaker 02

  Oh, you're a Christian, there you go, okay.

• 3:20:08Shawn Ryan?

  You go to heaven or you go to hell? That's about it.

• 3:20:12Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you. I got, I came back, I was very satisfied. Really, my wife and I were having a lot of fun. And I got a phone call. And that was the premise for this book, Crossing the Rubicon. I, I got a phone call from a club member. Club members aren't supposed to talk to me. And they can be punished by, you know, an ass chewing all the way to being expelled from the club for communicating to me or with me. And the guy said, you recognize my voice?

• 3:20:56Speaker 02

  And I said, yeah. And I said some smart ass to him. I goes, and this is my rabbi. And he said, look, I, I called you. And he used the term, you know what we, what his close friends used to call Ralph? Are, are you familiar with that? We used to, Sonny, his name is Ralph.

• 3:21:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:21:21Speaker 02

  So we would say, hey, Ralph, you know, like if I was one to really be serious or brotherly, I go Ralph, you know, I want to talk to you, man. I want you to listen to what I'm saying. So anyways, the person on the other end said, if you're going to reconcile with Ralph, he goes, you need to do it because he's not going to be around much longer. And I got up out of bed, made myself a cup of coffee. And I, I started thinking about all these decades of interacting with all these people. And in the morning, I started writing this book. And it, it took me three years.

• 3:22:01Speaker 02

  I wrote it and the ending, the ending was true, but it was, I felt it was soft. And I just said, hey, you know what? I'm going to pull all the bullshit away. And, because people ask, you know, why didn't you go back? Or why don't you try to reconcile? And I explain all that in the ending of this book. But it's interesting that, you know, you tell me you either go to heaven or you go to hell. And I'm not going to say what it is, but I have a message for Sonny at the end of the book. But anyways.

• 3:22:40Speaker 00

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• 3:23:26Speaker 02

  So how did you become a Christian? That interests me.

• 3:23:29Shawn Ryan?

  How did I become a Christian? That is a long story, but I was going through some serious internal battles.

• 3:23:43Speaker 02

  With yourself?

• 3:23:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And.

• 3:23:45Speaker 02

  Crashes of conscience or emotional instability or?

• 3:23:51Shawn Ryan?

  Um, very troubled with the world.

• 3:23:54Speaker 02

  Okay. Angry at the world or just?

• 3:23:57Shawn Ryan?

  Angry at the world, a lot to do with kids, a lot of, I started diving into a lot of the shit that happens to kids sexually.

• 3:24:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:24:06Shawn Ryan?

  And exploitation, trafficking, you know?

• 3:24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know.

• 3:24:11Shawn Ryan?

  All that kind of stuff. And I got really deep into it. And, and then some of this minor in possession or minor attracted persons, have you heard about this shit? There is a section of the country who wants to make people that are attracted to kids a condition. And they want to call them minor attracted persons.

• 3:24:40Speaker 02

  And that makes it okay?

• 3:24:42Shawn Ryan?

  That makes it okay in their mind.

• 3:24:45Speaker 02

  That's going to be a problem. You know, let me tell you.

• 3:24:47Shawn Ryan?

  So, okay, let me finish. So now it's very, I still am very vocal about it. And I just didn't really see people doing anything. And a lot of the people that I respected leaned that way politically. And I just could not understand how you could, how you could be okay with that. And anyways, so having this internal battle in my head and, and I had basically tried to convince myself, Sean, this, if you're the only one out here fighting this shit, who fucking cares? Maybe you're the one that's fucked up. Maybe you shouldn't be doing this shit.

• 3:25:31Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe you should just let it happen. Not that I'm fucking stopping anything anyways, right? But it just really troubled me and I just couldn't understand like how it was happening. And.

• 3:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  In in short, it it it, I was on a hike and I had felt like I was uh had just surrendered my fucking soul to the to the devil, you know, but I didn't really believe at that time. And I walked through this gate. We were on a me and my wife were on a vacation. I walked through this gate and this guy comes up to me and um tries to talk to me. I don't want to talk to him. Obviously, I'm in a fucking mood, right? And uh and I had I had smoked a joint before I went on this hike. I tried to calm myself down. That didn't do a damn thing.

• 3:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing was working, really. Uh uh. And my, of course, my wife turns around and talks to him, but I'm like, fuck, you know? I just want to go to bed. And um, so I turn around and I look at him and he fucking looked at me in the eyes. And he read every single thought from front to back in my fucking brain and articulated it. And said, you don't need to be worrying about these kids. That's not your fucking problem. That's not your battle. And then he went through all the other things. There was stuff about trans kids or stuff about China. All these things were going on in my head. And uh after the the first thing, my I blanked out because I couldn't understand how another

• 3:27:00Shawn Ryan?

  Almost like it's too much information coming in. I hadn't even articulated this shit to my wife. Yeah. And this guy's just yanking thought after thought after thought out of my head. Who is this guy? I've never seen him. Never seen him. And haven't seen him since. We were there for a week. We were there for a week. And I'm a, you know, I was a SEAL. I contracted for CIA. I pay attention to security and uh and a lot of those guys that were working at that gate knew who I was uh from the from the podcast.

• 3:27:34Shawn Ryan?

  So I had, you know, stopped to talk to them. Never saw this guy, though. Knew the other ones, never saw this guy. Never saw him again? Never saw him before, never saw him again. This was the last night. So he reads my mind, legitimately reads my fucking mind. And I walk back, I'm walking back to my bungalow and um talking to my wife and I'm freaking out because I'm I tell her, I go, holy shit, I think that was fucking God talking to me. And um

• 3:28:04Shawn Ryan?

  before that, there's some other things that happened. I'll I'll shorten it up a little bit, though. Three things happened. There was another guy, my best friend died of a heroin addiction. He was uh, he was uh, he was a SEAL. We contracted at CIA together. Um, I didn't wind up joining a biker gang, obviously, but I did go down to Columbia and got really wrapped up into drugs down there. And he was with me. And um, so anyways, point being, we were very, very close. He was my best friend. And uh, but he was also always known as a protector. He was a pro hockey player before he was a SEAL. He was a SEAL. He was a CIA contractor. And each one of those segments of his life, everybody around him considered him to be a protector

• 3:28:49Shawn Ryan?

  at every level. And um, and I had tried to save his life. He had moved in with me, da da da da. Obviously, you know, you know the how it end. Anyways, we go there, I'm in the super vulnerable position. There's this guy running around all fucking week. He looks exactly like my best friend. We go out in town, he was out in town. If we're on a hike, he's on a hike. It was really odd. If we're at the pool, he's at the pool. If we're at the fucking restaurant, he's somewhere in the restaurant.

• 3:29:19Shawn Ryan?

  Turns out, we'd been there all week. We walked back to the bungalow from the gate, maybe a three to five minute walk. The entire time we were there, it turns out, there was only two thing, two, two, two rooms in this bungalow. It was like a duplex. He was on the other fucking side. So first time I'd seen him. So that was a sign. Then I walk in the room and I had went there and I don't really have many friends anymore, and especially here in town. And I had met another SEAL. And uh, his name was Dan Cirillo. And um, me and him had a special bond. He owned a handful of hospitals and had a uh very successful security company.

• 3:30:04Shawn Ryan?

  And I have this. And it was one of the only relationships I've ever had in town where I don't fucking need anything from you and you don't need anything from me, so we don't have to worry about the asks. And we can just sit down and be friends and not have to worry about what the fuck do you want from me? Well, he died.

• 3:30:23Shawn Ryan?

  And that really bothered me because it was my only friend here. Young guy? No, old guy. Died, in my opinion, had a great death. Uh, died on a hunting trip with his son. And um, I mean, I wish he was still here, but if there's a way to go and you get, you know? I get it. And uh, anyway, so as soon as we walk in the hotel, me and my wife are having a discussion. My cell phone dings. I don't answer because I'm in this heavy discussion, like, what the hell is going on? How did this guy just read my fucking mind? Check the, check my phone afterwards. It's his daughter, who I'd never met. And she sent me a text that said that she had just walked into her dad's gun room for the first time since he had passed.

• 3:31:08Shawn Ryan?

  And he was in there. And he told her that he wanted her to reach out to me because I was his I was the person that had become the closest to him. And then I knew a side of him that she didn't know. And that for those three things to all happen damn near simultaneously, literally within minutes of each other. I knew something, somebody was trying to fucking tell me something. And I could go on because the shit continues on, but it didn't continue on until I got home. So I started looking into some of the stuff that had happened. And uh, I had called

• 3:31:50Shawn Ryan?

  um, a friend of mine who wound up being a spiritual mentor of mine. His name's Eddie Penny. He was a SEAL Team Six guy. And uh, I'll send you the episode. Okay. And uh, I served with him very briefly. Um, I wouldn't say we were close. We did a deployment together. And then he went on to the development group. I hadn't heard from him for fucking probably ten, fifteen years. Then I brought him on the show. And he talked about his, how he found faith. This guy, back when I knew him before,

• 3:32:29Shawn Ryan?

  he's just a, he's a fucking savage.

• 3:32:34Shawn Ryan?

  Never in a million years would you think that would happen to this guy. And he told me this. And uh, and just like this, told me how it happened. And I released his episode on Christmas Eve. Every single person since then has brought up Christ, one way or another, for for over a year.

• 3:32:59Shawn Ryan?

  So I called him and he started kind of telling me what some of this stuff means. And then then my whole team here, turns out, I didn't even know this, but my whole team here uh, very well versed in this. So it was almost like

• 3:33:15Shawn Ryan?

  um, after that moment, I was just completely surrounded with people that could guide me in the right direction.

• 3:33:25Shawn Ryan?

  You know? I hope that happens for you. Well, that would be nice. But you know, I'm I'm thinking. You know, I heard you talk about microdosing. Yeah. I have another, you know, I don't know how seriously you take psychedelics or if you even do plant medicine. But I have another best friend. Uh, and and so when I go do that, I I am um, I always have an intention that I want to get out of it if I do a heavy dose. And I did a journey with another one of my best friends. His name was Nick, is Nick Kefalitis. And uh, he's still a good friend of mine. He was a Marsoc Marine, Marine Raider.

• 3:34:07Shawn Ryan?

  And um, we did a journey together um out in the woods several years ago. And I asked him afterwards what his intentions were, and he said he just wanted to know if he had a relationship with God. Because he wasn't a believer either. And in the same fucking journey, I looked at this waterfall with him and all a perfect

• 3:34:40Shawn Ryan?

  Sculpture of Jesus Christ's head was etched in that waterfall.

• 3:34:50Shawn Ryan?

  And we looked away, or I looked away, looked back, still there, walked away, still there. Was there all fucking night until the next day I woke up and then I did not see it.

• 3:35:02Speaker 02

  So the initial guy could have been an angel, you think that, uh?

• 3:35:09Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I will finish the story because now you're interested. So then I come home and I told you I called Eddie Penny.

• 3:35:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:35:16Shawn Ryan?

  And I told him what had happened to me, this all happened in Sedona. And Eddie started telling me, all right, this is what this is. And my wife's telling me too, like Sean, God's always been around you. You just don't fucking take the time to pay attention. And that's why you never see it. But look at your life, look at what's happened. He's everywhere around you. And so I call Eddie, I'll tell him this and I, um, late at night down in a fire. And, uh, he starts telling me, you've chosen a side now. All these attacks are going to happen. The spiritual attacks are going to start to happen because nobody gives a shit if you're sitting on the sideline.

• 3:36:00Shawn Ryan?

  But once you choose a side, the attacks will start to happen. And so he starts telling me about guardian angels.

• 3:36:13Shawn Ryan?

  And that everybody has a guardian angel. Now I'm very new at this, even though I grew up Catholic, I still, I just, you know, I didn't believe I was a kid. I was forced to do it. I didn't really care. And then lost pretty much everything when I went to war. And, um,

• 3:36:31Shawn Ryan?

  the next day I have a meeting with my IT guy. And I thought it was going to be about IT shit. And he's a very devout Catholic. And I had a call with him at noon. I remember noon.

• 3:36:47Shawn Ryan?

  It was a long call and, uh, it wasn't about IT shit. It was the exact same conversation that Eddie Penny had had with me. And those two don't know each other, couldn't be farther apart from their personalities. They would not get along. And, and he starts telling me spiritual attacks are going to start to happen. You have guardian angel. They've known you since before you're born. And I'm still like, yeah, okay, whatever.

• 3:37:17Shawn Ryan?

  So I drive home for a late lunch.

• 3:37:21Shawn Ryan?

  Have lunch with my wife, tell her about these conversations. I'm driving back to work. I look at the odometer or the, you know, gas left to E says four, four, four. I look at the clock. It also says four, four, four. And then I think back and I go, this is four hours and 44 minutes after that phone call with Adam. So I text

• 3:37:44Shawn Ryan?

  one of my guys, uh, who you know, you just met him. And I say, hey,

• 3:37:51Shawn Ryan?

  look up what four, four, four means. I'll be at the office there shortly. Get to the office. He has it pulled up on his laptop. And he goes, four, four, four, what do you think four, four, four means? Four, four, four means your guardian angel wants to know that they're watching over you.

• 3:38:11Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, when I got it, I spent a year in solitary confinement and, uh, came out of, uh, that beef very bitter, you know, uh, I try not to appear bitter and I, I'm not bitter like,

• 3:38:30Speaker 02

  I, I understand police come after guys like me, you know? And it's just all part of the game and I, I don't hold animosity, but when I came, uh, out of that solitary confinement, I'd spent a year there. They were using my mom as a bargaining chip. She was dying of cancer. And they were using my mom as a bargaining chip and, uh, to get me to plead out and not fight the case and whatnot.

• 3:39:00Speaker 02

  And I came home, she died the next day. She came to see me that day and then the, the next day she died. And, uh, I had, when my dad died, I had taken his wedding ring. And I'd taken all the diamonds out of it and I put them in a heart for my mom. Cause I wanted her to have the, my dad's diamonds with her and, uh,

• 3:39:28Speaker 02

  she was in the hospice and somebody stole the, uh, the diamonds off of her.

• 3:39:36Speaker 02

  I was so mad, I, I, I went to the administrator and said, I don't know what happened, who you got working here? I said, but tell them the smartest thing for them to do was walk on the Ventura pier and throw it off the end of the pier. Cause if I ever see anybody with that on, I go, I'm not asking any questions. I'm just reacting. I don't care who has it on. And like I said, I was so mad and so angry, I, I just, everything was unraveling. The club wasn't the same. It didn't feel the same to me. Uh, we were in the midst of a, a new era with, uh, you know, chasing Osama bin Laden and everything that had happened. And

• 3:40:20Speaker 02

  I had a guy come to the house and

• 3:40:27Speaker 02

  he was a minister and, uh,

• 3:40:31Speaker 02

  he came there to tell me that I had guardian angels watching me. And he goes, I just want you to know. And, uh, he referred that to them, it was a, uh,

• 3:40:46Speaker 02

  as some sort of good dogs that protect you, uh, or something to do with the Bible. I, I didn't quite understand it. And, uh, I,

• 3:41:01Speaker 02

  I didn't say no, you know, I, I, he was sincere. I mean, I knew he believed in what he was telling me. And I had in, when I was in solitary confinement, they, they quit giving me my mail. They, uh, started sending my mail back then, you know, they start playing little games with you. And, uh, like in the month of December, I had 350 pieces returned to the people that sent mail to me.

• 3:41:31Speaker 02

  And the only thing I had in solitary confinement for a while was a Bible. It took everything away from me and so I was, I was reading the Bible, Bible a lot. But I came home and, uh, I've,

• 3:41:48Speaker 02

  there's a lot of things you can't explain in this life and they're mysterious, you know? And, uh,

• 3:41:56Shawn Ryan?

  Like how the fuck you're still sitting here?

• 3:41:57Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. When everybody around me has been, there's only a couple of guys left and they're dead. And I, I think of, I met with somebody that I was very close with, uh, somebody I trusted with my life, uh, met with him recently. And I know you understand this, him and I had a conversation about things that happened 30 years ago that I couldn't have that conversation with anybody else but him. Because we, we both understand and I, I think we're both wondering what the hell is fucking going on, man?

• 3:42:37Speaker 02

  Anyways, so I, which I don't brush off what you say, what you say and what you've just told me. It's, uh, uh,

• 3:42:49Speaker 02

  it's interesting and it, it attracts my attention, you know? But I, I don't know. It's like,

• 3:43:01Speaker 02

  I have this little hard headedness, you know? And you know what I'm talking about.

• 3:43:05Shawn Ryan?

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 3:43:06Speaker 02

  You know what I'm talking about. It's kind of like, you know, and it's, it almost goes back to that. We were speaking earlier, uh, uh,

• 3:43:16Speaker 02

  it's like,

• 3:43:19Speaker 02

  I don't want to pair weak. I,

• 3:43:23Shawn Ryan?

  That is the weakness.

• 3:43:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, you know, it's just like,

• 3:43:30Speaker 02

  I had, like I said, well, I had to come to terms with.

• 3:43:34Speaker 02

  I had two choices. You know, I could either quit the club or I could do, I could become a hypocrite and do the things that I was condemning other people for doing. And, uh, I chose to walk away, you know? But anyways.

• 3:43:52Shawn Ryan?

  Think this is a good place to end it.

• 3:43:54Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 3:43:55Shawn Ryan?

  But before we do.

• 3:43:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:43:57Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna give you something to chew on.

• 3:43:59Speaker 02

  All right.

• 3:44:13Shawn Ryan?

  That is the Jesus calling. So for dummies like me that can't understand the Bible, we have to resort to something like that. But what that is, and you could take it, leave it, do whatever you want with it. But that is a short little couple of sentences every day. It's not a big lift. It's easy to understand. See if that tugs on you.

• 3:44:40Speaker 02

  I will, I will take it and I appreciate it. I've enjoyed being here, talking to you. I, uh, hope I made sense. I, uh,

• 3:44:50Speaker 02

  there, uh, some of the subjects are very delicate and they're very personal. And, uh, you know,

• 3:45:00Shawn Ryan?

  It was an awesome interview.

• 3:45:02Speaker 02

  It's been a long journey, my friend.

• 3:45:04Shawn Ryan?

  But George, God has a plan for you, man. And you don't have a lot of time to figure it out, but I hope you do.

• 3:45:11Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I appreciate that. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this, uh, and, uh, I am gonna, uh, put my nose in it, see what it says.

• 3:45:22Shawn Ryan?

  Best of luck to him.

• 3:45:23Speaker 02

  Appreciate it. Thank you again.

• 3:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.